Instructor: Amelia Rauser
Satirical prints made in late eighteenth-century England glory in the use of the caricatural visual language to deform subjects’ faces for expressive effect. But how should we read these figures’ bodies? Fat, thin, lumpen, unclothed, extravagant in gesture and in costume, satirical bodies were deployed by printmakers to lampoon, castigate, and celebrate their subjects. Such expressive bodies imply a concept of subjectivity—and even cognition—that is itself particularly embodied. In this workshop, we will investigate eighteenth-century embodiment in satire and fashion. In a session devoted to “Celebrity Bodies,” we will sample current scholarship on “celebrity studies” and discuss the applicability of this concept to eighteenth-century representations. And in a session on “Fashionable Bodies,” we will study the changing silhouettes of fashionable dress in the eighteenth-century—not only in print representations, but also by handling and even trying on costumes made in these silhouettes, to come to a better understanding of how they framed the body and shaped its movement.
Enrollment limited to 15. Application required.