ISBN:
978-1-4725-1719-7
Language:
English
Pages:
XVII, 166 S.
,
Ill.
Keywords:
Materielle Kultur Verhalten, menschliches
;
Symbolik
;
Liebe
;
Geschichte
;
Kunst
;
Design
;
Kultur
Abstract:
How are love and emotion embodied in material form? Love Objects explores the emotional potency of things, addressing how objects can function as fetishes, symbols and representations, active participants in and mediators of our relationships, as well as tokens of affection, symbols of virility, triggers of nostalgia, replacements for lost loved ones, and symbols of lost places and times. Addressing both designed 'things with attitude' and the 'wild things' of material culture, Love Objects explores a wide range of objects, from 19th-century American portraits displaying men's passionate friendships to the devotional and political meanings of religious statues in 1920s Ireland.Review: Love Objects introduces a wonderfully rich array of ideas, objects and approaches as a means to question the relationships that we have with the things that we make, use, and own, it poses that important question: 'how do I love thee'? -- Cheryl Buckley, University of Brighton, UK Love Objects is a timely exploration of why and how we love objects. Probing the intersections of design and emotion across friendship, religion, sexuality, memory, identity, class and taste, the book unpacks our relationships with the material world as one deeply entangled in the fundamentals of the human condition. -- Kjetil Fallan, University of Oslo, Norway Love Objects presents a dozen intriguing perspectives on how significance arises in the using and making of material things. The collection shows how exploring the roles objects play in articulating emotion helps account for the variability of meanings attached to any thing and invites us to re-imagine design. -- Tim Putnam, formerly University of Portsmouth, UK The particular strength of this book resides in the perfect balance between the originality of the case studies (if the object they illustrate are very usual, the examples that illustrate them are often quite the contrary) and the capacity of the authors to enrich their own methodology, which is either theoretical (the common denominator being in many cases a certain emphasis on anthropology) or practice-based (the volume contains several contributions by artists with a strong theoretical interest), with a strong sensibility of the political dimension of the personal. All essays offer very innovative interpretations of femininity and masculinity, defeminizing and sometimes even queering them not only through the analysis of the cultural and historical conventions that surround them but also through the lines of resistance and empowerment that love objects may disclose. -- Jan Baetens Leonardo An attractive book examining the power of 'things' like clothes to evoke emotion, their role as fetishes, symbols and so on. Includes design, fashion, social values, identity and more Books Ireland, issue 358
Description / Table of Contents:
Section 1 : the lives of objects. 'I love giving presents' : the emotion of material culture / Louise Purbrick -- (S)mother's love, or, baby knitting / Jo Turney -- Sex, birth and nurture unto death : patching together quilted bed covers / Catherine Harper -- Section 2 : projecting and subverting identities. Bringing out the past : courtly cruising and nineteenth-century American men's romantic friendship portraits / Elizabeth Howie -- The genteel craft of subversion : amateur female shoemaking in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries / Noreen McGuire -- Performing masculinity through objects in postwar America : the playboy's pipe / Jessica Sewell -- Section 3 : objects and embodiment. Seduced by the archive : a personal and working relationship with the archive and collection of the London couturier, Norman Hartnell / Jane Hattrick -- Kitsch, enchantment and power : the bleeding statues of Templemore in 1920 / Ann Wilson -- 'Magic toyshops' : narrative and meaning in the women's sex shop / Fran Carter -- Section 4 : mediating relationships. Material memories : the making of a collodion memory-text / Christina Edwards -- The problematic decision to live : Irish-Romanian home-making and the anthropology of uncertainty / Adam Drazin -- Designing meaningful and lasting user experiences / Jonathan Chapman.
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