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Beyond the Veil

By Paul Gambino

Beyond the Veil

By Paul Gambino

0 - Default Title
Description
The visual history of how we deal with death – the grief and mourning, the funerals, symbols and ceremonies – is fascinatingly rich. Focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and travelling from Victorian England across to the US, Beyond the Veil is a visual tour through this curious world, charting the often peculiar and at times macabre ways of how the living memorialise the dead. Humans have always had ways of marking death, but in Victorian England death became a morbid obsession that went global – death was as much ‘celebrated’ as it was a source of fear and sadness. Queen Victoria herself became a figurehead of grief after the death of her beloved Prince Albert in 1861. Her ensuing fascination with death took many visual forms – from her ritualised embrace of black clothing to the building of ostentatious monuments – and massively influenced cultural norms in both the UK and further afield. The Victorians built complex cemeteries, collected precious memento mori, commissioned bizarre death portraits and obsessed over the correct mourning attire and funerary protocol, while turn-of-the century America saw reflections of many of these cultural phenomena. The bestsellers of the period were often about life and death (think Frankenstein and Dracula), while the art, architecture and style – with its often dark and heavy gothic overtones – revelled in the glamorisation of death. Beyond the Veil brings this extraordinarily elaborate and stylised visual culture together while expertly explaining and elaborating on its most peculiar and fascinating aspects.
Product details
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
208
Release Date:
2025-09-16
Publication Date:
2025-09-16
Publisher:
Frances Lincoln
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1836004222
ISBN13:
9781836004226
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
718 g
Height:
176 cm
Width:
229 cm
Thickness:
25 cm
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