V&A Museum, 2020. Paperback. New softcover in printed wraps. 8vo. (9 x 1 x 6 inches) Clean text free of marks or underlining. Gorgeous color photos printing on heavy paper throughout the books. Includes notes, further readings and photo credits. 95 pp.

Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. New. Item #202293
ISBN: 9781838510084

Darren Waterston's Filthy Lucre presents a dystopian response to the celebrated Peacock Room of 1876, designed by the architect Thomas Jeckyll and made infamous by the controversial painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Whistler's lavish palette of vivid blues and iridescent green-golds, sumptuous treatments that covered every surface from window shutters to ceiling, and gilded peacock motifs, inspired the title of his decorative masterpiece: Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room.

The title of Waterston's work - Filthy Lucre - conversely reflects the underbelly of the Aesthetic Movement, the tension between art and commerce, patronage and artistic ego. This was demonstrated by the deteriorating relationship between Whistler and his patron Frederick Richards Leyland and culminated in Whistler's satiric portrait of Leyland known as The Golden Scab:Eruption in Frilthy Lucre, which played on Leyland's predilection not only for frilly shirts but also his role as a captain of industry, and inspired Waterston's rendition.

In Filthy Lucre, the interior operates almost as a stage set occupied by the ghosts of departed performers evidenced by the broken pots, splintered shelves and echoed by the mournful soundscape that accompanies the installation. Waterston reimagines the Peacock Room in a way that is at once architectural, sculptural and theatrical, its ceramic content reinforcing the visceral drama of the work.

Price: $48.95