Secret Victorians: Contemporary Artists and a 19th-Century Vision

This lively and surprising book illuminates a "Victorian sensibility" that flourishes within contemporary British and American art. Stressing the Victorian period's intellectual curiosity rather than its prim morality, Secret Victorians features diverse works by twenty artists, including Helen Chadwick, Mat Collishaw, Douglas Gordon, Sally Mann, Steven Pippin, Lari Pittman, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Kara Walker. Among the themes explored are ornament and sexuality, photography and death, collections and colonialism, and science and crime. The book challenges prevailing notions of modernity by suggesting continuities, rather than breaks, with nineteenth-century cultural precepts.

The exhibit, Secret Victorians, will be at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, University of California, Los Angeles, from September 20, 1999 to January 2, 2000.