Continuum Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture: Commodifying the Ocean World (Biotechne: Interthinking Art, Science and Design)

The 19th-century ocean world inspired a multifaceted material discourse that intersected with scientific exploration, colonial expansion, industrial development, and the rise of middle-class leisure. From the seashore to the seabed, marine life forms and environments, made tangible through a range of representational technologies, processing and marketing, captivated practitioners, and audiences on a local and global scale. How did metropolitan and regional scientists, artists, dealers, designers, manufacturers and amateur enthusiasts experience and value the products and sites of the sea? This book examines the commoditization of the ocean world focusing on the transaction of oceanic objects in the intersecting realms of art, science, and culture. Through a combination of essays and case studies by scholars, curators, and scientists, Sea Currents in Nineteenth-Century Art, Science and Culture takes a closer look at the material, aesthetic and commercial dimensions of the collection and display, illustration and decoration, and trade and consumption of marine flora and fauna. Embodied in specimens, casts and models; pictured in paintings, prints and photographs; and stylized in fashion, the decorative arts and architecture, sea products – including seaweeds, shells, pearls, corals, anemones, sponges, jellyfish, mollusks, fish and whales – were deployed in marine stations and museums, exhibitions and emporia, homes and gardens, and colonial and indigenous industries catering to internationalizing markets. Engaging with the intersections between global art history, the history of science, empire studies, anthropology, ecocriticism and material culture, the essays in this volume explore the currency of marine matter embedded in the economies and ecologies of the 19th-century ocean world.