Abstract
The political developments since 2016 have made populism a major focus of the social sciences. This paper uses scholarly insights about populism to undertake a new examination of Dutch art of the seventeenth century. Using such an interdisciplinary method can illuminate aspects of Dutch (and European) art that have been overlooked. Populism has three core concepts: the people, the elite, and the people’s collective will. After demonstrating that these three concepts manifested themselves in seventeenth-century Dutch art, this research argues that populism is what distinguishes Dutch art from the art that was being produced in Europe at that time. It outlines the unique geographic and historical forces that enabled such art to emerge. Similar to current attitudes to populism – a positive one that considers it a part of democracy and a negative one that looks at it as a menace – we encounter two divergent attitudes towards the people in Dutch art of the Golden Age. By using populism as a political and social concept to examine art, this paper argues for a new kind of social history of art that goes beyond the work of Arnold Hauser.
Presenters
Yasser Derwiche DjazaerlyProfessor, Humanities, Fitchburg State University, Massachusetts, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art, Populism
