Picturing the Black Box
On Blanks in Nineteenth Century Paintings and Photographs
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4516230 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Geimer (ETH Zurich, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 467-501 |
| Publication date | 2004-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science in Context (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0269889704000237 |
| OpenAlex | W2153527934 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 3 |
ArgumentIn 1867 Edouard Manet painted the execution of the Mexican emperor Maximilian of Habsburg. Manet broke with the classical tradition of history painting, for he depicted the actual shooting itself instead of choosing moments before or after the execution. Thus, the painting refers to a moment that in real time would have been far too brief to be perceptible. Manet presented a portrait of living actors whose execution has already taken place. This depiction of the imperceptible invites comparison to contemporaneous photographs of extremely short periods of time: attempts to capture flying cannon balls (Thomas Kaife), to take flashlight portraits of patients that would undermine their bodies' reaction time (Albert Londe), to visualize the successive stages of a drop falling into water (Arthur Worthington). Like Manet these scientists referred to an "optical unconscious" (Walter Benjamin). A closer look at their work reveals that they dealt with a space of knowledge that went beyond the classical dichotomy between objectivity and imagination, scientific and artistic pictures
Art · Art history · Depiction · Emperor · Epistemology · Painting · Portrait · Skepticism · Visual arts · History · Philosophy · Photographic and Visual Arts · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2014 (8) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |