Paintings of a "kept woman" sitting in her lover's lap, of the Lady
of Shalott, of Merlin the magician, of an explosive, abstract
pattern--some rendered in meticulous detail, others only
sketched--appear side by side in David Peters Corbett's book on
English art. The sharp differences in style and in subject matter
are striking and significant, but they are not presented in any of
the usual ways. They are not seen as markers of a progressive
development, expressions of strong personalities, or signs of
English artists' inability or reluctance to master French
Impressionism. All these familiar narratives are abandoned in
Corbett's book, which, in their stead, proposes a new way of
looking at English painting from the Pre-Raphaelites to Wyndham
Lewis and the Vorticists. An award-winning art historian, Corbett
contends that from 1848 to 1914, English artists confronted a world
in which the rise of science and decline in religion deprived
painting of many of its traditional functions and powers. Yet these
same changes, according to Corbett, presented the possibility that
painting could become a crucial means of mediating the widely
decried materialism of industrial society. It could expose the
values that had been lost, reveal hidden spiritual and emotional
resources, or, alternatively, welcome and champion the dynamics of
modernism. Corbett makes persuasive use of a wide range of sources,
including contemporary art criticism, artists' letters, literature,
and, not surprisingly, the torrent of publicity touched off by the
Whistler versus Ruskin trial of 1877. But what gives his book
originality is its incisive discussion of aesthetic issues that art
historians, intent on social history,have generally overlooked.
Corbett puts readers in contact with debates about visual
experience, the handling of paint, codes of beauty, and questions
of meaning. Many of Corbett's points entail close analysis of art.
The World in Paint is amply illustrated with high-quality color and
black-and-white reproductions.
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