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The Authority of Art: Cultural criticism and the idea of the Royal Academy in mid‐Victorian Britain
Author(s) -
Trodd Colin
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8365.00044
Subject(s) - exhibition , criticism , national identity , media studies , valuation (finance) , identity (music) , power (physics) , relation (database) , sociology , history , art , political science , art history , law , aesthetics , politics , finance , physics , quantum mechanics , database , computer science , economics
In mid‐Victorian Britain the Royal Academy was subject to detailed investigation and valuation by a number of cultural, social and governmental forces. Focusing on the relationship between professional status and cultural power, many of these examinations were concerned with the role played by the Royal Academy in the public exhibition of art and the national education of artists. The purpose of this article is to survey and analyse the rhetorics which organized debates concerning the function and identity of the Royal Academy in the period between 1850 and 1880. Engaging with a range of primary sources – Select Committee Reports, exhibition reviews, critical essays and public speeches – this work addresses the following questions: How was the term ‘professional’ used in definitions of the Royal Academy? To what extent was its privileged position within the social, ceremonial and symbolic landscapes of Victorian culture dependent upon its exploitation of commercial markets? How could the Academy reject the claim that, in establishing the social status of its own membership, it had contrived to return art to the level of trade? Where was the Academy positioned in relation to the discourses of national culture which circulated within Victorian culture?