In 1857 the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who was fascinated by lesbianism, created a scandal with Les Fleurs du Mal [The Flowers of Evil]. This collection was originally entitled "The Lesbians" and described women as "femmes damnees," with "disordered souls" suffering in a hypocritical world. Then twenty years later, lesbians in Paris dared to flaunt themselves in that extraordinarily creative period at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries which became known as the Belle Epoque. Lesbian Decadence, now available in English for the first time, provides a new analysis and synthesis of the depiction of lesbianism as a social phenomenon and a symptom of social malaise as well as a fantasy in that most vibrant place and period in history. In this newly translated work, praised by leading critics as "authoritative," "stunning," and "a marvel of elegance and erudition," Nicole G. Albert analyzes and synthesizes an engagingly rich sweep of historical representations of the lesbian mystique in art and literature. Albert contrasts these visions to moralists' abrupt condemnations of "the lesbian vice," as well as the newly emerging psychiatric establishment's medical fury and their obsession on cataloging and classifying symptoms of "inversion" or "perversion" in order to cure these "unbalanced creatures of love." Lesbian Decadence combines literary, artistic, and historical analysis of sources from the mainstream to the rare, from scholarly studies to popular culture. The English translation provides a core reference/text for those interested in the Decadent movement, in literary history, in French history and social history. It is well suited for courses in gender studies, women's studies, LGBT history, and lesbianism in literature, history, and art.

Laugh Lines: Caricaturing Painting in Nineteenth-Century France is the first major study of Salon caricature, a kind of graphic art criticism in which press artists drew comic versions of contemporary painting and sculpture for publication in widely consumed journals and albums. Salon caricature began with a few tentative lithographs in the 1840s and within a few decades, no Parisian exhibition could open without appearing in warped, incisive, and hilarious miniature in the pages of the illustrated press. This broad survey of Salon caricature examines little-known graphic artists and unpublished amateurs alongside major figures like Edouard Manet, puts anonymous jokesters in dialogue with the essays of Baudelaire, and holds up the material qualities of a 10-centime album to the most ambitious painting of the 19th century. This archival study unearths colorful caricatures that have not been reproduced until now, drawing back the curtain on a robust culture of comedy around fine art and its reception in nineteenth-century France.

In this new study of art in fin-de-siecle Hamburg, Carolyn Kay examines the career of the city's art gallery director, Alfred Lichtwark, one of Imperial Germany's most influential museum directors and a renowned cultural critic. A champion of modern art, Lichtwark stirred controversy among the city's bourgeoisie by commissioning contemporary German paintings for the Kunsthalle by secession artists and supporting the formation of an independent art movement in Hamburg influenced by French impressionism. Drawing on an extensive amount of archival research, and combining both historical and art historical approaches, Kay examines Lichtwark's cultural politics, their effect on the Hamburg bourgeoisie, and the subsequent changes to the cultural scene in Hamburg.

Kay focuses her study on two modern art scandals in Hamburg and shows that Lichtwark faced strong public resistance in the 1890s, winning significant support from the city's bourgeoisie only after 1900. Lichtwark's struggle to gain acceptance for impressionism highlights conflicts within the city's middle class as to what constituted acceptable styles and subjects of German art, with opposition groups demanding a traditional and 'pure' German culture. The author also considers who within the Hamburg bourgeoisie supported Lichtwark, and why. Kay's local study of the debate over cultural modernism in Imperial Germany makes a significant contribution both to the study of modernism and to the history of German culture.

Thanks to its very nature, performance enters into natural dialogue with art, new media, politics, and the social sphere as a whole. Always happening in the here and now, and with a unique freedom and openness to the unknown, performance is a medium with a special ability to question its own subjects, materials, and languages. As a result, it is often best reflected in the dynamic character of contemporary art and contemporaneity in the broadest sense of the word. Points of Convergence explores these ideas and investigates critical approaches to performance, ultimately aiming to stimulate new discussion between theorists and practitioners. With twelve essays by leading figures in the field of performance arts, this illustrated volume is structured in two parts. The first, authored by academics in the discipline, features an introduction to key areas of scholastic research. The second part, authored by curators and other researchers, then focuses on an account of individual traditions of performance. Taken together, the contributions identify new possibilities for interaction between the theoretical aspects of performance art and the ways performance plays out within local contexts.

I AM THE FIRST CONSCIOUSNESS OF CHAOS collects the key "noirs" - lithographs, etchings and charcoals - of Odilon Redon, perhaps the most enigmatic and esoteric figure in the artistic lineage that leads directly from Symbolism to Surrealism. Never previously available in a single trade volume, the majority of Redon's noirs - over 250 illustrations - are finally collated here, along with illuminating excerpts from the decadent texts which inspired their creation. Authors featured include J-K Huysmans, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, St John the Divine, Edgar Allan Poe and others; the book also includes an autobiographical introductory essay by Redon himself. With proclamations such as "everything in art occurs through voluntary submission to the advent of the unconscious" and "my originality consists in putting the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible," Odilon Redon (1840-1916) established a theoretical legacy which now places him as one of the key precursors of Surrealist thought. And along with Gustave Moreau and Georges Seurat, Redon was one of the first painters to excite the imagination of a young Andre Breton. A contemporary of the Impressionists, Redon chose to align himself with literary Symbolism, demonstrated by his friendship with Stephane Mallarme and his visual interpretations of the "decadent" texts of such writers as Baudelaire, Flaubert, Poe, and others. His reputation as a purveyor of phantasmic visions was sealed by the description of his work included in J-K Huysmans' decadent bible A Rebours, in 1884, and his rise to prominence in the 20th century was precipitated by the inclusion of many of his works at the controversial Armory Show, held in New York in 1913."

The years 1855-80, generally referred to as 'The Sixties', saw some of the finest and most significant contributions to wood-engraved book and magazine illustration in Britain. In this major survey, now available in a revised paperback edition, Paul Goldman has selected 31 artists, including Edward Burne-Jones, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who have created some of the most important illustrative work of the period. Devoting a chapter to each of the five groups of artists he identifies, from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Idyllic School and the High Victorians, Goldman provides a critical commentary on every artist, followed by a checklist of the books they themselves illustrated or those to which they contributed. More detailed bibliographic information is included in an index of illustrated books arranged by author. This index also gives the locations of copies in public collections in the UK, USA and Australia. The index of magazine illustrations, listed chronologically under each periodical, gives the precise date and position of all the magazine designs mentioned. This is an authoritative and descriptive reference work for all scholars in the field, and is illustrated with 230 black-and-white illustrations which capture the delicacy and the variety of Victorian illustrative work.

Louis Francois Roubiliac, the most compelling sculptor in eighteenth-century Britain, was responsible for many complex and dramatic monuments that can be seen in Westminster Abbey and churches throughout the country. This book is not only the first extended treatment of the artist since 1928 but is also an exploration of tomb sculpture in the context of the period. The first section, written by David Bindman, discusses the reasons for the commissioning of tomb sculpture, ideas of death and the afterlife, the setting of the tomb, the themes that govern its imagery, and the negotiations between sculptor and patron. The second section, written by Malcolm Baker, examines in detail the processes involved in the design and making of the monuments. Through an analysis of the monuments themselves, the surviving models, and a range of documentary evidence, Baker considers Roubiliac's technical procedures and compares them to those of other sculptors in Britain and on the continent. The volume ends with a full catalogue raisonne of Roubiliac's known monuments. Each commission is discussed in detail, with full accounts of contemporary documentation, inscriptions, physical construction, and related models. By examining the particular social and religious conditions of the time it becomes possible to account not only for the distinctive features of Roubiliac's work and practice but also for how such theatrical works came to be accepted and admired. The book is fully illustrated, all the major works having been newly photographed to make visible details that are impossible to see under normal viewing conditions. Published for the Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art

In December 1888, Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is the most famous story about any artist in history. But what really happened on that dark winter night? In Van Gogh's Ear, Bernadette Murphy reveals the truth. She takes us on an extraordinary journey from major museums to forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing Van Gogh's world. We meet police inspectors and cafe patrons, prostitutes and madams, his beloved brother Theo and fellow painter Paul Gauguin. Why did Van Gogh commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious 'Rachel' to whom he presented his macabre gift? Did he really remove his entire ear? Murphy answers these important questions with her groundbreaking discoveries, offering a stunning portrait of an artist edging towards madness in his pursuit of excellence. BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK PRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." Edgar Degas Covering every era and over 650 artists, this comprehensive, illustrated guide offers an accessible yet expansive view of art history, featuring everything from iconic works and lesser-known gems to techniques and themes. Offering a comprehensive overview of Western artists, themes, paintings, techniques, and stories, Art: A Visual History is packed full of large, full-colour images of iconic works and lesser-known gems. Exploring every era, from 30,000BCE to the present, it includes features on the major schools and movements, as well as close-up critical appraisals of 22 masterpieces - from Botticelli's Primavera to J. M. W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire. With detailed referencing, crisp reproductions and a fresh design, this beautiful book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in art history - from first-time gallery goers to knowledgeable art enthusiasts. What makes great art? Discover the answer now, with Art: A Visual History.

Framed by tensions between figural sculpture experienced in the round and its translation into two-dimensional representations, Animating the Antique explores enthralling episodes in a history of artistic and aesthetic encounters. Moving across varied locations-among them Rome, Florence, Naples, London, Dresden, and Paris-Sarah Betzer explores a history that has yet to be written: that of the Janus-faced nature of interactions with the antique by which sculptures and beholders alike were caught between the promise of animation and the threat of mortification. Examining the traces of affective and transformative sculptural encounters, the book takes off from the decades marked by the archaeological, art-historical, and art-philosophical developments of the mid-eighteenth century and culminantes in fin de siecle anthropological, psychological, and empathic frameworks. It turns on two fundamental and interconnected arguments: that an eighteenth-century ontology of ancient sculpture continued to inform encounters with the antique well into the nineteenth century, and that by attending to the enduring power of this model, we can newly appreciate the distinctively modern terms of antique sculpture's allure. As Betzer shows, these eighteenth-century developments had far-reaching ramifications for the making and beholding of modern art, the articulations of art theory, the writing of art history, and a significantly queer Nachleben of the antique. Bold and wide-ranging, Animating the Antique sheds light upon the work of myriad artists, in addition to that of writers ranging from Goethe and Winckelmann to Hegel, Walter Pater, and Vernon Lee. It will be especially welcomed by scholars and students working in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art history, art writing, and art historiography.

Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media -- from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremonies, flower arrangements, and annual observances. In Japan and the "Culture of the Four Seasons," Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery.

Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing.

Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.

Evelyn Waugh's first book: a portrait of one of the greatest artists of the nienteenth century, from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth 'Biography, as books about the dead are capriciously catalogued, is still very much in the mode' This is a sparkling account of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's tragic and mysterious life, telling the story behind some of the greatest poetry and painting of the nineteenth century. Shot through with charm and dry wit, and illuminated by his sense of kinship with the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Rossetti is at once a brilliant reevaluation of Rosetti's work and legacy, as well as a blast of defiance against the art establishment of Waugh's day. 'The youthful high spirits of the writing make this a true cultural delight' New Statesman 'To be celebrated with fireworks, bunting and marching bands' Country Life

Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media-from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremonies, flower arrangements, and annual observances. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery. Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.

This new account of international modernism explores the complex motivations behind this revolutionary movement and assesses its triumphs and failures. The work of the main architects of the movement such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe is re-examined shedding new light on their roles as acknowledged masters.

Alan Colquhoun explores the evolution of the movement fron Art Nouveau in the 1890s to the megastructures of the 1960s, revealing the often contradictory demands of form, function, social engagement, modernity and tradition.

Written by Marilyn Martin, a former director of the South African National Gallery, Between Dreams and Realities is based on extensive research and experience. This book revisits important exhibitions, events and forgotten controversies; it highlights the achievements of directors, who often faced political agendas and strained relationships within and outside the institution. Between Dreams and Realities considers the aspirations and role of civil society in creating and maintaining a national institution for the common good.

Concurrently, the book examines long-standing government disinterest and neglect for the museum, and the difficulties that confronted directors in acquiring a collection worthy of its status. It also tells the story of excellent public cooperation and support, and of boards of trustees, directors and staff together overcoming the realities of budget cuts, government interference and severe space constraints. Between Dreams and Realities is a celebration of South Africa’s heritage and cultural wealth; it contributes to the fields of museum, heritage, cultural and curatorial studies, as well as visual and art history. It opens up the discourse and revives interest in public art museums in general and in the national art museum in particular, while offering perspectives on the future, and galvanising custodians and the public into action.

Paul Cezanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others began as Impressionists but soon extended their explorations of the world around them to create highly personal work. With their foundations in the bright colours of Impressionism and the break from traditional representational art, the Post-Impressionists worked alone but collectively created the bridge into the expressionism of the 20th Century. Their delightful and evocative masterpieces are celebrated in this gorgeous new book.

Rare Merit is a beautifully illustrated and astute examination of women photographers in Canada as it took shape in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Throughout, the camera was both a witness to the colonialism, capitalism, and gendered and racialized social organization, and a protagonist. And women across the country, whether residents or visitors, captured people and places that were entirely new to the lens. This book shows how they did so, and the meaning their work carries.

The enduring influence of naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American art, culture, and politics Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the most influential scientists and thinkers of his age. A Prussian-born geographer, naturalist, explorer, and illustrator, he was a prolific writer whose books graced the shelves of American artists, scientists, philosophers, and politicians. Humboldt visited the United States for six weeks in 1804, engaging in a lively exchange of ideas with such figures as Thomas Jefferson and the painter Charles Willson Peale. It was perhaps the most consequential visit by a European traveler in the young nation's history, one that helped to shape an emerging American identity grounded in the natural world. In this beautifully illustrated book, Eleanor Jones Harvey examines how Humboldt left a lasting impression on American visual arts, sciences, literature, and politics. She shows how he inspired a network of like-minded individuals who would go on to embrace the spirit of exploration, decry slavery, advocate for the welfare of Native Americans, and extol America's wilderness as a signature component of the nation's sense of self. Harvey traces how Humboldt's ideas influenced the transcendentalists and the landscape painters of the Hudson River School, and laid the foundations for the Smithsonian Institution, the Sierra Club, and the National Park Service. Alexander von Humboldt and the United States looks at paintings, sculptures, maps, and artifacts, and features works by leading American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Frederic Church, and Samuel F. B. Morse. Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC September 18, 2020-January 3, 2021

Embrace the not-so-small world of minis--and your own tiny book! From teeny burritos and miniscule Chanel handbags to furniture no larger than a quarter, this mind-blowing collection of squeal-worthy miniatures features more than 250 of the tiniest creations from all over the world. Kate UEnver, a lifelong collector of nearly 1,000 items, has curated unique and extraordinary miniatures on her Instagram account, @dailymini, since 2012. In The Book of Mini, she selects hundreds of pieces of artwork--many of which have never been seen before--and organizes them into sections on tiny food, diminutive wildlife, petite pottery, and more. Also included are interviews with collectors and artists exploring their methods, influences, and how they came to adore everything mini. Featuring hundreds of photographs and a collectible miniature book, The Book of Mini is a must-have book for the tiny lover in your life.

In this groundbreaking reassessment of the conventional understanding of a cohesive 'Arts and Crafts movement' in Britain, Imogen Hart argues that a sophisticated mode of looking at decorative art developed in England during the second half of the nineteenth century. Bringing to light a significant number of little-known visual and textual sources, Arts and Crafts Objects insists that the history of British design between the 1830s and the 1910s is more complex and interwoven than concepts of clearly differentiated 'movements' allow for. Reinvesting the objects with the original importance ascribed to them by their makers and users, this book places furniture, metalwork, tiles, vases, chintzes, carpets, and wallpaper at the centre of a rigorous reassessment of the concept of 'Arts and Crafts'. The book offers radical new interpretations of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and the homes of William Morris, alongside illuminating analyses of less familiar but equally rich contexts. -- .

The Renaissance in the 19th Century examines the Italian Renaissance revival as a Pan-European critique: a commentary on and reshaping of a nineteenth-century present that is perceived as deeply problematic. The revival, located between historical nostalgia and critique of the contemporary world, swept the humanistic disciplines-history, literature, music, art, architecture, collecting. The Italian Renaissance revival marked the oeuvre of a group of figures as diverse as J.-D. Ingres and E. M. Forster, Heinrich Geymuller and Adolf von Hildebrand, Jules Michelet and Jacob Burckhardt, H. H. Richardson and R. M. Rilke, Giosue Carducci and De Sanctis. Though some perceived the Italian Renaissance as a Golden Age, a model for the present, others cast it as a negative example, contrasting the resurgence of the arts with the decadence of society and the loss of an ethical and political conscience. The triumphalist model had its detractors, and the reaction to the Renaissance was more complex than it may at first have appeared. Through a series of essays by a group of international scholars, volume editors Lina Bolzoni and Alina Payne recover the multidimensionality of the reaction to, transformation of, and commentary on the connections between the Italian Renaissance and nineteenth-century modernity. The essays look from within (by Italians) and from without (by foreigners, expatriates, travelers, and scholars), comparing different visions and interpretations.

Paul Gauguin created some of the most advanced art in a brilliant generation of artists - all of whom struggled against the stifling conformity of the late 19th century's artistic mainstream.
He created paintings whose radically simplified lines and colors echoed the unschooled art of the rustic and native cultures he loved. After his famously disastrous stay with Vincent van Gogh in southern France, Gauguin escaped European civilization for the Polynesian islands. Immersing himself in the culture, he produced a series of radiant canvases and powerful sculptures - his last great works.
From his childhood in Peru to his experiences in Tahiti, the story of Gauguin's life is recounted in authoritative text by an expert on the post-Impressionists, coupled with powerful imagery by an award-winning illustrator.

Two Literary Critics Romancing the Archive at London's National Portrait Gallery. Part biography, part detective novel, part love story, and part meta archival meditation, Love Among the Archives is an experiment in writing a life. Our subject is Sir George Scharf, the founding director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, well known and respected in the Victorian period, strangely obscure in our own. We tell of discovering Scharf's souvenirs of a social life among the highest classes, and then learning he was the self made son of an impoverished immigrant. As we comb through 50 years of daily diaries, we stumble against plots we bring to the archive from our reading of novels. We ask questions like, did Scharf have a beloved? Why did Scharf kick his aged father out of the family home? What could someone like Scharf mean when he referred to an earl as his "best friend"? The answers turn out never to be what Victorian fiction - or Victorianist Studies - would have predicted. Presents a unique approach to life writing that foregrounds the process of archival discovery; a contribution to sexuality studies of the Victorian period that focuses on domestic arrangements between middle class men; offers an intervention into identity studies going beyond class, gender, and sexuality to try out new categories like "extra man" or "perpetual son" and a humorous critique of what literary critics do when they turn to "the archive" for historical authenticity.