Full Description
This book addresses the artistic phenomenon of "Whistlerism", originated by the American painter James McNeill Whistler, and sheds light on this movement's origins, its history and its wide-ranging impact on literature, poetry, art criticism, design and art philosophy.
Whistler's students and followers adopted the artist's visual language and helped to spread his work and his artistic theories during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The enduring nature of Whistlerism and its influence internationally allows it to be seen as a major artistic trend in Europe and the USA. The notion of Whistlerism offers a new prism to explore the history of art at the turn of the century. The particularity of this artistic phenomenon is that it emerged during the artist's lifetime and held sway over international contemporary art, literature and art criticism between 1878 - which marks the date of Ruskin's trial and the starting point of the myth of the artist, marked by the emergence of various adjectives, such as "Whistlerian" - and the beginnings of the Great War.
This book presents the latest research on Whistlerism and introduces new perspectives on this subject throughout a range of chapters written by internationally recognized specialists of the painter. The topics deal with the visual arts as well as with literature and art criticism, but also with design, objects, scenography and the art of gardening.
This collection is ideal for researchers in modern art, design and visual studies.
Contents
Introduction
Anne-Florence Gillard-Estrada and Laura Valette
Part 1 - Whistlerism Across the Arts: Circulation between Criticism, Literature and Poetry
1. The Gentle Art of Critical Discourse: Framing the Digital Archive of Whistler's Lifetime Criticism
Catherine Carter Goebel
2. Arrangement en couleur chair et noir: an Avant-garde Portrait by James McNeill Whistler and Théodore Duret
Midori Kono
3. Whistlerism: terminological manoeuvres between style, aesthetic theory and the polemics of criticism
Grischka Petri
4. "The painter must be pictorial always": from the Unity of the Arts to the Specificity of the Medium: Oscar Wilde's Whistlerian Heritage
Carole Delhorme
5. Le Culte du Nocturne: Baudelaire, Whistler and French Symbolism
Suzanne Singletary
Part 2 - Inter-Artistic Dialogues: Arrangements, Decoration and Design
6. Of Fans and Butterflies: The Folding of Subject and Medium in the Works of James McNeill Whistler and Stéphane Mallarmé
Kristina Åström
7. Sounding the Garden with Whistler, Mallarmé and Monet
Clare A.P. Willsdon
8. Whistler's Gold: Japonisme, Classicism, and Aesthetic Value
Aileen Tsui
9. Whistler's Quest for Beauty from "Colour and Picture Pattern" to Interior Design
Martine Lambert-Charbonnier
10. "A brilliant artistic shorthand": Tracing Whistler's Aesthetic in Polish Japonisme
Agnieszka Kluczewska-Wójcik
Part 3 - the "Butterfly effect": The dissemination of Whistlerism in Europe
11. "All the fashion" - Whistler and the International Trend for Pastel 1800-1900
Freya Spoor
12. Whistler's Shopfronts, the Grey-panel Phase and the London Impressionists
Anne Koval
13. Whistlerism and Polish landscape artists
Ewa Bobrowska
14. Portraits behind the Fog: Polish Art and Whistler
Urszula Kozakowska Zaucha
15. The Gentle Art of Making Portraits: Gustav Klimt's Lessons in the Painting of James McNeill Whistler
Charlotte Healy
16. Conclusion: Whistler's Legacy in Popular Culture
Daniel E. Sutherland
