638 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Breaking Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century. By Julie Wosk. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Pp. xiii+267; illustrations, notes, index. $32.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). In Breaking Frame, Julie Wosk looks at the interplay of forces in the relationship between technological developments and the visual arts in the 19th century. By examining artifacts as diverse as Honoré Daumier’s lithographs of 19th-century train travel and the design of the Atwater sewing machine of 1860, Wosk attempts to show how technological developments like the railroad were perceived and received by the public and how design of technological innovations like the sewing machine included classical design features in order to be more readily accepted by the public. The title phrase, “breaking frame,” is derived from the work of American sociologist Erving Coffman and signifies “the feeling of disorientation when encountering new experiences” (p. 3). According to Wosk, recurrent themes of diametrically opposed actions—fracturing and coherence, division and unity, fragmentation and integration— characterized the reaction ofpeople to the developing technologies and were a major influence in the visual arts that were produced during the 19th century. In the introduction, Wosk provides an outline, background informa tion, and justification for her research. While the six chapters of Breaking Frame can be viewed as individual essays, each discussing a particular aspect of the interaction between technology and the visual arts, the author describes two main divisions within the text. As Wosk puts it, “the first two chapters look at the artists’ startling ability to illuminate the underlying tensions accompanying the arrival of new technologies, their ability notjust to soften the century’s profound sense of disorientation and trauma, but also to make it painfully visible” (p. 7). Chapter 1, “The Traumas of Transport,” deals with the visual representations of steam carriage and railroad transportation and focuses on the disruptive and threatening nature of these technological advances. Chapter 2, “Art, Technology, and the Human Image,” looks at the relationship between humans and technology as seen in pictorial representations, literature, and the development of automatons. The second part of the book addresses the “often contentious debates that swirled around the dramatic introduction of the imitative arts and the new, ornamented, factory-made machines” (p. 20). The philosophical, and sometimes moral, debate of the good-versus-evil effects of technol ogy on design are discussed in chapter 3, “Technology and the Design Debate.” Technological advancements in electrometallurgy and electro plating of decorative wares are the focus of chapter 4, “The Anxiety of Imitation,” which continues the debate from chapter 3. Chapter 5, “The Struggle for Legitimacy,” addresses the issue of “truth in materials” (p. 167) by studying the development of cast iron and its uses as a TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 639 structural and decorative material. In “Classicizing the Machine,” the application of classical design elements to the artifacts of new technolo gies is seen as an attempt to legitimize the technology and facilitate its public acceptance. The afterword is a brief look “Into the Twentieth Century,” with references spanning the period from the Italian Futurists of 1909 to the Postmodernists of the 1970s and 1980s and comparisons to the events of the 19th century previously discussed. Wosk incorporates a variety of sources, primarily English and Ameri can, in her analysis of the technology and visual arts relationship. In addition to the written sources, she analyzes etchings and engravings, cast-iron architecture and furniture, electroplated tableware, and ma chinery. The inclusion of the decorative arts provides an added dimen sion to her study and shows the importance that artifacts can have in historical research. She also views the technology/visual arts relation ship from different perspectives. The study of etchings and engravings illustrates the artists’ and presumably public reaction to the new forms of transportation. In this case, the new technology was inspiration for the artwork. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the application of classical design motifs to machinery illustrates how the physical form of a new technology incorporated these design elements in order to have the technology more readily accepted by the consumer public. By presenting the different perspectives...