Baroque between the Wars

Alternative Style in the Arts, 1918-1939

Jane Stevenson

A new take on the arts and modernism that explores how baroque offered a completely different way of being modern
Covers literature, film, interior design, architecture, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging
Illustrates how Djuna Barnes, Charlie Chaplin, Cecil Beaton, Stephen Tennant, Rex Whistler, Dody Todd, Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, the Bright Young Things, the Sitwells, and Ottoline Morell, among others, influenced the style and culture of the interwar period
Discusses patronage and who got to become 'an artist'
Considers sexual politics and the privileges of straight white men
Explores the careers of women in the interwar period and the development of a lesbian approach to art and architecture in the works of Eileen Gray, Marie Laurencin, and Elsie de Wolfe

Baroque between the Wars

Alternative Style in the Arts, 1918-1939

Jane Stevenson

Description

Baroque between the Wars is a fascinating and new account of the arts in the twenties and thirties. We often think of this time as being dominated by modernism, yet the period saw a dialogue between modern baroque - eclectic, playful, camp, open to influence from popular culture yet in dialogue with the past, and unafraid of the grotesque or surreal - and modernism, which was theory-driven, didactic, exclusive, and essentially neo-classical.

Jane Stevenson argues that both baroque and classical forms were equally valid responses to the challenge of modernity, by setting painting and literature in the context of 'minor arts' such as interior design, photography, fashion, ballet, and flower arranging, and by highlighting the social context and sexual politics of creative production.

Accessibly written and generously illustrated, the volume focuses on artists, artefacts, clients, places, and publicists to demonstrate how baroque offered a whole way of being modern which was actively subversive of the tenets of modernism and practised by the people modernism habitually defined as not worth listening to, particularly women and homosexuals.

Baroque between the Wars

Alternative Style in the Arts, 1918-1939

Jane Stevenson

The In Between Time
I: Society
1:Climbing
2:Hiding in Plain Sight
3:Sitwell Style
II: The City
4:Modern Times
5:Streams Of Consciousness
6:Machines To Live In
III: Rooms
7:Outdoor Rooms
8:Chinese Wallpaper
9:Whiteness
10:White and Gold
11:Rococo Arcadia
IV: Uncanonical Arts
12:Silver Paper
13:Self Fashioning
14:Masks
15:Four Dozen White Lilies
16:Flowers in the Abstract
17:The Ghost of a Rose
Epilogue

Baroque between the Wars

Alternative Style in the Arts, 1918-1939

Jane Stevenson

Author Information

Jane Stevenson, Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall, University of Oxford

Jane Stevenson was born in 1959 and mostly brought up in London. She studied at the University of Cambridge, and subsequently taught at the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick before moving to Aberdeen, where she was Regius Professor of Humanity. Jane Stevenson is now Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall at the University of Oxford. Her works include studies of women's writing in Latin, early modern women poets, a biography of the painter Edward Burra, and six novels.

Baroque between the Wars

Alternative Style in the Arts, 1918-1939

Jane Stevenson

Reviews and Awards

"Baroque Between the Wars ... is a witty and elegant account of an alternative style in the arts ... this wide-ranging and hugely entertaining book perfectly combines aesthetic and social history." - Peter Parker, Books of the Year 2018, Times Literary Supplement

"The patterns that [Stevenson] contrived to weave out of subjects as widely dispersed as the Sitwells, Arthur Machen, Ronald Firbank and Coco Chanel were endlessly fascinating." - D.J. Taylor, Books of the Year 2018, Times Literary Supplement

"A beautifully written account of modern baroque in its many guises ... it is scholarly, diverting and fascinating, all at once: a bracing draught that genuinely fills a huge void, an essential read to understand a period in all its diversity." - James Stevens Curl, Times Higher Eucation

"Learned and thought-provoking ... Stevenson has encyclopaedic knowledge of the period and the style, in all its many forms. The book covers a glorious array of cultural activities ... Stevenson writes with gentle humour and a keen sense of the absurd." - Adrian Tinniswood, Literary Review

"Baroque Between the Wars draws its strength from Stevenson's omnivorous sourcing of material and her intellectual curiosity." - Tanya Harrod, Apollo

"exceptional" - Clive Aslet, Country Life

"A fascinating, thought-provoking account of the arts in the 1920s and 1930s" - The Tablet

"One of this book's greatest strengths is the author's original research across several disciplines ... [Stevenson] writes in clear, insightful prose ... This is essential reading that will, inter alia, explain you to yourself." - Ruth Guilding, The World of Interiors

"The book is welcome for its extensive examination of one of the most interesting moments in art and life of recent times." - David Platzer, The British Art Journal

"extraordinary ... Stevenson writes with admirable clarity and wit" - Altair Brandon-Salmon, Cherwell

"The first thing to be said about this wonderfully funny, provocative, and endlessly fascinating book is that it covers a lot of ground. It presents a very large range of creative production through a series of short and eminently readable chapters." - Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Journal of Architecture

"Broad in scope, yet full of telling detail, this important study of the Baroque sensibility brilliantly illuminates a too-long-neglected era of artistic and cultural activity." - Stephen Calloway, author of Baroque Baroque: The Culture of Excess

"Stevenson's achievement is baroque in its richness and variety. Spanning the art forms, and bringing to new prominence the period's decorative taste-makers from Cecil Beaton to Elsa Schiaparelli, she turns a serious eye on the meanings of masquerade. The emphasis on art markets and circles of patronage contributes a wealth of new material to this thick-woven tapestry of ideas." - Alexandra Harris, Department of English Literature, University of Birmingham

"With the scholarship, humanity, and wit that made her Edward Burra biography so outstanding, Jane Stevenson presents a shimmering bouquet of connected essays, animating the ghosts of early twentieth-century fashion and frolic, that propose a serious alternative to modernism." - Alan Powers