Brownlee, Peter John (Author)
University of Pennsylvania Press
Physical Details: 264
Language: English
When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1837 that "Our Age is Ocular," he offered a succinct assessment of antebellum America's cultural, commercial, and physiological preoccupation with sight. In the early nineteenth century, the American city's visual culture was manifest in pamphlets, newspapers, painting exhibitions, and spectacular entertainments; businesses promoted their wares to consumers on the move with broadsides, posters, and signboards; and advances in ophthalmological sciences linked the mechanics of vision to the physiological functions of the human body. Within this crowded visual field, sight circulated as a metaphor, as a physiological process, and as a commercial commodity. Out of the intersection of these various discourses and practices emerged an entirely new understanding of vision.The Commerce of Vision integrates cultural history, art history, and material culture studies to explore how vision was understood and experienced in the first half of the nineteenth century. Peter John Brownlee examines a wide selection of objects and practices that demonstrate the contemporary preoccupation with ocular culture and accurate vision: from the birth of ophthalmic surgery to the business of opticians, from the typography used by urban sign painters and job printers to the explosion of daguerreotypes and other visual forms, and from the novels of Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville to the genre paintings of Richard Caton Woodville and Francis Edmonds. In response to this expanding visual culture, antebellum Americans cultivated new perceptual practices, habits, and aptitudes. At the same time, however, new visual experiences became quickly integrated with the machinery of commodity production and highlighted the physical shortcomings of sight, as well as nascent ethical shortcomings of a surface-based culture. Through its theoretically acute and extensively researched analysis, The Commerce of Vision synthesizes the broad culturing of vision in antebellum America.
...MoreReview Justin T. Clark (2020) Review of "The Commerce of Vision: Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America". American Historical Review (pp. 230-231).
Review Martin L. Johnson (2020) Review of "The Commerce of Vision: Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America". Business History Review (pp. 274-276).
Review Julia Skelly (2019) Review of "The Commerce of Vision: Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America". Social History of Medicine (pp. 876-878).
Review David Weimer (2020) Review of "The Commerce of Vision: Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 147-148).
Similar Citations
Article
Corinne Doria;
(2021)
Searching for the Normal Vision. Measuring Visual Acuity in the 19th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB584358033/)
Thesis
Andrew B. Ross;
(2017)
A Natural History of the Eye: Shared Vision in Early American Natural History, 1784-1839
(/isis/citation/CBB004756092/)
Book
A. Joan Saab;
(2020)
Objects of Vision: Making Sense of What We See
(/isis/citation/CBB772588105/)
Article
Corinne Doria;
(2020)
À la recherche de la vision « normale » : mesurer l’acuité visuelle au XIXe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB715193668/)
Thesis
Schiavo, Laura;
(2003)
“A Collection of Endless Extent and Beauty”: Stereographs, Vision, Taste and the American Middle Class, 1850--1880
(/isis/citation/CBB001560621/)
Thesis
Talia Bess Shabtay;
(2021)
See, Think, Learn: Creativity and Limits in Early Cold War Art and Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB601718949/)
Book
Leja, Michael;
(2004)
Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp
(/isis/citation/CBB000741894/)
Thesis
Rossi, Michael Paul;
(2011)
The Rules of Perception: American Color Science, 1831--1931
(/isis/citation/CBB001567292/)
Article
Pesic, Peter;
(2013)
Helmholtz, Riemann, and the Sirens: Sound, Color, and the “Problem of Space”
(/isis/citation/CBB001320409/)
Chapter
Dupré, Sven;
(2013)
The Return of the Species: Jesuit Responses to Kepler's New Theory of Images
(/isis/citation/CBB001201651/)
Article
Sigrid Leyssen;
(2021)
Remaking “Michotte”: Reusing and Remaking Moving Images in the History of Perception Research
(/isis/citation/CBB651176380/)
Chapter
Neal, Valerie;
(2013)
Bringing Spaceflight Down to Earth: Astronauts and The IMAX Experience®
(/isis/citation/CBB001201399/)
Book
Alexis L. Boylan;
(2020)
Visual Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB032025612/)
Book
Jackson, Donald C.;
(2013)
Pastoral and Monumental: Dams, Postcards, and the American Landscape
(/isis/citation/CBB001321155/)
Book
Willumson, Glenn;
(2013)
Iron Muse: Photographing the Transcontinental Railroad
(/isis/citation/CBB001320948/)
Book
Mannoni, Laurent;
Nekes, Werner;
Warner, Marina;
(2004)
Eyes, Lies and Illusions: The Art of Deception
(/isis/citation/CBB000501538/)
Book
Hansen, Bert;
(2009)
Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio: A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America
(/isis/citation/CBB001034250/)
Book
Michael Rossi;
(2019)
The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America
(/isis/citation/CBB532177952/)
Article
Vergara, Moema de Rezende;
(2008)
As imagens femininas n'O Vulgarizador: público de ciência e mulheres no século XIX
(/isis/citation/CBB000932929/)
Book
Gemma Almond-Brown;
(2023)
Spectacles and the Victorians: Measuring, defining and shaping visual capacity
(/isis/citation/CBB163836400/)
Be the first to comment!