Book Description
For artists of the increasingly mechanized Victorian age, questions about the meaning and value of labour presented a series of urgent problems: Is work a moral obligation or a religious duty? Must labour be the preserve of men alone? Does the amount of work bestowed on a painting affect its value? Should art celebrate wholesome rural work or reveal the degradations of the industrial workplace? In this highly original book, Tim Barringer considers how artists and theorists addressed these questions and what their solutions reveal about Victorian society and culture.
Based on extensive new research, Men at Work offers a compelling study of the image as a means of exploring the relationship between labour and art in Victorian Britain. Barringer arrives at a major reinterpretation of the art and culture of nineteenth-century Britain and its empire as well as new readings of such key figures as Ford Madox Brown and John Ruskin.
About the Author
Tim Barringer is associate professor in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University. He is the author of Reading the Pre-Raphaelites and coeditor of Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, and Modernity, both published by Yale University Press.
Men at Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain FROM THE PUBLISHER
For Artists of the increasingly mechanized Victorian age, questions about the meaning and value of labour presented a series of urgent problems: Is work a moral obligation or a religious duty? Must labour be the preserve of men alone? Is the artist's labour morally and intellectually equal to other forms of work? Should art celebrate rural work or reveal the degradations of the industrial workplace?
In this remarkably original book, Tim Barringer considers how artists and theorists addressed these questions and what their solutions reveal about nineteenth-century society and culture. Representations of the male labouring body emerge as emblems of the era, the fulcrum of Victorian cultural preoccupations with gender, class, race, and religion. Labour, too, emerges as a key concept in aesthetic and critical thought.
Featuring extensive new research, Men at Work examines a broad spectrum of the visual culture of Victorian Britain and its empire, including prints, photographs, book illustrations, material objects, and exhibition and museum displays. Barringer arrives at a major reinterpretation of the art and culture of nineteenth-century Britain as well as new readings of such key figures as Ford Madox Brown, John Linnell, and John Ruskin.
Art & Photography
Book Info
