Diabolical designs

the long version

In Diabolical Designs, Deanna Marohn Bendix chronicles James McNeill Whistler's career as an "agitator" for elevating design. Demonstrating that Whistler's design ideas - seen most fully in his Peacock Room - were central to his entire artistic enterprise, Bendix reveals the artist's prominence in the Victorian design reform movement. She unearths rare documentation, public notices (both laudatory and critical), and written appreciation by his colleagues of at least twenty-five interiors designed by Whistler. Noting that many of his paintings were called "arrangements" - indeed, Whistler's Mother is actually titled Arrangement in Grey and Black - Bendix traces the extension of Whistler's holistic view of art to include the painting's frame and the entire setting in which the work would be seen. His designs for private and public spaces emphasized plain walls, light colors, and empty spaces; his stark interiors not only contrasted dramatically with the fussy Victorian style but pointed the way toward modern interior design. Bendix compares Whistler's role as a design influence to that of his contemporaries John Ruskin, William Morris, Edward Godwin, and his friend and rival Oscar Wilde. By exploring both well-known and obscure aspects of his career against the backdrop of the design mania of his time and milieu, she reveals Whistler's singular contributions to design renewal in Victorian England.