March 2012 Issue of ‘The Art Bulletin’
Offerings bearing on the eighteenth century from the March 2012 issue:
• Anne M. Wagner, “Regarding Art and Art History,” The Art Bulletin 94 (March 2012): 8-9.
• Elizabeth King, J. M. Bernstein, Carolyn Dean, Caroline Van Eck, Finbarr Barry Flood, Dario Gamboni, Jane Garnett and Gervase Rosser, James Meyer, Miya Elise Mizuta, and Alina Payne, “Notes from the Field: Anthropomorphism,” The Art Bulletin 94 (March 2012): 10-31.
• Andrei Pop, “Henry Fuseli: Greek Tragedy and Cultural Pluralism,” The Art Bulletin 94 (March 2012): 78-98.
Abstract: The wash drawings and oil paintings of subjects from Greek tragedy by Anglo-Swiss painter Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), routinely categorized as romantic classicism, might be better explained in terms of the contemporary revival of Greek tragedy, made possible by the philosophical anthropology of Johann Gottfried von Herder and David Garrick’s theater of character. From this climate of experimentation with foreign cultures arose a morally detached spectator and a critique of Eurocentrism in the era of Captain Cook and the American Revolution. Fuseli’s classicism thus played its part in the formation of the modern liberal version of cultural pluralism.
Lecture | Chrisman-Campbell, When Fashion Set Sail
From the BGC:
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell | When Fashion Set Sail:
Maritime Modes in Pre-Revolutionary France
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 3 April 2012
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell will deliver a Françoise and Georges Selz Lecture on 18th- and 19th-Century French Decorative Arts and Culture on Tuesday, April 3, 2012. Her talk is entitled When Fashion Set Sail: Maritime Modes in Pre-Revolutionary France. Dr. Chrisman-Campbell is an independent scholar and a consultant for The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. She received her B.A. from Stanford University, her M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and her Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen. Chrisman-Campbell has published numerous journal and magazine articles on 18th– and early 19th-century French fashion. She has also contributed to several books and museum catalogues, including Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915 (Los Angeles: Prestel and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010); Paris: Life & Luxury in the Eighteenth Century (Los Angeles: Getty Publishing, 2011); The Saint-Aubin ‘Livre de Caricature’ (Oxford: Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, forthcoming); and Seeing Satire (Oxford: Studies in Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, forthcoming).
One of the most iconic and enduring images of 18th-century extravagance is a French fashion plate depicting a woman wearing a miniature ship in her powdered and pomaded hair. This hairstyle—the coiffure à la Belle Poule—was not just an eye-catching novelty. It was one of many ship-shaped headdresses that celebrated specific French naval victories and, more importantly, advertised their wearers’ patriotism and political acumen. In addition to hairstyles, French women of the era wore hats à la maritime and garments adorned with nautical motifs, and the looms of Lyon produced textiles woven with scenes from naval battles. Sailing ships were also rendered in Sèvres porcelain, depicted on snuffboxes, and included in portraits of ladies of fashion. The vogue for nautical fashions and textiles during the reign of Louis XVI was a powerful testimony to the practical and symbolic role the sea played in the everyday lives of women at the most elite levels of French society, whether as a battlefield or a frontier. It also reflected the increasingly tempestuous nature of fashion itself in the pre-Revolutionary period.
Light refreshments will be served at 5:45 pm. The presentation will begin at 6:00 pm.
RSVP is required. Please click on the registration link at the bottom of this page or contact academicevents@bgc.bard.edu.
Please note that our Lecture Hall can only accommodate a limited number of people, so please come early if you would like to have a seat in the main room. We also have overflow seating available; all registrants who arrive late will be seated in the overflow area.
Coming in May | ‘The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town’
From Yale UP:
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town (London: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2012), 348 pages, ISBN: 9780300152012, $65.
Modern-day London abounds with a multitude of gardens, enclosed by railings and surrounded by houses, which attest to the English love of nature. These green enclaves, known as squares, are among the most distinctive and admired features of the metropolis and are England’s greatest contribution to the development of European town planning and urban form. Traditionally, inhabitants who overlooked these gated communal gardens paid for their maintenance and had special access to them. As such, they have long been synonymous with privilege, elegance, and prosperous metropolitan living. They epitomize the classical notion of rus in urbe, the integration of nature within the urban plan—a concept that continues to shape cities to this day.
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan delves into the history, evolution, and social implications of squares, which have been an important element in the planning and expansion of London since the early 17th century. As an amenity that fosters health and well-being and a connection to the natural world, the square has played a crucial role in the development of the English capital.
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is a landscape architect with an international practice based in London. He is gardens adviser to Hampton Court Palace and is currently redesigning the gardens of Kensington Palace in London.
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