The Industrial Sublime and Power Places One of the earliest paintings of the industrial sublime could be Coalbrookdale by Night, painted in 1801 by Philip James de Loutherbourg, a German artist who migrated to London and become a theatrical designer. His penchant for...
(Not) Picturing the Poor It was no accident that Frederich Engels (1820-1895), a twenty-four year old German social scientist, visited England to study the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon its population. In 1844 no other nation was as industrialized as Great...
IMPRESSIONISM, FASHION, AND MODERNITY Musée d’Orsay, Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago September 2012-September 2013 Part One: Fashion as the Trope of Modernité Imagine if Impressionism existed today, not as a style but as...
POSTMODERNISM: THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Part One Writing in the second volume of his important book, A Study of History, Arnold Toynbee attempted to describe the moment/s in which the “Modern” ended and the “Post-Modern” began. He asserted,...
BAUDELAIRE AND MODERNITY Every age needs its observer and every era requires an interpreter. To elevate the culture above mere description, that individual has to be an odd cross between a poet and a reporter. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a renegade poet, a...
