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Visual Arts

Anarchy & Beauty: William Morris and his Legacy, 1860 - 1960, National Portrait Gallery

16 Oct 14 – 11 Jan 15, 12:00 AM – 12:00 AM

‘Art is for all’: National Portrait Gallery London highlights this autumn include an examination of William Morris’ socialist views and the Arts and Crafts Movement

By CW Contributor on 19/8/2014

1 CW reader is interested
Copyright: Tate 2014  La Belle Iseult by William Morris, 1858, Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery
Copyright: Tate 2014 La Belle Iseult by William Morris, 1858, Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery
Anarchy & Beauty: William Morris and his Legacy, 1860 - 1960, National Portrait Gallery Anarchy & Beauty: William Morris and his Legacy, 1860 - 1960, National Portrait Gallery Ali Godwin
William Morris (1834-1896) is known for his block wallpaper designs of flora and fauna that have, in recent years, become fashionable once more on the walls of smart London drawing rooms. This ambitious multimedia exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery looks at the political ideas accompanying Morris’s designs and implicitly asks whether, in today’s world of inflated art markets, his idea that ‘art is for the people’ could survive.
Medieval Influence
Morris was a radical socialist who believed that beautiful things were meant for everyone. He even encased his copy of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in gold. Along with the art critic John Ruskin, Morris reinvented the idea of medieval ‘guilds’: collectives where artists could practice their crafts in environments of mutual support. Despairing of relentless Victorian industrialisation, Morris became increasingly enamoured by the art and literature of medieval England. This  obsession was shared among Morris’ Oxford peers Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti , and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of avant-garde painters. 
The collaborative results are explored in this exhibition of 70 objects and 70 portraits. Highlights include the Prioress’s Tale Wardrobe (1859); a cabinet built by the architect Philip Webb and decorated with Chaucerian fantasy by Burne-Jones, and which used to stand in Morris’ marital home, The Red House in Bexley Heath. Look out also for La Belle Iseult , a gorgeous tableau of medieval lore, which is Morris’s only completed easel work. 
As well as the gold-bound Marx bible there are a number of unusual objects to see, including the Indian sandals which Edward Carpenter had distributed amongst the liberal intelligentsia to replace the ‘ coffin -like imprisonment’ of normal shoes. 
Morris' Legacy
The exhibition broadly charts Morris’s legacy across an entire century, including a survey of contemporary Eric Gill’s contribution to the Arts and Crafts tradition (as well as titters at his infamously peculiar sex life). Curator Fiona McCarthy, who is best known for her books on British design, also interestingly sets Terence Conran up as Morris’s 1960s heir. However, above all this show celebrates Morris as a radical thinker and designer of lasting beauty. 

What Anarchy & Beauty: William Morris and his Legacy, 1860 - 1960, National Portrait Gallery
Where National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE | MAP
Nearest tube Charing Cross (underground)
When 16 Oct 14 – 11 Jan 15, 12:00 AM – 12:00 AM
Price £14 for adults, 12 for concessions,
Website Click here to book now



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  • Practical Information

    THE GALLERY

    The National Portrait Gallery, nestled on the edge of Trafalgar Square, puts faces to hundreds of names. Kings, queens, poets, inventors: it is an accessible archive of the characters that have populated our history books, curated chronologically. It's not all in in the past: there's also opportunity to consider more contemporary explorations of the portrait form: and not just that Kate Middleton portrait.

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