Dana Arnold

Facts or Fragments? Visual Histories in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The Temples at Paestum were ‘rediscovered’ in the mid–eighteenth century and information about the temples in the form of printed images was widely disseminated across Europe. In this essay attention is paid to innovative forms of visual representation and their relationship to the ever–refining set of cultural values applied to and associated with antiquity. This new visual language made three–dimensional objects widely available in a readable and coherent two–dimensional formula and equipped polite society with the critical faculties necessary to determine the associative values of Modern and Antique architecture and design. The importance of this new language and its impact on the quality of experience of the past and the development of aesthetic ideas and histories in the eighteenth century allows the exploration of the changing relationship between text and image which is a theme in this article. Moreover, the relationship of prints to the original object both in terms of the effect on its aura and the print acting rather like an historian as an interlocutor between the original (event) and the viewer (reader) is also considered here. This raises important questions about the relationship between the mass–produced image and the original, and the implications for the aura and status of the original object in an era before Walter Benjamin’s ‘Age of Mechanical Reproduction’.

Art and thought

Art and Thought is a collection of newly commissioned essays that explores the relationship between the discipline of art history and important movements in the history of western thought. •Brings together newly commissioned essays that explore the relationship between the discipline of art history and movements in the history of western thought. •Considers the impact of the writings of key thinkers, including Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger, on the way in which objects are perceived and understood and histories of art are constructed, deconstructed, and reconfigured according to varying sets of philosophical frameworks. •Introduces the reader to the dynamic interface between philosophical reflections and art practices. •Part of the New Interventions in Art History series, which is published in conjunction with the Association of Art Historians.

London Bridge and its symbolic identity in the Regency Metropolis: the dialectic of civic and national pride

This essay positions the rebuilding of London Bridge within the framework of the emerging early nineteenth-century metropolis. Improvements in planning, the definition of the city’s perimeters and entrance points and the erection of monuments to nation and state were all part of the creation of an urban identity in which London Bridge played a significant and distinctive role. The balance of power between a national government interested in urban development and an established authority within the City of London creates a dialectic around the issues of civic and national pride. The discrete identity of London Bridge as the entranceway into the City was appropriated and revised to help to create an image of a modern metropolis which encompassed not just the City but also the City of Westminster and the Borough of Southwark. As such, London Bridge became part of the infrastructure which attempted to give coherence to the fractured streetplan of the capital but its dis-location from the Metropolitan Improvements also expressed its local significance. A consideration of London Bridge in these contexts establishes its symbolic identity in Regency London. But it also raises interesting questions about the relationship between the symbolic and functional roles of buildings. A bridge can be a monument, a signifier of social or political preeminence, a national symbol or just a stretch of road that happens to pass over water. In this way London Bridge can be viewed as a matrix through which fundamental aspects of urban identity can be explored.