
Rendering Violence
Riots, Strikes, and Upheaval in Nineteenth-Century American Art
Ross Barrett(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 29. August 2014
Book
Hardback
244 pages
978-0-520-28289-6 (ISBN)
Description
Rendering Violence explores the problems and possibilities that the subject of political violence presented to American painters working between 1830 and 1890, a turbulent period during which common citizens frequently abandoned orderly forms of democratic expression to riot, strike, and protest violently. Examining a range of critical texts, this book shows for the first time that nineteenth-century American aesthetic theory defined painting as a privileged vehicle for the representation of political order and the stabilization of liberal-democratic life. Analyzing seven paintings by Thomas Cole, John Quidor, Nathaniel Jocelyn, George Henry Hall, Thomas Nast, Martin Leisser, and Robert Koehler, Ross Barrett reconstructs the strategies that American artists developed to explore the symbolic power of violence in a medium aligned ideologically with lawful democracy. He argues that American paintings of upheaval render" their subjects in divergent ways.
By exploring the inner conflicts that structure these painterly projects, Barrett sheds new light on the politicized pressures that shaped visual representation in the nineteenth century and on the anxieties and ambivalences that have long defined American responses to political turmoil.
By exploring the inner conflicts that structure these painterly projects, Barrett sheds new light on the politicized pressures that shaped visual representation in the nineteenth century and on the anxieties and ambivalences that have long defined American responses to political turmoil.
Reviews / Votes
"Intriguing." -- S. Webster CHOICEMore details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
12 color, 51 b-w
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 39 mm
Weight
499 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-28289-6 (9780520282896)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Ross Barrett is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of South Carolina. He has published articles in The Art Bulletin, American Art, and Winterthur Portfolio, along with catalog essays and entries on American painting and vernacular photography. He is also coeditor, with Daniel Worden, of Oil Culture, a volume of essays that examines cultural representations of petroleum and the oil industry.
Content
Acknowledgments Introduction 1. How Could a Mob Be Painted? Picturing Political Violence in the Jacksonian Era 2. Painting That "Might Prove Injurious": Cinque and the Representation of African American Political Violence 3. Riot, Rowdyism, and Reform: George Henry Hall and the Picturing of Midcentury Urban Upheaval 4. Trouble on the Home Front: Art, Democracy, and Disorder during the Civil War 5. Painting and Political Violence at Century's End Conclusion Notes List of Illustrations Index