Research Catalog

Title

Creating the countryside : the rural idyll past and present / edited by Verity Elson and Rosemary Shirley.

Publication

• London : Paul Holberton Publishing, [2017]
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Elson, Verity
• Shirley, Rosemary
• Compton Verney (Gallery), host institution.

Description

119 pages : illustrations (some color); 26 cm

Summary

• "The rural idyll occupies a deeply rooted place in the collective imagination. This highly original and vibrant study examines how key moments in art history have shaped our understanding of the British countryside and how contemporary artists continue to access and often challenge this concept. From High Art to propaganda, garden centres to air fresheners, contemporary art to computer games – a constellation of powerful images and ideas contribute to our understandings of the rural. This publication offers new ways of thinking about how ideas of the countryside have been formed and how they are reflected in contemporary culture, through the innovative integration of historic works by artists including Constable, Gainsborough and Stubbs, works of modern British art, together with contemporary responses to rural life and landscape by artists such as Mat Collishaw, Grayson Perry, Anna Fox and Alison Goldfrapp. Crucially, this volume enters this rich array of artworks into a productive dialogue with a range of visual cultures that populate everyday life, exploring how the imagery of the rural idyll is re-enacted, adapted and used today.
• Creating the Countryside features new writing from a variety of disciplines, encompassing the spheres of art history, rural history, literature and contemporary art. Interspersed throughout the publication are series of interviews with artists who are working with the rural in innovative ways, offering a stimulating range of new perspectives on the role and importance of the countryside in contemporary culture. The publication features artists whose work spanns [sic] nearly four centuries, including Helen Allingham, William Blake, Edward Burra, Rebecca Chesney, George Clausen, William Collins, Mat Collishaw, John Constable, Evelyn Dunbar, Anna Fox, Thomas Gainsborough, James Guthrie, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Josef Herman, Paul Hill, Sigrid Holmwood, Horockses, Hilary Jack, Peter Kennard, Delaine Le Bas, Clare Leighton, Claude Lorrain, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Jean-François Millet, MyVillages, Frank Newbould, Samuel Palmer, Grayson Perry, John Pettie, John Piper, Ingrid Pollard, Paul Reas, John Robertson Reid, Andy Sewell, Jo Spence, Stanley Spencer, George Stubbs, Graham Sutherland, Homer Sykes, Edward Arthur Walton and John Wyndham."--
• "This publication offers new ways of thinking about the rural idyll and the countryside more broadly, through the innovative integration of a wide range of art and visual cultures. These include classic landscapes by artists such as Blake, Claude, Constable and Turner, works of modern British art, and contemporary works by artists who present new perspectives on the rural idyll. Crucially, this volume will enter these familiar and unfamiliar art works into a productive dialogue with an extensive range of visual cultures which populate everyday life now and in the past, for instance Frank Newbould’s iconic wartime recruitment posters of 1942–44 and rural-themed video games. In the contemporary art world the rural is seriously underrepresented as an arena of critical inquiry and artistic production. This publication will make a significant contribution towards redressing this situation. In addition to the new scholarship on the rural idyll – by academic experts from a wide range of disciplines, encompassing the spheres of art history, contemporary art, poetry, literature, rural history, agriculture, and everyday life – it will include interviews with ten key contemporary artists who are working with the rural in innovative ways. It will also contain newly commissioned material from leading artists and writers which articulate the themes of the publication in ways that differ from the traditional catalogue essay. It will include a specially commissioned visual essay by Jeremy Deller. Deller will select a series of images from the exhibition and elsewhere and combine them with short pieces of text that develop the questions and themes discussed throughout the book in creative and open-ended visual dialogue.
• There will also be a new commission from the Scottish poet and writer Kathleen Jamie, whose moving observations on the relationships between nature and everyday life, articulate the embeddedness of the rural idyll into the mundane and the quotidian."--

Alternative Title

Creating the Countryside, Thomas Gainsborough to today.

Subject

• Landscapes in art
• Rural conditions in art
• Art, British > Themes, motives

Note

• Published to accompany the exhibition Creating the Countryside : Thomas Gainsborough to today, held at Compton Verney, March 18-June 18 2017.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 9781911300106
• 1911300105

OCLC

• 987780003
• SCSB-10417054

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library