[audiobook] Theatre for Change: Education; Social Action and Therapy by Robert Landy; David T. Montgomery at Arts-Photography

Description

The American nineteenth century saw a largely rural nation confined to the Eastern Seaboard conquer a continent and spawn increasingly dense commercial metropolises. This time of unprecedented territorial and economic growth has long been thought to find its most sweeping visual equivalent in the periodrsquo;s landscape paintings. But; as Matthew N. Johnston shows; the agersquo;s defining features were just as clearly captured in; and motivated by; visual material mass-produced through innovations in printing technology. Illustrated railroad and steamboat guidebooks; tourist literature; reports of geological surveys; ethnographic studies: all of these new print vehicles brought new meanings to the interplay of time; space; and place as American continental expansion peaked. Instrumental to that project of national and industrial growth; these commercial and scientific publications introduced readers; travelers; and citizens to a changing North American landscape made more accessible by new travel routes blazed between 1825 and 1875. More fundamentally; as Johnston shows in his nuanced analysis; by simulating new temporal frameworks through their presentation of landscape; these print materials established new models of consumption and new kinds of knowledge critical to expansion. Johnston relates these sources to traditional art historical subjectsmdash;the landscapes of the Hudson River school; luminist paintings by John Kensett and William Trost Richards; Native portraits painted by George Catlin; and photographs by Timothy Orsquo;Sullivanmdash;to show how key discourses associated with expansion shifted away from picturesque strategies pairing imagery and narrative toward entirely new forms that gave temporal structure to viewersrsquo; experience of an emerging modernity. Revealing the crucial role of print and visual culture in shaping the nineteenth-century United States; Narrating the Landscape offers fresh insight into the landscapes Americans beheld and imagined in this formative era.