The Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory congratulates Associate Professor Joseph Monteyne on the release of his new book, Media Critique in the Age of Gillray: Scratches, Scraps, and Spectres (University of Toronto Press, 2022). His essay is also being featured in Alex Tedlie-Stursberg: Sous la Plage, Les Pavés, an exhibition catalogue published by Trapp Projects, Vancouver, 2022.
Media Critique in the Age of Gillray centres on printed images and graphic satires which view paper as the foundation for the contemporary world. Through a focus on printed, visual imagery from practitioners such as James Gillray, William Blake, John Thomas Smith, and Henry Fuseli, the book addresses challenges posed by reproductive technologies to traditional concepts of subjective agency.
Monteyne shows that the late eighteenth-century paper age’s baseless fabric set the stage for contemporary digital media’s weightless production. Engagingly written and abundantly illustrated, Media Critique in the Age of Gillray highlights the fact that graphic culture has been overlooked as an important sphere for the production of critical and self-reflective discourses around media transformations and the visual turn in British culture.
Media Critique in the Age of Gillray: Scratches, Scraps, and Spectres is available for purchase at: https://utorontopress.com/9781487527754/media-critique-in-the-age-of-gillray/
