Ephemeral Arts Page 16

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is an educational charity committed to promoting original research into the history of British art and architecture. It is a part of Yale University and its activities and resources include research events, public lectures, publications, fellowships, grants programmes, and a library and archive. PMC Notes, the Centre’s newsletter, is published three times per year.

Hello! It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to this issue of PMC Notes as acting director. We have recently bid Mark Hallett farewell after his ten-and-a-half years’ service as director of the Paul Mellon Centre. I know that everyone who is reading this will want to join me in wishing Mark every success as he takes up the post of the Märit Rausing Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art.

At the Centre, one of Mark’s many legacies as director will be an openness to experimenting with the forms and formats through which art history is researched and how it is communicated to audiences, whether this is in print, through digital publication, via film, podcast, or at one of the many live events we host at the Centre or partner institutions. This creative and critical spirit of enquiry, towards enriching and expanding the histories of British art, will remain firmly embedded in the work of the Centre.

PMC Notes offers a snapshot of some of the ideas and projects being developed by members of the Centre’s community. The articles in this issue speak to this opening up and questioning of the boundaries of British art. Holly Shaffer and Sussan Babaie’s text on food and the ephemeral arts is developed from a dialogue they had this spring at the Centre as part of the series titled “In Conversation: New Directions in Art History”. Holly and Sussan take foodstuffs not only as representational subject matter but also ask us to think more conceptually about art history as a methodology for studying perishable goods and ephemeral arts across time zones and continents.

Tanya Harrod, a recipient of a PMC fellowship, also gives insight into her research-in-progress on the artistic and political lives of art collector Margaret Gardiner and her brother Rolf Gardiner, reflecting on the genre of biography as adapted to the life stories of two siblings. Margaret’s collection now forms the core of the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney.

Finally, our colleague Hannah Jones shares recent research on a rare book in the Centre’s library, which simultaneously sheds light on the history of ballet, and publishing and research collaboration on European dance between Cecil Sharp and Paul Oppé. Through all of these articles, there is a call for histories of art to pay attention to figures and art forms that, for several reasons, have until recently played minor roles within standard accounts of British art. This kind of art history is complex cultural work which poses many questions about who and what is visible, and the suitability of existing arthistorical methods.

This issue of PMC Notes gives a sense of hope about the incredible range and breadth of work that is happening in the field of British art – and what remains to be done. I hope you will be inspired by what you read here to interact with the Centre further in the coming months: either in person at Bedford Square to attend an event (remember to look on the inside of the removable cover wrap for our calendar) or to use our library and archives; or to delve deeper into research through a PMC publication online or in print. I look forward to continuing these conversations, and beginning many new ones, over the coming months.

Sarah Victoria Turner Acting Director

In Tudor and Jacobean England, visual art was often termed “lively”. This word was used to describe the full range of visual and material culture – from portraits to funeral monuments, book illustrations to tapestry. To a modern viewer, this claim seems perplexing: what could “liveliness” have meant in a culture with seemingly little appreciation for illusionistic naturalism? And in a period supposedly characterised by fear of idolatry, how could “liveliness” have been a good thing? In this wideranging and innovative book, Christina Faraday excavates a uniquely Tudor model of vividness: one grounded in rhetorical techniques for creating powerful mental images for audiences. By drawing parallels with the dominant communicative framework of the day, the book sheds new light on a lost mode of Tudor art criticism and appreciation, revealing how objects across a vast range of genres and contexts were taking part in the same intellectual and aesthetic conversations.

Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in PostReformation England

Christina J. Faraday

Publication date

April 2023

Dimensions

270 × 216 mm

Pages 208 Illustrations

126

From Victorian breakthroughs in synthesising pigments to the BBC’s conversion to chromatic broadcasting, the story of colour’s technological development is inseparable from wider processes of modernisation that transformed Britain. This revolutionary history brings to light how new colour technologies informed ideas about national identity during a period of profound social change, when the challenges of industrialisation, decolonisation of the Empire, and evolving attitudes to race and gender reshaped the nation. Offering a compelling new account of modern British visual culture that reveals colour to be central to its aesthetic trajectories and political formations, this chromatic lens deepens our understanding of how British art is made and what it means, offering a new way to assess the visual landscape of the period and interpret its colourful objects.

The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity

Kirsty Sinclair Dootson

Publication date

May 2023

Dimensions

255 × 230 mm

Pages

356

Illustrations

120