In the introduction part of the thesis, following a brief account of the adventure genre, Raymond Williams’s “structures of feeling” model is introduced with reference to the Robinson Crusoe story and the Robinsonade tradition. This thesis furthers the exploration of the adaptability of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe by illustrating the central argument with reference to an intra-medial (Elizabeth Whittaker’s “Robina Crusoe and Her Lonely Island Home”) and one inter-medial adaptation (Robinson Crusoe, 1997) of the Robinson Crusoe story. Thus, as an outcome of all these various adaptations, it is possible to observe a polyphonic voice in the entirety of the Robinsonades, in which many contradictory ideas and voices are highlighted. Since soon after the publication of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe, there have been many different cinematic and literary adaptations of this famous adventure story, which are collectively known as “Robinsonades.” Due to the plastic nature of the Robinson Crusoe story, which is a function of what Mikhail Bakhtin defines as the “adventure chronotope,” there are many intra-medial and inter-medial adaptations of Defoe’s novel in different historical, cultural, social and ideological contexts in which the “dominant” and/or “emergent” “structures of feeling” are represented. On the other hand, drawing collections, because they are evidence both of intimate links and of aesthetic choices that were less scrutinized and codified, give us unprecedented access to the networks of sociability of eighteenth-century collectors. Provenance search, auction studies and inventory upon decease – the traditional documents of collecting studies – are often unavailing in the case of modern drawing collections. We will also touch upon the methodological difficulties of retracing collecting practices often founded on gift or exchanges arising from studio sociablity. This paper first presents the disrupted context in which this practice appeared at the very end of the 18th century when artists had to adapt to a market in crisis. This collection, which we confront to other contemporary ensembles such as the Valedau and Chenard collections, as well as the collection of Alexandre du Sommerard, founder of the Cluny Museum, testifies to an emerging market and a growing consideration for modern art. Easily displayed and circulated, they were praised for being the enterprise of a “man of the world, friend of the arts,” who had thus created “a real portable museum which has nothing in common with the album of the lady of fashion, but which presents a real interest, that of assembling for display the worthy productions of our most distinguished artists.” Le Miroir des spectacles, des lettres, des mœurs et des arts, December 11, 1821. These drawings, now preserved in a museum, were originally gathered in portfolios – the practice was traditional for prints or Old Masters drawings, but assembling works from living artists remained unusual. Our paper proposes to recreate the networks and practices of modern drawing collecting, and its disruption on the already well-established French art market, by a detailed study of the collection of drawings bequeathed to the Fabre Museum of Montpellier by Antoine Valedau (1777-1838), a former Parisian stockbroker. But the historiography has significantly expanded its scope in the last decades, to include the study of modern drawings. Collecting and art market studies of the eighteenth-century period, which saw the rise of an international art market, used to focus mainly around the circulation of Old Masters’ painted canvases.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |