Project

Double Vision: Pendant Painting in Antebellum America

Program

Luce/ACLS Dissertation Fellowships in American Art

Department

History of Art and Architecture

Abstract

This study situates the form of the paired, or pendant, canvas within the ideological paradigms of the Victorian gothic, and in relation to theories and practices of replication and doubling in antebellum visual and literary culture. By approaching five core painted pairs "visual narratology", this project investigates the pendant structure as it exploits the dialogic construction of meaning and the off-screen space between canvases to establish a uniquely binary discourse.