Twentieth-Century Design; and The Photograph

by Jonathan W. Woodham
Twentieth-Century Design
(Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1997).
ISBN 0-19-284204-8.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

These are new titles from an anticipated series of about 50 volumes in the Oxford History of Art, which will cover world art and architecture as well as less typical areas as Art and the New Technology, Art and Film, and Art and Science.

In Woodham's design history, he allows little space for celebrated individuals, movements, or particular objects (which change their meanings when used or viewed in different periods and places), preferring instead to present an account of patterns of consumption, taste, and cultural significance, in the belief that "the most famous designs of the twentieth century are not those in museums, but in the marketplace."

Social context is also Clarke's focus in his overview of photography, although he is much more inclined to admit that photography has a history because of "a series of individual photographers who have been central to its development and who have produced what remain its definitive images." He begins with "What is a Photograph?," "How Do We Read a Photograph?," and "Photography and the Nineteenth Century," then embarks on a series of essays about subject categories: Landscape, the city, portraiture, the body, and documentary reportage. Both books include dozens of illustrations, a timeline, and an annotated bibliography.
(Review reprinted from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 12 No 3, Spring 1997)