After Word, Thought, Life: A Stroll in Parisian Parks

This afterword takes the reader on a lyrical psychogeographic drift (dérive) through Paris’ green spaces, from the Buttes-Chaumont of Aragon’s Paris Peasant back through the jardin anglais of the Parc Monceau and the grounds of colonial expositions to the bright red follies of the late twentieth-century Parc de la Villette. The pavilions met with here are like relics, living out their afterlives, triggering memories and imagination, reminding the reader of the changeability of function and meaning that makes it so difficult to pin down such structures

The Prado: Spanish Culture and Leisure, 1819–1939

The Prado, we are told, means simply ‘meadow’, designating a stretch of land that regularly played host to Madrid’s many popular festivals (such as the festival of San Isidro) and not the museum that would eventually be named after this location. This is an ambitious book. As the subtitle suggests, it attempts to tell the story of Spanish culture and leisure across two centuries. The scope is broad, the story complex, unfolding a veritable pageant that includes a cast of thousands, cultural, urban, political history; history of class and taste as well as museum history, all rolled into one. Such ambition is to be commended. It lifts the writing of cultural history to new heights, offering a contextual reading of the Paseo del Prado and the museum that came to bear its name. The simultaneous focus on leisure, culture and politics allows Eugenia Afinoguénova to map the different roles the museum was assigned to play in Spain’s shifting political landscape. Book review of The Prado: Spanish Culture and Leisure, 1819-1939, by Eugenia Afinoguénova, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017, ISBN 978027107857

Page, Canvas, Wall: Visualising the History of Art

In 1909, the Italian poet and founder of the Futurist movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti famously declared, ‘[w]e will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind’.1 He compared museums to cemeteries, ‘[i]dentical, surely, in the sinister promiscuity of so many bodies unknown to one another… where one lies forever beside hated or unknown beings’. This comparison of the museum with the cemetery has often been cited as an indication of the Futurists’ radical rejection of traditional institutions. It certainly made these institutions look dead. With habitual hyperbole Marinetti claimed: ‘We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!… Why should we look back […]? Time and Space died yesterday.’ The brutal breathlessness of Futurist thinking rejected all notions of a history of art. This essay considers how the history of art, embodied in art-historical canons, schools, periods, and aesthetic standards, has been conceptualised through writing, the organisation of collections, and the decoration of new museum buildings. It examines some of the moments in which the page, the canvas and the wall offer seminal and selective visualisations of the history of art and deploy notions of time and space that are complex and contradictory, and far from dead

Empathetic Encounters: Horses and Humans in the Art of George Stubbs

In eighteenth-century England horses were painted in a range of contexts such as racing and hunting scenes, and as individual, group and family equine portraits. The most well-known horse painter of the period was George Stubbs. His reputation was based on the artist’s detailed knowledge of equine anatomy, which was gained through meticulous dissections and culminated in the publication of The Anatomy of the Horse (1766). This illustrated treatise remained a touchstone for veterinarians until well into the nineteenth century. Its scientific naturalism forms the basis of Stubbs’ art but does not explain its somewhat elusive and enigmatic qualities. My paper will focus on encounters between horses and humans, be they jockeys, trainers, grooms or owners. These are often depicted as more than just professional associations. I will argue that there is a discernible empathetic force in these encounters which I shall aim to locate in the emotive and relational aesthetic theories of Edmund Burke and the formal aesthetics of William Gilpin. These help us to understand Stubbs’s hunting and racing scenes not simply as visions of nature but of a society that is relational and ordered, instinctive and empathetic, and ultimately political

Empathetic Encounters: Horses and Humans in the Art of George Stubbs

In eighteenth-century England horses were painted in a range of contexts such as racing and hunting scenes, and as individual, group and family equine portraits. The most well-known horse painter of the period was George Stubbs. His reputation was based on the artist’s detailed knowledge of equine anatomy, which was gained through meticulous dissections and culminated in the publication of The Anatomy of the Horse (1766). This illustrated treatise remained a touchstone for veterinarians until well into the nineteenth century. Its scientific naturalism forms the basis of Stubbs’ art but does not explain its somewhat elusive and enigmatic qualities. My paper will focus on encounters between horses and humans, be they jockeys, trainers, grooms or owners. These are often depicted as more than just professional associations. I will argue that there is a discernible empathetic force in these encounters which I shall aim to locate in the emotive and relational aesthetic theories of Edmund Burke and the formal aesthetics of William Gilpin. These help us to understand Stubbs’s hunting and racing scenes not simply as visions of nature but of a society that is relational and ordered, instinctive and empathetic, and ultimately political

The studio Collard and the barricades of 1871: a challenge not only to the architecture of Paris

The chapter investigates how the Studio Collard's photographs of the barricades fit into the overall trajectory of picturing Paris as a site of urban regeneration. Do they salute the irrepressible spirit of revolution or bear witness to a temporary imposition on the modern city Collard's own photographs had helped to frame

Painting the Bible: Representation and Belief in mid-Victorian Britain

Painting the Bible is the first book to investigate the transformations that religious painting underwent in mid-Victorian England. It charts the emergence of a Protestant realist painting in a period of increasing doubt, scientific discovery and biblical criticism. The book analyzes the position of religious painting in academic discourse and assesses the important role Pre-Raphaelite work played in redefining painting for mid-Victorian audiences. This original study brings together a wide range of material from high art and popular culture. It locates the controversy over the religious works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in debates about academicism, revivalism and caricature. It also investigates William Holman Hunt's radical, orientalist-realist approach to biblical subject matter which offered an important updating of the image of Christ that chimed with the principles of liberal Protestantism. The book will appeal to scholars and students across disciplines such as art history, literature, history and cultural studies. Its original research, rigorous analysis and accessible style will make it essential reading for anyone interested in questions of representation and belief in mid-Victorian England