In Decadent Style, John Reed defines \u201cdecadent art\u201d
broadly enough to encompass literature, music, and the visual arts
and precisely enough to examine individual works in detail. Reed
focuses on the essential characteristics of this style and
distinguishes it from non-esthetic categories of \u201cdecadent
artists\u201d and \u201cdecadent themes.\u201d Like the natural
sciences and psychology, the arts in the late nineteenth century
reflect an interest in the process of atomization. Literature and
the other arts mirror this interest by developing, or rather
elaborating, existing forms to the point of what appears to be
dissolution. Instead of these forms dissolving, however, they
require their audience's participation and thus involve a new
order. Reed argues that this process of reordering characterizes
decadent style, which depends upon sensory provocation resolvable
only through negation and is therefore bounded by philosophical and
emotional assumptions of inevitable frustration. Drawing upon the
literature, music, and visual arts of England and Europe at the end
of the nineteenth century, Reed provides a widely ranging and
authoritative overview of decadent style, which relates such
artists as Huysmans, Wilde, D'Annunzio, Moreau, Bresdin, Klimt,
Klinger, Wagner, and Strauss. He related decadent style to
Pre-Raphaelite and Naturalist preoccupation with detail and to
aesthetic and Symbolist fascination with sensibility and idealism.
Ultimately, Reed argues, decadent style is a late stage of
Romanticism, overshadowed by Symbolism but anticipating, in its
attempt to yoke incompatibilities and to engender a new cerebral
form, some of the main traits of Modernism.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
