Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture

Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture by Kathleen Davidson

How did scientists, artists, designers, manufacturers and amateur enthusiasts experience and value the sea and its products? Examining the commoditization of the ocean world during the nineteenth century, this book demonstrates how the transaction of oceanic objects inspired a multifaceted material discourse stemming from scientific exploration, colonial expansion, industrialization, and the rise of middle-class leisure. From the seashore to the seabed, marine organisms and environments, made tangible through processing and representational technologies, captivated practitioners and audiences. Combining essays and case studies by scholars, curators, and scientists, Sea Currents investigates the collecting and display, illustration and ornamentation, and trade and consumption of marine flora and fauna, analysing their material, aesthetic and commercial dimensions. Traversing global art history, the history of science, empire studies, anthropology, ecocriticism and material culture, this book surveys the currency of marine matter embedded in the economies and ecologies of a modernizing ocean world.

Sea Currents expands our thinking about human interactions with the oceans, linking developments in museums, consumerism, exploration, and colonialism with artistic and scientific culture, in an engaging discussion of how the ocean world was commodified by and for diverse communities* Peter H. Hoffenberg, Professor of History, University of Hawai’i at Manoa; co-editor of Oceania and the Victorian Imagination (2013) *
The sea’s leavings – whalebone, spermaceti, isinglass, mother-of-pearl, coral, seaweed – fascinate and allure. Exploring how nineteenth-century oceanic commodities were desired, extracted, displayed, and sold around the world, this volume provides a fascinating portrait of the Victorian sea and its global meanings. * Steve Mentz, Professor of English, St. John’s University, USA; author of Ocean (2020) and A Cultural History of the Early Modern Sea (2021) *
Sea Currents moves beyond sublime seascapes and shipwrecks to uncover marine object and display histories and the myriad ways they infiltrated everyday life. From rich and strange to domesticated, here the sea not only exceeds the frame but blows it apart. * Pandora Syperek, co-editor, ‘Curating the Sea’, Journal of Curatorial Studies, 2020, and Oceans (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art, 2023) *
Sea Currents forwards an important intervention for historians to consider the oceans beyond their conventional treatment as surfaces or metaphors...In light of this lacuna in historiography, Sea Currents offers an elaborate collection of histories that recognizes both the material and metaphorical seas. * H-Net *

Kathleen Davidson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Art History at the University of Sydney, Australia. Molly Duggins is a lecturer in the Department of Art History and Theory at the National Art School, Sydney, Australia.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781501352782
ISBN 10	1501352784
Title	Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture
Author	Kathleen Davidson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2023-03-09
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.