🎉   Please check out our new website over at books-etc.com.

Seller
Your price
£49.49
Out of Stock

Baroque between the Wars

Alternative Style in the Arts, 1918-1939

By (author) Jane Stevenson
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom
Published: 11th Jan 2018
Dimensions: w 162mm h 241mm d 24mm
Weight: 714g
ISBN-10: 0198808771
ISBN-13: 9780198808770
Barcode No: 9780198808770
Trade or Institutional customer? Contact us about large order quotes.
Synopsis
Baroque between the Wars is a fascinating and new account of the arts in the twenties and thirties. We often think of this time as being dominated by modernism, yet the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque - eclectic, playful, camp, open to influence from popular culture yet in dialogue with the past, and unafraid of the grotesque or surreal - and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, exclusive, and essentially neo-classical. Jane Stevenson argues that both baroque and classical forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity, by setting painting and literature in the context of 'minor arts' such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production. Accessibly written and generously illustrated, the volume focuses on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists to demonstrate how baroque offered a whole way of being modern which was actively subversive of the tenets of modernism and practised by the people modernism habitually defined as not worth listening to, particularly women and homosexuals.

New & Used

Seller Information Condition Price
-New
Out of Stock

What Reviewers Are Saying

Submit your review
Newspapers & Magazines
Baroque Between the Wars ... is a witty and elegant account of an alternative style in the arts ... this wide-ranging and hugely entertaining book perfectly combines aesthetic and social history. * Peter Parker, Books of the Year 2018, Times Literary Supplement * The patterns that [Stevenson] contrived to weave out of subjects as widely dispersed as the Sitwells, Arthur Machen, Ronald Firbank and Coco Chanel were endlessly fascinating. * D.J. Taylor, Books of the Year 2018, Times Literary Supplement * A beautifully written account of modern baroque in its many guises ... it is scholarly, diverting and fascinating, all at once: a bracing draught that genuinely fills a huge void, an essential read to understand a period in all its diversity. * James Stevens Curl, Times Higher Eucation * Learned and thought-provoking ... Stevenson has encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and the style, in all its many forms. The book covers a glorious array of cultural activities ... Stevenson writes with gentle humour and a keen sense of the absurd. * Adrian Tinniswood, Literary Review * Baroque Between the Wars draws its strength from Stevenson's omnivorous sourcing of material and her intellectual curiosity. * Tanya Harrod, Apollo * exceptional * Clive Aslet, Country Life * A fascinating, thought-provoking account of the arts in the 1920s and 1930s * The Tablet * One of this book's greatest strengths is the author's original research across several disciplines ... [Stevenson] writes in clear, insightful prose ... This is essential reading that will, inter alia, explain you to yourself. * Ruth Guilding, The World of Interiors * The book is welcome for its extensive examination of one of the most interesting moments in art and life of recent times. * David Platzer, The British Art Journal * extraordinary ... Stevenson writes with admirable clarity and wit * Altair Brandon-Salmon, Cherwell * The first thing to be said about this wonderfully funny, provocative, and endlessly fascinating book is that it covers a lot of ground. It presents a very large range of creative production through a series of short and eminently readable chapters. * Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Journal of Architecture * Broad in scope, yet full of telling detail, this important study of the Baroque sensibility brilliantly illuminates a too-long-neglected era of artistic and cultural activity. * Stephen Calloway, author of Baroque Baroque: The Culture of Excess * Stevenson's achievement is baroque in its richness and variety. Spanning the art forms, and bringing to new prominence the period's decorative taste-makers from Cecil Beaton to Elsa Schiaparelli, she turns a serious eye on the meanings of masquerade. The emphasis on art markets and circles of patronage contributes a wealth of new material to this thick-woven tapestry of ideas. * Alexandra Harris, Department of English Literature, University of Birmingham * With the scholarship, humanity, and wit that made her Edward Burra biography so outstanding, Jane Stevenson presents a shimmering bouquet of connected essays, animating the ghosts of early twentieth-century fashion and frolic, that propose a serious alternative to modernism. * Alan Powers *