Material Selves: Object Biographies and Identities in Motion (Material Culture of Art and Design)

Burchmore, Alex

ISBN 10: 1350416444 / ISBN 13: 9781350416444

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2024

About this Item

2024. hardcover. . . . . .

Seller Inventory # V9781350416444

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Material Selves: Object Biographies and Identities in Motion (Material Culture of Art and Design)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350416444
• ISBN 13: 9781350416444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

What do Persian robes of honour, 20th-century still-life painting, fur garments, and 18th-century porcelain all have in common? Prized, possessed and modelled, they highlight the deep connections we share with cultural objects.

Establishing new connections between people and things via artistic media and material culture, this highly interdisciplinary volume brings together both established and emerging scholars in the fields of art history, material culture, museum and heritage studies and literary studies to investigate the intersection of the personal with the material.

Raising vital questions of cultural identity, belonging and selfhood, Material Selves is the first book of its kind to consider the relationship between people and things across transcultural and transhistorical contexts. It employs innovative methodologies across ten chapters and critically expands on current models for understanding the dynamic relationship between people and things by tracing the central role objects have played in the construction, creation and performance of identity throughout history.

Structured around four key sections exploring biography and narrative; adornment and ornament; reclamation and intervention; and subjects and objects, the volume presents a global selection of case studies that explore, amongst other things, Margaret Olley's enduring fame, the significance of the Khil'a in Safavid Persia and early modern Europe, and 17th-century French painter Charles LeBrun's royal portraiture. Fusing these with contemporary theories of identity, the contributors provide analyses informed by posthumanism, the environmental humanities, race and gender. At the same time, they confront vital questions of identity, agency, and materiality, and highlight the way in which we use objects to tell stories, construct myths and make sense of our place in the world. In doing so, the book illuminates a wide range of cultural and chronological settings whilst giving close attention to the mobility of people and things between, across, and through time and place.

About the Author

Michael Yonan is Professor of Art History/Alan Templeton Endowed Chair in European Art, 1600–1830 at the University of California at Davis, USA. His research concentrates on eighteenth-century European art, particularly in Central Europe and Scandinavia; on the decorative arts, and on the theory and practice of material culture studies. With Stacey Sloboda he has co-edited Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds: Local and Global Geographies of Art for Bloomsbury Academic.