The portrait's subject : inventing inner life in the nineteenth-century United States / Sarah Blackwood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blackwood, Sarah, author.

Series:

Studies in United States culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Portraits, American.

Identity (Psychology) in art.

Identity (Psychology) in literature.

Psychology and art.

Physical Description:

xi, 201 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2019]

Summary:

"Between the invention of photography in 1839 and the end of the nineteenth century, portraiture became one of the most popular and common art forms in the United States. ... images of human surfaces became understood as expressions of human depth during this era. Combining visual theory, literary close reading, and in-depth archival research, Blackwood examines portraiture's changing symbolic and aesthetic practices, from daguerreotype to X-ray. Considering painting, photography, illustration, and other visual forms alongside literary and cultural representations of portrait making and viewing, Blackwood argues that portraiture was a provocative art form used by writers, artists, and early psychologists to imagine selfhood as hidden, deep, and in need of revelation, ideas that were then taken up by the developing discipline of psychology"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

In the portrait gallery of American literature

Face: Hepzibah's scowl

Head: writing the African American portrait

Limbs: postbellum portraiture and the mind-body problem

Mind/brain: the physiognomy of consciousness

Bones: the x-ray and the inert body

Selfie nation.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781469652580

1469652587

9781469652597

1469652595

OCLC:

1096221275