Art and Artifice in Visual Culture: Eighteenth Century to the Present

This edited volume explores the notion of “artifice” in modern visual culture, ranging from the eighteenth century to the present, in countries around the globe. Artifice has been regarded as a primarily Western phenomenon, playing as it does a central role in European art theory since the Renaissance. This volume proposes that artifice is better understood as a transcultural artistic phenomenon and requires far broader conceptualization across international contexts. It acquaints readers with works of art, visual modes of communication, and concepts originating in France, Germany, the United States, Japan, and China, and includes painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, film, and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) objects. Contributors demonstrate how practices of artifice function as both symbol and form, in parallel and divergent ways, in multiple cultural settings. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, and material culture. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction: Art and Artifice in a Transcultural Perspective PART I: Artifice and Spectatorship 1. Fractured Perception: Drawings, Prints, and Verres Cassés 2. Rococo Aesthetics and the Problem of Trompe l’Oeil 3. Degas’s “Histories” and the Foreshadowing Artifice of Self-Candaulism PART II: Haptic Illusions 4. Suggestive Surfaces: The Self-Referential Texture of Woodgrain in Japanese Woodblock Prints 5. Reconsidering the Origins of Yongzheng Guwantu: From the Aniconic Period to Vimalakīrtinirdeśa Sūtra 6. Fooling Art History: John F. Peto and William Harnett PART III: Alternative Realities 7. First Nations’ Wampum Belts: A Colonial Vision of Artifice in Eighteenth-Century New France 8. “An Opportunity to Grapple with the Picture Plane...”: The Stereo-Illusion’s History of Frustration 9. Self-Reference and Medium-Reference in Virtual Reality and Trompe l’Oeil Index