Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser.
This article addresses the relationship between early cinema and the tradition of spiritualist exposés. The latter were spectacular shows performed by stage magicians in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which aimed to debunk the tricks employed by spiritualist mediums in their séances. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the dispositive, this article shows how early cinema renewed and reinterpreted the tradition of the exposés. Focusing in particular on Hugo Münsterberg’s work, moreover, it addresses the connections between early film theory and psychological studies that debunked the illusions performed in spiritualist séances and stage magic. In the conclusion, the article proposes to employ the concept of “cinema of exposure” in order to address how early cinema invited spectators to acknowledge their own perceptual delusion. Résumé Cet article examine les relations entre le cinéma des premiers temps et la tradition des dévoilements spiritistes. Ces derniers étaient d’impressionnants spectacles créées par des magiciens au XIX siècle et au début du XX siècle, afin de dévoiler les trucages employés dans les séances de spiritisme. A partir du cadre théorique de la théorie du dispositif, l’article illustre comment le cinéma des premiers temps a renouvelé et réinterprété cette tradition des exposés. De surcroît, à travers l’analyse de l’œuvre d’Hugo Münsterberg, l’article vise à explorer les liens entre la première théorie du cinéma et les études psychologiques concernant les illusions des séances spiritistes. L’article propose enfin d’utiliser le concept du « cinéma de l’exposé » afin de comprendre comment le cinéma des premiers temps invitait les spectateurs à reconnaitre leurs propres illusions perceptives.
American Art 28, no. 1, 2014
This paper focuses on Painter with Pipe and Book (ca. 1650) by Gerrit Dou, a painter much admired by an exclusive circle of elite collectors in his own time. By incorporating a false frame and picture curtain, Dou transformed this work from a familiar “niche picture” into a depiction of a painting composed in his signature format. Drawing on anthropologist Alfred Gell’s concepts of enchantment and art nexus, I analyze how such a picture would have mediated the interactions between artist, owner, and viewer, enabling each agent to project his identity and shape one another’s response. I thus treat the painting as the center of a complex web of social relations formed in the specific setting of early modern collecting.
European Journal of American Culture, 2010
In recent years, the study of spiritualism and occultism has been proposed as a key to understand the political, social and cultural issues of nineteenth-century America. While the position of spiritualism's supporters has been the subject of most accounts, however, sources that critically questioned the spiritualist claims have been usually left aside. In this article, I will rely on this extremely rich body of sources, in order to understand how the debate about spiritualism played an essential role in the shaping of sceptical perspectives in nineteenth-century America. Focusing in particular on anti-spiritualist performances played on the stage by professional magicians and on psychological writings that questioned the phenomena of the spiritualist seances, I will argue that in both contexts the ‘spirit medium’ came to be understood as a performer, and the sitters as spectators. As a critical reading of texts such as film theory pioneer Hugo Münsterberg's 1891 ‘Psychology and Mysticism’ may suggest, the exposure of spiritualist trickery shaped a discourse on perception and sensorial delusion that anticipated in many ways later debates on cinematic spectatorship.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2017
By the early 19th century increased optical deceptions, like the phantasmagoria shows that could conjure up ghostly illusions, challenged biological and spiritual vision in novel ways. Ghosts also circulated with unprecedented ubiquity in printed stories of spectral appearances, from Gothic literature to spiritual visions. Within this constellation of developments Joseph Smith’s turn to print media to disseminate his own spectacular vision(s) should be understood as a cultural project to train vision and render it reproducible. The turn to publishing visionary accounts and instructions on avoiding deception coupled late romantic thought with modern practices of observing for early Mormons who were unsure if they could trust their eyes. Through a media archaeological approach to the religion’s initial reading network, this article argues that early Mormon texts taught readers how to properly see, discern, and become vigilant observers as a spiritual and modern necessity.
2016
Blümle, Claudia/Wismer, Beat (Hrsg.): Hinter dem Vorhang. Verhüllung und Enthüllung seit der Renaissance – Von Tizian bis Christo, Ausst. Kat. Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, München 2016
Van Hoogstraten’s comparison of a painting to ‘a mirror of Nature, which makes things seem to be that are not’, is probably the best-known quotation from the Inleyding. He holds that art ‘reflects the whole of nature’, calls it a ‘sister of reflexive Philosophy’ and describes the general tasks of painters in terms of ‘infinite reflections’. 1 This mirror metaphor is not as simple as it may appear: it relates to the deceptive quality of the image produced by the painter. The positive appreciation of deception that sounds in the metaphor was developed primarily in the classical theory of rhetoric.
Word & Image, 2011
Rutgers Art Review, 2014
MediaArtHistories RE:TRACE Conference, Danube-University Krems, 2017
Grey Room, 2016
The Most Noble of the Senses: Anamorphosis, Trompe-L'Oeil, and Other Optical Illusions in Early Modern Art, 2016
James Rosenquist: Visualizing the Sixties (exhibition catalogue), 2019
Art History, 2010
Rutgers Art Review, 2013
2012
Australian Feminist Law Journal, 2012
Fascination with Reality: Hyperrealism in Czech Painting, 2017