Although the idea of excess has often been used to degrade, many of the essays in this collection demonstrate how it has also been used as a strategy for self-fashioning and empowerment, particularly by women and queer subjects. This volume examines a range of material - including ceramics, paintings, caricatures, interior design and theatrical performances - in various global contexts. Each case study sheds new light on how excess has been perceived and constructed, revealing how beliefs about excess have changed over time.

Directing unprecedented attention to how the idea of ?excess? has been used by both producers and consumers of visual and material culture, this collection examines the discursive construction of excess in relation to art, material goods and people in various global contexts. The contributors illuminate how excess has been perceived, quantified and constructed, revealing in the process how beliefs about excess have changed over time and how they have remained consistent. The collection as a whole underscores the fact that the concept of excess must always be considered critically, whether in scholarship or in lived experience. Although the idea of excess has often been used to shame and degrade, many of the essays in this collection demonstrate how it has also been used as a strategy for self-fashioning, transgression and empowerment, particularly by women and queer subjects. This volume examines a range of material, including diamonds, ceramics, paintings, dollhouses, caricatures, interior design and theatrical performances. Each case study sheds new light on how excess was used in a specific cultural context, including canonical sites of study such as the Netherlands in the eighteenth century, Victorian Britain and Paris in the 1920s, and under-studied contexts such as Canada and Sweden.

In Approaching Historical Sources in Their Contexts, 12 academics examine how space, time and performance interact to co-create context for source analysis. The chapters cover 2000 years and stretch across the Americas and Europe. They are grouped into three themes, with the first four exploring aspects of movement within and around an environment: buildings, the tension between habitat and tourist landscape, cemeteries and war memorials. Three chapters look at different aspects of performance: masque and opera in which performance is (re)constructed from several media, radio and television. The final group of chapters consider objects and material culture in which both spatial placement and performance influence how they might be read as historical sources: archaeological finds and their digital management, the display of objects in heritage locations, clothing, photograph albums and scrapbooks. Supported by a range of case studies, the contributors embed lessons and methodological approaches within their chapters that can be adapted and adopted by those working with similar sources, offering students both a theoretical and practical demonstration of how to analyse sources within their contexts. Drawing out common threads to help those wishing to illuminate their own historical investigation, this book encourages a broad and inclusive approach to the physical and social contexts of historical evidence for those undertaking source analysis.

This pioneering book explores the notion of 'radical decadence' as concept, aesthetic and lived experience, and as an analytical framework for the study of contemporary feminist textile art. Gendered discourses of decadence that perpetuate anxieties about women's power, consumption and pleasure are deconstructed through images of drug use, female sexuality and 'excessive' living, in artworks by several contemporary textile artists including Orly Cogan, Tracey Emin, Allyson Mitchell, and Rozanne Hawksley. Perceptions of decadence are invariably bound to the negative connotations of decay and degradation, particularly with regard to the transgression of social norms related to femininity and the female body. Excessive consumption by women has historically been represented as grotesque, and until now, women's pleasure in relation to drug and alcohol use has largely gone unexamined in feminist art history and craft studies. Here, representations of female consumption, from cupcakes to alcohol and cocaine, are opened up for critical discussion. Drawing on feminist and queer theories, Julia Skelly considers portrayals of 'bad girls' in artworks that explore female sexuality - performative pieces designed to subvert and exceed feminine roles. In this provocative book, decadence is understood not as a destructive force but as a liberating aesthetic.

Skin Crafts discusses multiple artists from global contexts who employ craft materials in works that address historical and contemporary violence. These artists are deliberately embracing the fragility of textiles and ceramics to evoke the vulnerability of human skin and - in so doing - are demanding visceral responses from viewers. Drawing on a range of theories including affect theory, material feminism, skin studies, phenomenology and global art history, the book illuminates the various ways in which artists are harnessing the affective power of craft materials to address and cope with violence. Artists from Mexico, Africa, China, the Netherlands and Indigenous artists based in the unceded territory known as Canada are examined in relation to one another to illuminate the connections and differences across their bodies of work. Skin Crafts interrogates ongoing material violence towards women and marginalized others, and demonstrates the power of contemporary art to force viewers and scholars into facing their ethical responsibilities as human beings.

Are artists seismographs during processes of transformation? Is theatre a mirror of society? And how does it influence society offstage? To address these questions, this collection brings together analyses of cultural policy in post-apartheid South Africa and actors of the performing arts discussing political theatre and cultural activism. Case studies grant inside views of the State Theatre in Pretoria, the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, followed by a documentation of panel discussions on the Soweto Theatre. The texts collected here bring to the surface new faces and voices who advance the performing arts with their images and lexicons revolving around topics such as patriarchy, femicide and xenophobia.

Art is continuously subjected to insidious forms of censorship. This may be by the Church to guard against moral degeneration, by the State to promote a specific political agenda or by the art market, to elevate one artist above another. Now, and in the last century, artwork that touches on ethnic, religious, sexual, national or institutional sensitivities is liable to be destroyed or hidden away, ignored or side-lined. Drawing from new research into historical and contemporary case-studies, Censoring Art: Silencing the Artwork provides diverse ways of understanding the purpose and mechanisms of art censorship across distinct geopolitical and cultural contexts from Iran, Japan, and Uzbekistan to Britain, Ireland, Canada, Macedonia, Soviet Russia, and Cyprus. Its contributions uncover the impact of this silent control of the production and exhibition of art and consider how censorship has affected art practice and public perceptions of artworks.