Performance and Spectatorship in Edwardian Art Writing

134 Pages·2019·2.166 MB·English

by  Sophie Hatchwell

BERNARD SHAW AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
Performance and
Spectatorship in
Edwardian Art Writing
Sophie Hatchwell
Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries
Series Editors
Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel
Massachusetts Maritime Academy
Pocasset, MA, USA
Peter Gahan
Independent Scholar
Los Angeles, CA, USA
The series Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries presents the best and
most up-to-date research on Shaw and his contemporaries in a diverse
range of cultural contexts. Volumes in the series will further the academic
understanding of Bernard Shaw and those who worked with him, or in
reaction against him, during his long career from the 1880s to 1950 as
a leading writer in Britain and Ireland, and with a wide European and
American following.
Shaw defined the modern literary theatre in the wake of Ibsen as a
vehicle for social change, while authoring a dramatic canon to rival
Shakespeare’s. His careers as critic, essayist, playwright, journalist, lec-
turer, socialist, feminist, and pamphleteer, both helped to shape the
modern world as well as pointed the way towards modernism. No one
engaged with his contemporaries more than Shaw, whether as contro-
versialist, or in his support of other, often younger writers. In many
respects, therefore, the series as it develops will offer a survey of the rise
of the modern at the beginning of the twentieth century and the subse-
quent varied cultural movements covered by the term modernism that
arose in the wake of World War 1.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14785
Sophie Hatchwell
Performance
and Spectatorship
in Edwardian Art
Writing
Sophie Hatchwell
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK
Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries
ISBN 978-3-030-17023-3 ISBN 978-3-030-17024-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17024-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
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This book is dedicated to Andrew, with love, always.
A
cknowledgements
I am grateful to my colleagues at the University of Birmingham, particu-
larly Elliot Evans, Kate Nichols, Matthew Rampley and Gregory Salter,
as well as my editors at Palgrave, series editor Peter Gahan, and anony-
mous peer reviewer for their insightful comments. Thanks are also due
to Grace Brockington and Stephen Cheeke at the University of Bristol
for their support of this project in its earlier stages. I am indebted to a
number a people who provided invaluable assistance with my research,
including: Lise Delamare, Viv Gardener, Michael Hatt, Naia Headland-
Vanni, Morna O’Neill, Barbara Pezzini, Sam Rose, Samuel Shaw,
Andrew Stephenson, Madeleine Thiele, Claudia Tobin, Sarah Turner,
Jonathan Wild, and all at the Edwardian Culture Network; as well as staff
at the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, now sadly closed; Alice
Murray at Christie’s; the Courtauld Institute of Art; King’s College
Archives, Cambridge; the National Art Library; Tate Gallery Archive;
and the University of Bristol Theatre Collection.
vii
c
ontents
1 Introduction: An Invitation 1
2 Characterising the Audience 19
3 Spectatorship and Ekphrasis 39
4 Staging Spectatorship 59
5 Staging Art 79
6 Domesticity, Decoration and Role Play 97
7 Conclusion 115
Index 123
ix
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 1.1 Charles Conder, Invitation to a Dinner Party (1904),
lithograph 16.4 23.4 cm (comp.) 18.4 25.2 cm (sheet)
× ×
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1979
(A43-1980) 1
Fig. 3.1 Facsimile of page from ‘Charles Conder’s Paintings on Silk’,
in The Studio, 13–14 (1898), 233 39
Fig. 4.1 Henry Tonks, The Unknown God (Roger Fry Preaching the
New Faith) (1923, Private Collection) (© 1994 Christie’s
Images Limited) 59
Fig. 6.1 Charles Conder, Panel in Watercolour on Silk (1905),
facsimile from The Studio (April 1905), 201 97
xi
CHAPTER1
Introduction: An Invitation
Fig.1.1 CharlesConder,
InvitationtoaDinnerParty
(1904),lithograph16.4×
23.4cm(comp.)18.4×
25.2cm(sheet)National
GalleryofVictoria,Melbourne
Purchased,1979(A43-1980)
Abstract This book investigates how art writing in the long Edwardian
period,c.1895–1914,functionedasanactiveagentintheconstructionof
embodied, performative viewing experiences. Any attempt to trace how
spectators encountered and responded to art needs to account for the
ways in which this occurred beyond a physical confrontation between a
spectatorandanartwork.Utilizingjointphenomenological-semioticper-
spective,thisbookoutlinesamethodologyforanalysingtherhetoricalloci
of aesthetic encounter, and focuses on how art writing intervenes in the
viewer-objectexchange,shapingandconditioningtheattitudesandbehav-
iorsofspectators.Itarguesfortheneedtoattendtothediversityofsuchart
writing,witharangeofworksprovidingthesourcematerialforthisinvesti-
gation,oftentextsthatareotherwiseabsentfromart-historicalstudy.The
methodology herein has implications for how we understand the condi-
tionedorconstructednatureofaestheticexperiencemorebroadly,allowing
©TheAuthor(s)2019 1
S.Hatchwell,PerformanceandSpectatorshipinEdwardian
ArtWriting,BernardShawandHisContemporaries,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17024-0_1