A brief intellectual history of the idea of the art public.
 
The Art Public explores the history of efforts to imagine a collective, general audience for art in the world. Oskar Bätschmann explores both written and pictorial evidence of the development of the “art public” as an idea and disentangles connections between art production, audiences, and actual reception. Two aspects shape the narrative: the transformation of the audience from passive recipient to active agent as well as satirical jabs at audiences by the likes of Cruikshank, Rowlandson, and Daumier. This sweeping account connects the ancient Greeks with Renaissance painters, modern writers, and contemporary movie stars in a deft survey of the ways we imagine art’s immediate impact on audiences and its afterlives in museums, galleries, and the world.
 

Oskar Bätschmann is professor emeritus of early modern art history at the University of Bern. His books include Hans Holbein and Giovanni Bellini, also published by Reaktion Books. Nick Somers is the translator of many books from German including In the Blink of an Eye, also published by Reaktion Books. He lives in Vienna.