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Color is a visible technology that invisibly connects so many puzzling aspects of modern Western consumer societies—research and development, making and selling, predicting fashion trends, and more. Building on Regina Lee Blaszczyk’s go-to history of the “color revolution” in the United States, this book explores further transatlantic and multidisciplinary dimensions of the topic. Covering history from the mid nineteenth century into the immediate past, it examines the relationship between color, commerce, and consumer societies in unfamiliar settings and in the company of new kinds of experts. Readers will learn about the early dye industry, the dynamic nomenclature for color, and efforts to standardize, understand, and educate the public about color. Readers will also encounter early food coloring, new consumer goods, technical and business innovations in print and on the silver screen, the interrelationship between gender and color, and color forecasting in the fashion industry.
This book offers trans-historical and trans-national perspectives on the image of “the artist” as a public figure in the popular discourse and imagination. Since the rise of notions of artistic autonomy and the simultaneous demise of old systems of patronage from the late eighteenth century onwards, artists have increasingly found themselves confronted with the necessity of developing a public persona. In the same period, new audiences for art discovered their fascination for the life and work of the artist. The rise of new media such as the illustrated press, photography and film meant that the needs of both parties could easily be satisfied in both words and images. Thanks to these “new” media, the artist was transformed from a simple producer of works of art into a public figure. The aim of this volume is to reflect on this transformative process, and to study the specific role of the media themselves. Which visual media were deployed, to what effect, and with what kind of audiences in mind? How did the artist, critic, photographer and filmmaker interact in the creation of these representations of the artist’s image?
Architecture and Armed Conflict is the first multi-authored scholarly book to address this theme from a comparative, interdisciplinary perspective. By bringing together specialists from a range of relevant fields, and with knowledge of case studies across time and space, it provides the first synthetic body of research on the complex, multifaceted subject of architectural destruction in the context of conflict. The book addresses several specific research questions: How has the destruction of buildings and landscapes figured in recent historical conflicts, and how have people and states responded to it? How has the destruction of architecture been represented in different historical periods,...
Examining the wide-ranging implications of Ruskin's engagement with his contemporaries and followers, this collection is organized around three related themes: Ruskin's intellectual legacy and the extent to which its address to working men and women and children was realised in practice; Ruskin's followers and their sites of influence, especially those related to the formation of collections, museums, archives and galleries representing values and ideas associated with Ruskin; and the extent to which Ruskin's work constructed a world-wide network of followers, movements and social gestures that acknowledge his authority and influence. As the introduction shows, Ruskin's continuing digital pr...
What can visual artifacts tell us about the past? How can we interpret them rigorously, weaving their formal and material qualities into rich social contexts to reach wider historical conclusions? Unfolding key historiographical and methodological issues, Writing Visual Histories equips students to answer these questions, showing visual analysis to be a key skill in historical research. A multifaceted structure makes this a practical guide for writing and reflecting on visual histories. A first section includes six case studies -- on topics ranging from medieval heraldry to Life magazine. These examples are followed by an exploration of essential concepts that inform historical thinking about visual matters, a treatment of disciplinary practices, and discussion of the practicalities (such as accessing museum collections and organising permissions) that scholars working with visual sources have to navigate. This book is an invaluable tool kit for opening up a historical understanding of visual phenomena and practices of looking, and for writing that takes an integrated approach to studies of the past.
"Forms of Persuasion is the first book-length history of corporate art patronage in the 1960s. After the decline of artist-illustrated advertising but before the rise of museum sponsorship, this decade saw artists and businesses exploring new ways to use art for commercial gain. Where many art historical accounts of the sixties privilege radical artistic practices that seem to oppose the dominant values of capitalism, Alex J. Taylor instead reveals an art world deeply immersed in the imperatives of big business. These projects unfolded in Madison Avenue meeting rooms and MoMA galleries, but as the most creative and competitive corporations sought growth through global expansion, they also re...
The Last Ruskinians : Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Herbert Moore, and Their Circle tells the forgotten story of the influence of the British writer and critic John Ruskin on a group of American painters and collectors during the late 19th century. Ruskin's influence in the U.S. was largely disseminated by the legendary Charles Eliot Norton (the nation's first professor of art history, who taught at Harvard from 1874 to 1898), and through his associate, Charles Herbert Moore. The exhibition consists almost exclusively of watercolors - Ruskin's favorite medium. Displaying Ruskin's philosophy of 'truth to nature' in art, the works include botanicals, architectural details, landscapes, views of...
Uncovers the very active tradition of pictorial photography practiced in California during the first half of the twentieth century
Celestial Images celebrates the Golden Age of astronomical charts. Illustrations of cosmologies and heavenly phenomena entered an innovative phase at the time of the Renaissance, when the invention of printing improved the means of disseminating scientific knowledge and advances in astronomy revealed new information to be portrayed. This fortuitous conjunction engendered printed astronomical charts of surprising accuracy and delicate beauty. Assembled here from the Mendillo Collection of Antiquarian Astronomical Charts and Maps are over eighty examples of some of the finest celestial cartography created. There are star charts (maps of the constellations and the full celestial sphere), charts of planetary systems (cosmologies), and a smaller third category, charts of celestial phenomena (such as nebulae, comets, and eclipses). Together, they pay homage to the time when simple systems explained the universe and humankind held friendly commerce with the skies.
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