Helen Jacobsen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199693757
- eISBN:
- 9780191731976
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199693757.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Cultural History
Ralph Montagu, later first duke of Montagu, served as ambassador to the court of Louis XIV on two occasions and, at a time when French taste was gaining ground across Europe amongst the aristocratic ...
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Ralph Montagu, later first duke of Montagu, served as ambassador to the court of Louis XIV on two occasions and, at a time when French taste was gaining ground across Europe amongst the aristocratic and political elites, he appears as one of its most enthusiastic supporters. His material legacy – including Boughton House with its extraordinary collection of seventeenth-century decorative art and paintings, furniture, and textiles – has prompted much interest from art historians who have suggested that he was dazzled by the French court and became a leader of the new taste on his return to England. This chapter looks beyond the extant material evidence and considers in more detail his political career, which was inextricably bound up with his social and cultural life, and tries to address what lay behind his lavish consumption. It shows that Montagu’s artistic patronage was politically inspired, a way of manipulating his environment; it was driven by motives of comfort, wealth, and, above all, personal and familial aggrandizement.Less
Ralph Montagu, later first duke of Montagu, served as ambassador to the court of Louis XIV on two occasions and, at a time when French taste was gaining ground across Europe amongst the aristocratic and political elites, he appears as one of its most enthusiastic supporters. His material legacy – including Boughton House with its extraordinary collection of seventeenth-century decorative art and paintings, furniture, and textiles – has prompted much interest from art historians who have suggested that he was dazzled by the French court and became a leader of the new taste on his return to England. This chapter looks beyond the extant material evidence and considers in more detail his political career, which was inextricably bound up with his social and cultural life, and tries to address what lay behind his lavish consumption. It shows that Montagu’s artistic patronage was politically inspired, a way of manipulating his environment; it was driven by motives of comfort, wealth, and, above all, personal and familial aggrandizement.
Marjorie Trusted
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635474
- eISBN:
- 9780748653140
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635474.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Juan Facundo Riaño, Gayangos's son-in-law, (1829–1901) served as an advisor to the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria and Albert Museum) on Spanish decorative arts. In May 1870, he was appointed ...
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Juan Facundo Riaño, Gayangos's son-in-law, (1829–1901) served as an advisor to the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria and Albert Museum) on Spanish decorative arts. In May 1870, he was appointed as the Professional Referee to the South Kensington and sent reports on possible acquisitions at the end of almost every month. This chapter is a continuation of the author's 2006 article on Riaño's recommendations for the South Kensington Museum. This chapter is based primarily on the reports held in the Registry at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The aim is to discuss the acquisitions made by South Kensington under Riaños's effort and energy. This chapter also aims to examine further the circumstances under which he was making his recommendations including the problems which sometimes arose because of practical complications and political events. Riaño served as the successor to John Charles Robinson. Although during Riaño's period as a the professional referee, just as Pascual de Gayangos fostered good relations between Britain and Spain in innumerable ways, so his son-in-law Juan Facundo Riaño gave astute and informed advice on works of art in Spain, and indisputably helped to shape the collections of Spanish art in Kensington Museum or what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum.Less
Juan Facundo Riaño, Gayangos's son-in-law, (1829–1901) served as an advisor to the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria and Albert Museum) on Spanish decorative arts. In May 1870, he was appointed as the Professional Referee to the South Kensington and sent reports on possible acquisitions at the end of almost every month. This chapter is a continuation of the author's 2006 article on Riaño's recommendations for the South Kensington Museum. This chapter is based primarily on the reports held in the Registry at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The aim is to discuss the acquisitions made by South Kensington under Riaños's effort and energy. This chapter also aims to examine further the circumstances under which he was making his recommendations including the problems which sometimes arose because of practical complications and political events. Riaño served as the successor to John Charles Robinson. Although during Riaño's period as a the professional referee, just as Pascual de Gayangos fostered good relations between Britain and Spain in innumerable ways, so his son-in-law Juan Facundo Riaño gave astute and informed advice on works of art in Spain, and indisputably helped to shape the collections of Spanish art in Kensington Museum or what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Michele Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book, a sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between these authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism ...
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This book, a sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between these authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism itself. The book also shows how these conflicting energies animated the late nineteenth century's most exciting transatlantic cultural enterprise. Richly illustrated and historically detailed, this study of James's and Wilde's intricate, decades-long relationship brings to light Aestheticism's truly transatlantic nature through close readings of both authors' works, as well as nineteenth-century art, periodicals, rare manuscripts and previously unpublished letters. As this book shows, both nineteenth-century authors were deeply influenced by the visual and decorative arts, and by contemporary artists such as George Du Maurier and James McNeill Whistler. This book offers a nuanced reading of a complex relationship that promises to transform the way in which we imagine late nineteenth-century British and American literary culture.Less
This book, a sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between these authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism itself. The book also shows how these conflicting energies animated the late nineteenth century's most exciting transatlantic cultural enterprise. Richly illustrated and historically detailed, this study of James's and Wilde's intricate, decades-long relationship brings to light Aestheticism's truly transatlantic nature through close readings of both authors' works, as well as nineteenth-century art, periodicals, rare manuscripts and previously unpublished letters. As this book shows, both nineteenth-century authors were deeply influenced by the visual and decorative arts, and by contemporary artists such as George Du Maurier and James McNeill Whistler. This book offers a nuanced reading of a complex relationship that promises to transform the way in which we imagine late nineteenth-century British and American literary culture.
Martin Brückner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469632605
- eISBN:
- 9781469632612
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469632605.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This book examines the rise of maps as a best-selling media platform wielding unprecedented cultural influence in America between 1750 and 1860. During this period, maps became affordable for first ...
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This book examines the rise of maps as a best-selling media platform wielding unprecedented cultural influence in America between 1750 and 1860. During this period, maps became affordable for first time to ordinary men and women looking to understand their place in the world; maps quickly entered American schools where they shaped reading and other cognitive exercises; giant wall maps became public spectacles; and miniature maps became expressive of personal journeys. The book argues that by the same token maps were tools of geographic information or imperial political power, their very materiality rendered them into uniquely sociable objects whose visual and material expressions affected commercial practices and graphic arts, ritual performances and the communication of emotions, even facilitating postwar reconciliation. Richly illustrated and the first comprehensive history to document everyday map encounters in early America, this book provides new perspectives on American print culture and commodity circulation. Exploring the relationship between geography and the decorative arts, literacy and visual education, spatial cognition and social organization, the book reveals how a map-oriented ontology became injected into a broad range of cultural compositions that shaped the lives of the American people.Less
This book examines the rise of maps as a best-selling media platform wielding unprecedented cultural influence in America between 1750 and 1860. During this period, maps became affordable for first time to ordinary men and women looking to understand their place in the world; maps quickly entered American schools where they shaped reading and other cognitive exercises; giant wall maps became public spectacles; and miniature maps became expressive of personal journeys. The book argues that by the same token maps were tools of geographic information or imperial political power, their very materiality rendered them into uniquely sociable objects whose visual and material expressions affected commercial practices and graphic arts, ritual performances and the communication of emotions, even facilitating postwar reconciliation. Richly illustrated and the first comprehensive history to document everyday map encounters in early America, this book provides new perspectives on American print culture and commodity circulation. Exploring the relationship between geography and the decorative arts, literacy and visual education, spatial cognition and social organization, the book reveals how a map-oriented ontology became injected into a broad range of cultural compositions that shaped the lives of the American people.
Margaret S. Graves
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- August 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190695910
- eISBN:
- 9780190695941
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190695910.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
The art of the object reached unparalleled heights in the medieval Islamic world, yet the deep intellectual dimensions of ceramics, metalwares, and other plastic arts in this milieu have not always ...
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The art of the object reached unparalleled heights in the medieval Islamic world, yet the deep intellectual dimensions of ceramics, metalwares, and other plastic arts in this milieu have not always been acknowledged. Arts of Allusion reveals the object as a crucial site where premodern craftsmen of the eastern Mediterranean and Persianate realms engaged their creations in fertile dialogue with poetry, literature, painting, and, perhaps most strikingly, architecture. Through close studies of objects from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, this book reveals that allusions to architecture abound across media in the portable arts of the medieval Islamic world. Arts of Allusion draws upon a broad range of material evidence as well as medieval texts, from works of philosophy and ethics to marketplace manuals, to locate its subjects in a nuanced cultural landscape where the material, visual, and verbal realms were intertwined. Moving far beyond the initial identification of architectural types with their miniature counterparts in the plastic arts, it develops a series of new frameworks for exploring the intelligent art of the allusive object. These address materiality, representation, and perception, and examine contemporary literary and poetic paradigms of metaphor, description, and indirect reference as tools for approaching the plastic arts. Arts of Allusion makes a powerful case for the role of the intellect in the applied arts and for the communicative potential of ornament. Simultaneously, it argues for the reinstatement of craftsmanship into Islamic intellectual history.Less
The art of the object reached unparalleled heights in the medieval Islamic world, yet the deep intellectual dimensions of ceramics, metalwares, and other plastic arts in this milieu have not always been acknowledged. Arts of Allusion reveals the object as a crucial site where premodern craftsmen of the eastern Mediterranean and Persianate realms engaged their creations in fertile dialogue with poetry, literature, painting, and, perhaps most strikingly, architecture. Through close studies of objects from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, this book reveals that allusions to architecture abound across media in the portable arts of the medieval Islamic world. Arts of Allusion draws upon a broad range of material evidence as well as medieval texts, from works of philosophy and ethics to marketplace manuals, to locate its subjects in a nuanced cultural landscape where the material, visual, and verbal realms were intertwined. Moving far beyond the initial identification of architectural types with their miniature counterparts in the plastic arts, it develops a series of new frameworks for exploring the intelligent art of the allusive object. These address materiality, representation, and perception, and examine contemporary literary and poetic paradigms of metaphor, description, and indirect reference as tools for approaching the plastic arts. Arts of Allusion makes a powerful case for the role of the intellect in the applied arts and for the communicative potential of ornament. Simultaneously, it argues for the reinstatement of craftsmanship into Islamic intellectual history.
Josephine Lee
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665792
- eISBN:
- 9781452946474
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665792.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Drama
This chapter shows how The Mikado is an example of what is often called japonaiserie, a term that signals, unlike the alternative term Japonisme, a certain irreverence, whimsy, and lack of ...
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This chapter shows how The Mikado is an example of what is often called japonaiserie, a term that signals, unlike the alternative term Japonisme, a certain irreverence, whimsy, and lack of authenticity. Both japonaiserie and Japonisme are part of the larger infusion of orientalism into Western decorative arts. The Mikado both articulated and significantly refocused the rage for Japanese objects d’art, costumes, décor, and crafts, staging a world inhabited by fanciful characters whose “Japanese” nature is identified primarily in terms of familiar decorative objects such as swords, fans, screens, and china. It popularized an easy way of playing Japanese, an accessible and transparent racial impersonation that relied on the display and use of objects, songs, and gestures of the opera.Less
This chapter shows how The Mikado is an example of what is often called japonaiserie, a term that signals, unlike the alternative term Japonisme, a certain irreverence, whimsy, and lack of authenticity. Both japonaiserie and Japonisme are part of the larger infusion of orientalism into Western decorative arts. The Mikado both articulated and significantly refocused the rage for Japanese objects d’art, costumes, décor, and crafts, staging a world inhabited by fanciful characters whose “Japanese” nature is identified primarily in terms of familiar decorative objects such as swords, fans, screens, and china. It popularized an easy way of playing Japanese, an accessible and transparent racial impersonation that relied on the display and use of objects, songs, and gestures of the opera.
Jane Stevenson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198808770
- eISBN:
- 9780191846472
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198808770.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book re-examines the arts in the 1920s and 1930s, arguing that rather than being dominated by modernism, the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque—eclectic, playful, and open to influence ...
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This book re-examines the arts in the 1920s and 1930s, arguing that rather than being dominated by modernism, the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque—eclectic, playful, and open to influence from popular culture—and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, and exclusive, features which suggest that it was essentially a neoclassical movement. Thus the period is characterized by the ancient competition between baroque and classical forms of expression. The author argues that both forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity by setting painting and literature in the context of ‘minor arts’ such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production. The chapters of the book pursue a set of interconnected themes, focused by turns on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists, in order to test and explore the central idea.Less
This book re-examines the arts in the 1920s and 1930s, arguing that rather than being dominated by modernism, the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque—eclectic, playful, and open to influence from popular culture—and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, and exclusive, features which suggest that it was essentially a neoclassical movement. Thus the period is characterized by the ancient competition between baroque and classical forms of expression. The author argues that both forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity by setting painting and literature in the context of ‘minor arts’ such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production. The chapters of the book pursue a set of interconnected themes, focused by turns on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists, in order to test and explore the central idea.
Sean F. Johnston
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198712763
- eISBN:
- 9780191781131
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198712763.003.0010
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
While audiences evolved, organizations were trying to turn holograms into a business. Entrepreneurs and customers alike were captivated by holograms, but companies sought to develop new and ...
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While audiences evolved, organizations were trying to turn holograms into a business. Entrepreneurs and customers alike were captivated by holograms, but companies sought to develop new and competitive products that exploited innovation. Research companies, lubricated by government contracts, had been the first to investigate a commercial market for holograms from the late 1960s. Companies such as Conductron Corporation, IBM, Bell Telephone and CBS Laboratories had sought to stay at the front of the pack through basic research, setting ambitious goals and predicting products to come. They were confident that this would allow them to ‘invent the future’. Consumers flirted with adopting holograms as art, decoration, magazine illustrations and portraiture. As with the earlier visual technologies of Victorian optical toys, stereoscopes and 3-D cinema, children became a more reliable audience. But a mere twenty-five years after their revelation to the public, holograms were most commonly used as optical anti-counterfeiting devices.Less
While audiences evolved, organizations were trying to turn holograms into a business. Entrepreneurs and customers alike were captivated by holograms, but companies sought to develop new and competitive products that exploited innovation. Research companies, lubricated by government contracts, had been the first to investigate a commercial market for holograms from the late 1960s. Companies such as Conductron Corporation, IBM, Bell Telephone and CBS Laboratories had sought to stay at the front of the pack through basic research, setting ambitious goals and predicting products to come. They were confident that this would allow them to ‘invent the future’. Consumers flirted with adopting holograms as art, decoration, magazine illustrations and portraiture. As with the earlier visual technologies of Victorian optical toys, stereoscopes and 3-D cinema, children became a more reliable audience. But a mere twenty-five years after their revelation to the public, holograms were most commonly used as optical anti-counterfeiting devices.
