Transporting Visions: The Movement of Images in Early America

by Jennifer L. Roberts

Transporting Visions follows pictures as they traveled through and over the swamps, forests, towns, oceans, and rivers of British America and the United States between 1760 and 1860. Taking seriously the complications involved in moving pictures through the physical world―the sheer bulk and weight of canvases, the delays inherent in long-distance reception, the perpetual threat to the stability and mnemonic capacity of images, the uneasy mingling of artworks with other kinds of things in transit―Jennifer L. Roberts forges a model for a material history of visual communication in early America. Focusing on paintings and prints by John Singleton Copley, John James Audubon, and Asher B. Durand―which were designed with mobility in mind―Roberts shows how an analysis of such imagery opens new perspectives on the most fundamental problems of early American commodity circulation, geographic expansion, and social cohesion.

Genres: Art History

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 2013

Reviews

[Jonathan Frederick Walz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite good, even if Roberts can be just a smidge pedantic or dense and dry every so often. That does not detract from her masterful readings of images or her well-considered plea for material culture studies. Definitely an instant classic that I imagine graduate students will be reading for some time to come.