Overview

Synthetic Worlds is an examination of the remarkable interactions between chemistry, industry, aesthetics and art. It describes how the innovations of chemical engineering have provided new colours and surfaces, new substances, coatings and textures, and how these have been employed by artists. It includes many unusual and compelling illustrations.

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9781861892485

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Reviews

her book is filled with sparkling things The Guardian ... a gripping, mostly German history of a 200-year period during which perceptions about the relationship between art and nature were profoundly affected by the chemical industry, sometimes with devastating consequences ... absorbing, shocking and funny. Modern Painters a remarkable work of scholarship that is rewarding to read at many levels. Although page-turner is not an adjective normally associated with reviews of academic books, it is one that sums up the enjoyment I had when reading Synthetic Worlds... it offers a source of well-researched information, thought-provoking debate and an enjoyable read. The Times Higher Education Supplement an original account of the material history of colour as synthesised by chemistry Art Monthly Synthetic Worlds revisits several aspects of our knowledge of the fascinating story of the emergence of artificial substances from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century; in doing so it serves as an excellent example of how we might further explore a major technological change in history ... a daring and original book Isis Leslie has produced a sparkling, kaleidoscopic exploration of what happened to art, aesthetics and the human condition when natural products were replaced by synthetic ones, and how industrial progress and consumerism have thrown up waste and pollution that even chemists cannot transform into value within a human timescale ... Leslie's hypnotic and stylish prose ranges widely Ambix: The Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry

Author Information

Esther Leslie is Lecturer in English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is the author of Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism (2000) and Hollywood Flatlands: Critical Theory, Animation and the Avant-garde (2002).

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