The context of economic risk and the concomitant imagination of calamity that she evokes in this beautifully written book could not be more topical if she had invented the whole thing. These artworks were hitherto interpreted exclusively via the rhetorics of the picturesque, but Dubin brings their salient modernities to life. Street Professor of French, Yale University' Nina Dubin s incisive readings of Hubert Robert s ruin pictures, seen through the lens of period financial fears and speculations, will completely alter the prevailing wisdom about these paintings.

'Choice'' An astute reader of images and their cultural implications, Nina Dubin proposes in this beautifully produced study of Hubert Robert s enigmatic apocalypses a new understanding of how late-eighteenth-century aesthetics responded to the precarious temporality of dislocations that redefined economic value, politics, urbanism, and the very sense of what history might be. 'H-France Review'' In this well-written and thought-provoking book, Dubin focuses on Hubert Robert s paintings of ruins, interpreted as part of a culture that understood itself to be modern via its capacity to envision its own destruction. Street Professor of French, Yale University Nina Dubin s study has compiled an impressive array of contemporary sources for a comprehensive analysis of the motivations, influences, and implications of Hubert Robert s paintings from the late eighteenth century. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Īn astute reader of images and their cultural implications, Nina Dubin proposes in this beautifully produced study of Hubert Robert's enigmatic apocalypses a new understanding of how late-eighteenth-century aesthetics responded to the precarious temporality of dislocations that redefined economic value, politics, urbanism, and the very sense of what history might be.-Thomas Kavanagh, Augutus R. This captivating account - lavishly illustrated with rarely reproduced objects. The paintings are examined as expressions of the pleasures and perils of a risk economy. Drawing on a vast range of materials, 'Futures & Ruins' understands these artworks as harbingers of a modern appetite for destruction. At the center of this lively narrative lie Robert's depictions of the ruins of Paris - macabre and spectacular paintings of fires and demolitions created on the eve of the French Revolution. As the favored artist of an enterprising Parisian elite, Robert is a prophetic case study of the intersections between aesthetics and modernity's dawning business culture. In this timely and provocative study, Hubert Robert's paintings of urban ruins are interpreted as manifestations of a new consciousness of time, one shaped by the uncertainties of an economy characterized by the dread-inducing expansion of credit, frenzied speculation on the stock exchange, and bold ventures in real estate.

Futures & Ruins by Nina L. Dubin