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between individualized, more physiologically-based emotion and
culturally constructedconventions of human expression, and she
claims that the weakness in Pre-Raphaelitestyle "isdue, therefore,
to the difficultyof recognising the extent of their dependence
onthe actions and behaviour of social life" (92). This reader was
hard pressed, however, tounderstand how her extended reading of
William Holman Hunt's TheFlightofMadelaineand Porphyro uringthe
DrunkennessAttending heRevelry TheEve of St. Agnes)(1848)
wasintended to prove this point. And some arguments for influence
(that the Pre-Raphaelitesdrew ideas from contemporary handbooks on
acting, for instance) are alleged ratherthan documented. A more
demanding editing process might have made argumentativecoherence
more explicit, as well as eliminating a handful of minor but
unnecessary errors(for instance, subject/verb agreement on pages 94
and 95, a misnumbered reference toa plate on page 161). Without
more compelling argumentative control, the book cannotfullydeliver
on the promise that its rich subject matter offers: to provide a
comprehensiveaccount of Victorian conceptions of emotion and
character that successfully bridges disci-plinary boundaries.
ROSEMARYANN
GeorgeMason University
Body, Place, and Self in Nineteenth-Century Painting, by Susan
Sidlauskas;pp. xvi + 230.Cambridge and New York:Cambridge
UniversityPress, 2000, 50.00, $75.00."The nineteenth-century, like
no other century, was addicted to dwelling," WalterBenjamin remarks
in his notes towards the ArcadesProject 1999). "Itconceived the
resi-dence as a receptacle for the person, and it encased him with
all his appurtenances sodeeply in the dwelling's interior" (220).
Painters of the period, as Susan Sidlauskasshowsin her fascinating
new book, not only recognized this social fact, but exploited its
expres-sive possibilities. On their canvases, they explored the
waysin which subjectivitycould berepresented through the
juxtaposition of figures and space: the subjectivityat stake wasat
once that of artist,pictorial protagonist, and spectator.
Body,Place, and Selfin Nineteenth-Centuryaintingmakes us
reconsider how welook at pictures of people in rooms. Importantly,
Sidlauskas counteracts the criticalcompulsion-one which many
contemporary critics at the time could not resist-to viewthese
works as narratives, puzzling out the dynamics of relationships
past, present, andfuture, and reading iconographic significance
into items of furniture, pictures on a wall,fabric, and flowers.
Instead, this book leads us to interpret not the signifying
propertiesof things in themselves, but the spaces between them:
gaps which dramatize a lack ofcommunication, a sense of discomfort,
the enactment of an identity-or, increasingly,the reluctance to
offer up to the viewer any legible or coherent sense of human
interi-ority. Drawing intelligently on recent theories of
spatiality and perception, particularlythose of Michel de Certeau,
Anthony Vidler, and Beatriz Colomina, as well as lookingback to
Heinrich Wolfflin and Benjamin himself, Sidlauskassuggests how
these paintingsintentionally provoke an emotional, even a visceral
response, rather than demanding amore deliberative decoding.The
argument is developed by way of a detailed discussion of four
paintings:
between individualized, more physiologically-based emotion and
culturally constructedconventions of human expression, and she
claims that the weakness in Pre-Raphaelitestyle "isdue, therefore,
to the difficultyof recognising the extent of their dependence
onthe actions and behaviour of social life" (92). This reader was
hard pressed, however, tounderstand how her extended reading of
William Holman Hunt's TheFlightofMadelaineand Porphyro uringthe
DrunkennessAttending heRevelry TheEve of St. Agnes)(1848)
wasintended to prove this point. And some arguments for influence
(that the Pre-Raphaelitesdrew ideas from contemporary handbooks on
acting, for instance) are alleged ratherthan documented. A more
demanding editing process might have made argumentativecoherence
more explicit, as well as eliminating a handful of minor but
unnecessary errors(for instance, subject/verb agreement on pages 94
and 95, a misnumbered reference toa plate on page 161). Without
more compelling argumentative control, the book cannotfullydeliver
on the promise that its rich subject matter offers: to provide a
comprehensiveaccount of Victorian conceptions of emotion and
character that successfully bridges disci-plinary boundaries.
ROSEMARYANN
GeorgeMason University
Body, Place, and Self in Nineteenth-Century Painting, by Susan
Sidlauskas;pp. xvi + 230.Cambridge and New York:Cambridge
UniversityPress, 2000, 50.00, $75.00."The nineteenth-century, like
no other century, was addicted to dwelling," WalterBenjamin remarks
in his notes towards the ArcadesProject 1999). "Itconceived the
resi-dence as a receptacle for the person, and it encased him with
all his appurtenances sodeeply in the dwelling's interior" (220).
Painters of the period, as Susan Sidlauskasshowsin her fascinating
new book, not only recognized this social fact, but exploited its
expres-sive possibilities. On their canvases, they explored the
waysin which subjectivitycould berepresented through the
juxtaposition of figures and space: the subjectivityat stake wasat
once that of artist,pictorial protagonist, and spectator.
Body,Place, and Selfin Nineteenth-Centuryaintingmakes us
reconsider how welook at pictures of people in rooms. Importantly,
Sidlauskas counteracts the criticalcompulsion-one which many
contemporary critics at the time could not resist-to viewthese
works as narratives, puzzling out the dynamics of relationships
past, present, andfuture, and reading iconographic significance
into items of furniture, pictures on a wall,fabric, and flowers.
Instead, this book leads us to interpret not the signifying
propertiesof things in themselves, but the spaces between them:
gaps which dramatize a lack ofcommunication, a sense of discomfort,
the enactment of an identity-or, increasingly,the reluctance to
offer up to the viewer any legible or coherent sense of human
interi-ority. Drawing intelligently on recent theories of
spatiality and perception, particularlythose of Michel de Certeau,
Anthony Vidler, and Beatriz Colomina, as well as lookingback to
Heinrich Wolfflin and Benjamin himself, Sidlauskassuggests how
these paintingsintentionally provoke an emotional, even a visceral
response, rather than demanding amore deliberative decoding.The
argument is developed by way of a detailed discussion of four
paintings:
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Edgar Degas's Interior 1868-69), a scene notorious (especially
under its popular title TheRape) for its opacity, in which a
clothed man stands on one side of a sparselyfurnishedbedroom, a
semi-clothed woman huddles on the floor opposite, with an open
sewing-boxcenter-stage on a table; John Singer Sargent's Daughters
of EdwardDarleyBoit (1882),where the four girls, dwarfed in a
shadowy Parisianfoyer, project various stages of childdevelopment
without apparently making human contact with one another;
EdouardVuillard's Mother nd SisteroftheArtist(1893), the older
woman sittingwith a solid defiance,the younger curiously cramped
within the pictorial space, and threatening to merge withthe
wallpaper in a manner uncannily proleptic of Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's disturbednarrator;and WalterSickert'sgloomy depiction of
emotional stasis,Ennui (1914), with itsemployment and evocation of
what Virginia Woolf tellingly described as "agreat stretchof silent
territory"(qtd. 128). These case studies are preceded by an
illuminating chapteron the innovative theories of the
drawingteacher Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who, inhis class at the
"PetiteEcole," in Paris, encouraged his students to depict what
they imag-ined and felt as well as what they saw, by means of
understanding the waysin which onedoes not merely perceive pace but
actively experiencests effects on the body.
As Sidlauskasnotes, Lecoq developed his theory at the same time
that the realistplaywrightVictorien Sardou started to exploit the
significance of stage props, recognizing-like Honore de Balzac or,
a little later, Emile Zola-the potential eloquence of
furniture,both on its own and in relationship to a room's
inhabitants. Other artists whom she treatswere fascinated by the
suggestive powers of the stage as well: not just Degas, with
hisportraits of dancers, and Sickert, with his music hall studies,
but Vuillard who, as we arereminded, was involved with the Theatre
de l'Oeuvre, which staged not only puppet plays,but plays in which
the actors performed as if they were puppets, and hence developed
arepertoire of gestures which could be used to invoke the
irrational and mysteriousratherthan traitsof an individualized
psychology. The analogy with the stage, however, goes farbeyond
this. Sidlauskasconvincingly shows how, as the century progressed,
the interiorstreatedbythese artistswere increasinglyinterpreted as
a stage onto which personalitycouldbe projected, with a
correspondingly decreasing guarantee of any connection betweenwhat
one sees of aperson and a quintessential identity lurkingbeneath
the surface. In otherwords, she reads what is going on in these
paintings in relation to developing ideasconcerning subjectivity
and selfhood. Thus the Boit girls are seen alongside
late-nineteenth-century theories concerning a child's growing sense
of spatialorientation, andthe recognition of adolescence as a time
of self-absorption;Vuillard's sister's awkward,marionette-like
posture is likened to the photographs of Jean Martin Charcot's
patientsreproduced in the NouvelleIconographief his institution,
the Salpetriere; the open andstrangelyluminous
sewing-box,inevitablybut not reductively,isbrought into dialogue
withDora's infamous reticule.
Whilst persuasive, in the context of the general emergence of
contemporarytheories of selfhood, the psychological contexts are
occasionally tendentious. Biograph-ical information, including
thoughtful commentary on the artists' uneasy senses of theirown
identity, is sparinglybut usefully furnished. Through a close
scrutinyof their compo-sitional genealogies, as well as comparison
with analogous works, Sidlauskasmakes eachpainting simultaneously
uniquely evocative, and symptomatic of the gradual obliterationof
individual interiority in the art of the period. Whilst a
consideration of some otherworks might have complicated her
argument-what of GwenJohn's self-portraits, say?-
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the overall achievement is an important one. By making us look
at the suggestive proper-ties of texture and shape, of color and
surface, of gesture and, above all, of empty space,Sidlauskas has,
most valuably, made us register the importance of these works as
paint-ings, and not as surrogate works of literature. And yet, this
is not a retreat into self-sufficient aesthetics: rather, it is a
timely acknowledgment of the place of painterly styleand
composition within nineteenth-century cultural history.
KATEFLINTRutgersUniversity,New Brunswick
Ruskin's Artists: Studies in the Victorian Visual Economy,
edited by Robert Hewison; pp.xx + 244. Aldershot and Burlington,
VT:Ashgate, 2000, 47.50, $84.95.This collection from the Ruskin
Programme at Lancaster Universitymarks the centenaryofJohn Ruskin's
death. Its twelve essaysexplore his "specificinterventions" in the
"Victo-rian visual economy" as art critic, adoring disciple, dogged
polemicist, domineeringpatron, skittish friend, and devoted
Protestant (1). The Victorian visual economyemerges as a complex
system involving the constitution of middle-class power, a
Protes-tant spiritualizationof human and natural forms, and the
force of desire moving betweenmen and women, among men, and across
classes.
Hewison's introduction establishes the father-son relationship
as "decisive" nRuskin's "linkswith the artists he chose to
support"from the 1830s to the mid-1860s (1).The watercolor
landscapes his father bought were crucial to forming Ruskin's
taste, andboth aimed to move up "frommere collectors to
activepatrons"(5, 6).JohnJames rebukedRuskin's "sicklonging" forJ.
M.W.Turner though (qtd. 6), leaving him with "thedesire fora
parental love and approval alwayspotentially withheld" (7). Hewison
locates a five-stagepattern both in the "quarrelsbetween father and
son" as well as in Ruskin'srelationshipswith various artists (11).
"[A]dmiration" and art purchase are followed by "acquaintance"and
public praise;personal and critical"reappraisal"nsue, causing
"rupture" nd "reinter-pretation";finally,
"retrospectivereconciliation" occurs (10-11).Ruskin'smorallybound
aesthetic agenda informs the full range of his interven-tions in
the Victorianvisualeconomy, from championship of Turner and the
Pre-Raphaelitesto his reaction to representationsof male and female
bodies in art. In chapter 1, "'Candidand Earnest':The Rise of the
ArtCriticin the EarlyNineteenth Century,"Claire Wildsmithconsiders
the field which Ruskin entered in the early1840s as "anextension of
the middle-class attack on traditional sources of power into the
realm of the aesthetic" (16). Like hiscontemporaries, Ruskin sees
landscape as "a moral guide," but in celebrating TurnerRuskin
crosses established critics, such as George Darley, who disparages
this art as"'exaggerated"' (18, 28, 19). Even William Hazlitt, who
like Ruskin rejects neoclassicalaesthetics,regrets Turner's
"wasteof morbid strength"(qtd. 21). At issue is the preservationof
the "aristocracy f taste" n the face of increasing classantagonisms
played out throughthe reception of art (22, 23).In chapter 2, 'The
'Dark Clue' and the Law of Help: Ruskin, Turner, and
theLiberStudiorum,"Alan Davies studies an instance of Ruskin's
development of a spiritual-ized aesthetic focused on landscape art.
His interpretations of Turner's engravings
the overall achievement is an important one. By making us look
at the suggestive proper-ties of texture and shape, of color and
surface, of gesture and, above all, of empty space,Sidlauskas has,
most valuably, made us register the importance of these works as
paint-ings, and not as surrogate works of literature. And yet, this
is not a retreat into self-sufficient aesthetics: rather, it is a
timely acknowledgment of the place of painterly styleand
composition within nineteenth-century cultural history.
KATEFLINTRutgersUniversity,New Brunswick
Ruskin's Artists: Studies in the Victorian Visual Economy,
edited by Robert Hewison; pp.xx + 244. Aldershot and Burlington,
VT:Ashgate, 2000, 47.50, $84.95.This collection from the Ruskin
Programme at Lancaster Universitymarks the centenaryofJohn Ruskin's
death. Its twelve essaysexplore his "specificinterventions" in the
"Victo-rian visual economy" as art critic, adoring disciple, dogged
polemicist, domineeringpatron, skittish friend, and devoted
Protestant (1). The Victorian visual economyemerges as a complex
system involving the constitution of middle-class power, a
Protes-tant spiritualizationof human and natural forms, and the
force of desire moving betweenmen and women, among men, and across
classes.
Hewison's introduction establishes the father-son relationship
as "decisive" nRuskin's "linkswith the artists he chose to
support"from the 1830s to the mid-1860s (1).The watercolor
landscapes his father bought were crucial to forming Ruskin's
taste, andboth aimed to move up "frommere collectors to
activepatrons"(5, 6).JohnJames rebukedRuskin's "sicklonging" forJ.
M.W.Turner though (qtd. 6), leaving him with "thedesire fora
parental love and approval alwayspotentially withheld" (7). Hewison
locates a five-stagepattern both in the "quarrelsbetween father and
son" as well as in Ruskin'srelationshipswith various artists (11).
"[A]dmiration" and art purchase are followed by "acquaintance"and
public praise;personal and critical"reappraisal"nsue, causing
"rupture" nd "reinter-pretation";finally,
"retrospectivereconciliation" occurs (10-11).Ruskin'smorallybound
aesthetic agenda informs the full range of his interven-tions in
the Victorianvisualeconomy, from championship of Turner and the
Pre-Raphaelitesto his reaction to representationsof male and female
bodies in art. In chapter 1, "'Candidand Earnest':The Rise of the
ArtCriticin the EarlyNineteenth Century,"Claire Wildsmithconsiders
the field which Ruskin entered in the early1840s as "anextension of
the middle-class attack on traditional sources of power into the
realm of the aesthetic" (16). Like hiscontemporaries, Ruskin sees
landscape as "a moral guide," but in celebrating TurnerRuskin
crosses established critics, such as George Darley, who disparages
this art as"'exaggerated"' (18, 28, 19). Even William Hazlitt, who
like Ruskin rejects neoclassicalaesthetics,regrets Turner's
"wasteof morbid strength"(qtd. 21). At issue is the preservationof
the "aristocracy f taste" n the face of increasing classantagonisms
played out throughthe reception of art (22, 23).In chapter 2, 'The
'Dark Clue' and the Law of Help: Ruskin, Turner, and
theLiberStudiorum,"Alan Davies studies an instance of Ruskin's
development of a spiritual-ized aesthetic focused on landscape art.
His interpretations of Turner's engravings
VICTORIAN STUDIESICTORIAN STUDIES
