The spectral imagination: American art between science and superstition in the late nineteenth century

This dissertation explores how tensions between science and superstition were embedded in and constitutive of the visual arts in late nineteenth-century America. By focusing on the work of artists Henry Alexander (1860–94), William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Edwin Romanzo Elmer (1850–1923), and Irving Ramsay Wiles (1861–1948), this project examines the interplay of these ostensibly opposing worldviews in painting. It traces how the interdependence of these terms—which were very much in flux during the era—provided a creative paradigm for negotiating the professionalization of science, the emergent discipline of psychology, new theories of perception and memory, as well as scientific and spiritual efforts to unlock material, psychic, and supernatural worlds broadly. This dissertation reassesses distinctions between so-called realistic and visionary idioms in American art and offers a revised conception of the intersections between art and science in this period.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Thomas, Adam

Contributors dc:contributor

• Greenhill, Jennifer A.
• Weissman, Terri
• O'Brien, David
• Finnegan, Cara A.

• art
• painting
• science
• superstition
• Spiritualism
• magic
• psychology
• Henry Alexander
• William Merritt Chase
• Edwin Romanzo Elmer
• Irving Ramsay Wiles

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2014 Adam M. Thomas

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/50400

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/50400