Were The Pre-Raphaelites Really the Victorian Avant-Garde? Can an idea that looks backward also look forward? That question hangs over the the Tate Britain’s new exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde at the same moment that it celebrates the now crowd-pleasing artists that made up the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Edward Burne-Jones. As seductive as the femme fatales featured in works such as Rosetti’s Astarte Syriaca (from 1877; detail shown above), the idea that the Pre-Raphaelites stepped back aesthetically to step forward artistically seems just crazy enough to be true. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Were The Pre-Raphaelites Really the VictorianAvant-Garde?" [Image: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Astarte Syriaca (detail), 1877. Copyright Manchester City Galleries.][Many thanks to the Tate Britain for the image above and other press materials related to the exhibition Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde, which runs through January 13, 2013.]
