Misère

The Visual Representation of Misery in the 19th Century

By Linda Nochlin

2018

First Published

3.90

Average Rating

160

Number of Pages

4H53M

Audio Length

An incisive new piece of scholarship from renowned art historian Linda Nochlin tackling the concept of “misere,” or social misery, as it was reflected in the work of writers, artists, and philosophers in the nineteenth century In Misere, famed art historian Linda Nochlin reveals how, in the new form of civilization produced by the Industrial Revolution, in which the phenomenal growth of wealth occurred alongside an expansion of squalor, writers and artists of the nineteenth century used their craft to come to terms with what were often new and unprecedented social, material, and psychological circumstances. Nochlin charts the phenomenon of misery as it was represented in the popular and fine arts of the nineteenth century. Examining work by some of the great intellects of the era―including Dickens, Carlyle, Engels, Hugo, Buret, Disraeli, and de Tocqueville―as well as relative unknowns who were searching for ways to depict new realities, Nochlin draws from a range of sources that include paintings, prints, newspaper illustrations, photography, and a variety of from the account of a day in the life of an eight- year- old mine worker girl to the foundational texts of the field such as Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England . 80+ illustrations

Avg Rating

3.90

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

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4 STARS

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3 STARS

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Author

Linda Nochlin

Author · 14 books

Linda Nochlin was an American art historian, university professor and writer. A prominent feminist art historian, she was best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", in an essay of the same name published in 1971. Her critical attention has been drawn to investigating the ways in which gender affects the creation and apprehension of art, as evidenced by her 1994 essay "Issues of Gender in Cassatt and Eakins". Besides feminist art history, she was best known for her work on Realism, specifically on Gustave Courbet. Complementing her career as an academic, she served on the Art Advisory Council of the International Foundation for Art Research. In 2006, Nochlin received a Visionary Woman Award] from Moore College of Art & Design.