Futures & ruins
Subtitle: eighteenth-century Paris and the art of Hubert Robert
By: Nina L. Dubin.
Contributors: Robert, Hubert, 1733-1808.
Publisher: Getty Research Institute
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Los Angeles, CA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 197
ISBN-13: 9781606060230
Subjects: Robert, Hubert, -- 1733-1808 -- Criticism and interpretation; Ruins in art; Art and society -- France -- History -- 18th century; Paris (France) -- In art
Genres: In art
Other titles: Futures and ruins
Description: "As the favoured artist of an enterprising Parisian elite, Robert is a prophetic case study of the intersection between aesthetics and modernity's dawning business culture. In this provocative study, Hubert Robert's paintings of urban ruins are interpreted as manifestations of a new consciousness of time, one shaped by the uncertainty of an economy characterized by the anxiety-inducing expansion of credit, frenzied speculation on the stock market, and foolhardy ventures in real estate. At the centre of this lively narrative lie Robert's depictions of the ruins of Paris - macabre and spectacular paintings of desolation - on the eve of the French Revolution. Drawing on a vast range of materials, Futures & Ruins interprets Robert's artworks as harbingers of a modern appetite for self-destruction: the paintings are examined as expressions of the pleasures and perils of a risk economy."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: The unmade; title: The time of hell; title: Anti-edifice; title: Posterity.