Showing papers in "Visual Culture in Britain in 2009"
TL;DR: Tickner as mentioned in this paper, London: Frances Lincoln, 2008, pp. 203 In the celebration (or remembrance) of the insurgent events of May to June, 1968, most attention was focused on Paris.
Abstract: by Lisa Tickner, London: Frances Lincoln, 2008, pp. 203 In the celebration (or remembrance) of the insurgent events of May to June, 1968, most attention is focused on Paris. There are historical re...
11 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the development of folk art as an idea in English culture during the twentieth century, addressing the commonplace assumption that the promotion of "folk art" is necessarily antagonistic towards modernity, and, correspondingly, it is always to be associated with aesthetic conservatism, political reaction, and ethnically restrictive notions of Englishness.
Abstract: This article explores the development of folk art as an idea in English culture during the twentieth century, addressing in particular the commonplace assumption that the promotion of ‘folk art’ is necessarily antagonistic towards modernity, and, correspondingly, it is always to be associated with aesthetic conservatism, political reaction, and ethnically restrictive notions of Englishness. The article surveys a series of moments when the issue of folk art came to the fore: around 1909–1912, when there were efforts to establish an open‐air folk museum in England; 1929–1934, when these efforts were revived, and when folk art became the subject of pan‐European scholarly attention and a prime symbol of national identity; 1949–1954, when a new generation of designers turned to vernacular culture as a source of an energetic style that was both national and modernist; and the period since 1960, which saw attempts at the commodification of English folk art as an aspect of the national heritage. Through these cas...
8 citations
TL;DR: A cycle of British 'women in peril' thrillers from the first half of the 1970s, focusing in particular on the films And Soon the Darkness (1970), Assault (1971) and Blind Terror (1971), and the television series Thriller (1973-1976), were examined in this paper.
Abstract: This article considers a cycle of British ‘women in peril’ thrillers from the first half of the 1970s, focusing in particular on the films And Soon the Darkness (1970), Assault (1971) and Blind Terror (1971), and the television series Thriller (1973–1976). In their presentation of predatory males stalking female victims, these texts ostensibly offer a take on gender politics that is both disturbing and reactionary, and one might relate them in this respect to other narratives from this period that also relied on representations of the victimized female (most notably, A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs). In fact, the article finds in these fictions more ambiguity and ambivalence around gender identity than might initially be supposed. While this never coheres into anything that could be described as enlightened, there is nevertheless a distinctive playfulness with gender roles evident here, especially in the television dramas, which in various ways belies or troubles an ostensibly regressive sexual politics...
7 citations
TL;DR: Bacon's paintings encourage auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and/or tactile responses in the viewer as discussed by the authors, and it is therefore possible to look at Bacon as a painter who actively discourages oculocentrism.
Abstract: Francis Bacon's interest in the synaesthetic imagery of the playwright Aeschylus is well known Synaesthesia is a condition in which the stimulation of one sense causes a perception to occur in another sense For a synaesthete hearing a sound can, for example, trigger the perception of a colour This article examines a number of ways in which Bacon's paintings can be seen to rouse senses other than the visual Many of his artworks encourage auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and/or tactile responses in the viewer It is therefore possible to look at Bacon as a painter who actively discourages oculocentrism The article also pursues the implications that the literal presence of sensory stimuli other than the optical in an exhibition space has for a spectator's reception of visual artworks It draws on the differing physical experience between the mounting by Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum of Art of what was largely the same exhibition – the 2008–9 retrospective Francis Bacon – for its arguments
6 citations
TL;DR: Bacon's paintings acquired a certain critical velocity of exceptionalism with his participation in an exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1945 as mentioned in this paper, and some of the narratives that sustained his reception for the next couple of decades.
Abstract: With his participation in an exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery in 1945, Francis Bacon's paintings acquired a certain critical velocity of exceptionalism. This article looks at some of the narratives that sustained his reception for the next couple of decades. These include the trope of Bacon as existentialist representative of a catastrophic moment in Western culture; the Gothic ambience that is constructed around him by writers such as Robert Melville; the contextual and interdisciplinary perspectives of Sam Hunter and Lawrence Alloway, which foregrounded film and photography; and the eloquent formalism of David Sylvester. The lack of purchase on Bacon to be found from leftist perspectives, specifically John Berger's, is also recounted, as well as key formative exhibitions of the period, which positioned the artist. Finally, the article glances at the mediatization of Bacon that begins at the close of the 1950s, and his transformation through the format of culture-celebrity TV.
5 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the role that visual representation of the Troubles has played in securing the peace process in Northern Ireland and identify why it is crucial to appreciate the ways in which these post-feminist discourses are being employed to give meaning to the post-Ceasefire situation.
Abstract: I examine the role that visual representation of the Troubles has played in securing the peace process in Northern Ireland. I do this by considering a number of television representations produced during the ceasefire period and since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. A number of film and television productions were screened from 1992 onwards in which the subject matter centred on the Northern Irish conflict. I propose that these productions include not only narratives aimed at making sense of the conflict but post-feminist discourses on femininity, masculinity and in particular the ‘new man’. From a feminist position the article will identify why it is crucial to appreciate the ways in which these post-feminist discourses are being employed to give meaning to the post-Ceasefire situation. It will consider a number of different genres but will conclude with an analysis of the recent genre mix, the docudrama. The article revisits my earlier research on pre-Ceasefire representations in The Crying Ga...
4 citations
TL;DR: The authors introduce Isabel Lambert's career and look at intersections between it and Bacon's, setting him within the context of risks, experiments and discoveries that were taking place during and following the Second World War.
Abstract: Recent commentaries have emphasized the way twentieth-century artists create their public personae and have begun to test the restrictions on interpretation that have resulted. Francis Bacon constructed personae for his associates as well as himself; ‘Isabel Rawsthorne’, known as his model and fellow bon viveur, was the painter Isabel Lambert, who left a large body of work and writing on art. An early and indefatigable adherent to the embattled figurative avant garde that included Giacometti, she was also committed to new developments in ethnography and phenomenology. This article will introduce her career and look at intersections between it and Bacon's, setting him within the context of risks, experiments and discoveries that were taking place during and following the Second World War. Archive material pertaining to Lambert and to Bataille and others in Lambert's circle suggests a new understanding of Bacon's engagement with Parisian art and ideas and provides readings which complement current developme...
4 citations
TL;DR: For instance, this paper argued that Nazi propaganda photographs were a recurrent point of reference and departure for many of the paintings Francis Bacon produced during the war years and then over the next decade and beyond.
Abstract: By analysing a wide range of specific examples, this article seeks to demonstrate that Nazi propaganda photographs were a recurrent point of reference and departure for many of the paintings Francis Bacon produced during the war years and then over the next decade and beyond. The authors consider how his appropriations and transformations of such political imagery intersected with his equally continuous allusions to themes from Christ's Passion and Greek Tragedy. The argument opens up fresh intellectual contexts for Bacon, and reinforces other kinds of evidence that in his art he was motivated to represent the psychological tenor of modern history, with its dialectic of ritual and violence, rather than a more universal notion of the human condition.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a set of slides visually describing the New England town illustrated by the Boston Photographic Society and premiered by the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association in 1889 are shown in photographic societies throughout the United Kingdom.
Abstract: Prior to the formation of Sir Benjamin Stone's National Photographic Record Association (NPRA), a number of amateur photographic societies throughout Britain embarked on photographic surveys. The catalyst for these endeavours was ‘Illustrated Boston’, a set of slides visually describing the New England town sent from the Boston Photographic Society and premiered by the Liverpool Amateur Photographic Association in 1889. These slides were then shown in photographic societies throughout the United Kingdom. Although William Jerome Harrison had published erudite advice on how to carry out such a task, these formative surveys reveal a dislocation between ideal methodology and the realities of amateur surveying. This disjuncture has significant import for the representation of place and, drawing on the theories of Timothy Mitchell and Pierre Nora, this article examines the surveys as reflecting, and contributing to, particular social, aesthetic, political and institutional contexts integral to which was an ocul...
4 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Potvin's four interconnected case studies are the latest innovative queer analysis of male desire in late nineteenth century British visual culture, focusing on the relationship between male desire and sexual desire.
Abstract: by John Potvin, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 181 Potvin's four interconnected case studies are the latest innovative queer analysis of male desire in late nineteenth century British visual culture...
3 citations
TL;DR: Bacon's relationship with Surrealism and a historical tradition of grand masters is well documented, and Bacon's own citation in interviews of such painters as Rembrandt, Velazquez, Van Gogh and Picasso is also well documented as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Considerable attention has been paid to Bacon's relationship with Surrealism and a historical tradition of grand masters, and indeed Bacon's own citation in interviews of such painters as Rembrandt, Velazquez, Van Gogh and Picasso is well documented. What is perhaps less well recognized is the tradition of Romantic art and thought of the late nineteenth century with which Bacon's contemporaries identified him, and in particular the legacy in England that manifested itself in a practice of painting associated with J.A.M. Whistler and a canon of literature that was deeply rooted in the writings of Baudelaire, from the ‘Fleshly School of Poetry’ represented by Algernon Swinburne, and the later writings of Walter Pater, through to the poetry of T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats. At the heart of this nexus of practice and thought lay a well-trodden Anglicized argument about the differences between the concepts of analysis and synthesis in art, primarily understood as the difference between an aesthetic of narrative an...
TL;DR: This paper examined the representation of the past on British television and argued that authenticity and truth in relation to television's rendering of history have been particularly active in recent years, as a response to the perennial popularity of history programming.
Abstract: This article examines the representation of the past on British television. As a response to the perennial popularity of history programming, debates about authenticity and truth in relation to television's rendering of history have been particularly active in recent years. These debates are considered here through an exploration of the historical, socio‐cultural but also medium‐specific context of the representation of history. Through a study of the 1987 BBC series The Victorian Kitchen Garden, these issues are explored in relation to the heritage movement, television genres and shifts in modes of address that indicate a hybrid generic identity which transcends boundaries and is suggestive in its implications for our understanding not of only 1980s heritage and history programming but also of a subgenre of reality television.
TL;DR: The influence of homosexual drag clothing on the return of peacockery and colour in male dress in Bacon's paintings has been investigated in this paper, where the authors argue that the observation should be connected to the "sensuous world of leisure" offered by the meritocratic, design-conscious and brightly hued spaces of Sixties London.
Abstract: This article attends to the observation that the kinds of colours in Bacon's paintings, particularly after the 1962 triptych made for the Tate exhibition of the same year, intensified in tone and diversified in range. It argues that the observation should be connected to the ‘sensuous world of leisure’ offered by the meritocratic, design-conscious and brightly hued spaces of Sixties London. Taking the example of ‘those strange rainbow-hued shirts that he started wearing in the early seventies’, it reasons that the influence of homosexual ‘drag’ clothing on the return of peacockery and colour in male dress deserves consideration in relation to the artist's use of certain colours.
TL;DR: In this article, a comparison of three key locations: a recent touring exhibition called "Alien Nation" (Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Institute of International Visual Arts); the Globalising Art, Architecture and Design History project (GLAADH), a national project of curriculum change funded by HEFCE; and World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia.
Abstract: The current interest taken in Britain by art historians and curators in the areas of World Art, cultural diversity, global culture and multiculturalism is failing to challenge the exclusion and marginalization of artworks, artists and academics historically associated with cultural, ethnic or racial differences. Such a failure can be explored in British institutions of art history, collecting and display in their efforts to examine cultural difference, cultural diversity and World Art. While this article avoids a survey of such art institutions, it offers a comparison of three key locations: a recent touring exhibition called ‘Alien Nation’ (Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Institute of International Visual Arts); the Globalising Art, Architecture and Design History project (GLAADH), a national project of curriculum change funded by HEFCE; and World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia. What emerges is an account of World Art as a category of institutional experience in Britain, as the basis...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the limiting conditions of its inquiry and argue that the reception of advert X in this place might be significantly different to that in another place, and this difference would be a changing variable difference.
Abstract: This essay addresses itself to what I shall call the limiting conditions of its inquiry. Given that we speak of ‘visual culture’ as a field that comprises visual advertising, film, photography, various arts and a whole range of interlocking and overlapping practices, then to what degree can we engage with it when qualified by the term ‘in Northern Ireland’? Very large parts of this field seem to have very little connection to political geography, no matter how construed. Within image-based commercial advertising, for example, one might think none at all. Nonetheless, we might want to argue that the reception of advert X in this place might be significantly different to that in another place. Its very presence might signify a welcome ‘normality’. And this difference would be a changing variable difference. A similar difficulty occurs when we want to consider the idea of ‘material culture’ within the same geographical space; to what degree is the idea really attached to anything of substance. To what degree...
TL;DR: The Eames-Bradley report was published by the cross-community Consultative Group on the Past (CGOnP) as mentioned in this paper, which was set up to address issues of post-confl...
Abstract: On 28 January 2009 what has become known as the Eames–Bradley report was published. This was the report of the cross-community Consultative Group on the Past, set up to address issues of post-confl...
TL;DR: Doherty is probably the best-known contemporary artist from Northern Ireland as mentioned in this paper, who has developed a practice in photography, film and video that has consistently posited a critical engagement with aspects of the political conflict and its aftermath.
Abstract: Willie Doherty is probably the best-known contemporary artist from Northern Ireland. From his early work in the 1980s to the present he has developed a practice in photography, film and video that has consistently posited a critical engagement with aspects of the political conflict and its aftermath. Much of this focuses on his native city of Derry, where he continues to live and work. In addition to being short-listed twice for the Turner Prize in 1994 and 2003, Doherty’s work has been widely exhibited in international venues. In addition to representing Great Britain at the São Paolo Art Biennale in 2003, he has also represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and Northern Ireland in 2007, when the film Ghost Story was shown.
TL;DR: The authors discusses the aesthetics and politics of recent art photography in Northern Ireland, examining the ways in which the new political dispensation might be seen to have influenced artistic representations, and how the political agreement, and the new form of governance it has led to, might shift the focus of Northern Irish public life and culture away from the macro-politics of sectarianism and on to neglected ‘everyday’ issues of economy, environment and wealth.
Abstract: This essay discusses the aesthetics and politics of recent art photography in Northern Ireland, examining the ways in which the new political dispensation might be seen to have influenced artistic representations. In particular, the essay discusses how the political agreement, and the new form of governance it has led to, might shift the focus of Northern Irish public life and culture away from the macro-politics of sectarianism and on to neglected ‘everyday’ issues of economy, environment and wealth. The essay argues that the groundwork for such a shift is evident in recent photographic practice, through, for example, the work of John Duncan, the exhibitions and projects organized by Belfast Exposed Gallery, and the recent (2007) exhibition Luxus by Victor Sloan. The change in Sloan's aesthetic practice witnessed here is seen as indicative of the ways in which photography has addressed and might in future address the uncertainties of a peaceful Northern Ireland. Sloan's interest in the post-Wall, post-co...
TL;DR: McIntyre and O'Beirn as mentioned in this paper explore the re-politicization of space through modes of deconstruction and ambivalence, and explore the tension between affect and its potential use to veil political events.
Abstract: Looking at works by Northern Ireland-based artists Mary McIntyre, Heather Allen and Aisling O'Beirn, who have been practising since the early 1990s, this essay explores their response to an altered socio-political landscape in Northern Ireland, although they are still not reducible to this location as their sole context, either thematically or as their point of origin. I consider how the artists' shifting concerns and aesthetic strategies engage with ideological and experiential transformations in the post-Ceasefire period; and how they explore the re-politicization of space through modes of deconstruction and ambivalence. Whether, as Mieke Bal claims, political art today is characterized by a crucial ambivalence, this is in any case an unsettling feature of Mary McIntyre's photographs. Her reworking of the sublime in recent landscape photographs offers a simultaneous sense of enthralment and estrangement in order to explore tensions between affect and its potential use to veil political events, and betwe...
TL;DR: Waterhouse art has been at the heart of modern British visual culture in the form of posters, postcards, note cards, diaries, fridge magnets, mouse mats, mug... as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The art of John William Waterhouse RA (1849–1917) has long been at the heart of modern British visual culture in the form of posters, postcards, note cards, diaries, fridge magnets, mouse mats, mug...