Antebellum American Pendant Paintings by Ikemoto Wendy N. E.;

Author:Ikemoto, Wendy N. E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Figure 2.11Diorama, Park Square, Regents Park, designed by A. Pugin and built by J. Morgan 1823.

Source: In John Britton and A. Pugin, Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London. With historical and descriptive accounts of each edifice, vol. 1, (London: J. Taylor, 1825), plate opposite p. 66. © British Library Board / Robana / Art Resource, NY.

Cole’s paintings refused this type of passive spectatorship to encourage instead a more effortful form of looking at his already more challenging allegorical subjects. What happens when Cole remaps the kinetic effects of the moving panorama and diorama onto easel paintings is that the transitional passages that form the focus of the popular media take place now in the intervals between discrete canvases. This, in turn, shifts the burden of the transitional effect from image onto audience. The connections between scenes are not performed for viewers but rather made by them. The Voyage of Life, for instance, splits its implicitly continuous panorama into four discrete scenes. It falls upon the audience itself to “advance” the landscape, imagining its contiguity across breaks. In Past and Present, it becomes likewise the viewer’s responsibility to picture the shift from pristine to ruined tower. If the diorama enacts the process of deterioration within a single frame, Cole’s pendant canvases establish the framework for its visualization. Put another way, the intervals between Cole’s paintings activate the beholder.

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