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The tumultuous years of the French Revolution left France’s prestigious decorative arts industries poised on the brink of ruin. It was not until after the fall of the monarchy and the ascendancy of the Consulat and Empire under Napoleon that they began to recover so that by the middle of the nineteenth century they stood at the pinnacle of their achievement. This book is the first in depth study of the renowned porcelain works at Sèvres during its virtual rebirth under the 47 year direction of the scientist, teacher, and administrator Alexandre Brongniart. Some 110 working drawings from the Sèvres Archive are reproduced here for the first time in color. They celebrate the high skill of t...
An examination of the development, role, and influence of the British decorative art dealers who invented an Anglo-Gallic style for elite interiors. In this volume Diana Davis demonstrates how London dealers invented a new and visually splendid decorative style that combined the contrasting tastes of two nations. Departing from the conventional narrative that depicts dealers as purveyors of antiquarianism, Davis repositions them as innovators who were key to transforming old art objects from ancien régime France into cherished “antiques” and, equally, as creators of new and modified French-inspired furniture, bronze work, and porcelain. The resulting old, new, and reconfigured objects m...
A wide-ranging illustrated history of transparency as told through the evolution of the glass window Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political institutions, corporations, and the media. But how did it become such a powerful--and global--idea? From ancient glass to Apple's corporate headquarters, this book is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Daniel Jütte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window. Windows are meant to be unnoticed. Yet a historical perspective reveals the role that glass has played in shaping how we see and interpret the world. A seemingly "pure" material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jütte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparency--its costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change.
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The French Revolution had a marked impact on the ways in which citizens saw the newly liberated spaces in which they now lived. Painting, gardening, cinematic displays of landscape, travel guides, public festivals, and tales of space flight and devilabduction each shaped citizens’ understanding of space. Through an exploration of landscape painting over some 40 years, Steven Adams examines the work of artists, critics and contemporary observers who have largely escaped art historical attention to show the importance of landscape as a means of crystallising national identity in a period of unprecedented political and social change.
Cet ouvrage met en lumière la fabrique romantique de la royauté entre 1830 et 1848. Arrivé au pouvoir à la faveur d'une révolution, Louis-Philippe a dû montrer comment il souhaitait dorénavant articuler la souveraineté nationale au principe de la royauté héréditaire. Les dispositifs médiatiques ainsi mis en place ont contribué en France à renforcer le sentiment national, en même temps que les formes prises par celui-ci ont remodelé l'identité et les pratiques dynastiques. Analyser comment dynastie et nation se sont recomposées l'une par rapport à l'autre, au siècle du nationalisme, de la presse et de la démocratisation, tel est l'objectif de ce livre. Archives privées et diplomatiques, images et objets commémoratifs révèlent la construction d'une dynastie récapitulative, qui voulait résumer toutes les expériences politiques de l'histoire nationale.