The Body of Raphaelle Peale

Still Life and Selfhood, 1812-1824
1. Auflage 2001
ISBN: 978-0-520-22498-8
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 274 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 212 mm x 262 mm, Gewicht: 1184 g

The American painter Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825) left a legacy of vibrantly beautiful still lifes depicting objects such as fruit, vegetables, and meat. In this lively and literate study, the first book-length exploration of the artist, Alexander Nemerov presents a radical new reading of these paintings focusing on the uncanny quality of Raphaelle's still-life objects. Nemerov argues that the physical presence of these objects is not strictly their own but that of the artist's body. This imagery of embodiment, Nemerov argues, relates deeply to Raphaelle's own time.

The Body of Raphaelle Peale focuses on not just Raphaelle's paintings but also the visual and intellectual culture of early-nineteenth-century Philadelphia, to which these works intimately relate. More broadly, the book presents a reading of romanticism in the American visual arts. Above all, it is an argument about selfhood in Raphaelle's era. Raphaelle's focus—in paintings both playful and morbid—was the pleasures and horrors of being a mere body, of being less than a self.

Nemerov's primary source of evidence in this study is Raphaelle's art itself. After considering its theoretical and historical implications, he returns to the images, deftly guiding us to a fresh understanding of these remarkable paintings. Nemerov's formal analysis is infused with a sophisticated awareness of interdisciplinary issues, and he gracefully balances the formal, the theoretical, and the historical throughout his narrative. This beautifully illustrated study is sure to stimulate renewed appreciation of an exceptional American artist.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nemerov, Alexander

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 19. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: Barock, Klassizismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunst, allgemein Einzelne Künstler: Biographien, Monografien
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Malerei: Gemälde

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Windows on the Object

PART ONE: Before

1. Blackberries and The Solitary Imagination

2. Blackberries and Embodiment

3. Blackberries and Focused Vision: Refusing The Long View

4. Three Kinds of Silence

PART TWO: Beneath
5. Meat and Nonidentity

6. The Anatomized Still Life

7. Dissector and Dissected: Self and Body

PART THREE:Birth
8. Abjection: Still Life and the Return of the Maternal Body

9. The Rhapsodic Maternal Body

10. Smallness

11. The Deception of Venus Rising From The Sea

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Alexander Nemerov is Vincent Scully Professor of the History of Art at Yale University and the author of Frederic Remington and Turn-of-the-Century America (1995).