Scented Visions : Smell in Art, 1850-1914 / Christina Bradstreet.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bradstreet, Christina, 1980- author.

Series:

Perspectives on sensory history.

Perspectives on Sensory History Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Odors in art--History--19th century.

Odors in art.

Odors in art--History--20th century.

Art, Modern--19th century.

Art, Modern.

Art, Modern--20th century.

Pre-Raphaelitism.

Art for art's sake (Movement).

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

University Park, PA : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Smell loomed large in cultural discourse in the late nineteenth century, thanks to the midcentury fear of miasma, the drive for sanitation reform, and the rise in artificial perfumery. Meanwhile, the science of olfaction remained largely mysterious, prompting an impulse to "see smell" and inspiring some artists to picture scent in order to better know and control it. This book recovers the substantive role of the olfactory in Pre-Raphaelite art and Aestheticism.Christina Bradstreet examines the iconography and symbolism of scent in nineteenth-century art and visual culture. Fragrant imagery in the work of John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Simeon Solomon, George Frederic Watts, Edward Burne-Jones, and others set the trend for the preoccupation with scent that informed swaths of British, European, and American art and design. Bradstreet's rich analyses of paintings, perfume posters, and other works of visual culture demonstrate how artworks mirrored the "period nose" and intersected with the most clamorous debates of the day, including evolution, civilization, race, urban morality, mental health, faith, and the "woman question."Beautifully illustrated and grounded in current practices in sensory history, Scented Visions presents both fresh readings of major works of art and a deeper understanding of the cultural history of nineteenth-century scent.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Seeing Smell

1. The Fallen Angel

2. Art and Stench

3. Picturing Perfume

4. Smelling Pictures

Part II: Decoding Smell

5. Scent, Memory, Visions

6. Scent and Soul

7. The Erotics of Scent

8. Death by Perfume

Conclusion

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes index.

ISBN:

0-271-09258-0

OCLC:

1380732266