| The World in Paint: Modern Art and Visuality in England, 1848-1914 Contributor(s): Corbett, David Peters (Author) |
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ISBN: 0271023600 ISBN-13: 9780271023601 Publisher: Penn State University Press OUR PRICE: $128.65 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: February 2005 Annotation: 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. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Art | History - Modern (late 19th Century To 1945) - Art | Criticism & Theory |
| Dewey: 759.209 |
| LCCN: 2004007097 |
| Series: Refiguring Modernism |
| Physical Information: 1.14" H x 7.96" W x 9.74" (2.74 lbs) 256 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1900-1949 - Chronological Period - 1851-1899 - Cultural Region - British Isles - Chronological Period - 18th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Familiar narratives about the nature of English modernism, tradition, and periodization, together with the literary character of English art from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, are abandoned in this innovative and important book. In their stead, David Peters Corbett proposes a new way of looking at this painting from the Pre-Raphaelites to the Vorticists. Arguing that art history has been too reluctant to confront the fundamental question of how and what the consistency and application of paint signifies, Corbett investigates the work of English artists--among them Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Leighton, Watts, Whistler, Sickert, and the modernists of 1914 --through a historical examination of the meanings of the visual in English culture. By revealing that for many artists and thinkers the visual promised to deliver a more profound understanding of the world than language, the book offers a new reading of the art of the period between 1848 and the First World War. |
Contributor Bio(s): Corbett, David Peters: - David Peters Corbett is Professor of Art History and Director of the Research School in British Art at the University of York in the UK. |