Konst i omlopp mening, medier och marknad i Stockholm under 1700-talets senare hälft

Sammanfattning: The aim of this doctoral thesis is to explore how art was mediated and given meaning in the environment of an urban media culture in Stockholm during the second part of the 18th century. It comprises studies of how art was distributed on the market, how it was discussed in the press and how it was exhibited in public. It also includes an analytical orientation toward mixing of concepts and values, rather than purifying them into categories such as elite and popular. Art is approached as an open concept of investigation.The thesis presents three studies. The first discusses art as concepts and subject matter in papers, pamphlets and encyclopaedias, with a critical stand against the historiography emphasizing the establishment of the 'fine arts'.  The second situates art in two parallel practises of showing art in public, exhibitions arranged by the Academy of Arts and the Auction Chamber's public sales. The third deals with prints on the market, a medium equally recognized as one of the fine arts and as a visual mass medium. All studies also consider notions of interaction, public, and social class.Two overarching arguments are developed. The first concerns media cultural functions as mechanisms of cultural transgression. This argument points to the mixing of international and local, regarding both themes in the press and prints on the market. It also stresses the mixing of art, commerce, and entertainment, in the dual character of both the academy's exhibitions and the auction's sales. The second argument consists in pointing to alternative cuts, by which I suggest discursive relations between art, luxury, entertainment, and knowledge. These are areas that, since the 18th century, have often been kept apart, but were nonetheless deeply interwoven. One overarchig pattern studied throughout the thesis is the 18th-century linking of the fine arts as well as luxury, entertainment, and knowledge to a perceptually defined subject.