Engraving the savage : the New World and techniques of civilization / Michael Gaudio.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gaudio, Michael.

Contributor:

Kenneth H. and Thelma F. Cisney Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Indians in art.

Discoveries in geography.

Historiography.

America--Discovery and exploration--European--Historiography.

America.

Difference (Philosophy) in art.

Art--Reproduction.

Art.

Prints--Technique.

Prints.

Physical Description:

xxv, 207 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2008]

Summary:

In 1585, the British painter and explorer John White created images of Carolina Algonquian Indians. These images were collected and engraved in 1590 by the Flemish publisher and printmaker Theodor de Bry and were subsequently reproduced widely, establishing the visual prototype of North American Indians for European and Euro-American readers. Michael Gaudio explains how popular engravings of Native American Indians defined the nature of Western civilization by producing an image of its "savage other." Going beyond the notion of the "savage" as an intellectual and ideological construct, Gaudio examines how the tools, materials, and techniques of copperplate engraving shaped Western responses to indigenous peoples.

Engraving the Savage demonstrates that the early visual critics of the engravings attempted to open a comfortable space between their own "civil" image-making practices and the "savage" practices of Native Americans. The real significance of these ethnographic engravings, he contends, lies in the traces they leave of a struggle to create meaning from the image of the American Indian. The visual culture of engraving and what it shows, Gaudio reasons, is critical to grasping how America was first understood in the European imagination. His interpretations of de Bry's engravings describe a deeply ambivalent pictorial space in between civil and savage-a space in which these two organizing concepts of Western culture are revealed in their making.

Contents:

Introduction: White pebbles in the dark forest

Savage marks: the scriptive techniques of early modern ethnography

Making sense of smoke: engraving and ornament in de Bry's America

Flatness and protuberance: reforming the image in Protestant print culture

The art of scratch: wood engraving and picture-writing in the 1880s.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-199) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Kenneth H. and Thelma F. Cisney Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780816648467

0816648468

9780816648474

0816648476

OCLC:

164570487

Online:

Publisher description