Syllabus, BA Course "Pictorial Dwellings: Interiors and Domestic Life in the Image", Desmond Kraege, University of Lausanne, Autumn 2023 (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
Les etudes des peintures hollandaises du milieu du XVIIe siecle representant des interieurs domestiques se sont generalement concentrees sur les personnages et les activites du premier plan. Les portes et fenetres ouvertes en arriere-plan, donnant sur des rues adjacentes, ne sont que mentionnees au passage comme representant la ville ou le monde. Cet article met au contraire l’accent sur les vues donnant sur la rue a travers la lentille inexploree du quartier neerlandais, qui constitue un reseau social et une organisation officielle avec des reglements, des membres mandates, un controle social substantiel, de la camaraderie et un sentiment d’identite et de lieu. Veillant aux portes et fenetres ouvertes sur la rue, les residents se gardaient informes des activites et des nouvelles qui formaient le flux et le reflux des echanges sociaux dans le quartier et contribuaient a preserver l’honneur de la petite communaute. Dans leur evocation de personnages a cote de portes et de fenetres ou...
2018 - 'The Finding Place of Domestic Life. The Chamber Scape in the Dutch Golden Age'
'Vindplaats van het huiselijk leven. Het kamergezicht in de Hollandse Gouden Eeuw, in: Historisch Tijdschrift Holland, themanummer 'Thuis in Holland', 2012
The idea of Dutch domesticity is deeply rooted in our imagination. The Dutch household of the burgher, the tidy housewife and the orderly 17th-century house from the Golden Age all come to mind. Dutch genre paintings seem to represent this cosiness par excellence and we often believe that these paintings provide a glimpse into everyday reality and the symbols of our ancestors. But this belief in the transparency and legibility of painted scenes is typical of the 19th century and allows paintings to be interpreted in any way. The 17th-century 'chamber scape' can also be viewed differently: as the fruit of the early modern art of painting in which practical knowledge of Nature has been absorbed and as the offspring of an Aristotelian natural philosophical frame of mind, which also characterised the honourable household and the house that had been freed from moisture, cold, odour and smoke.
Home Cultures
In the light of a newly discovered source of thousands of seventeenth-century Dutch letters found in the English National Archive a case is made for a radical reinterpretation of seventeenthcentury Dutch paintings. These so-called "homescapes" feature in the historiography of the modern home as proof of the fact that seventeenthcentury Holland was the cradle of female domesticity. However, the captured Dutch letters written to the home front by seamen sailing on the large Dutch mercantile fleet, as well as the women's letters to their seafaring husbands tell
Architecturally, however, we have retained a fairly consistent 'family' of rooms that has not changed in essence since the Victorian era, give or take the advent of the computer nook, or the amelioration of the kitchen, dining room and drawing into one space. Th is suggests that the rooms of our lives have evolved but slowly, while the technology underpinning them, the wires, cables and ether clouds that connect us to the outside world, have evolved very fast. We are thus left with a kind of jet lag-the cure for which is often, in the twenty-fi rst century house, the adoption of consoling Victorian or other historic décor, which, combined with digital appliances and conveniences, creates a hectic, hybrid and deeply important zone.
Domestic Space in France and Belgium Art, Literature and Design, 1850-1920, edited by Claire Moran, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York-London, 2022
ITA È noto che nella pittura francese degli anni '80 e '90 dell'Ottocento, l'interno era un soggetto specifico di ricerca pittorica, in particolare quella più introspettiva legata ai Nabis Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard e Félix Vallotton. In Belgio, pittori come Xavier Mellery o Georges Le Brun avevano anche puntato su aspetti misteriosi della casa. Tuttavia, andando indietro nel tempo, possiamo osservare che l'origine della fortuna di questi soggetti può essere rintracciata nel tardo Romanticismo e in particolare negli anni '40 del XIX secolo, quando - come efficacemente osservato da Walter Benjamin - l'interno domestico divenne uno degli elementi più importanti della Parigi di Luigi Filippo. Benjamin sapeva che negli anni della Monarchia di Luglio questa attenzione alla sfera privata si rifletteva in molte scene domestiche che aumentavano sia nella letteratura (Balzac in primis) che nel mondo delle immagini. Più che nella pittura si nota la proliferazione di queste scene nelle immagini popolari, nelle litografie, nei bozzetti e nelle illustrazioni. Partendo da queste premesse, il saggio si propone di analizzare le immagini domestiche della Monarchia di Luglio - in particolare le litografie satiriche di Bartall, Gavarni, Grandville e Daumier - per dimostrare come un vero e proprio schema di rappresentazione degli interni moderni cominciasse a prendere forma proprio in quel periodo, quando lo spazio domestico era l'ambientazione ideale delle scene quotidiane urbane. Nel tracciare alcuni aspetti della nascita e dell'evoluzione delle convenzioni della rappresentazione d'interni francese dell'Ottocento (concentrandosi sul salotto e sulla sala da pranzo), poi accettate, rifiutate o riformulate dai pittori della vita moderna, il saggio si propone di mettere queste manifestazioni visive anche in relazione con la letteratura e il teatro per comprendere come nella società dell'epoca alcuni elementi, che caratterizzavano la domesticità borghese, fossero anche trasversali. ENG It is well known that in French painting in the 1880s and 1890s, the interior was a specific subject of pictorial research, in particular the more introspective one linked to the Nabis Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton. In Belgium, painters such as Xavier Mellery or Georges Le Brun had also focused on mysterious aspects of the house. However, going back in time, we can see that the origin of the fortune of these subjects can be traced back to late Romanticism and in particular to the 1840s, when - as Walter Benjamin so aptly observed - the domestic interior became one of the most important elements of Louis Philippe's Paris. Benjamin knew that in the years of the July Monarchy this attention to the private sphere was reflected in many domestic scenes that increased both in literature (Balzac above all) and in the world of images. More than in painting, one notices the proliferation of these scenes in popular images, lithographs, sketches and illustrations. On this basis, the essay will analyse the domestic images of the July Monarchy - in particular the satirical lithographs of Bartall, Gavarni, Grandville and Daumier - to show how an actual scheme for the representation of modern interiors began to take shape in this period, when domestic space was the ideal setting for urban everyday scenes. By tracing some aspects of the birth and evolution of the conventions of 19th-century French interior representation (focusing on the drawing room and dining room), later accepted, rejected or reformulated by painters of modern life, the essay aims to put these visual manifestations also in relation to literature and theatre in order to understand how in the society of the time some elements, which characterised bourgeois domesticity, were also transversal.
Domestic Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate 2009) - Introduction
2009
The early modern period saw the proliferation of religious, public and charitable institutions and the emergence of new educational structures. By bringing together two areas of inquiry that have so far been seen as distinct, the study of institutions and that of the house and domesticity, this collection provides new insights into the domestic experience of men, women and children who lived in non-family arrangements, while also expanding and problematizing the notion of 'domestic interior'. Through specific case studies, contributors reassess the validity of the categories 'domestic' and 'institutional' and of the oppositions private public, communal individual, religious profane applied to institutional spaces and objects. They consider how rituals, interior decorations, furnishings and images were transferred from the domestic to the institutional interior and vice versa, but also the creative ways in which the residents participated in the formation of their living settings. A variety of secular and religious institutions are considered: hospitals, asylums and orphanages, convents, colleges, public palaces of the ducal and papal court. The interest and novelty of this collection resides in both its subject matter and its interdisciplinary and Europe-wide dimension. The theme is addressed from the perspective of art history, architectural history, and social, gender and cultural history. Chapters deal with Italy, Britain, the Netherlands, Flanders and Portugal and with both Protestant and Catholic settings. The wide range of evidence employed by contributors includes sources – such as graffiti, lottery tickets or garland pictures – that have rarely if ever been considered by historians.