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evolved into important narrative agents of the movement. Taking a particular interest in the entanglements between visual display and narrative, the following sections argue that Red Cross museums have shaped, changed, and formulated their own humanitarian narratives throughout the twentieth century. The first section starts out by first describing the origins of the institution of Red Cross museums, with a particular focus on the museum of the American Red Cross in Washington
This book explores the influence of imperialism in the landscapes of modern European cities including London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Marseilles, Glasgow and Seville. The first part considers some ways in which the design of urban landscapes articulated competing visions of the imperial city, including large-scale planning and architectural schemes, urban design and public monuments. The final shape of the Queen Victoria Memorial in London suggests an oddly tenuous relationship between the creation of imperial space and the representation of the empire itself. The notions of empire and romanità are expressed through the location, styling and form of the Vittoriano in Rome. The second part of the book considers the role of various forms of visual display, including spectacular pageants, imperial exhibitions and suburban gardens, in the cultural life of metropolitan imperialism. The material transformation of Paris with rhetorical devices reveals a deep-seated ambiguity about just how 'imperial' Paris wanted to appear. Sydenham Crystal Palace housed the Ethnological and Natural History Department, and its displays brought together animals, plants and human figures from various areas of the globe. The largest part of imperial Vienna's tourist traffic came from within the Austrian lands of the empire. The last part of the book is primarily concerned with the associations between imperial identities and the history of urban space in a variety of European cities. The book considers the changing cultural and political identities in the imperial city, looking particularly at nationalism, masculinity and anti-imperialism.
provoked a debate about the extent to which it is possible, necessary, or even desirable to believe in such peculiar visual displays, or whether they could in fact be make-believe on the part of either jinn, patient, shaykh, or filmmaker. In anthropology, similar debates have occurred over the questionable value of photographic images and film in providing a window into unseen realities (Marcus 1994 ; Weiner 1997 ; MacDougall 1998 ; Henley 2006 ; Kiener 2008 ; Suhr and Willerslev 2012; 2013 ). As mentioned in Chapter 1 , Hastrup ( 1992
This chapter investigates formal pairings of modern and ‘primitive’ art in Der Blaue Reiter almanac (1912) and the Folkwang Museum in Hagen. Designed in 1902 by Henry van de Velde for Karl Ernst Osthaus, the Folkwang was the first museum of modern art and also the first institution to display so-called primitive objects as art. Influenced by the writings of Julius Meier-Graefe, Osthaus installed art objects in ahistorical and strikingly visual displays grounded in the theory and practice of the Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’). Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and August Macke adopted some of the Folkwang’s display strategies in Der Blaue Reiter almanac, which featured pairings of modern and ‘primitive’ art alongside musical compositions, poems and a theatre script. However, a close analysis of the almanac’s illustration programme reveals inconsistent understandings of the ‘total work of art’ and its relationship to the primitive. Exploring the points of overlap as well as difference between the Folkwang Museum and Der Blaue Reiter almanac underlines the significance of the Gesamtkunstwerk to European primitivism around 1900.
The church as sacred space places the reader at the heart of medieval religious life, standing inside the church with the medieval laity in order to ask what the church meant to them and why. It examines the church as a building, idea, and community, and explores the ways in which the sanctity of the church was crucial to its place at the centre of lay devotion and parish life. At a time when the parish church was facing competition for lay attention, and dissenting movements such as Lollardy were challenging the relevance of the material church, the book examines what was at stake in discussions of sanctity and its manifestations. Exploring a range of Middle English literature alongside liturgy, architecture, and material culture, the book explores the ways in which the sanctity of the church was constructed and maintained for the edification of the laity. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary theoretical approaches, the book offers a reading of the church as continually produced and negotiated by the rituals, performances, and practices of its lay communities, who were constantly being asked to attend to its material form, visual decorations, and significance. The meaning of the church was a dominant question in late-medieval religious culture and this book provides an invaluable context for students and academics working on lay religious experience and canonical Middle English texts.
This book analyses Anna of Denmark’s material and visual patronage at the Stuart courts, examining her engagement with a wide array of expressive media including architecture, garden design, painting, music, dress, and jewellery. Encompassing Anna’s time in Denmark, England, and Scotland, it establishes patterns of interest and influence in her agency, while furthering our knowledge of Baltic-British transfer in the early modern period. Substantial archival work has facilitated a formative re-conceptualisation of James and Anna’s relationship, extended our knowledge of the constituents of consortship in the period, and has uncovered evidence to challenge the view that Anna followed the cultural accomplishments of her son, Prince Henry. This book reclaims Anna of Denmark as the influential and culturally active royal woman that her contemporaries knew. Combining politics, culture, and religion across the courts of Denmark, Scotland, and England, it enriches our understanding of royal women’s roles in early modern patriarchal societies and their impact on the development of cultural modes and fashions. This book will be of interest to upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on early modern Europe in the disciplines of Art and Architectural History, English Literature, Theatre Studies, History, and Gender Studies. It will also attract a wide range of academics working on early modern material and visual culture, and female patronage, while members of the public who enjoy the history of courts and the British royals will also find it distinctively appealing.
The looking machine calls for the redemption of documentary cinema, exploring the potential and promise of the genre at a time when it appears under increasing threat from reality television, historical re-enactments, designer packaging and corporate authorship. The book consists of a set of essays, each focused on a particular theme derived from the author’s own experience as a filmmaker. It provides a practice-based, critical perspective on the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, questions of aesthetics, and the intellectual and emotional relationships between filmmakers and their subjects. It is especially concerned with the potential of film to broaden the base of human knowledge, distinct from its expression in written texts. Among its underlying concerns are the political and ethical implications of how films are actually made, and the constraints that may prevent filmmakers from honestly showing what they have seen. While defending the importance of the documentary idea, MacDougall urges us to consider how the form can become a ‘cinema of consciousness’ that more accurately represents the sensory and everyday aspects of human life. Building on his experience bridging anthropology and cinema, he argues that this means resisting the inherent ethnocentrism of both our own society and the societies we film.
Screening the Hollywood Rebels in 1950s Britain explores the relationship between classic American films about juvenile delinquency and British popular youth culture in the mid-twentieth century. The book examines the censorship, publicity and fandom surrounding such Hollywood films as The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, Rock Around the Clock and Jailhouse Rock alongside such British films as The Blue Lamp, Spare the Rod and Serious Charge. Intersecting with star studies and social and cultural history, this is the first book to re-vision the stardom surrounding three extraordinarily influential Hollywood stars: Marlon Brando, James Dean and Elvis Presley. By looking specifically at the meanings of these American stars to British fans, this analysis provides a logical and sustained narrative that explains how and why these Hollywood images fed into, and disrupted, British cultural life. Screening the Hollywood Rebels in 1950s Britain is based upon a wide range of sources including censorship records, both mainstream and trade newspapers and periodicals, archival accounts and memoirs, as well as the films themselves. The book is a timely intervention of film culture and focuses on key questions about screen violence and censorship, masculinity and transnational stardom, method acting and performance, Americanisation and popular post-war British culture. The book is essential reading for researchers, academics and students of film and social and cultural history, alongside general readers interested in the links between the media and popular youth culture in the 1950s.
-Janovian’ interpretation, Bergman duly accepted and worked with significant Janovian premises as he conceived of the story and characterizations for Autumn Sonata , just as the first interpretation holds, but adds that for various reasons, the director did not, finally, go on to make a thoroughly Janovian work. This interpretation purports, then, to identify unintentional (and indeed serendipitous) non-Janovian elements in the story conveyed by the finished audio-visual display. This is a kind of interpretation that is compatible
both public educator and provider of entertainment and spectacle that crossed the boundaries between fine art, visual display and consumer culture. Thus, by 1900 the role of art at the Crystal Palace was perhaps defined as much by the artistic demands for scenic art required for its many popular theatricals and pantomimes, and for its huge and varied exhibitions and displays (such as the panoramic trip through the Bay of Naples of 1900 and the Naval and Military Exhibition of 1901), as by its permanent Fine Arts Courts in the North Nave.4 This chapter considers two