| Summary: | The thesis investigates some elements of the eighteenth century German public sphere concerned with the visual arts. It considers the periodical press (with the art journal Miscellaneen artistischen Inhalts [1779-1808] providing a particular focus), the new bourgeois public for this press (the subject of Part I), and what is argued was the most crucial mediator of the visual to the new public, the engraved print, particularly the English print. The thesis locates these issues into the larger project of eighteenth century German bourgeois society, that is, the creation of a cultured class, with the 'man of taste' at its core. Part II considers the periodical press in general, and the art journal in particular, in relation to the new reading public and to the role they played in mediating/constructing information about the print as an art object. The role of print collecting handbooks in creating a discourse about the print as art and as equal to painting is similarly considered. The idea of Nachr.ichtenverkehr (information exchange) as part of Warenverkehr (commodity exchange) is discussed in terms of the art journal's use of artist's biography and its role in the print market. Part III focusses on the fashion (Mode) for the English print in Germany and explores, through the use of the case study, the issues of review writing and the male reader/viewer in regard to the subject matter, form, and medium of the English print (and some of its German imitators) . It is argued that the English print, because of its strong market presence and its representation of what was believed to be a positive English middle class model, had a relevance to Germany's new art collecting public. The specific examples of the stippled 'fancy' picture, the 'Grecian' pictures of Arigelica Kauffmann and the engraved modern history piece of West's Death of General Wolfe, are discussed respectively in terms of gendered viewing, bourgeois notions of virtue and the 'feeling' viewer. The final section points out that the development of a public taste, as formed by the press and the print market, was not without its opponents. The use of the public's press by scholars and academicians is discussed in terms of their project as self-appointed leaders in the creation of a tasteful society, and their own agenda of instituting measurable standards based on their interpretation of the antique, art theory and a metahistorical notion of 'art'.
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