ganymedesrocks: patrickhumphreys:Duncan Grant, Football, Borough Polytechnic mural, 1911.… Bloomsbur
ganymedesrocks: patrickhumphreys:Duncan Grant, Football, Borough Polytechnic mural, 1911. … Bloomsbury imagined modernism as a form of Byzantinism. The Borough Polytechnic decorations were the first public demonstration of this ethos. Fry began scrapping the commission’s specification of a didactic idealization of the labor of food production, replacing this program with “The Amusements of London,” a theme suggestive of the spontaneous, sensual pleasures of modern life. The amusements depicted were conceived to reflect the experiences of a working-class audience, and included the zoo, a Punch and Judy show, a football match, as well as scenes of swimming and sailing toy boats in city parks. Long before [Roger] Fry committed to print his description of modernism as an art for housemaids rather than their employers, the Borough Polytechnic murals proclaimed his belief in Post-Impressionism as an art that could transcend class boundaries by appealing to the untutored senses. —Christopher Reed, 2004 Duncan Grant, born James Corrowr Grant (1885 - 1978) -- source link