Fancy in Eighteenth-Century European Visual Culture

Topicsinclude: the seductive fictions of the fancy picture, Fragonard and galanterie, fancy in drawing manuals,pattern books and popular prints, fans and fancy goods, chinoiserie, excess and virtuality in garden design, Canaletto'sBritish 'capricci', urban design in Madrid, and Goya's 'Caprichos'.
Fancy in the eighteenth centurywas part of a rich semantic network, connecting wit, whimsicality, eroticdesire, spontaneity, deviation from norms and triviality. It was also a contentious term, signifying excess,oddness and irrationality, liable to offend taste, reason and morals. Thiscollection of essays foregrounds fancy – and its close synonym, caprice – as adistinct strand of the imagination in the period. As a prevalent, coherent and enduring concept in aestheticsand visual culture, it deserves a moreprominent place in scholarly understanding than it has hitherto occupied. Fancy is here understood as a type of creative outputthat deviated from rules and relished artistic freedom. It was also a mode ofaudience response, entailing a high degree of imaginative engagement withplayful, quirky artworks, generating pleasure, desire or anxiety. Emphasizingcommonalities between visual productions in different media from diverselocations, the authors interrogate and celebrate the expressive freedom offancy in European visual culture. Topicsinclude: the seductive fictions of the fancy picture, Fragonard and galanterie, fancy in drawing manuals,pattern books and popular prints, fans and fancy goods, chinoiserie, excess and virtuality in garden design, Canaletto'sBritish 'capricci', urban design in Madrid, and Goya's 'Caprichos'.

Contributor: Melissa Percival (Edited by), Muriel Adrien (Edited by)

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