The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been characterised as the 'age of speed' but they also witnessed a reanimation of still life across different art forms. This book takes an original approach to still life in modern literature and the visual arts by examining the potential for movement and transformation in the idea of stillness and the ordinary. It ranges widely in its material, taking Cezanne and literary responses to his still life painting as its point of departure. It investigates constellations of writers, visual artists and dancers including D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, David Jones, Winifred Nicholson, Wallace Stevens, and lesser-known figures including Charles Mauron and Margaret Morris. Claudia Tobin reveals that at the heart of modern art were forms of stillness that were intimately bound up with movement: the still life emerges charged with animation, vibration and rhythm. It is an unstable medium, unexpectedly vital and well suited to the expression of modern concerns.

About the Author
Claudia Tobin, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Cambridge.


Book Information
ISBN 9781474455145
Author Claudia Tobin
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press