Exhibiting Welshness: art, politics and national identity in Wales 1940-1994
Exhibiting Welshness: art, politics and national identity in Wales 1940-1994
The study aims to analyse the culture of the visual arts in Wales between 1940 and 1994 – a period when the British state took formal responsibility for arts patronage through the Arts Council of Great Britain. Special attention focuses on how exhibitions organised by Welsh representatives of the Arts Council helped define and assert a Welsh sense of national identity, whose interests this served, and what were its wider implications. Following Peter Lord’s idea of an “Aesthetics of Relevance,” the study therefore examines Welsh art in relation to the broader social, political and economic development of the Welsh nation. Using discourse analysis of exhibition files held in the Welsh Arts Council Archive, together with other primary and secondary sources, the study finds that the Welsh Arts Council promoted a British sense of Welshness – conceived first in communal, later in more progressive terms – that served to legitimise and reproduce the British social democratic consensus negotiated between government, capital and labour during the Second World War. At the same time, it marginalised nationalist ideas of Wales. This was achieved not only through the kinds of images shown by the Welsh Arts Council, but also how they were presented to Welsh audiences. In conceptual terms, the Welsh Arts Council can therefore be thought of as a “disciplinary mechanism” which made use of curatorial practices of display to regulate images into discursive formations that permitted, and so naturalised, certain ways of thinking about national identity, while silencing others. In turn, this codification of national culture helped define the social-space of the Welsh nation. On the other hand, audiences often challenged the authorised version of Welsh art through the different knowledges and experiences they brought to a display site. Art is therefore a key discursive space in which consensus on national identity is negotiated and contested.
Welsh art, cultural policy, Welsh Arts Council, Arts Council, Welsh history, National identity, Nationalism, exhibitions, public art, Modernist art, British cultural history
Jones, Huw D.
8a9d536b-2b68-41be-a1a6-da9aff14ec63
2007
Jones, Huw D.
8a9d536b-2b68-41be-a1a6-da9aff14ec63
Gruffydd, Pyrs
158c53c0-6d8b-4e3d-b45d-5bd8f15dd6b2
Jones, Huw D.
(2007)
Exhibiting Welshness: art, politics and national identity in Wales 1940-1994.
University of Wales, Doctoral Thesis, 287pp.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
The study aims to analyse the culture of the visual arts in Wales between 1940 and 1994 – a period when the British state took formal responsibility for arts patronage through the Arts Council of Great Britain. Special attention focuses on how exhibitions organised by Welsh representatives of the Arts Council helped define and assert a Welsh sense of national identity, whose interests this served, and what were its wider implications. Following Peter Lord’s idea of an “Aesthetics of Relevance,” the study therefore examines Welsh art in relation to the broader social, political and economic development of the Welsh nation. Using discourse analysis of exhibition files held in the Welsh Arts Council Archive, together with other primary and secondary sources, the study finds that the Welsh Arts Council promoted a British sense of Welshness – conceived first in communal, later in more progressive terms – that served to legitimise and reproduce the British social democratic consensus negotiated between government, capital and labour during the Second World War. At the same time, it marginalised nationalist ideas of Wales. This was achieved not only through the kinds of images shown by the Welsh Arts Council, but also how they were presented to Welsh audiences. In conceptual terms, the Welsh Arts Council can therefore be thought of as a “disciplinary mechanism” which made use of curatorial practices of display to regulate images into discursive formations that permitted, and so naturalised, certain ways of thinking about national identity, while silencing others. In turn, this codification of national culture helped define the social-space of the Welsh nation. On the other hand, audiences often challenged the authorised version of Welsh art through the different knowledges and experiences they brought to a display site. Art is therefore a key discursive space in which consensus on national identity is negotiated and contested.
This record has no associated files available for download.
More information
Published date: 2007
Additional Information:
Praise for Exhibiting Welshness:
"For the evolution of Arts Council policy in Wales, see Huw David Jones, 'Exhibiting Welshness: Art, Politics and National Identity in Wales, 1940-1994', unpublished PhD thesis, Swansea University, 2007. I have drawn extensively on the work of Dr Jones for this chapter, and I am greatly indebted to him for his enrichment of my understanding of the period".
Peter Lord (2016). The Tradition: A New History of Welsh Art, 1400-1990. Cardigan: Parthian, p.322 [n.28]. (Peter Lord is Wales's leading art historian)
Keywords:
Welsh art, cultural policy, Welsh Arts Council, Arts Council, Welsh history, National identity, Nationalism, exhibitions, public art, Modernist art, British cultural history
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 419526
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/419526
PURE UUID: d51b59a6-aa41-4f83-a847-4a16dbcbe1e0
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 13 Apr 2018 16:30
Last modified: 07 Feb 2024 02:57
Export record
Contributors
Thesis advisor:
Pyrs Gruffydd
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics
