DOCSLIB.ORG

Showing and Telling

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Showing and Telling SHOWING AND TELLING: VISUAL CULTURE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE AND EDITH WHARTON’S SUMMER A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of English California State University, Sacramento Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in English (Literature) by Juan Espinoza SPRING 2020 © 2020 Juan Espinoza ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii SHOWING AND TELLING: VISUAL CULTURE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE AND EDITH WHARTON’S SUMMER A Thesis by Juan Espinoza Approved by: __________________________________, Committee Chair Nancy Sweet __________________________________, Second Reader Susan Wanlass ____________________________ Date iii Student: Juan Espinoza I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for electronic submission to the Library and credit is to be awarded for this thesis. __________________________, Graduate Coordinator ___________________ Doug Rice Date Department of English iv Abstract of SHOWING AND TELLING: VISUAL CULTURE AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE AND EDITH WHARTON’S SUMMER by Juan Espinoza In her 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance, Edith Wharton admonished critics of her 1917 novel Summer who viewed the novel as a “pleasing romance of summer life.” Wharton saw her novel as part of the same Dark Romantic literary traditions of New England established by authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne. This project moves beyond Wharton’s connections of genre and geography to explore how both Hawthorne’s and Wharton’s literary works were intimately situated within their respective era’s popular culture and how popular entertainments of each era shaped the form, style, and worldview of each author’s literary works. I begin by analyzing how Hawthorne’s 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance is narrated as though it were a series of tableaux vivant or “living pictures,” antebellum entertainments with a moral message, though they were also often an excuse to skirt censorship laws. I then explore how, in much the same way, Wharton’s Summer uses the circus freakshow, a form descended from the tableaux vivant that displayed Otherness as a medical and scientific v entertainment. In Summer the freakshow is used with disturbing effect as a way to deliver an otherwise simple “seduced and abandoned” plot. Together these novels suggest that literary fiction is shaped by the popular culture that surrounds it. As that popular culture evolves, so too does the form of literary fiction. Large changes in popular culture, like those between tableaux vivant and the freakshow, are mirrored by minor differences in the narratives of literary fiction like those between The Blithedale Romance and Summer. _______________________, Committee Chair Nancy Sweet _______________________ Date vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This Master’s Thesis was made possible by many, many people. I would like to thank the following people: Dr. Nancy Sweet and Dr. Susan Wanlass for their support throughout this process and throughout my master’s degree. My family, especially my mother Traci Johnson and my father Luis Espinoza, who supported me throughout this entire journey. My brothers, José and Carlos Espinoza. My friends, especially Anthony Perez and Catalina Carapia-Aguillon, and Ambyr Gage, Ademidun Adejobi, David Ng, Sophia Louie and so, so many others. My colleagues, for supporting me in my many other endeavors. And Dora Monterroza, for putting up with me, for supporting me, for inspiring me, for pushing me to be the best person I can be. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: SETTING THE STAGE ...............................................................1 2. HUSH, POSE, AND YOU WILL BELIEVE: TABLEAUX VIVANT AND BLITHEDALE .............................................................................................................25 3. THE GREATEST SHOW IN NEW ENGLAND: FREAKSHOW, CIRCUS, AND SUMMER ....................................................................................................................58 4. STRIKING THE SET: CONLCUSIONS AND NOTES FOR FURTHER READINGS AND VIEWINGS ..................................................................................92 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................106 viii 1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION: SETTING THE STAGE In her 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance, Edith Wharton admonished critics of her 1917 novel Summer. Critics of the time were excited for the release of Summer. Many reviews drew a comparison between Wharton’s earlier work Ethan Frome and Summer, with the Nation favoring the former and the Times Literary Supplement seeing the two novels as equals (Rattray xvi). To Wharton, Summer was squarely in the dark, regional traditions of fiction established by authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Wharton felt, for good reason, that her critics were instead expecting Summer to be “the reflection of local life in the rose-and-lavender pages of their favourite authoresses” (Wharton, A Backward Glance 294). After all, the New York Times Book Review naively titled their review “Summer a Pleasing Romance of Village Life” (xix). Wharton’s stab at her reviewers is a less emphatic rebuke of “women’s writing” than Hawthorne’s own scorn of the “damned mob of scribbling women” he felt was ruining the critical reputation of his own work in 1855 (Wagner-Martin 243). Hawthorne’s 1852 novel The Blithedale Romance came before his “scribbling women” phase, but some of the reviews of the novel are no less damning than those he would receive—and comment on—later. The Norton Critical Edition of Blithedale contains one review, by an anonymous reviewer for the Westminster Review, declaring that Blithedale “will never attain the popularity which is vouchsafed…to some of its contemporaries” and which went on to say that “Hawthorne has a rich perception of the beautiful, but he is sadly 2 deficient in moral depth and earnestness” (262, 263). Reviews of Blithedale fall into roughly two camps. One camp identifies Blithedale as a roman à clef for the real-life Brook Farm. The Penguin Classics Edition quotes a review from the Christian Examiner that states emphatically that “Mr. Hawthorne is presenting…a delineation of life and character” at Brook Farm (x). Orestes Brownson, father to a Brook Farm participant, was often reluctantly roped into the roman à clef reading but tried, in his reviews, to lead the other camp that saw Blithedale “connected with some of [his] friends” but ultimately showing “very little of the actual persons engaged in it” (x). Though the reviews were decidedly mixed for each novel, it is interesting that the two authors, connected through time and genre, share a connection through their novels’s similar persistent misreadings. However, it is also easy to see that the novels share a similar narrative structure. Blithedale is the story of failed love at a failed socialist utopian community. It follows three main characters: Zenobia, a proto-feminist and author; Hollingsworth, a criminal reformer; and Miles Coverdale, a minor romantic poet and flaneur who narrates the story after the fact. The love triangle that develops between the three is complicated by the introduction of Priscilla and Westervelt. Summer follows Charity Royall in her love affair with the urbane Lucius Harney, who is visiting North Dormer to sketch colonial era houses. The love affair is complicated by Lawyer Royall, Charity’s adoptive ward. When Charity becomes pregnant by Harney and Harney leaves her for the beautiful Annabel Balch, Charity runs away to the outlaw community on the Mountain, her ancestral home. Lawyer Royall brings the exhausted Charity back to town and promptly 3 marries her. Each novel has very similar characters. Hollingsworth and Lawyer are the brooding older men, Coverdale and Harney the feckless young men, Priscilla and Charity the delicate but brooding young women, and Zenobia and Annabel Balch the “temptresses.” Besides complicated sexual/romantic relationships, each novel deals with themes of power and control. More specifically, the male characters use their power to control, confine, judge, and punish women. In Blithedale, the gaze is each male character’s, but especially Coverdale’s, main means of control. In Summer, that male gaze is suffused into an Orwellian panopticism lorded over by Lawyer Royall. Though the similarities in critical receptions and the narrative structures are intriguing, simply put, I find Wharton’s claim of literary kinship with Hawthorne the most intriguing. Wharton’s genealogical claim establishes her roots in both a geographical space, New England, and a generic vein, Dark Romanticism, a dark counterpoint to Romantic literature often conflated with the Gothic because of its fascination with the irrational, demonic, and grotesque, as opposed to Romantic literature’s focus on the sublime and euphoric. With this project I will add another category to the connection between Hawthorne and Wharton: performance. By this I mean two things, the actual performances within the novels and readings using a performance studies lens. I take this approach because both novels include
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Pictorial Real, Historical Intermedial. Digital Aesthetics and the Representation of History in Eric Rohmer's the Lady And
    ACTA UNIV. SAPIENTIAE, FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES, 12 (2016) 27–44 DOI: 10.1515/ausfm-2016-0002 Pictorial Real, Historical Intermedial. Digital Aesthetics and the Representation of History in Eric Rohmer’s The Lady and the Duke Giacomo Tagliani University of Siena (Italy) E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. In The Lady and the Duke (2001), Eric Rohmer provides an unusual and “conservative” account of the French Revolution by recurring to classical and yet “revolutionary” means. The interpolation between painting and film produces a visual surface which pursues a paradoxical effect of immediacy and verisimilitude. At the same time though, it underscores the represented nature of the images in a complex dynamic of “reality effect” and critical meta-discourse. The aim of this paper is the analysis of the main discursive strategies deployed by the film to disclose an intermedial effectiveness in the light of its original digital aesthetics. Furthermore, it focuses on the problematic relationship between image and reality, deliberately addressed by Rohmer through the dichotomy simulation/illusion. Finally, drawing on the works of Louis Marin, it deals with the representation of history and the related ideology, in order to point out the film’s paradoxical nature, caught in an undecidability between past and present. Keywords: Eric Rohmer, simulation, illusion, history and discourse, intermediality, tableau vivant. The representation of the past is one of the domains, where the improvement of new technologies can effectively disclose its power in fulfilling our “thirst for reality.” No more cardboard architectures nor polystyrene stones: virtual environments and motion capture succeed nowadays in conveying a truly believable reconstruction of distant times and worlds.
    [Show full text]
  • Thesis 19.11.17, Elena Stevens
    ! University of Southampton Research Repository Copyright!©!and!Moral!Rights!for!this!thesis!and,!where!applicable,!any!accompanying!data!are! retained!by!the!author!and/or!other!copyright!owners.!A!copy!can!be!downloaded!for!personal! non>commercial!research!or!study,!without!prior!permission!or!charge.!This!thesis!and!the! accompanying!data!cannot!be!reproduced!or!quoted!extensively!from!without!first!obtaining! permission!in!writing!from!the!copyright!holder/s.!The!content!of!the!thesis!and!accompanying! research!data!(where!applicable)!must!not!be!changed!in!any!way!or!sold!commercially!in!any! format!or!medium!without!the!formal!permission!of!the!copyright!holder/s.!! When!referring!to!this!thesis!and!any!accompanying!data,!full!bibliographic!details!must!be!given,! e.g.!! Thesis:!Author!(Year!of!Submission)!"Full!thesis!title",!University!of!Southampton,!name!of!the! University!Faculty!or!School!or!Department,!PhD!Thesis,!pagination.!! ! UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Striking an Attitude: Tableaux Vivants in the British Long Nineteenth Century by Elena Stevens Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2017 ! UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON ABSTRACT FACULTY OF HUMANITIES Doctor of Philosophy STRIKING AN ATTITUDE: TABLEAUX VIVANTS IN THE BRITISH LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY by Elena Stevens This thesis examines one instance of the long nineteenth-century’s engagement with the Antique: the medium of entertainment known as tableaux vivants. In tableau vivant performances, men, women and children were arranged into motionless (or near- motionless) configurations, and presented to audiences in parlour rooms, pleasure gardens, circuses, public houses, exhibition halls, variety theatres and music halls. Many performances derived inspiration from Antique statues or classicising paintings, although some captured elements of distant cultures.
    [Show full text]
  • Art and the Ordinary: Literary and Visual Constructs of the Mundane Jenessa Kenway University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected]
    UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones May 2017 Art and The Ordinary: Literary and Visual Constructs of the Mundane Jenessa Kenway University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations Part of the Art and Design Commons, and the Theory and Criticism Commons Repository Citation Kenway, Jenessa, "Art and The Ordinary: Literary and Visual Constructs of the Mundane" (2017). UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. 2995. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/thesesdissertations/2995 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Scholarship@UNLV. It has been accepted for inclusion in UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ART AND THE ORDINARY: LITERARY AND VISUAL CONSTRUCTS OF THE MUNDANE By Jenessa Lynn Wilson Kenway Bachelor of Arts — Art San Francisco State University 2006 Master of Fine Arts — Art University of Nevada, Las Vegas 2011 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Master of Arts — English Department of English College of Liberal Arts The Graduate College University of Nevada, Las Vegas May 2017 Thesis Approval The Graduate College The University of Nevada, Las Vegas January 27, 2017 This thesis prepared by Jenessa Lynn Wilson Kenway entitled Art and the Ordinary: Literary and Visual Constructs of the Mundane is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts — English Department of English Timothy Erwin, Ph.D. Kathryn Hausbeck Korgan, Ph.D. Examination Committee Chair Graduate College Interim Dean Emily Setina, Ph.D.
    [Show full text]
  • The Tableau Vivant As a “Figure of Return” in Contemporary
    ACTA UNIV. SAPIENTIAE, FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES, 9 (2014) 51–76 10.1515/ausfm-2015-0003 The Tableau Vivant as a “Figure of Return” in Contemporary East European Cinema ªGNES0ETHŐ Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. The paper analyses the re-conceptualization of the intermedial trope of the tableau vivant in recent East European cinema through several EXAMPLESFROM(UNGARIANAND2USSIANlLMSDIRECTEDBY'YÙRGY0ÇLl +ORNÎL -UNDRUCZ× "ENEDEK &LIEGAUF "ÎLA 4ARR AND !NDREI :VYAGINTSEV 4HE tableau vivantINTHESElLMSISNOTCONCEIVEDPRIMARILYASANEMBODIMENT of a painting, the introduction of “the real into the image” (as Brigitte 0EUCKERDESCRIBED INSTEADITAPPEARSMORELIKETHEOBJECTIlCATIONOFBODIES as images, and something that we can associate with what Mario Perniola considers the “sex appeal of the inorganic” or “the Egyptian moment in art.” As such, the tableau becomes a powerful agent in generating metanarratives, offering a blueprint for a “big picture,” a comprehensive vision of the world (reinforced by recurring mythological themes like the genesis or the end of the world, the loss of Paradise, etc.).7EMAYCONNECTTHISFEATUREOFTHESE tableaux vivants THEREFORE TOWHAT,YOTARDTERMEDASTHEhlGUREOFRETURN v and to the reconstructive tendencies of contemporary post-postmodern art.1 Keywords: tableau vivant, embodied painting, East European cinema, the sex appeal of the inorganic, Lyotard’s acinéma. %MBODIED0AINTINGSAND"ODIES/BJECTIlEDAS0AINTINGS Steering away from all the mainstream “new waves” that emerged in post-communist CINEMAS n AND IN SOME WAYS LOOSELY CONNECTED TO THE TRADITION DElNED BY THE cinematic poetry of Andrei Tarkovsky, the ornamentalism of Sergei Paradjanov, ANDPERHAPS THEBIZARRESURREALISMOF7OJCIECH(ASnWECANDISTINGUISHSEVERAL undercurrents in recent East European2 CINEMA CONSISTING OF lLMS THAT ARE 1 This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of National Education, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2012-4-0573.
    [Show full text]
  • The Tableau Vivant As a “Figure Of
    ACTA UNIV. SAPIENTIAE, FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES, 9 (2014) 51–76 The Tableau Vivant as a “Figure of Return” in Contemporary East European Cinema Ágnes Pethő Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. The paper analyses the re-conceptualization of the intermedial trope of the tableau vivant in recent East European cinema through several examples from Hungarian and Russian films directed by György Pálfi, Kornél Mundruczó, Benedek Fliegauf, Béla Tarr, and Andrei Zvyagintsev. The tableau vivant in these films is not conceived primarily as an embodiment of a painting, the introduction of “the real into the image” (as Brigitte Peucker described), instead it appears more like the objectification of bodies as images, and something that we can associate with what Mario Perniola considers the “sex appeal of the inorganic” or “the Egyptian moment in art.” As such, the tableau becomes a powerful agent in generating metanarratives, offering a blueprint for a “big picture,” a comprehensive vision of the world (reinforced by recurring mythological themes like the genesis or the end of the world, the loss of Paradise, etc.). We may connect this feature of these tableaux vivants, therefore, to what Lyotard termed as the “figure of return,” and to the reconstructive tendencies of contemporary post-postmodern art.1 Keywords: tableau vivant, embodied painting, East European cinema, the sex appeal of the inorganic, Lyotard’s acinéma. Embodied Paintings and Bodies Objectified as Paintings Steering away from all the mainstream “new waves” that emerged in post-communist cinemas – and in some ways loosely connected to the tradition defined by the cinematic poetry of Andrei Tarkovsky, the ornamentalism of Sergei Paradjanov, and perhaps, the bizarre surrealism of Wojciech Has – we can distinguish several undercurrents in recent East European2 cinema consisting of films that are 1 This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of National Education, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-II-ID-PCE-2012-4-0573.
    [Show full text]
  • The Material Image: Art and the Real in Film'
    H-German Muellner on Peucker, 'The Material Image: Art and the Real in Film' Review published on Monday, October 1, 2007 Brigitte Peucker. The Material Image: Art and the Real in Film. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. 251 pp. $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8047-5431-6. Reviewed by Beth Ann Muellner (German Studies Department, College of Wooster) Published on H- German (October, 2007) An Aesthetic and Sensory Spectrum of Cinematic Experience Brigitte Peucker's book offers readers interested in film and perception theory a well-written and insightful analysis. While perhaps less useful to historians, readers who know well the broad spectrum of films that Peucker analyzes--from Martin Scorsese to Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Jonathan Demme--will benefit from her interpretation of how various artistic modalities (such as dance, sculpture, literature, photography, and painting) function within the filmic text and beyond to mediate the real. Peucker presents an impressive array of philosophical and theoretical insights to sustain her analysis of the interplay between aesthetics and sensory experience in and of film. She bypasses the idea that the real is inherently unrepresentable in art and, supported by cognitive and phenomenological approaches to perception, bases much of her study on the idea that "spectatorial affect is 'real' even when it is film and not reality that produces it" (p. 1). While focus on the body is one way to understand Peucker's approach to the real as materialist, just as important to the author is a postmodern tension between the real and illusion. Peucker is interested in visual games such as the trompe l'oeil, but she returns most frequently to investigate the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century tradition of the tableau vivant as a node of intersecting modalities (painting, theater, sculpture) in film.
    [Show full text]
  • The Revolutionary Career of François Gérard By
    ON SHIFTING GROUND: THE REVOLUTIONARY CAREER OF FRANÇOIS GÉRARD BY JENNIFER MARIE LANGWORTHY DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor David O’Brien, Chair Associate Professor Lisa Rosenthal Associate Professor Oscar Vázquez Assistant Professor Jennifer Greenhill ii ii Abstract This dissertation examines the career of François-Pascal-Simon Gérard (1770- 1837) from its beginnings in the mid-1780s through the end of the French Revolution and provides a more complete understanding of Gérard as a key artist of the Revolutionary decade. A goal of this study is to set aside long-standing assumptions concerning Gérard’s political convictions and doubts about his artistic originality in order to shed light on Gérard’s critical contributions to Revolutionary art, and in particular, to the Davidian school. I demonstrate that, in the 1790s, Gérard moved away from the subjects and styles forged in Jacques-Louis David’s (1748-1825) studio. Most significantly, he reinvented classicism as a vehicle for moderate political themes, he reintroduced apolitical, sexualized imagery into classicism, and he established an artistic practice in which the serious business of the history painter was thoroughly integrated with that of the high-society portraitist. To do this, Gérard developed new modes of classicism, experimented with the emergent subject matter of Romanticism, and and explored issues of gender and sexuality in uncommon ways. During the tumultuous decade of the Revolution, when political consensus was at best fleeting and the traditional institutions of the French art world faltered, Gérard’s political and artistic flexibility allowed him not only to escape many of the consequences suffered by politically committed artists, but also eventually to thrive as a leading painter of the society of the late Directory.
    [Show full text]
  • Tableau Vivant [Living Picture] G J Christopher Drobnock University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
    University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2016 tableau vivant [living picture] G J Christopher Drobnock University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Ceramic Arts Commons Recommended Citation Drobnock, G J Christopher, "tableau vivant [living picture]" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1592. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/1592 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. tableau vivant. [living picture] A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Art by G J Christopher Drobnock Edinboro University of Pennsylvania Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics and Printmaking, 2008 May 2016 University of Arkansas This thesis is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. Jeannie Lynn Hulen, MFA. Thesis Director Dr. Ana Pulido-Rull David Charles Chioffi, M.A. Committee Member Committee Member Adam Posnak, MFA. Mathew Scott McConnell, MFA. Committee Member Committee Member Abstract With an overwhelming concern for functionality, the design world and industrial production have moved far beyond the pure necessity of the handmade object. With the paper coffee cup, disposable utility is the primary goal; afterwards the service is performed and the thing is discarded. On the other hand, the clay object can be used and reused allowing a personal relationship to form between the user and the object, the maker and the user.
    [Show full text]
  • Unfolding the In-Between Image
    Vol 3, No 1 (2014) | ISSN 2155-1162 (online) | DOI 10.5195/contemp.2014.80 http://contemporaneity.pitt.edu Unfolding the In-between Image The Emergence of an Incipient Image at the Intersection of Still and Moving Images Masaki Kondo Abstract As digital technology has transformed various aspects of our screen culture over the past few decades, we have been witnessing a disappearing boundary between photographic still images and cinematic moving images. An emerging in-between image has become increasingly prominent in this new image culture, which attempts to negotiate the grey area between stillness and movement. This in-between image, manifest in a variety of formats and media, points to an increasingly solid middle ground between the traditional divisions of still and moving images. This paper builds a conceptual framework for analysing this new type of image and explores both the roots of this emergent category before focusing on its contemporary trajectory as exemplified by the work of Adad Hannah, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, and James Nares. About the Author Masaki Kondo is a PhD student in Cinema and Media Studies at York University. His current research examines the emergence of the in-between image in screen media through the concept of affect. As digital technology has permeated every aspect of society in the past few decades, the use of film to Unfolding the In-between Image capture photographs and shoot footage has nearly vanished. The near-extinction of film as a recording The Emergence of an Incipient Image medium has opened up new questions regarding the at the Intersection of Still essence of photographic and cinematic images; at the same time, we are now seeing new potential in and Moving Images image-based art forms cultivated by on-going technological developments.
    [Show full text]
  • Tableaux Vivants in the Work of Pasolini and Ontani (1963–1974) Anna Mecugni University of New Orleans, [email protected]
    University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO Fine Arts Faculty Publications Department of Fine Arts 2011 A "Desperate Vitality": Tableaux Vivants in the Work of Pasolini and Ontani (1963–1974) Anna Mecugni University of New Orleans, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/fa_facpubs Part of the Fine Arts Commons Recommended Citation Mecugni, Anna. “A ‘Desperate Vitality’: Tableaux Vivants in the Work of Pasolini and Ontani (1963–1974),” Palinsesti: Contemporary Italian Art Online Journal 1, n. 2: 94–116. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Fine Arts at ScholarWorks@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fine Arts Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ANNA MECUGNI A “desperate vitality”. Tableaux vivants in the work of Pasolini and Ontani (1963-74) I am a force of the Past. Only tradition is my love. I come from the ruins, the churches, the altarpieces, the villages abandoned on the Apennines, the Alpine foothills where my brothers lived. I rove the Tuscolana like a madman, or the Appia like a dog without a master. Or I look at the twilights, the mornings over Rome, Ciociaria, the world, like the first acts of post-history, which I witness, thanks to my date of birth, from the far edge of some buried age... And I, adult fetus, more modern than all the moderns, roam in search of brothers that are no more. Pier Paolo Pasolini, “10 giugno 1962”, Mamma Roma1 This essay focuses on four key works by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) and Luigi Ontani (b.
    [Show full text]
  • Painting a Cinematic Tableau Vivant Master’S Thesis
    ESTONIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS FACULTY OF FINE ARTS Painting Department Katarina Meister Painting a Cinematic Tableau Vivant Master’s Thesis Supervisor: Stacey May Koosel, Phd 1 Tallinn 2016 Author’s declaration: I declare that: 1) This Master’s thesis is the result of my personal work, it has never been submit- ted (for defending) by anybody else; 2) All materials (works) and major opinions of other authors used during prepara- tion of the Master’s thesis and any data originating from other sources have been duly and correctly referred in the Master’s thesis; 3) I authorise the Estonian Academy of Arts to publish my Master’s thesis in the repository, where it will become available to the public via internet. Proceeding from the above I explain that: - Personal copyrights related to the preparation of this Master’s thesis and creation of any works included and/or described in the Master’s thesis belong to me as the author of the Master’s thesis and material rights related to the Master’s thesis will be handled pur- suant to the procedure established in the Estonian Academy of Arts; - As a Master’s thesis published in the repository will be available to unlimited number of persons, I presume that any person revising my Master’s thesis will follow the law, any other legal acts and good practice in good faith, honestly, with due care and respect towards the rights of other persons. Copying, plagiarising and any other use of this Master’s thesis and any works included and/or described in the Master’s thesis that can be considered violation of copyrights will be prohibited.
    [Show full text]
  • Tableaux Vivants, Early Cinema, and Beauty-As-Attraction Daniel Wiegand University of Zurich (Switzerland) E-Mail: [email protected]
    ACTA UNIV. SAPIENTIAE, FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES, 15 (2018) 9–32 DOI: 10.1515/ausfm-2018-0001 Tableaux Vivants, Early Cinema, and Beauty-as-Attraction Daniel Wiegand University of Zurich (Switzerland) E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. This article offers a case study in intermediality and explores relationships between tableaux vivants performances and early cinema around 1900. It locates processes of intermedial exchange not only at the level of form but also at the level of modes of address and reception. More specifically, the study is concerned with how bourgeois notions of beauty were transferred to the film image and reconciled with the attraction value of cinema. As a discussion of early film theory reveals, the concept of “beauty in film” depended on a taming of filmic motion, something that had already been realized in performance practices of tableaux vivants. In the subsequent analysis of the cultural context of tableaux vivants in European variety theatres, I outline a specific mode of address, which I term “beauty- as-attraction:” an overlap of the older aesthetics of the beautiful and the more modern aesthetics of attraction. Through concluding film analysis, I show how tableaux vivants became a model and source of inspiration for early cinema, thus bringing to fruition the two-fold address of beauty-as- attraction in a new media context.1 Keywords: early cinema, intermediality, film theory, art, painting. “Living photographs are about as far from being things of beauty as anything possibly could be.” Cecil Hepworth (1896, quoted in Bottomore 1996, 137.) Film pioneer Cecil Hepworth’s harsh judgment (quoted in the motto) notwithstanding, many of the earliest films and film programmes strove to attain painterly effects and were advertised as especially artistic and beautiful.
    [Show full text]