1st Edition
Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751-1919 Wasted Looks
By Julia Skelly
Copyright 2014
200 Pages
by
Routledge
200 Pages
by
Routledge
Highly innovative and long overdue, this study analyzes the visual culture of addiction produced in Britain during the long nineteenth century. The book examines well-known images such as William Hogarth's Gin Lane (1751), as well as lesser-known artworks including Alfred Priest's painting Cocaine (1919), in order to demonstrate how visual culture was both informed by, and contributed to,... Read more
Contents: Introduction: the visual politics of addiction; Wasted mothers: reading William Hogarth’s Gin Lane; From graphic satire to temperance art: George Cruikshank’s Addiction to Sobriety; Addictive architecture: the Crystal palace, gin palaces and women’s consumption; Closeting addiction: confinement, punishment, concealment; Advertising masculine vulnerability: Cocaine and cigarettes after the First World War; Conclusion. Bibliography; Index.
Biography
Julia Skelly is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She is the editor of The Uses of Excess in Visual and Material Culture, 1600-2010.
'Not only must Julia Skelly be congratulated on this welcome study, but some praise is also due to the publisher. It is now comparatively rare to find an academic study with 33 illustrations ... the production is handsome.' Journal of British Studies
