Baroque Baroque

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The Culture of Excess

An examination and celebration of the Baroque culture of excess.

Stephen Calloway

Editions:

Price: £24.95

250 points

Overview

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

Specifications

Paperback
English
290 x 250 mm, 11 3/8 x 9 7/8 in
240 pp
162 colour illustrations
ISBN-13: 9780714838601
ISBN-10: 0714838608
120 Duotone Images

About the book

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 interior 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.

In The Press

'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)

About the author(s)

Stephen Calloway is a writer, journalist, lecturer, designer and consultant on historic interiors. He was formerly Curator of Paintings at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.