Light!: The Industrial Age 1750-1900, Art & Science, Technology & Society - Hardcover

Bluhm, Andreas; Lippincott, Louise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0500510296 ISBN 13: 9780500510292

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 2001

Synopsis

Of all the revolutionary changes brought about by the industrial age perhaps the most extraordinary and far-reaching was the transformation of light. Scientists described its hidden laws to the public for the first time. Artists found radical ways of depicting it. Inventors found new ways of making it. The lives of ordinary people changed forever as streets, shops, theaters, and their own homes were brilliantly illuminated, first by gas, and then, even more dazzlingly, by electricity. The story is told here for the first time in its entirety. The book describes the inventions still with us, like electric light, the microscope, and photography, as well as arcane reminders of a vanished world, such as the heliostat, the lithophane, and the magic lantern. It portrays a revolution in the arts: Caspar David Friedrich depicting twilight, the Impressionists conjuring up sunlight. And it debates the changing symbolism of light: the meaning of the Enlightenment, the light of God's truth, the nightmarish light of the furnace by night. Above all, it delineates the changing lives of people. Setting masterpieces of painting alongside contemporary scientific instruments, theater paraphernalia, and domestic articles, Light! captures the history of human perception, understanding, and ingenuity. 195 color and 100 b/w illustrations.

About this title

About the Author:

Andreas Blühm is Head of Exhibitions at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. He has organized numerous scholarly and traveling exhibitions of nineteenth-century art, including "The Color of Sculpture 1840-1910." Louise Lippincott is Curator of Fine Arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Her publications include Selling Art in Georgian London: The Rise of Arthur Pond, Edvard Munch: Starry Night, and Alma Tadema: Spring.

From Publishers Weekly:

Andreas Bl hm, head of exhibitions and display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and Louise Lippincott, curator of fine arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, present the vivid and engaging exhibition catalogue Light!: The Industrial Age 1750-1900 Art & Science, Technology & Society. As the authors intriguingly assert, "a history of light is really a history of the human perception, understanding, and manipulation of light." In a practical sense, this statement is obvious; we no longer use the flaming gas jets that were commonplace 100 years ago. On a more subtle level, however, the ways artists interpreted light during the century and a half that Bl hm and Lippincott have investigated raises many thoughtful questions, which this beautiful book explores. 304 illus., 195 in color.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0500510296
• ISBN 13: 9780500510292
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272