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Cecily Brown is a British-born, New York-based artist who rose to prominence in the late 1990s. Originally influenced by Cubism and Abstract Expressionism, Brown has over the years developed her unique voice, which investigates the sensual qualities of oil paint and portraiture through a satirizing and celebratory process inspired both by abstraction and realism. Gentle and yet forceful, Brown's exuberant brushwork, rich palette, intense energy, and black humor have redefined some of painting's historical canons.
Working at the forefront of cosmetic surgery at the turn of the twentieth century, Dr Suzanne Noël was both a pioneer in her medical field and a firm believer in the advancement of women. Today her views on the benefits of aesthetic surgery to women may seem at odds with her feminist principles, but by placing Noël in the context of turn-of-the-century French culture, this book is able to demonstrate how these two worldviews were reconciled. Noël was able to combine her intense convictions for gender equality and anti-ageism in the workforce with her underlying compassion and concern for her female patients, during a time when there were no laws in place to protect women from workplace discrimination. She was also responsible for several advances in cosmetic surgery, a thriving industry, and is today best known for her development of the mini facelift. This book, therefore, sheds much valuable light on advances in aesthetic surgery, twentieth-century beauty culture, women and the public sphere, and the ‘new woman’.
A colourful account of women’s health, beauty, and cosmetic aids, from stays and corsets to today’s viral trends Victorian women ate arsenic to achieve an ideal, pale complexion, while in the 1790s balloon corsets were all the rage, designed to make the wearer appear pregnant. Women of the eighteenth century applied blood from a black cat’s tail to problem skin, while doctors in the 1880s promoted woollen underwear to keep colds at bay. Beautification and the pursuit of health may seem all-consuming today, but their history is long and fantastically varied. Ranging across the last four hundred years, Margarette Lincoln examines women’s health and beauty in fascinating detail. Through first-hand accounts and reports of physicians, quacks, and advertising, Lincoln captures women’s lived experience of consuming beauty products, and the excitement—and trauma—of adopting the latest fashion trends. Considering everything from body sculpture, diet, and exercise to skin, teeth, and hair, Perfection is a vibrant account of women’s body-fashioning—and shows how intimately these practices are related to community and identity throughout history.
For the most part, the women portrayed have speak to us through intermediaries. Hildegard of Bingen, Christine de Pisan, and Ann Hutchinson's 'recusant nuns' may present themselves in their own words - though even here there are veils of concealment, dissimulation, assumption and presumption to be removed - but Chaucer's women, Chretien's patrons, Milton's Eve, the conflation of saints which comprises Wilgefortis, Ste Foy, and the imperious Theodora are presented in the words, works and social milieux of men. Where they are, ostensibly, given their own voices it is by male authors.
This groundbreaking work uncovers the role played by black people in the emergence of the Bah'i faith in North America. Drawing on a wide range of sources including personal essays, letters, and journals, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of some extraordinary individuals.
A panoramic social history that chronicles the quest for beauty in all its contradictions—and how it affects the female body. Who decides what is fashionable? What clothes we wear, what hairstyles we create, what colour lipstick we adore, what body shape is 'all the rage’. Thestory of female adornment from 1860- 1960 is intriguingly unbuttoned in this glorious social history. Virginia Nicholson has long been fascinated by the way we women present ourselves – or are encouraged to present ourselves – to the world. ‘Women have been fat or slim, hyperthyroid or splenetic, sallow or pink-cheeked, slouched or erect, according to the prevalent notions of beauty…’ Cecil Beaton, The Gla...
Garcia de Orta’s Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563) was one of the first books to take advantage of the close relationship between medicine, trade and empire in the early modern period. The book was printed in Goa, the capital of the Portuguese empire in the East, and the city where the author, a Portuguese physician of Jewish ancestry, lived for almost thirty years. It presents a vast array of medical information on various drugs, spices, plants, fruits and minerals native to India or adjoining territories. In addition, it includes information concerning indigenous methods of healing as well as a far-reaching assessment of ancient and modern authors on Asian materia medic...
In 1705-1706, during the War of the Spanish Succession and two years after a devastating earthquake, an ’epidemic’ of mysterious sudden deaths terrorized Rome. In early modern society, a sudden death was perceived as a mala mors because it threatened the victim’s salvation by hindering repentance and last confession. Special masses were celebrated to implore God’s clemency and Pope Clement XI ordered his personal physician, Giovanni Maria Lancisi, to perform a series of dissections in the university anatomical theatre in order to discover the 'true causes' of the deadly events. It was the first investigation of this kind ever to take place for a condition which was not contagious. Th...
New York, more than any other city, has held a special fascination for filmmakers and viewers. In every decade of Hollywood filmmaking, artists of the screen have fixated upon this fascinating place for its tensions and promises, dazzling illumination and fearsome darkness. From Street Scene and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Rosemary's Baby, The Warriors, and 25th Hour, the sixteen essays in this book explore the cinematic representation of New York as a city of experience, as a locus of ideographic characters and spaces, as a city of moves and traps, and as a site of allurement and danger.
Uroscopy - the diagnosis of disease by visual examination of the urine - played a very prominent role in early modern medical practice and in the lives of ordinary people. Widely considered as the most reliable way to diagnose diseases and pregnancies it was taught at the best universities. Leading physicians prided themselves on their mastery in this field. Countless medical writings were dedicated to uroscopy and artists represented it in hundreds of illustrations and paintings. Based on a wide range of textual and visual sources, such as autobiographies, court records, medical treatises and genre painting, this book offers the first comprehensive study of the place of uroscopy in early modern medicine, culture and society and of the - gradually changing - ways in which medical practitioners, lay persons and, last but not least, artists perceived and used it.