<em>Art and the British Empire</em>, edited by Tim Barringer, Geoff Quilley, and Douglas Fordham

Abstract

Reviewed by: Art and the British Empire Peter H. Hoffenberg (bio) Art and the British Empire, edited by Tim Barringer, Geoff Quilley, and Douglas Fordham; pp. xx + 442. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2007, £60.00, £25.00 paper, $94.00, $50.00 paper. The twenty essays in this edited volume are the products of a 2001 conference on "Art and the British Empire" held at the Tate. That impressive gathering and this subsequent award-winning text brought together a community of scholars pursuing the uneasy trinity of "Art," "Empire," and "British" within various geopolitical and chronological contexts and shaped by interests in different artistic genres and cultural questions. Each essay responds to the editors' claims that "empire remains an unspoken presence, stalking the museums' picture stores and haunting the footnotes of journals and monographs" (4). The contributors' individual and collective efforts ensure that empire's presence is no longer unspoken—rather than stalking, it is front and center. This beautifully illustrated text provides delightful and often brilliant insights into landscapes, the picturesque, portraiture, and photographs from South Africa, British North America, Australia, South Asia, and Jamaica on one hand, and individual artists, homoexoticism, miniatures, and perspectives on the other. In most cases, these two trajectories work well together, as they do with the nearly one hundred and fifty illustrations, many in rich color. The content of this study might be too much or too disparate for some readers, but no reader will close the book without finding at least several of the chapters provocative, encouraging further research. That will be true for artists, art historians, and others interested in issues often held within the portfolios of cultural history and both cultural and material studies. Some of the chapters will also be useful for undergraduate and graduate courses on the histories of the British Empire and of the visual arts, as well as of the more specific regions and genres. How does one approach this ambitious project? How might one read this bold text? Before embarking on individual chapters of interest, if not the entire corpus, I recommend the editors' formal introduction, John MacKenzie's essay in The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (1996), and Jeffrey A. Auerbach's essay in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume V: Historiography (1999). These relatively short pieces will provide a sense of the state of play in the study of art and of artists in the history of the British Empire, as well as of the choices that the editors were required to make. Perhaps the most significant decision was to publish a work that does not offer a linear narrative of a particular type of art or place, but rather a series of case studies encouraging different linear narratives or providing moments in the more traditional ones. This volume is a sincere attempt to bring art, literary, cultural, and representational theories to bear on works of art. Hence, the bibliography includes Partha Mitter and W. J. T. Mitchell, significant figures in that theoretical enterprise. For the serious student of art—for example, students of the art of landscape painting or of South Asian sculpture—the references to their works will be more reassuring than the expected references to Edward Said and Homi Babha. Theorists of the visual arts helpfully inform us that art, literature, and culture are not the same, even if they are intertwined. Theories of culture and representation are most helpful when venturing into the realm of formal art when considerations and appreciations of specific artistic genres, creative contexts, and theories of beauty or aesthetics are included. Sometimes a bit of Nikolaus Pevsner is a good thing. [End Page 584] The volume's approaches to art and art history call upon traditional scholarship together with contributions from the fields of postcolonialism, gender studies, and the new imperial history. Thus, the useful bibliography also includes the works of Bernard Smith, Antoinette Burton, and Nick Thomas, as well as biographical reflections and considerations of center-periphery tensions. Not surprisingly, what counts as art is broadly defined; essays on painting will neither surprise nor disappoint, but many will be surprised and pleased by serious considerations of photography...