Synthetic worlds : nature, art and the chemical industry
"From the late eighteenth century to the period immediately following the Second World War, there was a remarkable alliance between chemistry and art. Synthetic Worlds offers fascinating new insights into the place of the material object and the significance of the natural, the organic and the inorganic in Western aesthetics during that era."
280 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
9781861892485, 9781861895547, 1861892489, 1861895542
57485528
Introduction : Glints, facets and essence
1. Substance and philosophy: coal and poetry
2. Eyelike blots and synthetic colour
3. Shimmer and shine, waste and effort in the exchange economy
4. Twinkle and extra-terrestriality: a utopian interlude
5. Class struggle in colour
6. Nazi rainbows
7. Abstraction and extraction in the Third Reich
8. After Germany: pollutants, aura and colours that glow
Conclusion : Nature's beautiful corpse