Concepts of Spanish Art Crafted through Exhibitions in Spain, the UK and the US from 1800 to 1939.
Abstract
Spanish art has traditionally been associated with specific artists, mainly the Spanish Old Masters. When scholarly publications studied the construction of this traditional concept of Spanish art, they based their studies on historiography and other texts that contribute to the elaboration of this artistic concept. However, historiography is not the only variable that influenced the creation of artistic concepts: the art market and museum collections also contribute to these concepts. This thesis aims to add another layer of complexity to the study of the consolidation of the concepts of Spanish art by examining exhibitions in which Spanish artists were displayed from 1800 to 1939. Aiming to discover patterns and the evolution of exhibition dynamics when displaying Spanish art, this study focuses on three countries: Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
After collecting 336 exhibitions, using one of the few official primary sources—catalogues—the analysis consists of a combination of traditional and computational methodologies. This has allowed me to move from local to global perspectives. This means that, instead of only discovering general patterns, it also allows an understanding of the different local contexts. The type of analysis chosen for this study is network analysis, specifically a graph model based on co-exhibition, which allowed me to map and visualize the invisible connections generated when artists were displayed in the same exhibition. Adding to that, statistical analysis based on network theory, this research approached the analysis in three dimensions: general, chronological, and local.
The conclusions drawn from this analysis not only contribute to understanding how the concept or concepts of Spanish art were crafted and built in exhibitions, such as maintaining the traditional concept of Spanish art based on the Old Masters practically untouched by a large part of the nineteenth century but also how the application of network analysis, particularly co-exhibition networks, as an effective tool for revealing patterns and analysing exhibition dynamics.