Outré Aesthetics

OUTRÉ AESTHETICS by Sarah York A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2015 © Sarah York 2015 Author’s Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that the thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract By Sarah York Since the revolutionary period in America, aesthetics has played a crucial role in political formation, social improvisation, and cultural imagination. Aesthetic contemplation offered a rich and evocative language for imagining political liberty, and for dealing with the inherent contradictions and challenges of a new democracy. At the same time, many Americans held substantially disparate concepts, values, and tastes. They offered alternative visions and ‘outside’ aesthetic expressions that continued through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and into the present. Outré aesthetic varieties testify to the tremendous diversity in American life, people, and art. Outré aesthetics connects corporeal and emotive responses to art and material appearances with the non-normative systems and disruptive forms that define them. I employ the outré as both an analytical concept and critical tool for understanding embodied approaches to aesthetic experience, with historical, cultural, artistic and literary examples. I bring together recent critical treatments of aesthetics across disciplines into conversation, including cultural studies, literature, philosophy, history, psychology, disability and freak studies, bio/neuro/cognitive and social aesthetics, and expand on recent claims. The dissertation attempts to contribute to revisionist American Studies by asserting an aesthetics that questions the distinction between aesthetic function and life, and examines both the significance and ubiquity of the outré in the relationship between politics and aesthetics in American culture. iii Acknowledgements Thanks to my mentors and friends for the opportunity to learn alongside them, and to collaborate in so many ways. Thanks to Victoria Lamont and Jay Dolmage, for all their enthusiasm, guidance, inspiration, and understanding. Thanks to Andy McMurry for his support and kind words, and to Kevin McGuirk, who understood the vision of this project early on, and the many approaches to American studies and aesthetics. Joan Hawkins and Mario Boido took time to critically assess my work with thoughtful questions. Thanks to our Chair. My friends both within and without the program are all amazing and caring people. Thanks to Justin Newman, and to everyone who came through That House. The Department of English also welcomed me, and facilitated years of research, work, and teaching. The atmosphere of community cultivates mutual growth. Thanks to Katherine Acheson for featuring this work on the departmental site, Fraser Easton, who interrupted an evening at home to help with an application, and Aimée Morrison. Randy Harris invented exceptions in my case. Fiona McAlister went above and beyond, and Julie-Anne Desrochers offered invaluable assistance and help. There are others. Thanks to all those whose shared words and images fill these pages. Thanks to my family for putting up with my seclusion while I worked, and to Bear. Finally, and first, my mother’s brilliant dissertation was permanently interrupted by my inconvenient birth, and yet she cheered me on, even through her serious illness. Thank you for the peace of woodland space, for being wonderful, and for making it possible. iv Dedication This thesis is dedicated to Lynn York, with love. v Table of Contents Page Author’s Declaration ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv Dedication v List of Figures vii Introduction 1 Chapter One: “Outré Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century” 19 Chapter Two: “Outré Aesthetics in the Nineteenth Century” 39 Chapter Three: “Outré Exhibits and Performance” 57 Chapter Four: “On the Road” 98 Chapter Five: “Rebel, Rebel” 118 Chapter Six: “Embodied Aesthetics and Outré Encounters: a Bio-Cognitive View” 143 Chapter Seven: “Outré Shadows” 166 Chapter Eight: “Startling Figures” 199 Conclusion 216 References 221 Letters of Copyright Permission 247 vi List of Figures Figure 1 Artist Unknown. Gentleman's Amusement. Circa 1800. Wintherthur Museum, Wilmington……………………………………………………30 Figure 2 Artist Unknown (from China). Saucer (top and bottom). Circa 1730. Wintherthur Museum, Wilmington………………………………………32 Figure 3 John Greenwood. Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam. Oil on Canvas. Circa 1752-58. St. Louis Art Museum, St.Louis………………………...36 Figure 4 John Lewis Krimmel. Dance in a Country Tavern (top). Oil on canvas.1833-34. Fourth of July Celebration in Centre Square, Philadelphia (bottom). Oil on canvas. 1819. Pennsylvania……………..37 Figure 5 [American] Artist Unknown. “[Man Whittling a Stick], early 1850s.” 1850 -1855. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York………………......54 Figure 6 A composite of 19th century “freaks”.…………………………………...77 Figure 7 Wounded Civil War veterans, by shells or other combat injuries……….78 Figure 8 Contrast in three different styles of portraits. Circa 1860s………………81 Figure 9 Nineteenth-century American advertisements…………………………...85 Figure 10 Nineteenth-century freak show, sideshow and circus posters…………...87 Figure 11 Barnum’s Coney Island and animal crackers…………………………….94 Figure 12 Coney Island and Queens by American photographers…………..……...96 Figure 13 “Route 66 Map (1913).” Arizona Good Road’s Association Illustrated Maps and Tour Book……………………………………………………………99 Figure 14 “Route 66 Travel Mats (1959)”..………………………….……………100 Figure 15 Richard Serra. The Matter of Time. 2005. Steel. Sculpture and Installation. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao………………………………….............140 Figure 16 Müller-Lyer Illusion. The top line was perceived to be longer than the bottom line, despite equal length ………………………………………145 vii Introduction “He wonders, Is it just these people I’m outside or is it all America?”- John Updike Since the revolutionary period in America, aesthetics has played a crucial role in democratic political formation, social improvisation, and cultural imagination. Aesthetics was an important topic of discussion for early Americans who struggled both to define an emerging nation and to distinguish themselves from Old World Europeans. As early as the eighteenth century, transatlantic aesthetic theories and concepts permeated American public discourse and writing, and helped to navigate pressing national issues such as social cohesion, community values, and shared public perception. American pragmatism and efficiency favored aesthetic ideas that could unite people in common understanding and facilitate the formation of a national identity.1 Aesthetics thus played a vital role in determining the limits of ‘appropriate’ American sensibilities. Aesthetic contemplation offered a rich and evocative language for imagining political liberty, and for dealing with the inherent contradictions and challenges of a new republic. Ideas about nature, divine design, pleasure, taste, imagination, beauty, the sublime, and freedom, were both expressed and explored through philosophical aesthetic discourse. How to balance feeling and reason, order and chaos, clarity and complexity, and restraint or self-control in tension with creative or imaginative abandon? Slowly, an authoritative aesthetics emerged, one that emphasized both collective and self-governance through 1 “We, the people,” for instance, was a concept that suggested one mass body, a collective unit. As a social metaphor, the Body Politic became a central vehicle for American populism (Herzogenrath 2010). 1 rational ethics, conservative Christian moralism, neo-classicism, natural beauty, and simplicity. At the same time, many Americans held substantially disparate concepts, values, and tastes. Certainly, not everyone embraced a national aesthetics. Indeed, many imagined a democratic republic in personal ways, and offered alternative visions and what would become known as (but did not originally constitute) outside aesthetic expressions. Such outré aesthetic varieties were a response to a dominant aesthetics. They embodied an American rebellious spirit and the will-to-freedom of those who had fled to America to escape traditional strictures and persecutions back home. In fact, outré presences and aesthetics were present from the very beginning, long before a united nation formed, and testified to the tremendous diversity in American life, peoples, and art. Through public cultural, critical, and legal pressure, many efforts were made (often unsuccessfully) to suppress outré forms, to render them invisible, or at least less visible, and to limit their popular influence and circulation. Yet the outré was simultaneously inspiring, regenerating, and nourishing. Thus, to frame it as oppositional or antipodal in relationship to dominant aesthetics is to overlook what is in fact a complex and vital dynamic. In time, American aesthetic and cultural history was officially rewritten and retold to reflect the patriotic values and aesthetic productions of relatively small and privileged elites, including founding fathers, wealthy merchants and landowners, educated and literate authors and printers, and the doctrines of strict religious leaders – and reinforced by later republicans, Victorian moralists, and conservative governmental institutions. Outré

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