Research programme
The ECARTICO program explores the complex fabric of artistic and economic competition in the field of history painting in Amsterdam from c. 1630 through 1690. The term history painting denotes textually based figure paintings - i.e. historie: subjects from the Bible, mythology, pastoral literature and classical and contemporary history. This was the most internationally oriented and, according to the art theory of the period, most highly valued category of painting. However, apart from studies concentrating on the work of Rembrandt, history painting in Amsterdam has been a neglected area within the study of Dutch art. The traditional emphasis on Rembrandt, who is usually studied as an isolated phenomenon, has impeded a proper understanding of the dynamics of the market for history paintings in Amsterdam as a whole.
Within a few decades the Amsterdam art market rapidly developed into the most thriving in Europe, a position it held until contracting sharply after 1670. The most prominent segment of that market was the production of history paintings (of which Rembrandt's work constituted only a small, albeit highly conspicuous, part). Around the middle of the century, the leading practitioners of history painting were concentrated in Amsterdam. This distinguished its art market significantly from those of other Dutch cities, in which the production of landscape, still life and genre paintings played more important roles. During the same period Amsterdam developed into the center of the international art trade.
In the beginning of the 1630s painters of Rembrandt's generation were starting their careers, while successful artists of an older generation continued to be active. Soon, several pupils of Rembrandt left his studio and began to cut their own paths and became formidable competitors. Other artists settled in Amsterdam, some of them (notably Von Sandrart and Lievens) acquainted with the latest trends in Rome or Antwerp. Between c. 1640 and 1690 a considerable number of noted painters with highly diverging styles (many of them nowadays categorized as 'classicists') moved to Amsterdam from elsewhere. The continuous interaction with the production of history paintings in Haarlem, Utrecht and Antwerp, the rapidly increasing import of expensive history paintings from Italy, and the presence of outsiders from Antwerp (hired for the decoration of the Town Hall), provided new impulses. Most of these artists were still active in the 1660s, which meant that the market for history paintings during those years was characterized by an unprecedented variety. Not only the number of paintings produced, but also the stylistic and iconographic diversification, as well as the variety in organization of production and ways of marketing the products were unheard-of. However, this situation came to an abrupt stop: as of the middle of the 1670s Gerard Lairesse seems to have had the stage practically to himself. When he went blind in 1690, only a few minor masters were left.
Problems, questions, goals, framework, coherence.
Underlying this project is the basic assumption that artistic emulation and economic competition are indissolubly linked components that determine the techniques, styles and themes of newly produced paintings in an art market where artists, art dealers, connoisseurs and the wider art-buying public continually interacted with and were affected by one another.
The Amsterdam market for paintings will be studied for the first time as an arena in which a group of ambitious painters competed artistically and economically in order to obtain an advantageous position in this market. To sell their work profitably, to procure commissions and to realize their artistic ambitions, painters had to attract and maintain the attention of art dealers, patrons and art lovers/consumers of paintings, as well as of the cultural elite of poets and humanists who were sometimes involved in the social and artistic rivalry among artists and among patrons. Painters had to achieve all this in a competitive environment by developing personal styles, iconographies and artistic ideologies, organizing their means of production in effective studio structures and processes, and working out manners of marketing and ways of keeping up relations with (networks of) customers.
Insofar as the above-mentioned artists have been studied, this has occurred in monographs on single painters, or sometimes (mainly in exhibitions) in isolated stylistic groups, while artistic interactions between painters have always been examined in terms of "influence". This vague and passive concept, which approaches works of art from the wrong side and has been plaguing art history for more than a century, will be rigorously excluded. This project focuses on the choices artists made - choices determined by a great variety of factors, from the artist's technical and artistic training, his interaction with the products of others and with different artistic ideologies, to the social positions of customers and economic forces in the art market.
At the center of this interdisciplinary project is the question of what choices artists, art dealers, customers and connoisseurs made to achieve certain artistic, social or economic goals, and how and to what degree these choices are related to the changes in technique and production process (process innovation), and changes in form, content and function (product innovation) of the works being made, bought and viewed. How did artists use style and subject matter to position themselves in relation to one another vis à vis certain (groups of) buyers? What strategies can be identified for making a name for oneself, organizing the studio and marketing its products? What (changing) artistic ideologies were connected with this self-positioning of artists apropos their audience and colleagues? What did the choices for certain styles, themes and studio organizations mean when viewed in connection with the social background, denomination and social ambition of the painters on the one hand, and the background of certain networks of connoisseurs and buyers on the other, also considering the (changing) economic and political situation? Before now the asking of such important questions had barely even begun.
The sub-projects vary in approach and scope but are closely connected; they interlock with and complement each other. Projects 1 and 2, a close collaboration between Bok and a postdoc, constitute the socio-economic foundation, exploring the dynamics of the various economic forces at work in the Amsterdam art market, as well as assessing the artists' social and economic positions and their place in cultural networks. Project 3 studies the nature of rivalry and innovation in a short, but critical period (1635-1645) when a host of young, ambitious artists started their careers and had to establish their own 'niches' in the art market; 4. examines within its cultural and socio-economic context the large number of artists competing as of c. 1645 for a segment of the market in an unprecedented variety of styles and types, which, however, contracted rapidly between c. 1670 and 1690; 5. explores the question of why 'outsiders' from the Southern Netherlands were hired for highly important commissions of the city government; 6. zooms in on a large and distinct part of the production, that of biblical subjects, approaching the choice of subject matter and style from the side of the 'consumers', for a better understanding of the strategies of artists catering to the demand of the public. 7. In a collaborative effort, Bok and Sluijter will bring together the various lines of research and their results and address the project's contribution towards a theory in which form, content and function of paintings is being viewed within networks of producers, middlemen and consumers. Three closely related PhD projects carried out at the IFA/NYU will also offer important contributions.
Innovative aspects, methods, prior research, importance.
By placing artistic and economic competition at the center of attention, questions about the relationships of form, content, the functions of paintings in society and artistic ideologies with their socio-economic context - questions forever haunting the history of art - will be approached from a new perspective. The project is innovative in many respects: not only is its approach pioneering and does it seek to fill the gap in research on essential questions of artistic production in the most thriving art market of that time, but its most important feature is that it brings together fields of research that have always functioned separately. Researchers working on theories of supply and demand and the socio-economic history of the production, selling, buying and owning of paintings, and those who study the relations between form, technique, content, function and art theoretical concepts will join forces.
The methodological challenge of this project consists of the variety of methods employed. Together these will contribute to a new theoretical framework, based on a heuristic model, that should be able to incorporate the facets relating to the many-sided network of producers, middlemen and consumers that made paintings meaningful in society (compare Van der Stock). The concepts of artistic rivalry and economic competition and their interconnectedness, as well as their relations to process and product innovation will continually be investigated. The methods, working assumptions and framework with which this project is concerned will be discussed in seminars and expert meetings, so that the underpinnings of the project are repeatedly examined with a critical eye. Conclusions will be laid down in project 7 (synthesis). The results of the sub-projects will continuously be collated. The shared set of working assumptions will guarantee that the closely related sub-projects will interlock and complement each other.
The project is based in the interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of the Dutch Golden Age (part of the Institute for Culture and History of the University of Amsterdam), consisting of historians, art historians and historians of literature and offering a highly stimulating platform for research. Members of the research group are affiliated with the Huizinga Instituut and the Onderzoekschool Kunstgeschiedenis.
