Family Art (Family Life S.) - Hardcover

This work is a celebration of the idea of family art. Under this broad theme, the author examines all the different ways in which families express themselves through images, objects, rites and ceremonies. From photographs, portraits, patchwork quilts and rugs to the life of gardens, Christmases and Jewish festivals, the author shows how families construct their own worlds. Through the active creation of artefacts and familiar ceremonies, family art enables each member of the group to feel at home and also to extend hospitality beyond the narrow confines of one family unit to the world outside. This book has assembled a vast array of examples of family art from Britain, Europe and North America: a German painting of a family tree, African hooked rugs, Danish `hygge', the English child's garden. While the family art discussed in the book is largely modern, Western and middle class, the author argues that it nevertheless embodies values which are universal, and which stand against homelessness in all its forms. Family art helps those within the family to flourish both as individuals and as members of a group to make the world more homelike. `Family Art' is a richly illustrated and sensitively written work, which will appeal to students of the history of art, popular culture, sociology, anthropology, and to the general reader interested in the history of the family.