Description
Book SynopsisThis book celebrates and seeks to understand the overlooked appearances of hybrid forms in visual culture; artefacts and practices that meld or interweave incongruous elements in innovative ways. And with an emphasis on the material aspects of such entities, the book adopts the term ''mixed form'' for them.Focusing on key phenomena in the last half millennium, such as the cabinet of curiosities, the broadside ballad and the chapbook as early forms of image-text, the scrapbook, assemblage, and, in digital times, so-called ''mixed reality,'' the book argues that while the quality of inconsistency is traditionally dismissed, its expression nevertheless plays a vital role in social life.Crucially,
Mixed Forms of Visual Culture relates its phenomena to the emergence of the division of labour under capitalism and addresses the shifting relationships between art and life, when singularity and uniformity are variously valued and dismissed in the two arenas, and at different points in hi
Trade Reviewit is a pleasure to follow the author on her historical and taxonomic crossing of the world of mixed form, from the Renaissance and post-Renaissance cabinet of curiosities till today’s digital creations, over popular genres such as the broadsheet, the chapbook and the scrapbook – all well documented and cleverly illustrated. The visual material of the book is refreshing and often very original, while the comments are always helpful as well as consistently structured in function of the underlying general question of the link with division of labor. * Jan Baetens, Leonardo *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Introduction: Mixtures of all sorts 1. The cabinet of curiosities as mixed form: depictions and desire 2. Mixed form in working life: the rise of manufacture 3. Popular mixed forms in a long eighteenth century: from the broadside ballad to the chapbook 4. Visual essay 5. Mixed-form and modernism in the visual arts: assemblage and assembly lines 6. Visual essay 7. Digital culture as Wunderkammer Conclusion: A synthesis of sorts Bibliography Index
