Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:29:20.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - The visual arts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2008

Gail Marshall
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
Get access

Summary

In his famous analysis of Britain in the 1890s, Holbrook Jackson saw the fin de siècle as a transitional point between the rule-bound certainties of Victorian society and the revolutionary ethos of modernism. This cultural melange of old and new is especially prevalent in the visual arts of the last decades of the nineteenth century, when worship of a mythic past conspired with a zeal for novelty. British artists during this period engaged with the same issues as their Continental counterparts, but their versions of fantasy and neophilia were unique: the same decades witnessed James McNeill Whistler's attenuated poetic visions of the Thames; Frederic Leighton's monumental reconstructions of the classical past; the novel, yet medievalising, furniture designs of William Morris and the Glasgow School; Burne-Jones's languid androgynous figures; and Aubrey Beardsley's perversely erotic drawings and engravings. Despite many artists' professed rejection of both tradition and the ugliness of the modern world, the visual artists of the fin de siècle shared with literature an engagement with prevalent ideas: the legacy of Charles Darwin, the economic critique of Karl Marx and the psychological concerns of the generation that preceded Sigmund Freud. Artists abandoned Darwin's scientific naturalism, but were drawn constantly to organic forms and the negative implications of natural selection - that is, the extinction of a decadent species, rather than survival of the fittest. The inspiration of Marx and his English followers led artists to consider craft and furniture-making as a newly dignified part of their profession. A pan-European obsession with neurosis and anxiety found its way into the tense mood and hermetic subject matter of many prints, drawings and paintings.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • The visual arts
  • Edited by Gail Marshall, Oxford Brookes University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle
  • Online publication: 28 September 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521850636.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • The visual arts
  • Edited by Gail Marshall, Oxford Brookes University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle
  • Online publication: 28 September 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521850636.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The visual arts
  • Edited by Gail Marshall, Oxford Brookes University
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle
  • Online publication: 28 September 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521850636.008
Available formats
×