Chapter 16 - Ideals of a Picture Gallery

Summary

This chapter examines the relationship between literature and visual cultures between 1900 and 1920 through the different forms of art writing practised by a range of literary and cultural figures. Museums and art galleries witnessed a surge in popularity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as collections expanded and opened up to a wider viewing public, while exhibitions such as the post-impressionist exhibition of 1910 have come to be seen as cultural landmarks in narratives of the period. This essay explores writers’ encounters with artworks and artefacts in the contested yet stimulating spaces of museums and galleries, and examines the ways in which such encounters helped to frame questions about aesthetics and cultural identity, history and the contemporaneous. It takes in the role of periodical cultures – focusing on Rhythm (1911–13), Blast (1914–15), and Colour Magazine (1914–32) – in mediating responses to visual art and as sites in which the demarcations between word and image could be redefined.