Sculpture and the decorative in Britain and Europe: seventeenth century to contemporary

Abstract

"Sculpture and the decorative meet in all manner of objects, art practices, and contexts. Yet they are largely kept apart in academia, art criticism, exhibitions and museums. By foregrounding the overlaps between sculpture and the decorative, this volume of essays by artists, curators and art historians offers a model for a more integrated form of art history writing. Through distinct case studies, from a seventeenth-century Danish altarpiece to contemporary British ceramics, the book charts the ways in which concepts associated with sculpture and the decorative have been employed and negotiated by practitioners, critics, audiences and historians. Exploring why and how these categories are constructed and contested reveals the various agendas that the shifting relationships between sculpture and the decorative expose and serve to support. Bringing to centre stage makers, objects and spaces that have been marginalized by the enforcement of boundaries within art and design discourse, these essays challenge the classed, raced and gendered categories that have structured the histories and languages of art and its making. Sculpture and the Decorative is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and practice of sculpture and the decorative arts and the methodologies of art history"--

Contents

Sculpture and the decorative : towards a more integrated mode of art history writing / Imogen Hart and Claire Jones -- 'Exulting and adorning it in exuberant strains' : music, figuration and ornamentation in Abel Shrøder's altarpiece (Skt Morten in Næstved, Denmark) / Margit Thøfner -- Galathea : ships, sculpture and the state in Golden Age Denmark / Michael Hatt -- An allegory of civic virtue : sculpture and ornament in St George's Hall, Liverpool / Katie Faulkner -- Sculpture and the decorative nin fin-de-siècle Brussels : women as creators and consumers / Marjan Sterckx -- "Sacred stones guarded about with dragons" : Welsh national identity in William Goscombe John's Corn hirlas (1898) / Melanie Polledri -- Slupture and the decorative at the Scottish National War Memorial / Imogen Hart -- Ornament and monument in German sculpture, 1910-30 : Milly Steger an René Sintenis / Nina Lübbren -- Modernist sculpture and the decorative : Henri Laurens with Robert Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier / Anna Ferrari -- The decorative arts as found object : converging domains for contemporary sculpture / Lisa Wainwright -- Gross domestic product : contemporary British ceramics and the subversion of the monument / Laura Grey -- Fabrication and failure : hacking the decorative in contemporary British art / Bridget O'Gorman.