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Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment
Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of interior design and interior spaces from 1700 to 1850. Considering the interior as material, social and cultural artefact, this volume moves beyond conventional descriptive accounts of changing styles and interior design fashions, to explore in depth the effect on the interior of the materials, processes, aesthetic philosophies and cultural attitudes of the age. From the Palace of Versailles to Virginia coffeehouses, and from Chinoiserie bathhouses to the trading exchanges of the West Indies, the chapters in this book examine a wide range of themes including technological advancements, public spaces, gender and sexuality, and global movements in interior designs and decorations. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars, this volume provides the most authoritative and comprehensive survey of the history of interiors and interior architecture in the long eighteenth century.
Chaos and Cosmos
Writing in 1940, the prominent German art historian Erwin Panofsky asked, "How, then, is it possible to build up art history as a respectable scholarly discipline, if its objects come into being by an irrational and subjective process?" In Chaos and Cosmos, Karen Lang addresses the power of art to resist the pressures of the transcendental vantage point-history. Uncovering the intellectual and cultural richness of the early years of academic art history in Germany—the period from the 1880s to 1940—she explores various attempts within art history to transform aesthetic phenomena—chaos—into the cosmos of a systematic, unified field of inquiry.Lang starts by examining Panofsky's approac...
Dynastic Colonialism
Dynastic Colonialism analyses how women and men employed objects in particular places across the world during the early modern period in order to achieve the remarkable expansion of the House of Orange-Nassau. Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent explore how the House emerged as a leading force during a period in which the Dutch accrued one of the greatest seaborne empires. Using the concept of dynastic colonialism, they explore strategic behaviours undertaken on behalf of the House of Orange-Nassau, through material culture in a variety of sites of interpretation from palaces and gardens to prints and teapots, in Europe and beyond. Using over 140 carefully selected images, the authors co...
Chaos and Cosmos
Writing in 1940, the prominent German art historian Erwin Panofsky asked, "How, then, is it possible to build up art history as a respectable scholarly discipline, if its objects come into being by an irrational and subjective process?" In Chaos and Cosmos, Karen Lang addresses the power of art to resist the pressures of the transcendental vantage point-history. Uncovering the intellectual and cultural richness of the early years of academic art history in Germany--the period from the 1880s to 1940--she explores various attempts within art history to transform aesthetic phenomena--chaos--into the cosmos of a systematic, unified field of inquiry.Lang starts by examining Panofsky's approach to...
Chinoiserie
In a critical reassessment of chinoiserie, a style both praised and derided for its triviality, prettiness, and ornamental excesses, Stacey Sloboda argues that chinoiserie was no mute participant in eighteenth-century global consumer culture, but was instead a critical commentator on that culture. Analysing ceramics, wallpaper, furniture, garden architecture and other significant examples of British and Chinese design, this book takes an object-focused approach to studying the cultural phenomenon of the 'Chinese taste' in eighteenth-century Britain. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the critical history of design and the decorative arts in eighteenth-century Britain, and students and scholars of art history, material culture, eighteenth-century studies and British history will find a novel approach to studying the decorative arts and a forceful argument for their critical capacities.
Entangled Landscapes
The exchange of landscape practice between China and Europe from 1500–1800 is an important chapter in art history. While the material forms of the outcome of this exchange, like jardin anglo-chinoisand Européenerie are well documented, this book moves further to examine the role of the exchange in identity formation in early modern China and Europe. Proposing the new paradigm of “entangled landscapes”, drawing from the concept of “entangled histories”, this book looks at landscape design, cartography, literature, philosophy and material culture of the period. Challenging simplistic, binary treatments of the movements of “influences” between China and Europe, Entangled Landscapes reveals how landscape exchanges entailed complex processes of appropriation, crossover and transformation, through which Chinese and European identities were formed. Exploring these complex processes via three themes—empire building, mediators’ constraints, and aesthetic negotiations, this work breaks new ground in landscape and East-West studies. Interdisciplinary and revisionist in its thrust, it will also benefit scholars of history, human geography and postcolonial studies.
Art, Science, and Diplomacy: A Study of the Visual Images of the Macartney Embassy to China, 1793
This book examines how the Embassy members approached, selected, and represented information, and how, in doing so, they helped to shape European perceptions of China. The Macartney Embassy of 1793 was the first British diplomatic mission to China, seeking to open ties between the two empires. As part of the mission, the British government commissioned writers and artists to chronicle the geography and culture of a civilization that had, until then, been shrouded in mystery. A central focus of the book is the artwork itself, which provides a window into the diplomatic, artistic and scientific viewpoints underlying the mission. Drawing on archival research, the study recreates the processes t...
The Uses of Excess in Visual and Material Culture, 1600–2010
Although the idea of excess has often been used to degrade, many of the essays in this collection demonstrate how it has also been used as a strategy for self-fashioning and empowerment, particularly by women and queer subjects. This volume examines a range of material - including ceramics, paintings, caricatures, interior design and theatrical performances - in various global contexts. Each case study sheds new light on how excess has been perceived and constructed, revealing how beliefs about excess have changed over time.
Popular Culture and Its Relationship to Conflict in the UK and Australia since the Great War
This book shows how cultural production derived from, or in anticipation of, conflict can be used to create specific social identities, national histories, and contemporary concepts of memory in Britain and Australia. Studies on the politics of cultural production have usually focussed on one conflict, or on one particular cultural medium, at a time. This volume, however, presents a broader horizon to draw attention to more popular forms of cultural production from the Great War up to and including its Centenary. The chapters in this volume interrogate the contentious philosophical notion that culture thrives in times of war, and expires in peace, and asks whether ‘art’, as a form of social barometer, can anticipate conflict rather than merely respond to it. This is a fascinating read for students, researchers, and academics interested in British and Australian History and its relationship with Popular Culture. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Contemporary British History.
Beyond Chinoiserie
The complex interweaving of different Western visions of China had a profound impact on artistic exchange between China and the West during the nineteenth century. Beyond Chinoiserie addresses the complexity of this exchange. While the playful Western “vision of Cathay” formed in the previous century continued to thrive, a more realistic vision of China was increasingly formed through travel accounts, paintings, watercolors, prints, book illustrations, and photographs. Simultaneously, the new discipline of sinology led to a deepening of the understanding of Chinese cultural history. Leading and emerging scholars in the fields of art history, literary studies and material culture, have authored the ten essays in this book, which deal with artistic relations between China and the West at a time when Western powers’ attempts to extend a sphere of influence in China led to increasingly hostile political interactions.
