Rossetti

Rossetti: Painter and Poet by JB Bullen, 261 pages

Rather than examine any part of his artistic output in isolation, Bullen's survey of the works of the Pre-Raphaelite master Dante Gabriel Rossetti considers both his poetry and his painting, with each informing the other.  The study follows a biographical path, an approach particularly fruitful with an artist known for his creative association with other artists and personal involvement with his models.  Stunning reproductions of virtually the entirety of Rossetti's body of work are distributed liberally throughout the book, and are almost always placed close to their discussion in the text.

Evidently, Bullen's primary interest in Rossetti is the sensuality of his work, mapping what he calls Rosetti's "anatomy of desire."  Unfortunately, it generally seems as if this is Bullen's only interest, and he sometimes slides into the uncomfortably prurient, as when he speculates on the specific sex acts the artist may or may not have engaged in with his different lovers, while at other times the writing approaches that parodic level where any object longer than it is wide is labelled a phallic symbol.  Late in the book, Bullen paraphrases a defense Rossetti made of his work, that it "contained many rooms, rooms which included both the spiritual and the sensual, and in order to arrive at a complete picture all those rooms must be explored."  Although Bullen thoroughly explores some of those rooms, by neglecting others the picture remains sadly incomplete.