Nine Revisionist Theses on the Picturesque

Michasiw, Kim Ian

doi:10.2307/2928685

Cited by 27 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Empires have a way of coming to an end, leaving behind their landscapes as relics and ruins which become the spectral spaces for nationalist and postcolonial controversies over tradition and modernity. Mitchell consolidates Kim Michisaw’s revisionist critique which not only stresses the ambiguity of the Picturesque’s status in relation to English tourism and agriculture but also its seeming opposition to the colonialist or imperial eye (Michisaw, 1992). The Picturesque is perhaps curiously not perhaps even anti‐mimetic; thus Michisaw argues it is a severely limiting strategy for perceiving ‘alien’ peoples and lands.…”

Section: Transported Subjects: British Artists In India and The Problmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The Picturesque is perhaps curiously not perhaps even anti‐mimetic; thus Michisaw argues it is a severely limiting strategy for perceiving ‘alien’ peoples and lands. Just because colonialists promoted their drawings and Indian scenery as ‘Picturesque views’ this did not mean that the subjects/objects of imperialism should be treated in an equivalent manner to those of the English Picturesque (Michisaw, 1992:96).…”

Section: Transported Subjects: British Artists In India and The Problmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

‘Enchanted Traps?’ The Historiography of Art and Colonialism in Eighteenth‐century India

Eaton

2012

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This essay examines the visual culture of 18th‐century India in the light of recent historiographical debates in art history, postcolonial studies and anthropology. It seeks to highlight the exciting new developments in this long neglected field to explore how and why scholars of the visual are now rising to the challenge of the ‘imperial turn’. My argument foregrounds the relationship between knowledge, power and representation before turning to the issue and the danger of viewing empire as a ubiquitous presence in British and Indian art. I consider whether we need to provincialize Europe or whether ‘Europe’ (i.e. the Western episteme broadly defined) is already ‘parochial’ in outlook.

show abstract

Section: Transported Subjects: British Artists In India and The Problmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Transported Subjects: British Artists In India and The Problmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Enchanted Traps?’ The Historiography of Art and Colonialism in Eighteenth‐century India

Eaton

2012

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They were differentiated by their 'economic and functional relation to the landscape': the 'improvers', who work on the land and govern it, and the 'sensationalist nomads moving through a world over which they have no control, a striated space marked by hands-whether those of Nature or of landowners'. 96 It is the virtuosic landlord, who can impose 'art and taste' in a landscape, in whom 'the picturesque and the drive to mastery intersect'. 97 At the picnic then, the Bombay government acted as a 'virtuosic landlord' whose mastery, in this case, lay in marshalling a moveable feast, and enabling a spatial and temporal withdrawal from the city, for the Prince.…”

Section: The Elephanta Aestheticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond conservation: Royal picnics at Elephanta and the legitimization of empire

Mulgund

2023

Mod. Asian Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Histories of conservation suggest that from the nineteenth century onwards, the custodianship and conservation of colonial antiquities enabled European powers to legitimize imperial claims. This article complicates this view by focusing on a series of visits made by British royals to the Caves of Elephanta, near Bombay, as part of their tours of India. Of particular interest are the visits in 1870 and 1875, which were essentially picnics, including fireworks and feasting, with little showcasing of ongoing conservation efforts. The article argues that these early visits also sought to advance a narrative of imperial legitimization through the British heirs’ presence at an Indian monument. Rather than acts of rational governance, such as conservation measures, these picnics were transactions within the ceremonial economy that privileged consumption as a means of legitimizing empire. They present a register of imperial engagement with an Indian monument that is neither ‘plunder’ nor ‘preservation’. Instead, they are posited as predecessors of the durbars (courts/assemblies) produced by the British administration from 1877 onwards. As acts of imperial political communication, the Elephanta visits drew upon the popularity of the picnic as a form of leisure, and consumption, and the long-standing aesthetic resonances of the site, such as the island’s picturesque framing and the Caves’ Romanticist associations. These enduring aesthetic frameworks made the acts of consumption legible as imperial political communication. The picnics at Elephanta demonstrate that colonial antiquities featured in imperial narratives of legitimization based on political pageantry, exceeding conservation and rational governance.

show abstract

“…This does not, however, differentiate between large areas of productive land and areas that could not be worked with the available technology (Michasiw, 1992), suggesting that choices within the picturesque aesthetic were designed to tell a particular story. The picturesque illustrates a particular class view of rural landscape change.…”

Section: Exploring “The Picturesque”: a Complex Landscapementioning

confidence: 99%

The picturesque roots of impression management: framing, Claude glass and “rose”-tinted lens?

McBride,

Atkins,

Atkins

2023

AAAJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThis paper explores the way in which industrial pollution has been expressed in the narrative accounts of nature, landscape and industry by William Gilpin in his 18th-century picturesque travel writings. A positive description of pollution is generally outdated and unacceptable in the current society. The authors contrast his “picturesque” view with the contemporary perception of industrial pollution, reflect on these early accounts of industrial impacts as representing the roots of impression management and use the analysis to inform current accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe research uses an interpretive content analysis of the text to draw out themes and features of impression management. Goffman's impression management is the theoretical lens through which Gilpin's travel accounts are interpreted, considering this microhistory through a thematic research approach. The picturesque accounts are explored with reference to the context of impression management.FindingsGilpin's travel writings and the “Picturesque” aesthetic movement, it appears, constructed a social reality around negative industrial externalities such as air pollution and indeed around humans' impact on nature, through a lens which described pollution as adding aesthetically to the natural landscape. The lens through which the picturesque tourist viewed and expressed negative externalities involved quite literally the tourists' tricks of the trade, Claude glass, called also Gray's glass, a tinted lens to frame the view.Originality/valueThe paper adds to the wealth of literature in accounting and business pertaining to the ways in which companies socially construct reality through their accounts and links closely to the impression management literature in accounting. There is also a body of literature relating to the use of images and photographs in published corporate reports, which again is linked to impression management as well as to a growing literature exploring the potential for the aesthetic influence in accounting and corporate communication. Further, this paper contributes to the growing body of research into the historical roots of environmental reporting.

show abstract

Nine Revisionist Theses on the Picturesque

Cited by 27 publications

References 16 publications

‘Enchanted Traps?’ The Historiography of Art and Colonialism in Eighteenth‐century India

‘Enchanted Traps?’ The Historiography of Art and Colonialism in Eighteenth‐century India

Beyond conservation: Royal picnics at Elephanta and the legitimization of empire

The picturesque roots of impression management: framing, Claude glass and “rose”-tinted lens?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About