Welcome to Art in Society

The Journal of Art in Society is a website dedicated to exploring interactions between social changes and developments in art. 

After just over a year of operation, we have grown quickly from just the germ of an idea into a website with many hundreds of visitors a week. Thank you for your enthusiastic support, and for your comments and suggestions. We look forward to providing many more new articles to interest and entertain you in the year ahead.

Here's what you'll find inside:

Art news and reviews

For our highly selective reviews of recent art-related journal articles and news items of interest, go here, and for art-related books go here.

Feature articles

• NEW! The life and death of Mummy Brown: the remarkable story of how the crumbled remains of mummies came to be used by European artists right up to the twentieth century 
• Sarka of the South Seas: complementing our Tax Brief on this artist, this is a full account of the American watercolourist Charles Sarka’s colourful life, work and travels
• Art in a speeded-up world: how radical changes in the concept of time during the nineteenth century inspired revolutionary changes in literature and art
• Early influences of photography on art: an analysis of the far-reaching impacts that the invention of photography had on nineteenth century painting
• On the trail of the Last Supper: how depictions of the Last Supper have changed over different cultures and different times
• Should artists get royalties?: some recent developments affecting artist royalty rights schemes in Australia and the UK have revived an acute and often acrimonious debate
• Floating pleasure worlds of Paris and Edo: an analysis of two depictions of pleasure worlds in France and Japan reveals some startling similarities and contrasts
• The shocking birth and amazing career of Guernica: how Picasso's monumental painting came to be created and assume such extraordinary recognition
• Surviving the Black Death: how one Italian painter prospered despite one of the worst natural disasters in history.
• Strange encounters: the oddly-productive relationships between the eccentric art collector Albert Barnes, the painter Henri Matisse and the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Art briefs

• NEW! Encounters with the Isenheim Altarpiece::we begin our exploration of Matthias Grűnewalds' extraordinary sixteenth century master-work and its possible role in healing victims of disease
• Julie Manet, Renoir and the Dreyfus Affair: insights into a famous controversy from an unexpected source 
• Why wasn’t photography invented earlier? or is this just a case of hindsight bias?
  

• The surprising discovery of an early graphic novel: Charles Sarka's long-delayed claim to fame
  
• Michelangelo's disputed Entombment: the mysteries that enshroud this controversial painting.

Now in preparation...

• The emergence of the winter landscape -- Bruegel and his predecessors.

Your comments welcome

This site is a permanently-ongoing work in progress, so we always welcome your comments or suggestions. Please also contact us if you'd like to be notified when new articles are added to the site.

                    Our masthead shows a detail from William Powell Frith’s The Railway Station (1862)


                                                          Site last updated: 11 May 2013