Baroque Baroque
An examination and celebration of the Baroque culture of excess.
Stephen Calloway
- Spotlights Baroque style in all its 20th-century manifestations: fashion, film, photography, design and interior decoration
- Traces the origins of the Baroque 'revival' that evolved as a rebellion against the sterilities of Modernism, and that thrives today as a colourful, opulent alternative to the minimalist aesthetic
- Charts the achievements of figures as diverse as the Sitwells, Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean, Coco Chanel and Fellini, and many other creative forces from the last 100 years
- Explores all facets of contemporary Baroque culture, from the extravagances of haute couture to the theatrical affectation of Hollywood to the fantastical whimsies of architecture and design
Hardback
250 x 290 mm, 9 7/8 x 11 3/8 in
240 pp
162 colour illustrations
120 duotone images
ISBN 9780714829852
0714829854
Now available for the first time in paperback, this extraordinary book examines the 'culture of excess' in all its twentieth-century manifestations. Fashion, film, photography, design and decoration: all feature in Stephen Calloway's meticulous coverage of the colourful, the opulent and the theatrical.
The author examines early examples of Baroque excess - by the Sitwells, Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean and others - as well as the darker Baroque spirit of the wartime Neo-Romantics and film-makers such as Fellini and Jarman. Tracing the Baroque tendency all the way into the 1990s, he shows how ideas have been cross-fertilized, providing links between such unlikely bedfellows as Leon Bakst and Luis Buñuel, Coco Chanel and Nigel Coates, Liberace and Lacroix. Illustrated with a wealth of photographs, this book provides a celebration that is truly Baroque in substance and in spirit.
Stephen Calloway is Associate Curator of Paintings at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He is also a writer, lecturer, designer and consultant on historical interiors, and a frequent contributor to television and radio programmes. His books include Twentieth Century Decoration, The House of Liberty, The Elements of Style, Oscar Wilde, An Exquisite Life and Aubrey Beardsley.
'The most provocative and stimulating style book of the year.' (The New York Times)
'Baroque Baroque is a carefully written and wonderfully illustrated book ... it helps to define the notion of Englishness itself.' (The Times)
'The sort of book that could itself become a landmark in taste.' (Country Life)