Ever since Vogue ran a gorgeous spread about the exhibit "The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde", I've been waiting impatiently for it to come to San Francisco. It is here at last, in all its lush beauty...
The Legion of Honor is The Cult of Beauty's only U.S. venue, so I highly recommend you make your way there if you're anywhere nearby. Unfortunately, the Vogue story is not available online, but there are shots from the accompanying fashion spread. Art Daily and San Mateo's Daily Journal both have insightful articles about the exhibit, exploring both the individual objects and the British Aesthetic Movement's place in history and art history. As written in Art Daily, "The iconoclastic belief that art's sole purpose is to be beautiful on its own formal terms stood in direct opposition to Victorian society's commitment to art's role as moral educator." The passionate search for a new ideal of Beauty (with a capital B) also led avant-garde artists to create beautiful objects with which to decorate their homes. Let's take a glimpse inside their rarified world and see what we can learn...
- Saint Cecilia by John William Waterhouse is inspiration to drag the most comfortable, luxurious chair outside on the next fair day. No sitting in folding lawn chairs like an animal! Just don't forget to drag it back in, if you don't have two musicians to do it for you.
- It's a little tough to get ideas from Midsummer by Albert Moore- I don't have a throne, for one, but perhaps the thing to take away is if you're going to do something, really do it. Drape your home in floral garland that matches your robes, or at least wear a very nice robe around the house.
- Honestly, these first three paintings make me think the Victorian Avant-Garde was all about being utterly exhausted by the endless beauty surrounding you, and passing out in chairs while handmaidens waited to attend to your needs. The three large paintings (or tapestries?) in the background of Laus Veneris by Edward Burne-Jones are a bit much for modern tastes, but I could definitely go for that blue dress.
- The rich tapestry Pomona by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and John Henry Dearle reminds us to dress for the occasion. Going to gather produce from the garden for tonight's dinner? Skip the cutoffs and wear something that looks lovely surrounded by fruit and flowers. And carrying your harvest in your skirt is far more picturesque than using a plastic bag.
- William Morris' Fruit (or Pomegranate) wallpaper makes me hope someone starts reprinting all of his designs. In the meantime, they are available as prints from the V&A Museum. Of course, yours won't have holes in it like the original.
(Images: 1. Art Daily 2. The Telegraph 3. Legion of Honor 4. V&A Museum 5. V&A Museum.)
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What's the difference between the Victorian/British Aesthetic Movement and the pre-Raphaelites? I'm guessing the pre-Raphaelites are a subset?
If memory serves, the pre-Raphaelites were a later off-shoot of the Movement; and that they took the concepts to more extreme, visually lush renderings of their own group and of myth. Pre-Raphaelites render women with paler skin contrasted with redder hair, for example, and whole scenes (easily seen in comparison of the women subjects) are heightened in the same way. As the movement progresses beyond the pre-Raphaelites, it becomes decadent with the the portrayals of beauty in death.
The museum in Wilmington, DE has a beautiful and rather large collection of pre-Raphaelite art (it has been called the best collection outside of those in the UK).
If you google particular pre-Raphaelites (William Morris, for example), you will find a good number of resources for reproduction wallpaper for your home.
I think I'd like to dress like Pomona to pick veggies in my garden just once this summer! The neighbors wouldn't know how to handle it!
Agree - the show is lovely and those lovely ladies do look exhausted by it all!
If you are searching for William Morris wallpaper, do not miss Bradbury & Bradbury in Benicia, CA for beautiful silk screen wallpapers - check out www.bradbury.com
"Honestly, these first three paintings make me think the Victorian Avant-Garde was all about being utterly exhausted by the endless beauty surrounding you, and passing out in chairs while handmaidens waited to attend to your needs."
It's called languid beauty; very romantic and sexy for the Victorians :)
Charles Rupert - http://www.charlesrupertdesigns.com/index.php - out of Victoria BC carries quite a few Morris and that era papers. They were even featured in AT a couple of years ago.
You should check out Dante Gabriel Rossetti if you are really interested in the Pre-Raphaelites. They are really connected with the Romanticism movement in literature as well.
Wallpaper also available at http://www.william-morris.co.uk
Wait, you learned what from these works? Something about wearing a nice robe while moving about the house? Disgusting.
And no one should re-print Morris' wallpaper designs. Those are special because they were made either by hand or through uniquely devised machine-based slow-print means because the idea of easy, mechanized, low quality mass production was what brought Morris to his designs and their specific production. The work held the value of the artist who made it, and he could be proud of his mastery in the work.
I don't begrudge the William Morris rights-holders their grip on the patterns, and they are welcome to insist on whatever expensive hand-blocking they like. I just wish that the choices for Morrisesque wallpaper weren't limited to: (A) incredibly expensive, unpasted rolls or (B) nothing. Why can't there something reasonably priced (and installable by the nonprofessional) that is not a Morris knockoff but at least reminds one of the themes and palettes of Morris? The spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement was not anywhere near as elitist and couture as its current manifestations.
Goodjoog needs to relax a little.
I think that part of the issue is that in the UK, the Arts and Crafts movement was very much an upper class idea. The original, hand pressed wallpapers and one of a kind handwoven tapestry pieces that came out of the Morris studio certainly could never be afforded by the average working class family.
In the States (while there are certainly exceptions like the Gamble House and FLW's masterpieces), the movement came down to a more middle class populist mindset with pragmatic choices that included some factory production such as Stickley furniture (despite the astronomic prices that originals now command, it was middle to upper middle class originally - since my grandmother had several pieces.)
I live in a tiny (900 sq feet) Craftsman bungalow and would LOVE to have just one room done in an authorized Morris print wallpaper (agreeing with Bee for Brian).