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The University of Chicago Exquisite Schemes: The THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO EXQUISITE SCHEMES: THE AESTHETICS OF EXCESS IN THE LATE BRITISH EMPIRE, 1890-1930 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE BY JACOB HARRIS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2020 Copyright 2020 by Jacob Harris. All rights reserved. ii Table of Contents List of Figures.................................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................................... vi Abstract.............................................................................................................................................................. ix Introduction........................................................................................................................................................ 1 I. The arts of excess...................................................................................................................................... 1 II. Excess and empire in the fin-de-siècle and the early 20th century……......................................... 10 III. Method................................................................................................................................................... 15 IV. Chapter outline..................................................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 1: Exquisite Schemes: Modernist Aesthetics and the Problem of Luxury ............................. 26 I. Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 26 II. Luxury and modernity........................................................................................................................... 32 III. Thinking luxury in the 19th century .................................................................................................. 38 IV. Decadent rarities, modernist anti-decadence................................................................................... 47 V. The Figure in the Carpet....................................................................................................................... 56 Coda: Georges Bataille and the critical life of luxury in the 20th century .......................................... 68 Chapter 2: Drawing from life in Colonial India: W.E.G. Solomon, Living labor, and Modern Indian Art in the Early 20th Century.......................................................................................................................... 72 I. Indian art under the Raj.......................................................................................................................... 72 II. Exquisite labor........................................................................................................................................ 78 III. Labor and modernity in colonial India............................................................................................. 81 IV. Art and labor, art and life.................................................................................................................... 86 V. Modern Indian art.................................................................................................................................. 94 VI. The Bombay revival of Indian art .................................................................................................. 101 VII. The exquisiteness of the Delhi and India House murals .......................................................... 107 Chapter 3: A Wild of Weird Delights: Ronald Firbank and the Erotics of the Surface .................... 115 I. Vellum..................................................................................................................................................... 115 II. Firbank and the modern surface....................................................................................................... 122 III. Mapping Firbank: surface, style, structure .................................................................................... 130 IV. The Flower and Santal........................................................................................................................... 136 V. Gauguinish grace ................................................................................................................................. 143 Coda: Egypt: Native Artisan ...................................................................................................................... 152 Coda: Raghubir Singh and the Postcolonial Afterlife of Aesthetic Excess in India........................... 156 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................................... 161 iii List of Figures Images have been omitted to avoid violating copyright. Fig. 0.1: A selection of objects made of hair encased in resin by Studio Swine, 2014. Fig. 0.2. A gold bullet by Aram Moordian. Information is encoded within the grooves, able to be read by a purpose-built machine Fig. 1.1. An illustration by Ms. Tice for Mina Loy’s Poem, “Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots,” in a 1914 issue of Rogue Fig. 1.2. The first page of Yeats’ playscript for At The Hawk’s Well in Harper’s Bazar, featuring Edmond Dulac’s costume designs and other embellishments. Fig. 1.3. Another page of Yeat’s script for At the Hawk’s Well, showing advertisements for fashionable items. Fig. 2.1. King Porus meets with Alexander the Great after the battle of Hydaspes, a mural inside India House, London. Fig. 2.2. A contemporary photograph of the Indian Room at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London. Fig. 2.3. An interior designed by William Morris, preserved at Standen, West Sussex. Fig. 2.4. An allegory of the Vaishya Caste by G.H. Nagarkar Fig. 2.5. Poetry, allegorical fresco with art-nouveau elements by either S. Fyzee-Rahamin or M.V. Dhurandhar in the North Block of the Secretariat Building, New Delhi Fg. 2.6. An angelic figure by S. Fyzee Rahamin in the Delhi Secretariat Fig. 2.7. A preparatory painting for the Secretariat mural by a student of the Bombay School of Art, c. 1920s. Fig. 2.8. Childhood pendentive in the Octagonal Hall at India House, London Fig. 2.9. Love pendentive in the Octagonal Hall at India House, London Fig. 3.1. A page from the journal in which Firbank kept notes for both The Flower Beneath the Foot and Santal during his travels in Tunisia and Algeria Fig. 3.3. Egypt: Native Artisan, photograph by Lehnert and Landrock, as it appears on the interior cover of Firbank’s notebook Fig. 3.4. Young Arabian Man, photograph by Lehnert and Landrock, 1910s. A more typical example of the studio’s nude male photography, mimicking the Orientalism of 19th century French painting. iv Fig. 4.1. Fruit Seller and a Boy with a Child at Zaina Kadal Bridge, Jhelum River, Srinagar Kashmir, photograph by Raghubir Singh. 1979. v Acknowledgements I first decided that I wanted to pursue doctoral studies in English literature while I was still in high school. I imagine that the earliest stirrings of an interest in the turn of the 20th century took shape there as well: at Avondale Alternative Secondary School in Toronto, where I was precociously introduced to the basics of critical theory. My intellectual formation has been enduringly marked by the influence of my teacher Paul Leonard, whom I am lucky a decade later to have as a friend and interlocutor. I am indebted to the many professors who influenced me at York University in Toronto, and who nurtured my scholarly ambitions over the course of my BA. I am grateful to Igor Djordjevic, who took me seriously as an intellectual and encouraged my ability ever since my first year of college. I am also grateful to Terry Goldie for encouraging me to apply to graduate programs in the United States. I would also like to thank Elicia Clements and David Latham for their support with my application to this program. I began my PhD in the English Department at the University of Chicago in 2014, and I have always considered myself fortunate to have joined a large, supportive, and sociable cohort. Thanks to Vinh Cam, Joseph Bitney, Beatrice Bradley, Shirl Yang, Caroline Heller, Carrie Taylor, Gerónimo Sarmiento Cruz, and Javier Ibañez, for making life as fun as it has been stimulating over the last six years. I’m also grateful for the close friendships that I have been able to form with others at UChicago and Northwestern. Gary Kafer, Ektor Acarón, C.C. McKee, Marissa Fenley, and Matt Beeber have made life so much better over the years. I would never have been able to write this dissertation without the support, direction, and immense patience of my extraordinary committee, who always had faith in my ideas even when my own confidence flagged. I thank Bill Brown for his abundant intellectual generosity, his thoroughness and care as a reader, and for his knack for tapping into the unconscious of my vi arguments. I thank Maud Ellmann for her mentorship ever since my first quarter of coursework, for the judiciousness with which she kept my thinking grounded while still encouraging its eccentricity, and for her sobering
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