Ruth Livesey
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263983
- eISBN:
- 9780191734731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263983.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter examines the afterlife of 1880s socialism in the early modernist generation. It focuses upon Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry and examines their negotiations with the productive, engaged ...
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This chapter examines the afterlife of 1880s socialism in the early modernist generation. It focuses upon Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry and examines their negotiations with the productive, engaged aesthetics of those Bloomsbury socialists before the Bloomsbury Group. Both Woolf and Fry had significant relations with writers examined in earlier chapters of this work. Woolf's writings concerning the Women's Co-operative Guild reflect her rejection of the socially engaged and productive aesthetics of that generation in favour of a radical statement of aesthetic autonomy and the individualism of the artist. Meanwhile, Roger Fry's aesthetics strained between a belief in a democracy of aesthetic responsiveness and a conscious attempt to rewrite the aesthetic legacy of Ruskin and Morris. In the debacle that surrounded Wyndham Lewis's secession from Fry's collective Omega Workshops, however, Lewis himself sexed Fry's aesthetics as effeminate traces of the fin de siècle.Less
This chapter examines the afterlife of 1880s socialism in the early modernist generation. It focuses upon Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry and examines their negotiations with the productive, engaged aesthetics of those Bloomsbury socialists before the Bloomsbury Group. Both Woolf and Fry had significant relations with writers examined in earlier chapters of this work. Woolf's writings concerning the Women's Co-operative Guild reflect her rejection of the socially engaged and productive aesthetics of that generation in favour of a radical statement of aesthetic autonomy and the individualism of the artist. Meanwhile, Roger Fry's aesthetics strained between a belief in a democracy of aesthetic responsiveness and a conscious attempt to rewrite the aesthetic legacy of Ruskin and Morris. In the debacle that surrounded Wyndham Lewis's secession from Fry's collective Omega Workshops, however, Lewis himself sexed Fry's aesthetics as effeminate traces of the fin de siècle.
Daniel Moore
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266755
- eISBN:
- 9780191916038
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266755.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter explores the context and after-effects of the exhibition ‘Manet and the Postimpressionists’ (1910). While seen, rightfully, as a central moment in modernism’s introduction to the British ...
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This chapter explores the context and after-effects of the exhibition ‘Manet and the Postimpressionists’ (1910). While seen, rightfully, as a central moment in modernism’s introduction to the British public, by way of the encounter with the work of Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse and others, few studies have engaged with the explanatory and educational context of the exhibition, nor on the ways in which Postimpressionism became so central to British modernist design and decoration. This chapter, in particular, looks at Roger Fry’s writings on Postimpressionism, and argues that the term was simultaneously one that denoted both an artistic style and a pedagogical strategy designed to educate public taste.Less
This chapter explores the context and after-effects of the exhibition ‘Manet and the Postimpressionists’ (1910). While seen, rightfully, as a central moment in modernism’s introduction to the British public, by way of the encounter with the work of Manet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse and others, few studies have engaged with the explanatory and educational context of the exhibition, nor on the ways in which Postimpressionism became so central to British modernist design and decoration. This chapter, in particular, looks at Roger Fry’s writings on Postimpressionism, and argues that the term was simultaneously one that denoted both an artistic style and a pedagogical strategy designed to educate public taste.
Fernihough Anne
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112358
- eISBN:
- 9780191670770
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112358.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
It has been argued in the last two chapters that D. H. Lawrence and the Bloomsbury art-critics had far more in common than the critical orthodoxy on modernist aesthetics would suggest. The extent to ...
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It has been argued in the last two chapters that D. H. Lawrence and the Bloomsbury art-critics had far more in common than the critical orthodoxy on modernist aesthetics would suggest. The extent to which their interests coincide is brought out by the fact that they all single out Paul Cézanne's work as a kind of paradigm or benchmark for what they think art should achieve. Clive Bell's Art, though making universal claims about art, was written very much as a defense of Cézanne's painting in particular, whilst Roger Fry devoted an entire study to Cézanne. Lawrence wrote his own longest essay in art-criticism, shortly after reading Bell's Art in January 1929. In the same month, he also read Fry's Cézanne: A Study of His Development (1927), a work to which he makes specific reference in his own essay. His comments on Fry's study are extremely dismissive, and, taking them at face value, many critics have been content to cite them as evidence of the radical Lawrence-Bloomsbury opposition.Less
It has been argued in the last two chapters that D. H. Lawrence and the Bloomsbury art-critics had far more in common than the critical orthodoxy on modernist aesthetics would suggest. The extent to which their interests coincide is brought out by the fact that they all single out Paul Cézanne's work as a kind of paradigm or benchmark for what they think art should achieve. Clive Bell's Art, though making universal claims about art, was written very much as a defense of Cézanne's painting in particular, whilst Roger Fry devoted an entire study to Cézanne. Lawrence wrote his own longest essay in art-criticism, shortly after reading Bell's Art in January 1929. In the same month, he also read Fry's Cézanne: A Study of His Development (1927), a work to which he makes specific reference in his own essay. His comments on Fry's study are extremely dismissive, and, taking them at face value, many critics have been content to cite them as evidence of the radical Lawrence-Bloomsbury opposition.
Claudia Tobin
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474455138
- eISBN:
- 9781474481212
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474455138.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
When Virginia Woolf sought to evoke Roger Fry’s qualities as an art critic, she reached for the image of him as a humming-bird hawk-moth, ‘quivering yet still’ in his absorbed attention to ...
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When Virginia Woolf sought to evoke Roger Fry’s qualities as an art critic, she reached for the image of him as a humming-bird hawk-moth, ‘quivering yet still’ in his absorbed attention to Post-Impressionist paintings. This chapter argues that modes of ‘active’ stillness and receptive, vibratory states of being were crucial to Woolf’s experience and representation of art. It traces ‘quivering’ as a talismanic word across a range of her fiction and non-fiction, and explores the pervasive figure of the insect in Woolf’s re-imagining of the human sensorium, with particular focus on her essay Walter Sickert: A Conversation (1934), and on Sketch of the Past (1939).
The second half of the chapter addresses Woolf’s underexplored biography of Roger Fry and her confrontation with the problem of ‘writing’ Fry under the imperative not to ‘fix’ her subject, but rather to register his ‘vibratory’ non-physical presence. It considers the role of vibration more widely in Woolf’s life-writing and in Fry’s art theory, in the context of twentieth-century spiritualism, Quakerism and new communication technologies. It proposes that by examining the different functions and meanings of still life (visual and verbal) in Woolf’s and Fry’s work, we can further illuminate their approach to the relationship between art and life.Less
When Virginia Woolf sought to evoke Roger Fry’s qualities as an art critic, she reached for the image of him as a humming-bird hawk-moth, ‘quivering yet still’ in his absorbed attention to Post-Impressionist paintings. This chapter argues that modes of ‘active’ stillness and receptive, vibratory states of being were crucial to Woolf’s experience and representation of art. It traces ‘quivering’ as a talismanic word across a range of her fiction and non-fiction, and explores the pervasive figure of the insect in Woolf’s re-imagining of the human sensorium, with particular focus on her essay Walter Sickert: A Conversation (1934), and on Sketch of the Past (1939).
The second half of the chapter addresses Woolf’s underexplored biography of Roger Fry and her confrontation with the problem of ‘writing’ Fry under the imperative not to ‘fix’ her subject, but rather to register his ‘vibratory’ non-physical presence. It considers the role of vibration more widely in Woolf’s life-writing and in Fry’s art theory, in the context of twentieth-century spiritualism, Quakerism and new communication technologies. It proposes that by examining the different functions and meanings of still life (visual and verbal) in Woolf’s and Fry’s work, we can further illuminate their approach to the relationship between art and life.
Ruth Livesey
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263983
- eISBN:
- 9780191734731
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263983.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book brings to life the growth of the socialist movement among men and women artists and writers in late nineteenth-century Britain. For these campaigners, socialism was inseparable from a ...
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This book brings to life the growth of the socialist movement among men and women artists and writers in late nineteenth-century Britain. For these campaigners, socialism was inseparable from a desire for a new beauty of life; beauty that also, for many, required them to reject the sexual conventions of the Victorian era. From the early 1880s and well into the twentieth century, the efforts of these writers and activists existed in critical tension with other contemporary developments in literary culture. This book maps the ongoing dialogue between socialist writers like William Morris, decadent aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde and defining figures of early modernism including Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry. The book concludes that socialist writers developed a distinct political aesthetic in which the love of beauty was to act as a force for revolutionary change. The book draws on archival research and extensive study of socialist periodicals, together with readings of works by writers including Morris, Wilde, Schreiner, George Bernard Shaw, Isabella Ford, Carpenter, Alfred Orage, Woolf and Fry. The book uncovers the lasting influence of socialist writers of the 1880s on the emergence of British literary modernism and by tracing the lives of neglected writers and activists such as Clementina Black and Dollie Radford, it provides a vivid evocation of an era in which revolution seemed imminent and the arts were a vital route to that future.Less
This book brings to life the growth of the socialist movement among men and women artists and writers in late nineteenth-century Britain. For these campaigners, socialism was inseparable from a desire for a new beauty of life; beauty that also, for many, required them to reject the sexual conventions of the Victorian era. From the early 1880s and well into the twentieth century, the efforts of these writers and activists existed in critical tension with other contemporary developments in literary culture. This book maps the ongoing dialogue between socialist writers like William Morris, decadent aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde and defining figures of early modernism including Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry. The book concludes that socialist writers developed a distinct political aesthetic in which the love of beauty was to act as a force for revolutionary change. The book draws on archival research and extensive study of socialist periodicals, together with readings of works by writers including Morris, Wilde, Schreiner, George Bernard Shaw, Isabella Ford, Carpenter, Alfred Orage, Woolf and Fry. The book uncovers the lasting influence of socialist writers of the 1880s on the emergence of British literary modernism and by tracing the lives of neglected writers and activists such as Clementina Black and Dollie Radford, it provides a vivid evocation of an era in which revolution seemed imminent and the arts were a vital route to that future.
Daniel Moore
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266755
- eISBN:
- 9780191916038
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266755.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter details the encounters between modernist art and design and the British home. Using a range of case studies – in particular the Omega Workshops, the Isokon building in Hampstead and the ...
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This chapter details the encounters between modernist art and design and the British home. Using a range of case studies – in particular the Omega Workshops, the Isokon building in Hampstead and the activities of the Design Industries Association and Council for Art in Industry – it explores the reception of modernist home design and decoration in Britain in the decades before the Second World War. In particular, it discusses the rise of modernist design and decoration institutions, and charts their development and organisation.Less
This chapter details the encounters between modernist art and design and the British home. Using a range of case studies – in particular the Omega Workshops, the Isokon building in Hampstead and the activities of the Design Industries Association and Council for Art in Industry – it explores the reception of modernist home design and decoration in Britain in the decades before the Second World War. In particular, it discusses the rise of modernist design and decoration institutions, and charts their development and organisation.
Ralph Parfect
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748690954
- eISBN:
- 9781474422185
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690954.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs was founded in 1903 by a group of art theorists, scholars and historians that included Roger Fry, later a co-editor of the magazine for almost ten years ...
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The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs was founded in 1903 by a group of art theorists, scholars and historians that included Roger Fry, later a co-editor of the magazine for almost ten years (1909-1919). On Fry’s death in 1934, the magazine itself described him as ‘the man who in the past did most to establish it and mould its character’. Part of this character was a consistent attention to Chinese art that he shared with fellow Bloomsbury writers, artists and intellectuals. This chapter illuminates Fry’s practice as a theorist and an editor interested in the arts of China by examining how these were represented and discussed in the Burlington Magazine under his auspices. It focuses especially on the kinds of language, discourse and textual strategies of sinophile contributors such as Arthur Waley, Lawrence Binyon, Perceval Yetts and R.L. Hobson. The chapter locates their approaches to Chinese art within a longer-term Western historiography of China and its culture(s), as well as within late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century discourses such as aestheticism, scientism and orientalism. It thus attempts to unpack the ideological implications of the ‘connoisseurship’ professed by the magazine’s title as applied to the subject of Chinese art.Less
The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs was founded in 1903 by a group of art theorists, scholars and historians that included Roger Fry, later a co-editor of the magazine for almost ten years (1909-1919). On Fry’s death in 1934, the magazine itself described him as ‘the man who in the past did most to establish it and mould its character’. Part of this character was a consistent attention to Chinese art that he shared with fellow Bloomsbury writers, artists and intellectuals. This chapter illuminates Fry’s practice as a theorist and an editor interested in the arts of China by examining how these were represented and discussed in the Burlington Magazine under his auspices. It focuses especially on the kinds of language, discourse and textual strategies of sinophile contributors such as Arthur Waley, Lawrence Binyon, Perceval Yetts and R.L. Hobson. The chapter locates their approaches to Chinese art within a longer-term Western historiography of China and its culture(s), as well as within late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century discourses such as aestheticism, scientism and orientalism. It thus attempts to unpack the ideological implications of the ‘connoisseurship’ professed by the magazine’s title as applied to the subject of Chinese art.
Fernihough Anne
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112358
- eISBN:
- 9780191670770
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112358.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Clive Bell's Art (1914), one of the key texts of Bloomsbury art-criticism, is at best an incoherent work and, at worst, a disturbingly elitist one. Peter Fuller, in Art and Psychoanalysis, is harshly ...
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Clive Bell's Art (1914), one of the key texts of Bloomsbury art-criticism, is at best an incoherent work and, at worst, a disturbingly elitist one. Peter Fuller, in Art and Psychoanalysis, is harshly critical of it in ways that few people would wish to question, attacking Bell as ‘opinionated, arrogant, ultimately downright reactionary’, yet nonetheless finding in Bell's theory ‘kernels of truth’ that can shed light on his own arguments. In spite of its faults, Bell's Art is an important text for the student of D. H. Lawrence's art-criticism. Lawrence had many direct and indirect connections with Bloomsbury, and Bell and Roger Fry are two of the very few art-critics he takes the trouble to criticize overly. In fact, his attack on Bloomsbury aesthetics is vociferous and uncompromising. As a result, literary history has generally defined Lawrence's views on art in opposition to those of Bloomsbury, which is not the most fruitful way of approaching the art-criticism of either camp.Less
Clive Bell's Art (1914), one of the key texts of Bloomsbury art-criticism, is at best an incoherent work and, at worst, a disturbingly elitist one. Peter Fuller, in Art and Psychoanalysis, is harshly critical of it in ways that few people would wish to question, attacking Bell as ‘opinionated, arrogant, ultimately downright reactionary’, yet nonetheless finding in Bell's theory ‘kernels of truth’ that can shed light on his own arguments. In spite of its faults, Bell's Art is an important text for the student of D. H. Lawrence's art-criticism. Lawrence had many direct and indirect connections with Bloomsbury, and Bell and Roger Fry are two of the very few art-critics he takes the trouble to criticize overly. In fact, his attack on Bloomsbury aesthetics is vociferous and uncompromising. As a result, literary history has generally defined Lawrence's views on art in opposition to those of Bloomsbury, which is not the most fruitful way of approaching the art-criticism of either camp.
Amber K. Regis
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780983533955
- eISBN:
- 9781781384930
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780983533955.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines the contradictions involved in Virginia Woolf's theorizing of biography as shaped by the experience of writing Roger Fry (1940). More specifically, it shows how Woolf's view of ...
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This chapter examines the contradictions involved in Virginia Woolf's theorizing of biography as shaped by the experience of writing Roger Fry (1940). More specifically, it shows how Woolf's view of biography becomes increasingly contradictory from “The New Biography” (1927) to “The Art of Biography” (1939). In March 1940, Roger Fry received its first bad review, when Leonard claimed that Woolf employed the “wrong method.” Subsequent critics would accuse Woolf of failure on different and contradictory terms. Catherine Parke, for instance, insists on a return to tradition. Elizabeth Cooley argues that the book is “a peculiar double failure.” This essay considers Woolf's apparent retreat from biographical experiment with respect to Roger Fry, focusing on the evidence and accusations of failure that haunt the biography's critical legacy, and suggests new contexts for reading her method and practice.Less
This chapter examines the contradictions involved in Virginia Woolf's theorizing of biography as shaped by the experience of writing Roger Fry (1940). More specifically, it shows how Woolf's view of biography becomes increasingly contradictory from “The New Biography” (1927) to “The Art of Biography” (1939). In March 1940, Roger Fry received its first bad review, when Leonard claimed that Woolf employed the “wrong method.” Subsequent critics would accuse Woolf of failure on different and contradictory terms. Catherine Parke, for instance, insists on a return to tradition. Elizabeth Cooley argues that the book is “a peculiar double failure.” This essay considers Woolf's apparent retreat from biographical experiment with respect to Roger Fry, focusing on the evidence and accusations of failure that haunt the biography's critical legacy, and suggests new contexts for reading her method and practice.
Barbara Lounsberry
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813056937
- eISBN:
- 9780813053790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056937.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Though Woolf opposed the darkened waters of the dictators in 1938, in 1939, as the war edges closer, she can’t avoid letting it shade her life and work. On March 22, Madrid “surrender[s]” to the ...
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Though Woolf opposed the darkened waters of the dictators in 1938, in 1939, as the war edges closer, she can’t avoid letting it shade her life and work. On March 22, Madrid “surrender[s]” to the fascists (D 5: 211). The week before, Hitler marches into Prague and proclaims (Woolf writes) that “Czecko-Slovakia has ceased to exist).” Although Woolf's fluidity is affected, she remains bold. In January, she dons the mask of Cleopatra (perhaps ominously) for her brother Adrian's costume party. Using diary form, she starts her memoirs in April. And she continues her inner artistic struggle to resurrect Roger Fry. Across the year, she also seeks life enduring through her own diary—and in many other diaries as well. Some diarists aid her—like her diary-father, Sir Walter Scott. In January, Woolf wishes to also write on the remarkable journals of French painter Eugène Delacroix. However, in August, she finds, in F. L. Lucas's Journal Under the Terror, 1938, an invitation to noble suicide. In the Journals of Charles Ricketts, R. A., the brilliant outsider and friend of Michael Field, which she reads in late December, she meets a diary stopped by war.Less
Though Woolf opposed the darkened waters of the dictators in 1938, in 1939, as the war edges closer, she can’t avoid letting it shade her life and work. On March 22, Madrid “surrender[s]” to the fascists (D 5: 211). The week before, Hitler marches into Prague and proclaims (Woolf writes) that “Czecko-Slovakia has ceased to exist).” Although Woolf's fluidity is affected, she remains bold. In January, she dons the mask of Cleopatra (perhaps ominously) for her brother Adrian's costume party. Using diary form, she starts her memoirs in April. And she continues her inner artistic struggle to resurrect Roger Fry. Across the year, she also seeks life enduring through her own diary—and in many other diaries as well. Some diarists aid her—like her diary-father, Sir Walter Scott. In January, Woolf wishes to also write on the remarkable journals of French painter Eugène Delacroix. However, in August, she finds, in F. L. Lucas's Journal Under the Terror, 1938, an invitation to noble suicide. In the Journals of Charles Ricketts, R. A., the brilliant outsider and friend of Michael Field, which she reads in late December, she meets a diary stopped by war.
Julia Briggs
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748624348
- eISBN:
- 9780748651856
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748624348.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter centres on Roger Fry’s concept of ‘significant form’, which can be seen as a distinct structure or shape within the novel/short story. It states that narrative was an uncertain source of ...
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This chapter centres on Roger Fry’s concept of ‘significant form’, which can be seen as a distinct structure or shape within the novel/short story. It states that narrative was an uncertain source of aesthetic value because it was usually guilty of ‘suggesting emotion and conveying ideas’. The chapter looks at how literature employed ‘impure’ associations, as well as the challenge posed by Fry’s opinions on the unacceptable emotions often suggested by inferior works of art. It also looks at Woolf’s first attempts in modernist form.Less
This chapter centres on Roger Fry’s concept of ‘significant form’, which can be seen as a distinct structure or shape within the novel/short story. It states that narrative was an uncertain source of aesthetic value because it was usually guilty of ‘suggesting emotion and conveying ideas’. The chapter looks at how literature employed ‘impure’ associations, as well as the challenge posed by Fry’s opinions on the unacceptable emotions often suggested by inferior works of art. It also looks at Woolf’s first attempts in modernist form.
Peter Stansky and William Abrahams
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804774130
- eISBN:
- 9780804777926
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804774130.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This book explores the life of Julian Bell, a younger member, and sole poet, of the Bloomsbury Group, the most important community of British writers and intellectuals in the twentieth century, which ...
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This book explores the life of Julian Bell, a younger member, and sole poet, of the Bloomsbury Group, the most important community of British writers and intellectuals in the twentieth century, which includes Virginia Woolf (Julian's aunt), E. M. Forster, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and the art critic Roger Fry. This biography draws upon the expanding archives on Bloomsbury to present Julian's life more completely and more personally than has been done previously. It is an exploration of personal, sexual, intellectual, political, and literary life in England between the two world wars. Through Julian, the book provides important insights on Virginia Woolf, his mother Vanessa Bell, and other members of the Bloomsbury Group. Taking us from London to China to Spain during its civil war, the book is also the story of one young man's life.Less
This book explores the life of Julian Bell, a younger member, and sole poet, of the Bloomsbury Group, the most important community of British writers and intellectuals in the twentieth century, which includes Virginia Woolf (Julian's aunt), E. M. Forster, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and the art critic Roger Fry. This biography draws upon the expanding archives on Bloomsbury to present Julian's life more completely and more personally than has been done previously. It is an exploration of personal, sexual, intellectual, political, and literary life in England between the two world wars. Through Julian, the book provides important insights on Virginia Woolf, his mother Vanessa Bell, and other members of the Bloomsbury Group. Taking us from London to China to Spain during its civil war, the book is also the story of one young man's life.
Claudia Tobin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781942954569
- eISBN:
- 9781789629392
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781942954569.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter reads French aesthetician Charles Mauron's work Aesthetics and Psychology, alongside its translator Roger Fry and publisher Virginia Woolf to explore formalism, aesthetic purity and ...
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This chapter reads French aesthetician Charles Mauron's work Aesthetics and Psychology, alongside its translator Roger Fry and publisher Virginia Woolf to explore formalism, aesthetic purity and contemplative attention.Less
This chapter reads French aesthetician Charles Mauron's work Aesthetics and Psychology, alongside its translator Roger Fry and publisher Virginia Woolf to explore formalism, aesthetic purity and contemplative attention.
Lois J. Gilmore
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780983533955
- eISBN:
- 9781781384930
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780983533955.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter examines contradictions in Virginia Woolf's relationship to art and auto/biography within the context of Bloomsbury. It discusses Bloomsbury's relationship to the African art that was ...
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This chapter examines contradictions in Virginia Woolf's relationship to art and auto/biography within the context of Bloomsbury. It discusses Bloomsbury's relationship to the African art that was introduced in England by that “contradictory and catalytic figure” Roger Fry, and that was “by nature contradictory when decontextualized and viewed from within Western culture.” Focusing in particular on the responses of Woolf, Fry, and Clive Bell to the 1920 exhibition of African objects at the Chelsea Book Club, the chapter highlights “the nuanced contradictions about African material culture” circulating in Bloomsbury. It suggests that the responses of Bloomsbury members to African objects reflect the argument of ambiguity and ambivalence.Less
This chapter examines contradictions in Virginia Woolf's relationship to art and auto/biography within the context of Bloomsbury. It discusses Bloomsbury's relationship to the African art that was introduced in England by that “contradictory and catalytic figure” Roger Fry, and that was “by nature contradictory when decontextualized and viewed from within Western culture.” Focusing in particular on the responses of Woolf, Fry, and Clive Bell to the 1920 exhibition of African objects at the Chelsea Book Club, the chapter highlights “the nuanced contradictions about African material culture” circulating in Bloomsbury. It suggests that the responses of Bloomsbury members to African objects reflect the argument of ambiguity and ambivalence.
Elizabeth Willson Gordon
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748642274
- eISBN:
- 9780748651979
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642274.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter discusses the publicity practices of the Hogarth Press, examining the career of American artist E. McKnight Kauffer, who designed the cover and logo of the Press. It looks at Kauffer's ...
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This chapter discusses the publicity practices of the Hogarth Press, examining the career of American artist E. McKnight Kauffer, who designed the cover and logo of the Press. It looks at Kauffer's experience in book production and his connections with Bloomsbury figures such as Roger Fry, describing his work as suitable to the Hogarth Press due to its productive engagement with books and art and commerce.Less
This chapter discusses the publicity practices of the Hogarth Press, examining the career of American artist E. McKnight Kauffer, who designed the cover and logo of the Press. It looks at Kauffer's experience in book production and his connections with Bloomsbury figures such as Roger Fry, describing his work as suitable to the Hogarth Press due to its productive engagement with books and art and commerce.
Barbara Lounsberry
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780813056937
- eISBN:
- 9780813053790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056937.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
“By the summer of 1934,” Hermione Lee writes, Hitler's “ambitions and his methods were fully apparent.” In the mid-1930s, Nazis issue regulations to eliminate women doctors and lawyers in Germany. ...
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“By the summer of 1934,” Hermione Lee writes, Hitler's “ambitions and his methods were fully apparent.” In the mid-1930s, Nazis issue regulations to eliminate women doctors and lawyers in Germany. German universities reduce the female quota of students to just ten percent. On October 28, 1934, Oswald Mosley stages a vicious attack on Jews during a British Union of Fascists rally at the Royal Albert Hall. Beyond these alarming national and international threats, Woolf faces inner personal (and artistic) loss and outer public attack, as she writes in her diary. She starts to speak of “warnings” in this journal. However, André Gide’s Pages de Journal, 1929–32 give her new direction in August 1934. In September, Guy de Maupassant's travel diary Sur l’eau (Afloat) particularly helps her to navigate through Roger Fry's unexpected death. She both enters its words in her diary and uses Afloat for a key moment in her novel The Years. In October, Alice James's Journal helps Woolf calibrate British women's social and sexual lives in the first decades of The Years and shows her—as do Gide's and Maupassant's diaries—a fierce fight, both without and within, between constraint and freedom.Less
“By the summer of 1934,” Hermione Lee writes, Hitler's “ambitions and his methods were fully apparent.” In the mid-1930s, Nazis issue regulations to eliminate women doctors and lawyers in Germany. German universities reduce the female quota of students to just ten percent. On October 28, 1934, Oswald Mosley stages a vicious attack on Jews during a British Union of Fascists rally at the Royal Albert Hall. Beyond these alarming national and international threats, Woolf faces inner personal (and artistic) loss and outer public attack, as she writes in her diary. She starts to speak of “warnings” in this journal. However, André Gide’s Pages de Journal, 1929–32 give her new direction in August 1934. In September, Guy de Maupassant's travel diary Sur l’eau (Afloat) particularly helps her to navigate through Roger Fry's unexpected death. She both enters its words in her diary and uses Afloat for a key moment in her novel The Years. In October, Alice James's Journal helps Woolf calibrate British women's social and sexual lives in the first decades of The Years and shows her—as do Gide's and Maupassant's diaries—a fierce fight, both without and within, between constraint and freedom.
Mark Hussey
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190462321
- eISBN:
- 9780190462345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190462321.003.0018
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
The early twentieth-century revolution in visual art that came to be known in England as post-impressionism emphasized the view that artistic creativity resides not only in the making of the artwork, ...
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The early twentieth-century revolution in visual art that came to be known in England as post-impressionism emphasized the view that artistic creativity resides not only in the making of the artwork, but also in the interaction between the artwork and the spectator, an orientation which the contemporary discipline of neuroaesthetics holds in our time. Clive Bell’s theory of “significant form” provided an approachable way for the British public to integrate their understanding of the new art into existing notions of art history and led to a severely diminished role for representation in visual art. Bell’s theory is identifiable as one manifestation of pervasive changes in the understanding of creativity and perception that were sweeping through Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bell could not say why certain combinations of lines and colors led to the experience of an “aesthetic emotion,” only that they did. Contemporary researchers in neuroaesthetics, such as Semir Zeki, have returned to Bell’s notion to ask whether the experience of aesthetic emotion might be due to some common neural organization. This chapter points to commonalities between the speculations of Bell and other members of the Bloomsbury Group, such as Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry, and those of contemporary researchers into brain processes.Less
The early twentieth-century revolution in visual art that came to be known in England as post-impressionism emphasized the view that artistic creativity resides not only in the making of the artwork, but also in the interaction between the artwork and the spectator, an orientation which the contemporary discipline of neuroaesthetics holds in our time. Clive Bell’s theory of “significant form” provided an approachable way for the British public to integrate their understanding of the new art into existing notions of art history and led to a severely diminished role for representation in visual art. Bell’s theory is identifiable as one manifestation of pervasive changes in the understanding of creativity and perception that were sweeping through Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bell could not say why certain combinations of lines and colors led to the experience of an “aesthetic emotion,” only that they did. Contemporary researchers in neuroaesthetics, such as Semir Zeki, have returned to Bell’s notion to ask whether the experience of aesthetic emotion might be due to some common neural organization. This chapter points to commonalities between the speculations of Bell and other members of the Bloomsbury Group, such as Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry, and those of contemporary researchers into brain processes.
Ashley Maher
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198816485
- eISBN:
- 9780191853708
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198816485.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
While the city has been at the center of literary modernist studies through such influential formulations as Raymond Williams’s “metropolitan forms of perception,” the influence of architectural ...
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While the city has been at the center of literary modernist studies through such influential formulations as Raymond Williams’s “metropolitan forms of perception,” the influence of architectural modernism has received comparatively little attention. Far from a lagging branch of the modern movement, architecture and design instigated one of the defining divides in British literary modernism, between Vorticism and Bloomsbury. At a time when Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier were just starting their careers, Wyndham Lewis and Roger Fry formulated rival utopias, to be achieved through an architecture and design-driven mass modernism. These debates culminated in D. H. Lawrence’s end-of-life call to “Pull down my native village to the last brick” and use modernist planning to “[m]ake a new England.” The conflation of creation and violent destruction initially inspired members of the Auden Group but ultimately caused many mid-century authors to become wary of uniting aesthetic revolution with political revolution.Less
While the city has been at the center of literary modernist studies through such influential formulations as Raymond Williams’s “metropolitan forms of perception,” the influence of architectural modernism has received comparatively little attention. Far from a lagging branch of the modern movement, architecture and design instigated one of the defining divides in British literary modernism, between Vorticism and Bloomsbury. At a time when Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier were just starting their careers, Wyndham Lewis and Roger Fry formulated rival utopias, to be achieved through an architecture and design-driven mass modernism. These debates culminated in D. H. Lawrence’s end-of-life call to “Pull down my native village to the last brick” and use modernist planning to “[m]ake a new England.” The conflation of creation and violent destruction initially inspired members of the Auden Group but ultimately caused many mid-century authors to become wary of uniting aesthetic revolution with political revolution.
James King
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474414500
- eISBN:
- 9781474421874
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474414500.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
As an artist, an impresario, a biographer and a collector, Roland Penrose (1900–1984) is a key figure in the study of modern art in England. This book explores the intricacies of Penrose's life and ...
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As an artist, an impresario, a biographer and a collector, Roland Penrose (1900–1984) is a key figure in the study of modern art in England. This book explores the intricacies of Penrose's life and work, tracing the profound effects of his upbringing in a Quaker household on his values, the early influence of Roger Fry, and his friendships with Max Ernst, André Breton and other surrealists, especially Paul Éluard. Penrose's conflicted relationship with Pablo Picasso, his tireless promotion of surrealism and the production of his own surrealist art are also discussed. Penrose's complex professional and personal lives are handled with a deftness of touch, including his pacifism, his work as a biographer and art historian, as well as his unconventionality, especially in his two marriages — including that to Lee Miller — and his numerous love affairs.Less
As an artist, an impresario, a biographer and a collector, Roland Penrose (1900–1984) is a key figure in the study of modern art in England. This book explores the intricacies of Penrose's life and work, tracing the profound effects of his upbringing in a Quaker household on his values, the early influence of Roger Fry, and his friendships with Max Ernst, André Breton and other surrealists, especially Paul Éluard. Penrose's conflicted relationship with Pablo Picasso, his tireless promotion of surrealism and the production of his own surrealist art are also discussed. Penrose's complex professional and personal lives are handled with a deftness of touch, including his pacifism, his work as a biographer and art historian, as well as his unconventionality, especially in his two marriages — including that to Lee Miller — and his numerous love affairs.
Karen L. Levenback
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781942954088
- eISBN:
- 9781786944122
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954088.003.0025
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
An Australian by birth, Florence Melian Stawell, who was educated as a classicist at both Trinity College (Melbourne) and Newnham College (Cambridge) was a civilian living in London during the Great ...
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An Australian by birth, Florence Melian Stawell, who was educated as a classicist at both Trinity College (Melbourne) and Newnham College (Cambridge) was a civilian living in London during the Great War. She shared this experience with Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, and many of their Bloomsbury friends. But unlike Woolf, whose life during the war has been the subject of some attention (my own Virginia Woolf and the Great War, for example), the home-front experience of Stawell and her literary output, including her anthology of poetry (The Price of Freedom) and her writings on a range of topics (patriotism, education, and the League of Nations among them), has been overlooked. This paper suggests that we may well find the Great War as a way into the life and work of this underappreciated woman, a contemporary of Virginia Woolf.Less
An Australian by birth, Florence Melian Stawell, who was educated as a classicist at both Trinity College (Melbourne) and Newnham College (Cambridge) was a civilian living in London during the Great War. She shared this experience with Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, and many of their Bloomsbury friends. But unlike Woolf, whose life during the war has been the subject of some attention (my own Virginia Woolf and the Great War, for example), the home-front experience of Stawell and her literary output, including her anthology of poetry (The Price of Freedom) and her writings on a range of topics (patriotism, education, and the League of Nations among them), has been overlooked. This paper suggests that we may well find the Great War as a way into the life and work of this underappreciated woman, a contemporary of Virginia Woolf.