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Description: Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America
~I’ve always been charmed by that scene early on in Citizen Kane in which the impulsive young millionaire Charlie Kane, played by Orson Welles, announces to his bank-appointed guardian, Mr. Thatcher, that he wants to publish a newspaper. “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper,” Kane explains. Thatcher repeats the phrase with a...
PublisherYale University Press
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00093.002
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Preface and Acknowledgments
I’ve always been charmed by that scene early on in Citizen Kane in which the impulsive young millionaire Charlie Kane, played by Orson Welles, announces to his bank-appointed guardian, Mr. Thatcher, that he wants to publish a newspaper. “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper,” Kane explains. Thatcher repeats the phrase with a sputter of disgust at the offending word fun: “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.”
Acting not only as Kane’s guardian and disciplinarian, but also, it seems, as a guardian of disciplinary boundaries, Thatcher asks his ward what he knows about running a newspaper. Kane resists the older man’s disciplinary guardianship with what might be called antidisciplinary interdisciplinarity. “I don’t know how to run a newspaper, Mr. Thatcher,” he answers. “I just try everything I can think of.”
Personally, I admire this spirit of try-what-works pragmatism. I am also aware of how such pragmatism, unanchored by long-term goals and principles, leads to a moral or political floundering (as it certainly does in the case of Charlie Kane). The book you have before you constitutes my version of try-what-works art history, cultural history, and social history all wrapped into one. But its thoroughgoing eclecticism is guided throughout by what I hope the reader will find to be consistent principles of socially critical inquiry and an aspiration toward multicultural equality. In the pages ahead I try everything I can think of—everything that might work—to elucidate, with these goals in mind, a handful of nineteenth-century American paintings and the varied society that produced them.
I finished my last book days after the birth of my daughter Molly and began this one days after the birth of my son Gus nearly two years later. Since then, good friends have had their own babies, loved ones have died, political systems have faced upheaval, and any calculation of misery and joy in the world seems more imponderable now than ever.
So many friends, colleagues, and family members have read and commented on various parts of this book at various stages along the way that I despair of remembering each and every name as I sit down to tally my acknowledgments. The following list is long, therefore, but surely not long enough. For critical readings of the entire book, whole chapters, parts of chapters, or public lectures that found their way into chapters, I would like to thank—a deep breath will be necessary—Tony Anemone, Matthew Baigell, Karen-edis Barzman, Charles Bassett, Jon Bassewitz, Joel Bernard, Al Boime, Doreen Bolger, Sarah Burns, Jim Cuno, Linda Docherty, Johnny Faragher, John Fiske, Estelle Freedman, Jane Hunter, Carrie Jones, Joe Ketner, Michael Haney, Tony Judt, Richard Leppert, George Lipsitz, Karen Lucic, Michael Marlais, Walter Michaels, Angela Miller, David Miller, Fred Mosely, Alex Nemerov, Joel Pfister, Rick Powell, Vince Raphael, Bruce Robertson, Paul Rogers, Eric Rosenberg, Claudia Smeltzer, Gray Sweeney, Dick Terdiman, Katie Trumpener, Alan Wallach, Amy Warner, Sherry Wellman, and my copyeditor at Yale, Lawrence Kenney. Having said that, I would like Michelle Bogart, Ann Dietrich, Marianne Doezema, Ken Eisen of Railroad Square Cinema, Vivien Fryd, Alan Hess, Tom Jester, Margaretta Lovell, Amy and Jack Meyers, Thayer Tolles Mickelson, Dwight Miller, Pete Moss, Barry O’Connell, Hearne Pardee, John Peters-Campbell, Donald Preziosi, Carrie Rebora, Dan Reich, Jack Rushing, David Simon, Marc Simpson, Paul Staiti, Ted Stebbins, Roger Stein, David Steinberg, Gabe Weisberg, Gina Werfel, John Wilmerding, Steven Youra, and Rebecca Zurier to stand for an even larger network of friends and colleagues who shared with me their good advice, encouragement, and knowledge as well as in some instances difficult-to-find slides, elusive references, and lavish food and drink. My faithful friend, reader, and Roman restaurant guide was Dana Prescott. Two graduate students who were wonderfully forthcoming in sharing their ideas and research were Beth O’Leary (on Lilly Martin Spencer) and Lesley Wright (on Seymour Guy). My former Colby student Martin Berger, who is now writing a Yale American Studies Ph.D. dissertation on Thomas Eakins, read several chapters with extremely close and critical attention; there are certain sentences that we worked over so many times I can no longer tell if they are his or mine. But that, really, is the point of this necessarily unwieldy paragraph and, indeed, of the book as a whole: there is no such thing as an individual, isolated creator; all creation is collective. No sentence in this book is exclusively mine, none that was not formed in conscious or unconscious collaboration with all the authors cited in my bibliographic endnotes as well as my students, friends, colleagues, unknown audience members, and even critics who wrote adversarial reviews of my previous book or vigorously disputed ideas I presented in public forums at various locations over the years. As you will see in the chapters ahead, I believe that all art, however personal it may be, is similarly shaped and formed by the tug and pull of a variety of often competing social collectives—the artist’s family, friends, professional associates, class affiliates, ideological opponents, and so forth.
Four individuals who have been mentors over the years not only intellectually but, more important, in terms of what they have taught me about largeness of spirit are Wanda Corn, Beth Johns, Jules Prown, and Bryan Wolf. The late David Huntington was also a figure I much admired for his generosity toward new scholars coming along. In the course of writing this book I became friends with Bill Truettner, who is yet another inspiration for his receptivity to younger scholars and new ideas. I hope I am able to return to the field at large the goodwill and openness that these friends have shared with me.
While writing the book I was fortunate to receive fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Getty Grant Program, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Stanford Humanities Center. The libraries, archives, and special collections across the country that assisted me in my research are too numerous to name, but as operating and acquisition budgets tighten everywhere, I have become aware that I cannot take these institutions for granted, and I thank them for their continuing efforts to keep their doors open to scholars. In 1986–87 the Department of Art at Stanford University and in 1989–90 the Program in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society at the University of Minnesota kindly provided me with office facilities and secretarial assistance as well as warm collegiality. Colby College has been unfailingly supportive throughout, not only in terms of funds for travel, research, books, and permissions fees, but also for much-appreciated help of various kinds from custodians, deans, librarians, audiovisual personnel, my fellow faculty, and my department secretary, Pam Wilder. My students at Colby have been astute and energetic critics of ideas I have tried out in class and, as a result, they have helped to generate the various interpretations contained in this book. I am especially grateful for the research assistance provided to me in the summer of 1989 by Barb Shaw and in the summer of 1992 by Alex Peary.
My editor at Yale, Judy Metro, deserves special mention for her patient advice and delightful sense of humor. The writing of a book certainly has its moments of fun (whatever Mr. Thatcher might suppose), but for any author, seeing a manuscript through to publication is no barrel of laughs. Therefore, it is especially good to be able to work with one’s editor as a friend.
I’d like to close with some affectionate words for the Lubins and Warners, my immediate family, especially for my parents-in-law, Ann and Dale Warner, and my father, Sam Lubin. Doris Lubin, my mother, died while I was writing this book but I must say that I feel her always with me, especially every time I successfully crack a joke. I dedicate this to her as well as to Molly and Gus and their mother, Libby, who is the best part of all my hours, Italian or otherwise. I may try everything that works, but she makes everything work.
Preface and Acknowledgments
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