Victorian Art History

A T THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY , Victorian painting experienced at least one mass media event, so far as circulation is concerned — the appearance of Frederic Leighton’s The Bath of Psyche (1890) on the wall of the drug kingpin in Paul Thomas Anderson’s notorious film Boogie Nights of 1997. As a ferocious deal is going awry, over the desperate dealers looms one of the masterpieces of the Victorian High Renaissance, a commentary through the cool classicism of the late Victorians about the corresponding fin-de-siècle of the lately finished century. It is a stunning moment — perhaps recognized only by historians of British art — but there it is nonetheless. One is to presume that the dealer has acquired the original from the Tate Gallery, since he would never own a copy, let alone a poster! Busboy superstud Mark Wahlberg has brief, violent contact with a masterpiece

Art · Art history · Classicism · Decadence · Literature · Painting · Psyche · The Renaissance · Art History and Market Analysis · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Philosophy