Art Criticism and Its Institutions in Nineteenth-Century France

This book explores a range of social, institutional and discursive conditions in and through which criticism emerged and functioned in 19th-century France, and goes on to develop broader theoretical questions drawn from historical case studies.;Unlike many investigations of art criticism in 19th-century France, this book takes as its starting point the conception of criticism as discourse, that is, an historically constituted representation/signifying practise, embedded in a complex of shifting social and material collections; linguistic rules, literary codes, gendered cultural, political and institutional formations, which in different ways mediated the content, form and the very objects of critical discourse.;Issues discussed include: the emergence and formation of the social and professional category of "art critic" and its determination in modes of art writing; and the social, judicial and institutional fields in which it operated and through which its authority was negotiated and conferred.