Abstract
We examine the constituents of the talent development model in the arts. First, it is important to delimit the perimeter of the arts domain and define professionalism. An illustration of the historical and geographical variability of the delimitation of the arts is given, based on the work of French and American public statistics. The criteria for artistic professionalism are themselves multiple and competing, but also subject to controversy, since the export of the notion of talent outside the sphere of the arts, where it has historically been shaped, gives rise to a critique of the political economy of talent.
The next step is to identify the qualities in artistic work whose distribution motivates differences in success and the hierarchy of values. A paradox is constant: the arts offer a potential for individualization and differentiation without assignable limits, while at the same time eliciting comparative evaluations that rank artists, without possible reference to absolute criteria. Drawing on the research of Michael Baxandall, Martin Warnke and Antoine Schnapper [8], we show how the social history of creative practices in the visual arts cannot be reduced to a simple, routine distinction between ancient times, which knew nothing other than the work of the artisan artist who was a member of a guild, and an academic organization, which tightly controlled aesthetics and the organization of production, on the one hand, and modernity, which emerged in the 18thcentury to celebrate the genius of the artist as demigod, then as martyr to misunderstanding, in its romantic or avant-garde version, on the other. Our historical investigation is organized around a principle of analysis. Whatever qualities can be identified in artists and observed in their works, assessments of these qualities are accompanied by ranges of variability such that certain qualities act as meta-rules. For example, as Baxandall writes:
"[ facilita results] from a natural talent and abilities acquired and developed through exercise, but, of course, the word was often used with more freedom and laxity. The agility implied in practice by the exercise of this virtue(facilita) was one of the most prized qualities of the Renaissance, but it was, and still is, difficult to define precisely." [9]
