시각문화론적 연구를 위한 시론

A Preliminary Proposal for a Study of the English Aristocracy’s Consumption of Visual Culture

This paper outlines a programmatic scheme for an investigation into the English aristocracy’s consumption of visual culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It aims to address one of the most intriguing but neglected historical questions in the history of art: how did a landed aristocracy, its political and social power firmly rooted in a rural economy, manage to forge and guide national tastes in arts? Based on a wide survey of the literature on English aristocracy and visual arts, the proposed study examines the cultural politics of art patronage and collecting with a view to reformulating it as part of visual cuture studies. In doing so, the study locates the reception of the visual arts by the English aristocracy within the context of identity formation, nationalism, and conspicuous consumption. Although the study construes the English nobility’s achievements as a group, it also presents a detailed picture of some prominent individuals’ contributions to the formation of national tastes. In other words, the purpose of the study is to explore the ways in which the visual arts helped to negotiate historical contingencies and to meet human desires.