Screen LibraryBritish Modernism and Chinoiserie /
This volume examines the ways in which an intellectual vogue for a mythic China was a constituent element of British modernism. Traditionally defined as a decorative style that conjured a fanciful and idealized notion of China, chinoiserie was revived in in London's avant-garde circles, the Blo...
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| Group Author: | |
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| Published: |
Edinburgh University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Edinburgh : |
| Publication Dates: | [2015] |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
This volume examines the ways in which an intellectual vogue for a mythic China was a constituent element of British modernism. Traditionally defined as a decorative style that conjured a fanciful and idealized notion of China, chinoiserie was revived in in London's avant-garde circles, the Bloomsbury group, the Vorticists and others, who like their eighteenth-century forebears, turned to China as a cultural and aesthetic utopia. As part of Modernism's challenge to the 'universality' of so-called Western values and aesthetics, the turn to China would contribute much more than has been acknowledged to Modernist thinking. As these 10 new chapters demonstrate, China as an intellectual and aesthetic utopia dazzled intellectuals and aesthetes, at the same time the consumption of Chinese exoticism became commercialized. The essays show that from cutting-edge Modernist chic to mass culture and consumer products, the vogue for chinoiserie style and motifs permeated the art and design of the period. --Provided by publisher. |
| Carrier Form: | x, 235 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780748690954 : 0748690956 |
| Index Number: | NX650 |
| CLC: | I561.065 |
| Call Number: | I561.065/B862-1 |
| Contents: |
Introduction: "the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay" / China and the formation of the modernist aesthetic ideal / Shared affinities : Katherine Mansfield, Ling Shuhua and Virginia Woolf / Roger Fry, Chinese art and The Burlington magazine / Chinese artistic influences on the vorticists in London / The idea of the Chinese garden and British aesthetic modernism / "Beautiful, baleful absurdity" : chinoiserie and modernist ballet / Fashion, chinoiserie and modernism / The Oriental and the music hall : sound and space in Thomas Burke's Limehouse Chinatown / Staging China, excising the Chinese : Lady Precious Stream and the darker side of chinoiserie / Chinoiserie : an unrequited architectural affair / |