Portraits of the Landscape

Portraits are defined in part by their aim to reveal and represent the inner ‘character’ of a person. Because landscapes are typically viewed as lacking such an ‘inner life,’ one might assume that landscapes cannot be the subject of portraiture. However, the notion of landscape character plays an important role in landscape aesthetics and preservation. In this essay, I argue that landscape artworks can thus share in portraiture’s goal of capturing character, and in doing so present us with essential tools for revealing the often ineffable character of place. I explain the implications of this view for debates about scientific cognitivism in environmental aesthetics, representing the narrative dimension of landscape character and integrity, and appeals to the character of place in historic and environmental preservation

Poetic Economics: Phillis Wheatley and the Production of the Black Artist in the Early Atlantic World

This essay reads Wheatley as a key participant in the shifting economic and emotional relationships between artists, audiences, and texts that we now associate with romanticism. To recover facets of the role that the black artist played in the romantic movement(s), I examine three portraits of Wheatley-the poetic spectacle managed by her promoters, the actual portrait that appeared as the frontispiece for her Poems on Various Subjects, and the portrait that Wheatley herself created through her poetry. These portraits chart the tensions that circulated around the figure of the black African artist 111 the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, tensions between genius and barbarity, originality and imitation, exteriority and interiority, and artistic expression and commodification. These binaries have often characterized the terrain of Wheatley studies, marking opposing positions and points of contention. I argue for a different way of reading, one that sees the figure of Phillis Wheatley as produced through the interplay of all of these forces within the context of the early black Atlantic. Wheatley and her work exposed both the emphasis on authentic self-expression through art and the ways in which the mental life of the artist became available to the reader as a consumer product. She created a different vision of the black artist than that which commonly circulated in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, one that fused Christian discourse with romantic elements of imagination, Nature, and the poetic sublime, yet remained distant from and somewhat inaccessible to white readers. Keywords: Wheatley, black Atlantic, poetry, romanti

The Figure in Art: Selections from the Gettysburg College Collection

The Figure in Art: Selections from the Gettysburg College Collection is the second annual exhibition curated by students enrolled in the Art History Methods class. This exhibition is an exciting academic endeavor and provides an incredible opportunity for engaged learning, research, and curatorial experience. The eleven student curators are Diane Brennan, Rebecca Duffy, Kristy Garcia, Megan Haugh, Dakota Homsey, Molly Lindberg, Kathya Lopez, Kelly Maguire, Kylie McBride, Carolyn McBrady and Erica Schaumberg. Their research presents a multifaceted view of the representation of figures in various art forms from different periods and cultures.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/1017/thumbnail.jp

Constituent Parts: Recent Portraiture in Canadian Military Art

Not common within the art historical record of the Canadian Military, the work of a number of visual artists participating in the Canadian Forces Artists Program demonstrates a keen and growing interest in portraiture. In this article, the work of Gertrude Kearns, Mary Kavanagh, and Erin Riley will be highlighted to illustrate the recent trend. Their work is contrasted with one another as well as with portraiture created by Canada’s war artists in the First and Second World Wars to bring to light the tensions of representation inherent in military portraiture. It will be shown that shifting perceptions found in the wider employment of portraiture and freedom given to participants in the Canadian Forces most recent official art program have encouraged depictions of members at all levels of the Canadian Forces