The Meaning of Pictures
Images of Personal, Social and Political Identity
Distributed for University of Wales Press
Why do Welsh pictures painted between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries still matter today? This volume is mainly concerned with how pictures are understood by the people who use them—including patrons, museum curators, and the general public—rather than by the painters who paint them. The Meaning of Pictures discusses different aspects of painting unified by this common theme, including such topics as eighteenth-century painting, nineteenth-century genres, how pictures are valued by the art market, and how, since the 1980s, the Welsh art world has fought a reactionary battle against the New Art History movement.
“This collection of essays by the one-time enfant terrible of cultural studies in Wales, Peter Lord, confirms his reputation as the leading interpreter of the country’s visual culture. Having previously revolutionized understanding of the social grammar of images through a controversial series of groundbreaking volumes, he now futher extends his range and reflects, in characteristically forthright fashion, on the resistance he encountered in attempting to educate Wales in the value of its indigenous visual heritage.”
Foreword by Professor M. Wynn Thomas
Introduction
The Portrait of Elizabeth Gwynne of Taliaris
Quality, Value, Validation
Improvement: The Visualization of ‘Y Werin’, the Welsh Folk
The Construction and Destruction of Archie Rees Griffiths: A Romance of the Depression
The State of the Art
Endnotes
Picture Acknowledgements
Index
Art: Art--General Studies
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