Resumen de Los espacios de creación: la representación de talleres de artista de artista desde el romanticismo hasta las primeras vanguardias
Spaces for Creation: Artists¿ Studios Depictions from Romanticism to Historical Avant-Gardes" aims to analyse artists¿ studios depictions in 19th century Western painting, revealing a huge amount of examples of such an iconographic modern phenomenon. Two main kinds of pictorial representations were founded: contemporary and scenes coming from past times, especially those related with old masters like Raphael, Michelangelo or Rembrandt. Parisian Salons and Spanish Fine Arts National Exhibitions catalogues were consulted in order to establish the importance and scope of the subject, along with databases and inventories of public and private art collections worldwide. Artistic literature from all times and contemporary artistic literature and press are prominent resources for the development of this dissertation, discovering another topic for the international imaginary of the Western artistic culture in Europe and North America.
The main lines of discourse mix contemporary and historic depictions of artists¿ ateliers and attend to their profound significance, related to principal artistic reflections and problems in a period from around 1785 to the late 19th and early 20th centuries in both cases. Methodology and other issues are explained in the introduction; the first chapter is focused on theoretical and aesthetics approaches to the subject, especially focused in artists as art historians, as they represent old masters in the studio, and the parallels between these paintings and some prominent facts in 19th century artists lives and their economic, social and political backgrounds. The second chapter estates the importance of the topic along French Salons from 1785 to 1885, finding out hundreds of lost and unknown pictures that state clearly the relevance of artists¿ studios images in this time, much more than one could ever imagine. The particular circumstances of the exhibitions and other polemics around them are regarded along this large and necessary part of the PhD, in order to contextualise the transformations of the primary and secondary meanings of artists¿ studios depictions.
Kings or popes visits to artists¿ studios are one of the most prominent depictions for their relevance and number, and the topic of the third chapter, focusing on the main patron king and artists of past times, showing a positive or a negative vision of them. They entail a complex signification related not only to art history perception but also to 19th century links between art and power, with peculiar connotations deriving from social, economic and political situations along the period. After this, some paintings focus in the innate genius question and the early approach of children to art through their presence in artists¿ studios pictures. The fifth part is dedicated to those representations including other artists¿ atelier, involving again many different approaches to the issue, as learning, friendship and artistic rivalry. Love, death and family, the main spheres of private life, can be seen in many paintings related and examined together in the next part of this dissertation, highlighting historic love stories staging in the atelier like that of Raphael and the Fornarina, and the linkage between death and artists¿ studios.
Thereafter many depictions dealing with artistic creation in the atelier form a separated chapter analysing the origins of creative inspiration and the solitude as an important factor of it, along with the presence of models, clients and other sitters during painting sessions and that of art related specific characters, like the critics, the experts and the amateurs. The ateliers often intend to show their owner¿s social, artistic, economic or political thinking, so I examine it according to the austerity, luxury, misery or leisure of their representations. Finally, women artists¿ vindications are depicted in studios images too, having a special meaning due to their harsh conditions of inequality in 19th century society.
