Competing Visions

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 101-121
Author(s):  
Matthew G. Stanard
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Free State ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Congo Free State

Studies of the visual culture of the Congo Free State (CFS) have focused overwhelmingly yet narrowly on the “atrocity” photograph used to criticize Leopold II’s colonial misrule. This article presents a new picture of the visual culture of Leopold II’s Congo Free State by examining a broader, more heterogeneous range of fin de siècle images of varied provenance that comprised the visual culture of the CFS. These include architecture, paintings, African artwork, and public monuments, many of which were positive, pro-Leopoldian images emphasizing a favorable view of colonialism. The visual culture of the CFS was imbued with recurring themes of violence, European heroism, and anti-Arab sentiment, and emerged from a unique, transnational, back-and-forth process whereby Leopold and his critics instrumentalized images to counter each other and achieve their goals.

scholarly journals Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, Visual Culture and Late-Victorian Gender Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-263
Author(s):  
Victoria Mills
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Numerous Book ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Book Illustrations ◽  
Multi Media ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Abstract Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face was first published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1852, but was reissued in numerous book editions in the late nineteenth century. Though often viewed as a novel depicting the religious controversies of the 1850s, Kingsley’s portrayal of the life and brutal death of a strong female figure from late antiquity also sheds light on the way in which the Victorians remodelled ancient histories to explore shifting gender roles at the fin de siècle. As the book gained in popularity towards the end of the century, it was reimagined in many different cultural forms. This article demonstrates how Kingsley’s Hypatia became a global, multi-media fiction of antiquity, how it was revisioned and consumed in different written, visual and material forms (book illustrations, a play, painting and sculpture) and how this reimagining functioned within the gender politics of the 1880s and 1890s. Kingsley’s novel retained a strong hold on the late-Victorian imagination, I argue, because the perpetual restaging of Hypatia’s story through different media facilitated the circulation of pressing fin-de-siècle debates about women’s education, women’s rights, and female consumerism.

Impressions of the Covered Body

2021 ◽  
pp. 14-33
Author(s):  
Ron J. Popenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Human Form ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stylistic Changes

This chapter draws parallels between the development of photography as visual culture and images of concealing the face and body. The first section, ‘Veiled Exposures’, notes examples of the costumed and draped human form in late Romanticism through Realism, verismo and Symbolism. A history of Pierrot performances and photo portraits in Paris, Brussels and Marseille maps the stylistic changes that move the white-faced role from the classical to the sentimental and finally to the phantom grotesque. Citing the work of composers, illustrators, photographers and writers, associations with death and masking are introduced. ‘Skulls and Draped Bodies’, the final sub-section, comments upon the anxieties present in fin-de-siėcle images, including the shroud-fabric paintings of Ferdinand Hodler and the skulls in Odilon Redon’s prints and drawings. The chapter also chronicles the importance of professional portrait photography in Paris.

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