Main entry:

Reed, Christopher, 1961-

Title & Author:

Bloomsbury rooms : modernism, subculture, and domesticity / Christopher Reed.

Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press for the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture, ©2004.

Description:

viii, 314 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 30 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: Heroism and housework: competing ideas of the modern. -- Rooms of one's own: three early domestic environments. Vanessa Bell and 46 Gordon Square (1904-12) ; Roger Fry and Durbins (1909-19) ; Duncan Grant and King's College, Cambridge (1910). -- Sailing to Byzantium: Post-Impressionist primitivism. Greek loves: Mediterranean modernism and the Borough Polytechnic murals (1911) ; Forging a feminist primitivism: Byzantine women by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell (1912) ; Country and city: Asheham and Brunswick Square (1911-12). -- On to Omega: the workshops' origins and objects. The origins of the Omega ; A modern Eden (1913-14) ; Abstraction and design (1914-15). -- An aesthetic of conscientious objection: Bloomsbury's wartime environments. Outposts of peace: Eleanor and Wissett (1915-16) ; Making Charleston (1916-17) ; Urban outposts: River House and 46 Gordon Square (1916-19). -- Re-imagining modernism. Public figures' private spaces: King's College, Cambridge and 52 Tavistock Square (1920-24) ; Signifying subculture: Gordon Square Houses and Charleston (1924-28) ; The end of amusing: interiors and commissions (1927-36).

Summary:

"The book traces the development of Bloomsbury's domestic aesthetic from the group's influential promulgation of Post-Impressionism in Britain around 1910 through the 1930s. In detailed studies of rooms and environments created for Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes, among others, by Woolf's sister Vanessa Bell, and her artist colleagues Duncan Grant, and Roger Fry, Reed challenges the accepted notion that these artists drifted away from modernism. He presents their work as an alternative form of modernism, later suppressed by sexist and homophobic attitudes that disparaged the decorative arts and domesticity in general, as well as Bloomsbury in particular. The aesthetic and ideological implications of the Bloomsbury interiors were international in scope, Christopher Reed argues, and constitute important episodes in this history of modernity." "Contemporary photographs, paintings and surviving interiors, notably at Grant and Bell's Sussex farmhouse, Charleston, illustrate the remarkable creativity of the Bloomsbury domestic aesthetic."--Jacket.

Resources:
Table of contents
Table of contents

ISBN:

0300102488 (cl ; alk. paper)
9780300102482 (cl ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Bloomsbury group
Arts, English 20th century.
Artists Homes and haunts England.
Interior decoration England History 20th century.
Modernism (Aesthetics) England.
Interpersonal relations England.
Groupe de Bloomsbury.
Arts anglais 20e siècle.
Artistes Résidences et lieux familiers Angleterre.
Modernisme (Esthétique) Angleterre.
Artists Homes and haunts
Arts, English
Interior decoration
Interpersonal relations
Modernism (Aesthetics)
Innenarchitektur
Beeldende kunsten.
Artists Homes and haunts Great Britain.
Interior decoration Great Britain History 20th century.
Modernism (Aesthetics) Great Britain.
Interpersonal relations Great Britain.
England

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 231344
Call No.: NX543. R44 2004
Status: Available