The popularity of works of art
Kunstgeschichte. Open Peer Reviewed Journal, (2011)Abstract
This text reviews different notions of popularity in scholarly literature through time, and groups them into broader definitions on the one hand, which define popularity as a combination of esteem and fame (»well-liked by many people«), and narrower definitions on the other hand, for which certain characteristics (e.g. low quality, or a lower-class audience) are essential. Although broader definitions are more intuitive and less complex, narrower definitions have always been predominant in scholarly literature. However, if popularity is seen as a property of a work of art that can exist in varying degrees, rather than a category to which an object can either belong or not, it can be applied in its broader sense to any work of art.