Misére: The Visual Representation of Misery in the 19th Century

Nochlin (Women, Art, and Power) illuminates the largely unexplored field of what are called in film studies “proto-documentary,” or the calculatedly unrefined 19th-century drawings, paintings, and photography created to call attention to social and economic injustice. Examining pathos-laden images ranging from simple illustrations that ran in newspapers to paintings by such artists as Goya, Degas, and Van Gogh, Nochlin shows how many of these works succeeded in their aim of redressing societal ills; for example, the woodcuts that documented a British 1842 inquiry into mining conditions brought to light the exploitation of children in the pits, resulting in laws prohibiting child labor, and the unsentimental photography of Jacob Riis advanced the case for better living conditions for impoverished immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side. Nochlin deepens her study by asking how accurately and convincingly one can document the lived realities of the poor and wonders at the moral implications of such visual representations. Specifically, she points to often-demeaning portrayals of the victims of the Irish Potato Famine—including those of crouching and half-naked women—to question the ability of documentary art to convey the objective reality of a situation. Inspired in part by the broadening gap between rich and poor in the U.S., this succinct and insightful book makes 19th-century social injustice uncannily relevant today. 80 illus.[em] (Apr.) [/em]