Carol Mavor

Last updated
Carol Mavor
TitleProfessor of Art History and Visual Culture
Academic background
Alma mater University of California, Santa Cruz
Thesis Utopic imagings of difference within Victorian culture: The little girl, the sleeper, the Virgin Mother and "the-maid-of-all-work" (1989)
Notable works
  • Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs
  • Becoming: The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden
  • Blue Mythologies: Reflections on a Colour
Website www.carolmavor.com

Carol Jane Mavor is an American writer and professor. Her work includes the books Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs, Becoming: The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden, and Blue Mythologies: Reflections on a Colour. She is Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Manchester.

Contents

Writing

Mavor's first book, Pleasures Taken: Performances of Sexuality and Loss in Victorian Photographs, was published by Duke University Press in 1995. Pleasures Taken critically analyzes three Victorian era photograph collections, including photographs of young girls collected by Lewis Carroll, and argues that similarities in fantasies between Victorians and people of the present day make it difficult for current observers to see Victorian desires. [1] While The Times Literary Supplement described her application of literary theory as "strained", it also noted that Mavor "intends to provoke, and she succeeds". [2]

Four years later Mavor's second book, Becoming: The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden, was published by Duke University Press. Becoming examines the photographs taken by Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden of her daughters, and reads them for sensual and erotic content. Susan Freeman, writing for the Journal of Women's History , summarized the book as "a theoretical and provocative examination of female photographers and their subjects, mother-daughter relationships, pleasure, and same-sex sexuality". [3] The Village Voice praised Mavor's "real flair for evoking and elucidating individual images" but criticized her "tendency to fall into erotic flights of fancy", ultimately concluding that "Mavor's analytic foibles far outweigh her strengths". [4] The Times Literary Supplement also found fault with Mavor's "single-minded" interpretations, and noted that the book "shows no interest in how Hawarden herself might have viewed her photography". [5]

Mavor's 2007 book Reading Boyishly: J.M. Barrie, Roland Barthes, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Marcel Proust and D.W. Winnicott, a "boyish" exploration of the work of the authors named in the title, was described by Grayson Perry in The Guardian as a "thrilling mix of philosophy, photography, biography and much more", [6] and by Susan Salter Reynolds in the Los Angeles Times as "a defense of adolescence". [7]

In 2012 Duke University Press published Mavor's book Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion of Camera Lucida, La Jetée, Sans Soleil and Hiroshima mon amour, in which Mavor uses personal recollections to interpret the French post-war works of Roland Barthes, Chris Marker, Marguerite Duras and Alain Resnais. The Los Angeles Review of Books described the book as “a testimony to the bruising and wounding power of art” written in "an unabashedly first person, nonprescriptive account". [8] In French Studies , Max Silverman pointed out that "Carol Mavor does not write conventional works of art and literary criticism" and that although the writing is "defiantly non-rational", its "poetic ‘logic’ of similarities and differences and correspondences and absences open up culture and the unconscious in illuminating ways." [9]

Blue Mythologies: Reflections on a Colour, which Publishers Weekly called a "fine, multi-disciplinary work" that "explores the color's aesthetic and emotional resonances from a fresh perspective", was published by Reaktion Books in 2013. [10] Visual Studies summarized Blue Mythologies as "a poetic and scholarly exploration of humanity's fascination with blue, written in an unashamedly personal and structurally inventive style". [11] Writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books , Dylan Montanari praised Mavor's ability "to coax us into having a less complacent attitude to our own contradictory investments, even when it comes to something as apparently innocuous as a color", but also noted that some readers might dismiss some of the book's analysis as "fanciful musings on Mavor's part, fit for a memoir, perhaps, but little else". [8] Philip Hoare of Times Higher Education suggested that "it is easier to read Blue Mythologies as enhanced poetry, rather than prose", concluding that the book "succeeds in directing our eyes anew". [12]

Mavor's most recent book, Aurelia: Art and Literature Through the Mouth of the Fairy Tale was published by Reaktion Books in 2017. For Jack Zipes the book itself is “an extraordinary, poetical, and analytical fairy tale” about art, literature and fairytales, which Mavor then uses to demonstrate “how we comprehend and metonymically live our lives through these stories”. [13]

Mavor's poem "Mothball Moon" was published in P. N. Review. [14] She has also written essays for Cabinet Magazine. [15]

Films

Mavor created the film Fairy Tale Still Almost Blue, which was described in The Philadelphia Inquirer as "something akin to an all-female, fairy-tale version of Thomas Mann's dark novella Death in Venice". [16] She also wrote and performed in Full, which was filmed and edited by Megan Powell. [17]

Academic career

Mavor is a professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Manchester, [18] and has held temporary honorary positions at other institutions including the Northrop Frye Chair in Literary Theory at the University of Toronto in 2010 [19] and the Novo Nordic Professor Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Copenhagen in 2019. [20] She taught formerly at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her PhD in the History of Consciousness in 1989 under the direction of Hayden White at the University of California, Santa Cruz. [21]

Podcasts

In 2018, the podcast This is Love spoke with Mavor for their episode, "Blue." [22]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<i>La Jetée</i> 1962 French film

La Jetée is a 1962 French science fiction featurette directed by Chris Marker and associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is 28 minutes long and shot in black and white.

"On Fairy-Stories" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the fairy story as a literary form. It was written as a lecture entitled "Fairy Stories" for the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, on 8 March 1939.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fairy</span> Mythical being or legendary creature in European folklore

A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural, or preternatural.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Lang</span> Scottish poet, novelist and literary critic (1844–1912)

Andrew Lang was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Greenaway</span> British artist

Catherine Greenaway was an English Victorian artist and writer, known for her children's book illustrations. She received her education in graphic design and art between 1858 and 1871 from the Finsbury School of Art, the South Kensington School of Art, the Heatherley School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. She began her career designing for the burgeoning holiday card market, producing Christmas and Valentine's cards. In 1879 wood-block engraver and printer, Edmund Evans, printed Under the Window, an instant best-seller, which established her reputation. Her collaboration with Evans continued throughout the 1880s and 1890s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Rackham</span> English book illustrator

Arthur Rackham was an English book illustrator. He is recognised as one of the leading figures during the Golden Age of British book illustration. His work is noted for its robust pen and ink drawings, which were combined with the use of watercolour, a technique he developed due to his background as a journalistic illustrator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Doyle (illustrator)</span> English illustrator

Richard "Dickie" Doyle was a British illustrator of the Victorian era. His work frequently appeared, amongst other places, in Punch magazine; he drew the cover of the first issue, and designed the magazine's masthead, a design that was used for over a century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cupid and Psyche</span> Classical story of Cupid and Psyche

Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from Metamorphoses, written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis. The tale concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche and Cupid or Amor, and their ultimate union in a sacred marriage. Although the only extended narrative from antiquity is that of Apuleius from 2nd century AD, Eros and Psyche appear in Greek art as early as the 4th century BC. The story's Neoplatonic elements and allusions to mystery religions accommodate multiple interpretations, and it has been analyzed as an allegory and in light of folktale, Märchen or fairy tale, and myth.

Fairy painting is a genre of painting and illustration featuring fairies and fairy tale settings, often with extreme attention to detail. The genre is most closely associated with Victorian painting in the United Kingdom, but has experienced a contemporary revival. Moreover, fairy painting was also seen as escapism for Victorians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Halberstam</span> American academic, LGBT+ activist

Jack Halberstam, PhD, previously known as Judith Halberstam, is an American academic. Since 2017, Dr. Halberstam has been a professor in the department of English and comparative literature and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University. Previously, Halberstam was a professor of American studies and ethnicity, gender studies, and comparative literature, and the director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California (USC). Halberstam was the Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC. Halberstam is a gender and queer theorist and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gayle Rubin</span> American cultural anthropologist, activist, and feminist

Gayle S. Rubin is an American cultural anthropologist best known as an activist and theorist of sex and gender politics. She has written on a range of subjects including feminism, sadomasochism, prostitution, pedophilia, pornography and lesbian literature, as well as anthropological studies and histories of sexual subcultures, especially focused in urban contexts. Her 1984 essay "Thinking Sex" is widely regarded as a founding text of gay and lesbian studies, sexuality studies, and queer theory. She is an associate professor of anthropology and women's studies at the University of Michigan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden</span> British photographer (1822–1865)

Clementina Maude, Viscountess Hawarden, commonly known as Lady Clementina Hawarden, was a British amateur portrait photographer of the Victorian Era. She produced over 800 photographs mostly of her adolescent daughters.

Joani Blank was an American sex educator, entrepreneur, author, videographer, cohousing enthusiast, philanthropist, and inventor in the field of sexuality. She used publishing, her sex store, and other endeavors to promote sex-positive feminism. Her papers are part of the Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University Library.

Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825–1916) was an artist of the Victorian era whose work consisted mainly of watercolor illustrations in children’s books. These illustrations were strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, being highly detailed and haunting in content. Love and death were popular subject matter of Pre-Raphaelite art and something that can be seen in Eleanor Vere Boyle’s work. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, even called her work "great in design." However, even though she was one of the first woman artists to be recognized for her achievements, she did not exhibit or sell work often as it was not acceptable given her family’s social status. Thus, she signed her works “EVB” to obscure her identity and quickly became one of the most important female illustrators in the 1860s.

Jane M. Blocker is a Professor of Contemporary Art and Theory and the Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she is affiliated with the Moving Image Studies at the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. In a note on the back cover of Blocker's What the Body Cost Lucy R. Lippard writes of her: "Jane Blocker is as good a writer, scholar, and original thinker as feminists could hope for."

Feminist revisionist mythology is feminist literature informed by feminist literary criticism, or by the politics of feminism more broadly and that engages with mythology, fairy tales, religion, or other areas.

<i>Still Time</i> (book)

Still Time is a 1994 photography book by Sally Mann. The book is published by Aperture and was released alongside Mann's exhibition for the photographs. The book consists of 60 four-color and duotone images of landscapes as well as abstract photography and images of Mann's children, some of which have been collected from her previous book, Immediate Family. The cover image is a photograph of Mann's 7 year old daughter Jessie, who is pictured topless with her breasts covered by nightblooming cereus. The book opens with a quote from Eric Ormsby's Childhood House, and images focus on the theme of the passing of time.

Annabel Dover is a British artist. She has a BA (Hons) in fine art from Newcastle University (1998), an MA in fine art from Central Saint Martins, London (2002), and a teaching qualification (PGCE) in art and design from the University of Cambridge (2003).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonora Blanche Alleyne</span> English author, editor, and translator

Leonora Blanche "Nora" Lang was an English author, editor, and translator. She is best known as variously the translator, collaborator and writer of The Fairy Books, a series of 25 collections of folk and fairy tales for children she published with her husband, Andrew Lang, between 1889 and 1913. The best known of these are the Rainbow Fairy Books, a series of twelve collections of fairy tales each assigned a different colour.

Phillip Prodger is a museum professional, curator, author, and art historian. He is the Senior Research Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art and formerly served as Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Born in Margate, Kent, he currently resides outside of New Haven, Connecticut.

References

  1. ↑ Cline, P. K. (1996). "Pleasures taken: Performances of sexuality and loss in Victorian photographs by Carol Mavor". Choice . Vol. 33, no. 5. p. 831. doi:10.5860/CHOICE.33-2807.
  2. ↑ Warner, Marina (October 13, 1995). "Angels and their masquerades". The Times Literary Supplement . No. 4828. p. 20.
  3. ↑ Freeman, Susan K. "The Photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden". Journal of Women's History . 14 (1): 215.
  4. ↑ Dieckmann, Katherine (August 24, 1999). "Portrait of a Victorian photographer". The Village Voice . p. 57.
  5. ↑ Duguid, Lindsay (October 15, 1999). "Becoming: The photographs of Clementina, Viscountess Hawarden". The Times Literary Supplement . p. 36.
  6. ↑ "Critics and public figures on the books they just couldn't put down". The Guardian. November 29, 2008. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  7. ↑ Salter Reynolds, Susan (February 24, 2008). "Lad Tidings" . Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  8. 1 2 Montanari, Dylan J. (December 5, 2013). "Lasting Impressions: Carol Mavor's Affective Palette". Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  9. ↑ Silverman, Max (January 1, 2014). "Black and Blue: The Bruising Passion of 'Camera Lucida', 'La Jetée', 'Sans soleil', and 'Hiroshima mon amour' by Carol Mavor (review)". French Studies: A Quarterly Review. 68: 130. doi:10.1093/fs/knt265. S2CID   187073153.
  10. ↑ "Blue Mythologies: Reflections on a Colour". Publishers Weekly . April 22, 2013. Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  11. ↑ Loske, Alexandra (2014). "Blue mythologies: Reflections on a colour / The story of black". Visual Studies. 29 (2): 217–220. doi:10.1080/1472586X.2014.887281. S2CID   219609778.
  12. ↑ Hoare, Philip (November 7, 2013). "Blue Mythologies: Reflections on a Colour, by Carol Mavor". Times Higher Education . Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  13. ↑ Zipes, Jack (2018). "Aurelia: Art and Literature through the Mouth of the Fairy Tale by Carol Mavor (review)". Marvels & Tales. 32 (2): 465. doi:10.13110/marvelstales.32.2.0465 – via Project MUSE.
  14. ↑ Mavor, Carol (2016). "Mothball Moon". P.N. Review. 42 (5).
  15. ↑ "Contributors, Carol Mavor". Cabinet Magazine. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
  16. ↑ Newhall, Edie (July 22, 2012). "Little Berlin show devoted to art and writing". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
  17. ↑ Mavor, Carol. "FULL". FULL. Retrieved July 17, 2019.
  18. ↑ "Prof Carol Mavor: Professor of Visual Arts". University of Manchester . Retrieved October 9, 2018.
  19. ↑ Durden, Mark (2013). Fifty Key Writers on Photography. Routledge. p. 168. ISBN   978-0-415-54944-8.
  20. ↑ "Affiliated honorary professors". University of Copenhagen, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  21. ↑ Mavor, Carol Jane (1989). Utopic imagings of difference within Victorian culture: The little girl, the sleeper, the Virgin Mother and "the-maid-of-all-work" (PhD). University of California, Santa Cruz. OCLC   22096184.
  22. ↑ "Blue". This is Love . December 5, 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.