Ann Gagné is College Instructor at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada. Her current research explores how touch and ethics relate to education as well as the spatial framing of learning in the nineteenth century which is an extension of themes found in her doctoral dissertation. She is very active on Twitter @AnnGagne and also writes a blog that relates to teaching and pedagogical strategies at www.allthingspedagogical.blogspot.ca Sensory studies has really expanded in the past few years which is great
Read moreTag: Art
Ann Gagné, “Race, Place, and Perspective in the Victorian Period”: VSAO Conference
Ann Gagné is College Instructor at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada. Her current research explores how touch and ethics relate to education as well as the spatial framing of learning in the nineteenth century which is an extension of themes found in her doctoral dissertation. She is very active on Twitter @AnnGagne and also writes a blog that relates to teaching and pedagogical strategies at www.allthingspedagogical.blogspot.ca The end of the term at Ontario colleges and universities usually means instructors spending quality time with essays
Read moreMaho Sakoda, The Exhibition Report: ‘Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends’
Maho Sakoda is a fourth year PhD student at the University of Sussex in Brighton. Her thesis explores the relationship between literature and art in the nineteenth century. It especially focuses on works of George Eliot in relation to her contemporaries in the world of art such as by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Simeon Solomon and Julia Margaret Cameron. It aims to reveal the ways in which the different genres of art collaborated and addressed similar topics relating to
Read moreSuburban Identity in Paul Maitland’s Paintings of Cheyne Walk
by Simon Knowles This post accompanies Simon Knowles 2014 Journal of Victorian Culture article ‘Suburban Identity in Paul Maitland’s Paintings of Cheyne Walk’. You can download a copy of this article here. The rapid growth of London’s suburbs during the latter half of the nineteenth century was viewed by the Victorians as an extremely mixed blessing. As a signifier of the entrepreneurial spirit of the middle class, coupled to the high moral value placed upon domestic privacy and family life,
Read moreLulu: The Tiger Lillies at Contact Theatre, Manchester
By Guy Woolnough Lulu, based on the verses of Wedekind, performed by the Tiger Lillies[1], is a dark, compelling and shocking show. It shocks in the most affecting way, not with overt displays of violence or sex, but with powerful words and an intense narrative. I found the performance stunning and fascinating: it is good. Lulu, the eponymous heroine danced by Laura Caldow, is the beauty from the slums who is abused and exploited by men. From her childhood in
Read moreVictoriana: The Art of Revival
by Helen Goodman (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Emma Curry (Birkbeck, University of London) EC: Reinventing the Victorian period in film and literature has become something of a trend in recent years, from the multiple new versions of Sherlock Holmes to Sarah Waters’s fantastic Neo-Victorian novels. In response to this repeated reimagining and reshaping, the Guildhall Art Gallery has put together a wonderful new collection of work inspired by the nineteenth century, entitled, appropriately, ‘Victoriana: The Art of Revival’.
Read moreDrawing ‘Upset Victorians’: An Interview with Artist Anthony Rhys
Over a series of emails in October our editor Lucinda Matthews-Jones (LMJ) interviewed the artist Anthony Rhys (AR) on his striking, harrowing and mesmerising artworks of ‘Upset Victorians’. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/45465982[/vimeo] As his website declares, these ‘people want to tell you something about their lives and for one fleeting moment their feelings become explicit. They are the downtrodden, poor, hapless, disenfranchised and sometimes cruel residents of farms, towns and valleys. Places blackened by smoke, sin, hypocrisy and despair’. In this interview Anthony
Read moreArt Revolutions in the Nineteenth Century
Serena Trowbridge, Birmingham City University This post relates to some research to which I return regularly, wondering where it will lead me. I’m interested in the ways in which ideas move, between people, across continents, and manifest themselves in art and literature as well as political ideology. Related to this, I am organising a conference on ‘Cultural Cross-Currents between Russia and Britain in the nineteenth century’, co-hosted by Birmingham City University and the State University of Tomsk. The cultural situation
Read moreThe Work of Art in the Age of Steampunk: A Review of the Tate Britain’s ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Avant-Garde’ show
Gillian Piggott (Middlesex University) In our image-obsessed world, where versions of paintings are infinitely reproduced on cards, fridge magnets and coffee coasters, how is it possible to comport ourselves productively towards the great originals on display at an exhibition – such as those in the recent Pre-Raphaelites: Avant-Garde show at Tate Britain? In his late essay, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Walter Benjamin outlines the phenomenon so descriptive of the experience one has nowadays of
Read moreYou Say You Want a Revolution: ‘Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde’, Tate Britain
Beatrice Bazell (Birkbeck College, University of London) Figure One: John Everett Millais,The Blind Girl (1856) My mother stood in front of Millais’ The Blind Girl and marvelled: ‘You think you know these paintings, but actually you don’t.’ This will always be the major stumbling block, as well as the major strength of any exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite work: in being so familiar with these beautiful, fascinating works we risk thinking of them as kitsch souvenirs of a bygone age, when in
Read more