The Art of Evolution ─ Darwin, Darwinisms, and Visual Culture

Inspired by the Charles Darwin bicentennial, The Art of Evolution presents a collection of essays by international scholars renowned for their groundbreaking work on Darwin. The book not only includes a discussion of the popular imagery that immediately followed the publication of On the Origin of Species, but it also traces the impact of Darwin’s ideas on visual culture over time and throughout the Western world. The contributors analyze the visual expression of a broad range of Darwin-inspired subjects, including eugenics, aesthetics and sexual selection, monera and protoplasm theories, social Darwinism and colonialism, the Taylorized body, and the natural history of surrealism. The visual imagery responding to Darwin and Darwinism ranges from popular caricature to state propaganda to major trends within Modern Art and Modernism. This rarely addressed subject will enrich our understanding of Darwin’s impact across disciplines and reveal how transformations in science were manifested visually in so many enticingly unexpected ways. Contributors: Sara Barnes, Robert Michael Brain, Fae Brauer, Janet Browne, James Krasner, Barbara Larson, Marsha Morton, Gavin Parkinson, Andrew Patrizio, Phillip Prodger, Pat Simpson

BARBARA LARSON is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of West Florida. She is author of The Dark Side of Nature: Science, Society, and the Fantastic in the Work of Odilon Redon and the forthcoming Cain: Art and the Debates between Church and State in Early Third Republic France. FAE BRAUER is Professor of Art History and Theory at the University of New South Wales and Research Professor in Visual Theory at the University of East London. Her books include Corpus Delecti: Art, Sex and Eugenics and Modern Art’s Centre: The Paris Salons and the French “Civilizing Mission.”