Genetics of visual arts

What can the genetic approach bring to the history of art, and vice versa? Genetic criticism, by getting involved in the analysis of visual works, has followed an interdisciplinary and open approach initiated since its foundation. Its originally textual methodology led it to favour the study of conjunctions between image and text, in fields that are still not very well studied by the history of art, such as the titling of works or the terminologies concerning the artists' drafts. Genetics can renew the history of art by providing it with tools to enhance in a better way the archives of creation and recreate scientifically the processes that gave birth to the work of art, but at the cost of a conversion of the critical relation.