4.4 Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society and Board of Health In the meantime Owen joined the town's social and intellectual elite, which like its politics was largely dominated by Dissenters. They were prominent in the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society which Owen joined in 1793. There he associated with some significant reformers, heard papers on a wide range of intellectual, industrial and social topics, and himself presented papers dealing with such issues, including one on education. The society was founded in 1781, the co-founders b
Introduction Robert Owen (1771–1858) (see Figure 1) was one of the most important and controversial figures of his generation. He lived through the ages of Enlightenment and Romanticism and was personally touched by the ideas and dramatic changes that characterised that era. Profiting enormously during the first half of his life from the prog
5.2 Background to Theory of the Earth The two volumes of Theory of the Earth embody a startlingly original conception of the processes which shape the earth's surface, and they contain some vivid observations, drawn from Hutton's travels. However, they are poorly organised, repetitive and sometimes obscure. In a most helpful survey of Hutton's work, from which this section draws liberally, Jean Jones quotes from a wonderfully direct letter that a saddlesore Hutton wrote while on a field-trip in Wales: ‘Lord pity the arse
3.4 The role of the Edinburgh Town Council This route incidentally leads us to another important feature of the movement, namely the role of the Edinburgh Town Council and its provosts. (The English equivalent would be a lord mayor.) Throughout the eighteenth century, the Town Council, with a policy of enlightened self-interest, promoted the city by sponsoring or patronising its academic, medical and scientific life. The Council regarded the city's university, infirmary and medical school as institutions which, if given enough prestig
3.1 Clubs and societies The milieu was urban. It was not a business of isolated individuals working in country estates, or of secluded academics, cloistered within unworldly universities. The scene was convivial, social. The focus was Edinburgh, although Glasgow and Aberdeen were active too. Cities were small. Even the capital was intimate enough for its intelligentsia to be able to meet regularly and casually. ‘Here I stand, at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh’, wrote an excited visitor, ‘and within a fe
3.2 The people who make adinkra Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on what you learnt about the people who make adinkra. 3.1 The people who make kente In Section 3 you will learn more about the people who make kente and adinkra. Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on what you learnt about the people who make kente. 2.6 Questions Now that you’ve been introduced to kente and adinkra, you might like to think about the questions in the activity below. The purpose of these questions is to encourage you to think about the broader issues and themes mentioned in Section 2. Later on you will have more information to go on, but it is worth noting what you can now and generating some first thoughts in relation to these questions. 1 The meanings and values of textiles in Ghana This unit looks at three kinds of textile used and marketed in Kumasi and its surrounding towns in Ghana – the hand-made textiles of kente and adinkra and industrially produced waxed cottons – in order to consider meanings and values assigned to them. The unit revolves around a series of video clips originally produced for the course A216 Art and its histories. The Course Team filmed at the market in Kumasi as well as at Bonwire, which is a centre for kente 2.5 Modern sources As set out in Figure 1, modern sources, too, fall into various subcategories. We'll look at some of them in more detail a little later. For now let's just say that most of the sources you will use in this unit are broadly scholarly: publications written by people with an expertise in the Classical world. We will 3.2 Contexts On their own, sensory perceptions don't tend to mean that much. They depend on a context in which they can be brought to life: for instance, that of a character. Such sensory perceptions as you've just listed in Activity 4 might hold more meaning if the man who twitches the curtains was the character smelling the smells or touching the surfaces; if his neighbour in the purple sari was the character hearing the noises, tasting the flavours. Sensory perceptions offer dimensions that will enrich 4.1 Unit summary ‘Freedom’ can mean many different things; the word can have a powerful emotive force. We're concerned here with political freedom. Isaiah Berlin distinguished between a concept of negative freedom and a concept of positive freedom. Negative freedom is freedom from interference, it is a matter of the opportunities that lie open to you. Positive freedom is the capability of doing what you really want to do. Historically, according to Berlin, the concept of positive freedom has been used to 3.4 Neoclassical and the Baroque – a delicate balance As, from the seventeenth century onwards, French aesthetic preferences polarised around Poussin and Rubens (perceived champions, respectively, of line and colour), the argument was largely one of degree: the proportion of swirling movement and colour to balance, order, contour and harmony. The late nineteenth-century philosopher Nietzsche characterised Greek tragedy, and indeed all art, as a tension between the Dionysiac (Bacchanalian forces of whirling revelry, after Dionysus, the Gre 3.2 The influence of Géricault and Gros It was at the École des Beaux-Arts that Delacroix met Théodore Géricault, whose Romantic canvases, such as The Raft of the Medusa (Plate 15), made an impact on him. Delacroix posed as one of the foreground figures in this work, which was somewhat controversial due to its heroic and realistic treatment of a contemporary news story of French naval troops and settlers, shipwrecked on their way to Senegal and signalling to another vessel for help. The painting’s departure from grand, Learning outcomes At the end of this Unit you should be able to: identify those aspects of Delacroix’s art that qualify it as ‘Romantic’; come to an understanding of the interplay between classicism and Romanticism in Delacroix’s art; appreciate the nature of Delacroix’s fascination with the Oriental and the exotic even before he visited Morocco. Acknowledgements This unit was written by Dr Linda Walsh
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce References 2 The work of Goya Goya developed from a decorator of churches to a court artist, accomplished portraitist, satirical graphic artist and a painter of dark, nightmare visions. His work at court, for Carlos III and Carlos IV, involved both decorative work and a series of portraits of key figures who moved in court circles. As his official, public work became more sought after, however, he developed a parallel career as a graphic artist that seemed to express more freely a private view of the injustices, vices, fo 2.5 The emperor With Napoleon's coronation as emperor in 1804, a new type of official image was once again required. Portraits of the emperor in his ceremonial robes were commissioned from several established artists; these all revived a traditional type of royal portraiture from the eighteenth century. The example shown in Plate 10 is by a former David student, Francois Gérard (1770–1837), by now a fashionable portrait painter (see Author(s): 5.6.4 Wedding anniversaries Silver and golden wedding anniversaries were often commemorated with a portrait. Many examples follow the pattern of the studio portraits taken for engagements and weddings, with the couple taken individually and together.
Activity 8
Activity 7
