The texts collected in this book deal with the influence of “cheap images” on the formation of art historical knowledge around 1900. The focus is on two main themes:
First, the history of technological upheavals in the field of industrial production and iteration, which contribute significantly to the diffusion of the (art-historical) picture; second, the historical classification of the debates surrounding the unification of art-historical knowledge.In different contexts, the fundamental question of how the increase in historical artworks reproductions challenges traditional hierarchies between high culture and popular culture, and entails a systematic reorientation of art history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is explored.
