Performance and Spectatorship in Edwardian Art Writing (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries) - Hardcover

Hatchwell, Sophie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3030170233 ISBN 13: 9783030170233

Publisher: Palgrave Pivot, 2019

Synopsis

This book explores how Edwardian art writing shaped and narrated embodied, performative forms of aesthetic spectatorship. It argues that we need to expand the range of texts we think of as art writing, and features a diverse array of critical and fictional works, often including texts that are otherwise absent from art-historical study. Multi-disciplinary in scope, this book proposes a methodology for analyzing the aesthetic encounter within and through art writing, adapting and reworking a form of phenomenological-semiotic analysis found conventionally in performance studies. It focuses on moments where theories of spectatorship meet practice, moving between the varied spaces of Edwardian art viewing, from the critical text, to the lecture hall, the West End theatre and gallery, middle-class home, and fictional novel. It contributes to a rethinking of Edwardian culture by exploring the intriguing heterogeneity and self-consciousness of viewing practices in a period more commonly associated with the emergence of formalism.

About this title

Review:

“The premise of this book is an exciting one, activating art, art criticism, theater, and literature to argue for the distinct nature of Edwardian art criticism and art viewing.  Performance is key here, as the author shows that literary and theatrical tropes were employed to construct spectatorship as a social act.” (Morna O'Neill, Wake Forest University, USA) 
“This highly original book recasts how we think about art criticism and theory. Its attention to the performative rhetoric of art writing offers new and imaginative forms of interpretation that bring out the social and ideological dimensions of criticism. It will make an important contribution to our understanding of its subject, but its significance goes beyond its immediate theme of Edwardian England to suggest alternative ways of analysing art criticism more generally.” (Professor Matthew Rampley, Masaryk University, Czech Republic)

 

About the Author:

Sophie Hatchwell is Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Birmingham, UK. She is the author of Auctioning Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon: A Sales History 1990-2015 (2017) and Auctioning Stanley Spencer: A Sales History 1990-2015 (2017).

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 3030170233
• ISBN 13: 9783030170233
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 137