Bachelors of a different sort: Queer aesthetics, material culture and the modern interior in Britain

by John Potvin, Christopher Breward (Editor), Bill Sherman (Editor)

Overview

The bachelor has long held an ambivalent, uncomfortable and even at times unfriendly position in society. This book carefully considers the complicated relationships between the modern queer bachelor and interior design, material culture and aesthetics in Britain between 1885 and 1957. The seven deadly sins of the modern bachelor (queerness, idolatry, askesis, decadence, the decorative, glamour and artifice) comprise a contested site and reveal in their respective ways the distinctly queer twinning of shame and resistance. It pays close attention to the interiors of Lord Ronald Gower, Alfred Taylor, Oscar Wilde, Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts, Edward Perry Warren and John Marshall, Sir Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, Noël Coward and Cecil Beaton. Richly illustrated and written in a lively and accessible manner, Bachelors of a different sort is at once theoretically ambitious and rich in its use of archival and various historical sources.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784991098
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	12/22/2015
Series:	Studies in Design and Material Culture
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Potvin is Director of the Humanities PhD Program and Associate Professor in Art History at Concordia University

Table of Contents

1. Men of a different sort: the seven deadly sins of the modern bachelor
Part I: Wilde spaces
2. ‘God save the Queen’: Lord Gower, idolatry and the cult of the bric-à-brac diva
3. Vale(d) decadence: Charles Ricketts, Charles Shannon and the Wilde factor
Part II: Country living
4. Askesis and the Greek Ideal: Edward Perry Warren and Lewes House
5. Of art and irises: Cedric Morris, Arthur Lett-Haines and the decorative ideal
Part III: Stage design for living
6. Coward in the room: interwar glamour and the performances of a queer modernity
7. Cecil Beaton: artifice as resistance
8. Conclusion: manifesto for a queer home of one’s own
Bibliography
Index