Charleston and Monk's House : the intimate house museums of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell / Nuala Hancock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hancock, Nuala.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Charleston Farmhouse (West Firle, England).

Historic house museums--England.

Historic house museums.

England.

Physical Description:

x, 226 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2012]

Summary:

The interwoven biographies of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, narrated through the spaces of their 'sister' house museums

What can we learn from a commemorative house? What biographical narratives emerge as we travel through the spaces of another's intimate inhabitation? This compelling new study unveils the revelatory potential of the house museum to inform and enrich our understanding of the lived past of its former inhabitants. It focuses on the redolent, the emotionally textured interiors of Charleston and Monk's House, the literary/artistic house museums of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, seeking out traces of their shared biography. Fresh perspectives unfold on the sisterhood of Woolf and Bell and their continuous artistic exchange, as we shadow their daily lives through the richly painted rooms and atmospheric gardens of their former Sussex homes. Discover these celebrated artists in a different light - animated, moving and gestural, handling the materials of their related arts and brought vividly to life through the tangible fabric of their past living. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Biography and the literary artistic house museum 12

2 Spatial choreography: gestural bodies and the rhythms of living 30

3 Spatial embodiment: the anatomy of the house: the architecture of interior space 55

4 A poetics of gardens 90

5 Spatial revelations: the artefact unveiled 114

6 Museum space: space poetically reconstructed 142.

ISBN:

0748646736

9780748646739

OCLC:

794037973