A la charnière des XIXe et XXe siècles, Berta Zuckerkandl (1864-1945), salonnière et journaliste autrichienne, participa activement à établir des échanges artistiques, culturels et politiques entre la France et l'Empire austro-hongrois. Alors que ses liens familiaux avec Georges Clemenceau lui permirent d'entrer en contact avec les artistes et intellectuels parisiens qu'il fréquentait - Rodin, Carrière, Raffelli, Geffroy..., son salon rassemblait à Vienne quelques-uns des acteurs emblématiques de la Wiener Moderne - Bahr, Klimt, Wagner, Mahler...-, formant le noyau d'un vaste réseau social européen. Porte-parole de la Sécession viennoise, Zuckerkandl s'imposa également comme l'une des critiques d'art les plus productives de son temps, guidant les artistes et initiant le public à l'art moderne, en s'appuyant sur les initiatives françaises pour orienter le développement de l'art. Cette étude vise ainsi à mettre en lumière son rôle dans la dynamique des échanges artistiques entre Vienne et Paris. Elle apporte d'abord des éléments biographiques éclairant la place privilégiée de Zuckerkandl à la rencontre des cultures française et autrichienne. Elle montre ensuite son implication au sein des cercles artistiques autrichiens et offre une analyse détaillée d'un corpus d'écrits sur l'art moderne. Elle expose enfin les résultats de ses interventions en faveur de la promotion des artistes français et de la réception de leurs oeuvres en Autriche, mettant en lumière les objectifs artistiques, culturels et politiques poursuivis par Zuckerkandl, décidé à préserver la culture autrichienne à l'épreuve de la guerre et de la chute de l'Empire austro-hongrois. / At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, Berta Zuckerkandl (1864-1945), Austrian salonnière and journalist, engaged actively in artistic, cultural and political exchanges between France and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Being on familiar terms with Georges Clemenceau gave her the opportunity to exchange ideas with artists and intellectuals in Paris, including Rodin, Carriere, Raffaelli, and Geffroy. Her salon in Vienna gathered some of the most pioneering personalities of the Wiener Moderne...- Bahr, Klimt, Wagner, Mahler...- and thus formed the centre of a vast social network within Europe. Being a spokeswoman of the Vienna Secession, Zuckerkandl established herself as one of the most active contemporary art critics. She guided artists and introduced the public into modern art by drawing on French initiatives to influence the art's development. The present study thus aims at highlighting her role in the dynamic artistic exchange between Vienna and Paris. It will first present Zuckerkandl's biography in order to draw attention to her privileged position in the exchange of the French and Austrian cultures. Secondly, it will show her impact on artistic Austrian groups and provide a detailed analysis of a corpus of selected documents dealing with modern art. It will finally discuss her interventions in favour of French artists and the reception of their works in Austria by highlighting the artistic, cultural and political aims pursued by Zuckerkandl, who was determined to preserve the Austrian culture despite the war and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

This thesis provides an overview of the engagement with the material culture of Assyria, unearthed in the Middle East from 1845 onwards by British and French archaeologists. It sets the artistic discovery of Assyria within the visual culture of the period through reference not only to painting but also to illustrated newspapers, books, journals, performances and popular entertainments. The thesis presents a more vigorous, interlinked, and widespread engagement than previous studies have indicated, primarily by providing a comprehensive corpus of artistic responses. The artistic connections between Britain and France were close. Works influenced by Assyria were published, exhibited and reviewed in the contemporary press, on both sides of the English Channel. Some artists, such as Gustave Doré, successfully maintained careers in both London and Paris. It is therefore often meaningless to speak of a wholly ‘French’ or ‘British’ reception, since these responses were coloured by artistic crosscurrents that operated in both directions, a crucial theme to be explored in this dissertation. In Britain, print culture also transported to the regions, away from large metropolitan centres, knowledge of Assyria and Assyrian-inspired art through its appeal to the market for biblical images. Assyria benefited from the explosion in graphical communication. This thesis examines the artistic response to Assyria within a chronological framework. It begins with an overview of the initial period in the 1850s that traces the first British discoveries. Chapter Two explores the different artistic turn Assyria took in the 1860s. Chapter Three deals with the French reception in the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter Four concludes the British reception up to 1900, and Chapter Five deals with the twentieth century. The thesis contends that far from being a niche subject engaged with a particular group of artists, Assyrian art was a major rediscovery that affected all fields of visual culture in the nineteenth century.

From the viewpoint of classical reception studies, I am asking what contemporary British art (by, for example, Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst, and Mark Wallinger) has to do with the classical tradition – both the art and literature of Greco-Roman antiquity. I have conducted face-to-face interviews with some of the leading artists working in Britain today, including Lucas, Hirst, Wallinger, Marc Quinn, and Gilbert & George. In addition to contemporary art, the thesis focuses on Greco-Roman art and on myths and modes of looking that have come to shape the western art historical tradition – seeking to offer a different perspective on them from that of the Renaissance and neoclassicism. The thesis concentrates on the generation of artists known as the YBAs, or Young British Artists, who came to prominence in the 1990s. These artists are not renowned for their deference to the classical tradition, and are widely regarded as having turned their backs on classical art and its legacies. The introduction asks whether their work, which has received little scholarly attention, might be productively reassessed from the perspective of classical reception studies. It argues that while their work no longer subscribes to a traditional understanding of classical ‘influence’, it continues to depend – for its power and provocativeness – on classical concepts of figuration, realism, and the basic nature of art. Without claiming that the work of the YBAs is classical or classicizing, the thesis sets out to challenge the assumption that their work has nothing to do with ancient art, or that it fails to conform to ancient understandings of what art is. In order to do this, the thesis analyses contemporary works of art through three classical ‘lenses’. Each lens allows contemporary art to be examined in the context of a longer history. The first lens is the concept of realism, as seen in artistic and literary explorations of the relationship between art and life. This chapter uses the myth of Pygmalion’s statue as a way of thinking about contemporary art’s continued engagement with ideas of mimesis and the ‘real’ which were theorised and debated in antiquity. The second lens is corporeal fragmentation, as evidenced by the broken condition of ancient statues, the popular theme of dismemberment in western art, and the fragmentary body in contemporary art. The final chapter focuses on the figurative plaster cast, arguing that contemporary art continues to invoke and reinvent the long tradition of plaster reproductions of ancient statues and bodies. Through each of these ‘lenses’, I argue that contemporary art remains linked, both in form and meaning, to the classical past – often in ways which go beyond the stated intentions of an artist. Contemporary art continues to be informed by ideas and processes that were theorised and practised in the classical world; indeed, it is these ideas and processes that make it deserving of the art label.