I viewed an Arts and Crafts exhibition, but something was missing
Sharing again <3
"The Pre-Raphaelites used the exotic to draw interest — like the lion skin worn by Morgan le Fay in Sandys’ painting, or Simeon Solomon’s indulgent, eroticised dark-skinned figure in Babylon hath a golden cup, or the forlorn Black child whose face and body Rossetti sketched for his work Beloved. With the exception of Solomon’s painting, these figures and motifs are satellites, revolving around and offsetting the central figure — almost always a beautiful white woman.
Meanwhile, the poem quoted on Newill’s bedspread was written in 1804 as the Industrial Revolution gathered speed. Works like Strawberry Thief and Newill’s bedspread hark back to an idealised English rural past, one that never existed but provided a rich fount of imagery to sell wallpaper for townhouses. I don’t have to go into how notions of an idealised past are key to fascism, or connect one with the other; but I notice this English past being celebrated and idealised in these works, and say “Hm.” I now have to admit a prejudice and say that I don’t enjoy William Morris patterns too much: I find them claustrophobic and static. For me, they evoke the close tangle of furniture in late Victorian rooms, the tight weave of obligations, the need to perform good manners, the pressure to agree that the past was always better. Or is that just me?"
