Narrating Modernity: The British Problem Picture

Small signs of wear but no tears, scratches or major flaws. Problem pictures were an extraordinarily popular feature of the Edwardian Royal Academy. The ambiguous, often slightly risque paintings of modern life were conversation pieces whose meaning was hotly debated in private and public. At a time when the question 'How might art best address itself to and be addressed by a modern world?' was fiercely contested, the problem picture supplied one populist answer. The pictures, however, had been swept from the walls of an embarrassed Royal Academy by 1914 when the modernist aesthetic finally triumphed. Recovering a genre lost between studies of Victorian and modernist painting, Pamela Fletcher uses the story of the problem picture to illuminate the transition and dialogue between these two great periods of British art.Hardback book, published by Ashgate Publishing Limited in 2003.The book is in good condition, with just a few defects marking it down from very good. Pages are white, clean and unmarked, with sharp corners and no tears or creases. Main defects: - Apparent fading to the spine and left hand side of front of dust jacket - Visible crease, approximately 5 centimeters long, to the bottom of the front of the dust jacket Copyright © Ashgate. …