David Jobling
REVIEW | EXPO
October 1st 2008 03:42
:
Allen and Unwin
EXPO - International Expositions 1851 - 2010
by Anna Jackson
RRP $49.95
Published by V&A
by Anna Jackson
RRP $49.95
Published by V&A
Anna Jackson is Deputy Keeper of the V&A Museum's Asian Department and curator of the forthcoming exhibition, Maharajas (V&A 2009). She co-curated Encounters and co-edited the accompanying book (V&A 2004). She is also the author of Japanese Textiles (V&A 2000) and a contributor to Art Deco (V&A 2003).
With EXPO International expositions 1851 - 2010, Jackson seems to be in her element providing rich insights into the important activities of promoting the future and acknowledging the present.
Following the enormous success of London's Great Exhibition of 1851, expositions have been held in Europe, America and Asia and provided a stage on which the world has come together to display its achievements and ambitions. Fully illustrated with posters, ephemera, photographs, books and catalogue plates it's a feast for the eyes and mind. The book is broken into four chapters that look at the World's Stage, the City Transformed, the World Displayed and the Future Represented.
All through the book there are fascinating facts about Expositions of the past and how various members of public responded to new inventions. Items such as the electric light bulb and the television set were revealed to an excited public at World Expositions.
Concepts of the future are enormously interesting to look at retrospectively, just as the world of the imagination is. Here there is a constant stream of ideas and styles that seem ancient and strange to us now, certainly in the earlier years. It's not until the middle of the last century where things start to seem familiar.
The ideas of what the future looks like, sounds like, feels like has always stimulated much interest and nowhere more it seems than at an International Expo.
This is a very worthy read, with plenty of images to view, a great book for anyone with an interest in history, art and society.
The V&A Museum is one of the most distinguished art museums in the world and this book is another feather in the cap of their excellent publishing arm. Distributed in Australia by Allen and Unwin, EXPO is well worth a look.
David Jobling
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