Facingness in George Caleb Bingham’s River Paintings
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15010381 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Peters Corbett (Courtauld Institute of Art, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 2-23 |
| Publication date | 2018-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Art (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1073-9300 • E-ISSN: 1549-6503 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/699608 |
| OpenAlex | W2843549556 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
This article is concerned with how the river paintings of George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879) face us and how this fact implies an ethics of looking. It argues that the facingness of Bingham’s paintings is a way of affirming both their own aesthetic status and their relevance to prevailing political narratives of the time. Drawing on some recent and period writings about the face, the argument suggests that these paintings’ face-to-face encounter with the spectator offers an ethics of facingness and proposes the agency of the work of art itself as a legitimate voice in national debate. Finally, the article explores the possibility that Bingham’s example may be important in this way for our understanding of Western art of the mid-nineteenth century and its relationship to themes of development and progress
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Literature · Narrative · Painting · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory
| Highly cited | No |
|---|