Popular Prints Research Articles

Popular Prints for Children ... And Everyone Else

Popular Prints for Children ... And Everyone Else

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity

Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II. Studies in British Art 18 (review)

Reviewed by: Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II. Studies in British Art 18 Will Pritchard Julia Marciari Alexander and Catherine MacLeod, eds., Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II. Studies in British Art 18. New Haven and London: Yale Center for British Art and The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2008. 268 pp. + 60 illustrations. This volume has a complicated ancestry. Its grandsire was the exhibition, Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II, mounted first at the National Portrait Gallery in 2001 and then at the Yale Center for British Art in 2002. That show begat both a splendid catalogue and a pair of accompanying conferences, one in London and one in New Haven. Some of the nine essays in this collection (which appears to mark the end of the Painted Ladies franchise) were first presented at those conferences. Readers may be forgiven for mistaking this book for the Painted Ladies catalogue: the two are roughly the same size, have the same editors and the same publisher. Each shows a Lely countess on the dust jacket, and each opens with an essay by Kevin Sharpe (the former with one on "Politics, Society and Culture," the latter with another called "Aesthetics, Sex and Politics"). Both volumes are handsomely produced and lavishly illustrated. Despite the similarities, however, this volume is far from redundant. While the Painted Ladies catalogue was more solidly art historical in focus, Politics, Transgression and Representation casts its net more widely and aims to "stimulate thinking across traditional disciplinary boundaries" (xi). Scholars of the Restoration, the editors maintain, have been slow to cross these boundaries and the field has "remained relatively compartmentalized, particularly with regard to the visual arts" (xi). This claim is perhaps debatable; boundary-crossing works by Joseph Levine and James Winn come to mind. (And, more generally, the claims that representations are political and that politics is representational are more or less articles of faith in contemporary criticism. One would be more surprised nowadays to find a collection of essays that tried to cordon off the political from the aesthetic.) Nonetheless, this collection certainly bears out its editors' claim that the Restoration age is "one of the richest for the study of the intersection of politics and culture" (xix), and it will surely please and instruct students of the period, whatever their disciplinary affiliations. Part of Yale's Studies in British Art series, the volume is dedicated to the late Sir Oliver Millar, and the editors characterize the essays it contains as "rang[ing] from the type of document- and object-based art history of which Sir Oliver was [End Page 64] such a notable exponent, to more theoretical analyses that reflect developments in recent decades" (xiii). And while they hasten to add that "[t]hese approaches are not mutually exclusive" (xiii), the essays that follow do begin to sort themselves into two categories. Some pose relatively straightforward and finite art-historical questions: were the Windsor Beauties portraits commissioned or conceived as a single set, or how were women depicted in seventeenth-century popular prints? Others make the visual arts less central to their proceedings, relying instead on written documentary evidence to address such historical topics as how Charles II's court was perceived by the populace or the extent to which women at court exercised political power. Rachel Weil, the historian who treats this last subject, modestly suggests in conclusion that her broader topic—"[t]he complex interplay between female political symbolism and female political agency"—calls for "the joint efforts of art historians, literary scholars, and political historians working together" (189). The volume as a whole mounts this collective effort and shows some of the dividends that such an effort can pay. Within the "joint effort" of the volume as a whole, there are individual essays which deliver on the promise of cross-disciplinarity, essays that are not only flowers in an inter-disciplinary bouquet but that are also themselves hybrids. Susan Shifrin's discussion of various portraits depicting Hortense Mancini, Duchess Mazarin as Cleopatra or Diana instructively places visual iconography alongside verbal depictions of the duchess (and of Cleopatra and Diana...

The Emperor's New Clothes: Japanese Visuality and Imperial Portrait Photography

This article examines the visual culture of late nineteenth-century Japan through portrait photographs, paintings, and prints depicting Emperor Meiji (1852–1912), the country's first constitutional monarch. Four official portrait photographs, produced between 1872 and 1888, promoted his new image as the leader of Japan's modernisation and the divine descendent of the Sun Goddess. Photography embodied the accuracy of vision that was non-existent in Japanese art and was therefore considered perfect for giving authenticity to his dual image. The emperor's photographs also served as the model for numerous popular prints as well as official and unofficial portrait paintings. Thanks to these images, which broke the long-standing taboo about portraying the emperor, Meiji's likeness circulated to people of all walks of life. The last official portrait (1888) became known as goshin'ei (venerable true shadow) and the quintessential icon of the sovereign. It was distributed to public schools to be worshipped by students on special occasions. Although it was a photographic reproduction of a conte crayon drawing, the state treated it as an authentic photograph and required schools to handle it as a sacred object. This series of portraits, which clearly etched the emperor's image in the Japanese mind, reveals the significant transformation of Japanese vision during the late nineteenth century.

The Loggia of Raphael: a Vatican art treasure

The loggia, or colonnaded porch, on the second story of the Apostolic Palace is one of the VaticanGCOs most remarkable art treasures; its decoration, designed by Raphael (1483GCo1520) and executed by his workshop in 1517GCo19, epitomizes the spirit of the Italian Renaissance in its synthesis of Christian and classical themes. The thirteen square vaults of RaphaelGCOs loggia each contain four frescoes of scenes from the Bible, from the Creation to the Last Supper. Meanwhile, the plasterwork of the other architectural elements is decorated with GCGBPgrotesquesGC[yen]GCofanciful arabesques enlivened with a wide variety of human and animal figuresGComodeled after ancient Roman wall paintings.This groundbreaking study of RaphaelGCOs loggia, the first to be published in English, has four parts. The first and second concern the grotesques and the scenes from the Bible, respectively, while the third examines the lives and artistic styles of the members of RaphaelGCOs workshop who worked with him on the loggia. The fourth part traces the loggiaGCOs enduring influence: the grotesque ornamental style elaborated by Raphael has been imitated as far afield as the corridors of the United States Capitol, and the Bible scenes served as influential models for popular prints. Illustrated throughout with newly commissioned color photographs, this book reaffirms the central importance of RaphaelGCOs loggia to the history of art.

Ethiopian orthodox visual culture in the age of mechanical reproduction: a research note

ABSTRACTThis paper explores contemporary visual imagery associated with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, focusing on the tension between innovation and conservatism deriving from traditions that straddle the realms of religion and commerce. Specifically, it considers the circulation of popular mass-produced chromolithographic prints and the contexts in which this imagery has been integrated into Orthodox religious practice. These prints today may be found displayed in churches where they serve as objects of devotion and as models for paintings produced by local artists. The paper argues that the current phenomenon is in fact a latter day manifestation of a process that has been practiced for centuries in the highlands of Ethiopia.

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity 1812-1945 by Stephen M. Norris (review)

134 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g theRusso-Japanese War in 1904-05, which caused Kuropatkin to formulate the doctrine of the 'Yellow Peril' as the greatest strategic threat to Russia (pp. 95-96), this increasing paranoia clouded the judgement of theGeneral Staff. In his conclusion Marshall shows (pp. 183-88) how in theperiod leading up to the FirstWorld War 'The Myopic Guard' was distracted from the more serious threat in Europe by their concerns over pan-Islamism and the modernization of the Japanese and Chinese armed forces, not to mention growing tensions with the British over Afghanistan which (asJennifer Siegel has shown in her Endgame, London and New York, 2002) were not resolved by theAnglo-Russian agreement of 1907.He concludes with some observa tions on the continuities of attitudes and personnel amongst military oriental ists into the early Soviet period, embodied most clearly in thefigure ofAndrei Evgenievich Snesarev, the tsaristGeneral Staffs leading expert on Afghani stan and British India, who would become the rector of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow from 1921until his arrest in 1930 (p. 190). There are the usual problems with Routledge books: the copy-editing is somewhat slipshod, and in many cases entirely new errors seem to have been added. The volume is also horrendously overpriced at ?75.00. However, the book will be of interestnot only toRussianists but also to historians working on other European colonial empires. It should be essential reading not just for military historians, but for anyone who wants to further their understanding of that elusive concept, the 'official mind' in tsaristRussia. School of History Alexander Morrison UniversityofLiverpool Norris, Stephen M. A War ofImages:Russian Popular Prints,Wartime Culture,and National Identityi8i2-ig4j. Northern IllinoisUniversity Press, DeKalb, IL, 2006. xiii + 277 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $40.00. Stephen Norris seeks to demonstrate 'the visual nature of Russian nation hood before and after 1917', a subject, he suggests, that has hitherto 'been litde studied' (p. 3). 'Nationhood' is his preferred term for themore widely accepted 'national identity' and 'national consciousness' and he limits the visual side of his investigation solely to the lubok,although not to the lubokin general (which he calls a genre), but to thewar lubok (which he also confus ingly calls a genre [p. 5], when it is, ifanything, a sub-genre or theme). This initial confusion is compounded by the book's title,which mentions neither nationhood nor lubki as such, but does denote the self-recommending symmetry of the book's historical parameters, from the Patriotic War to the Great Patriotic War. Following the introductory chapter, six of the next seven chapters are devoted to the wars that were the stimulus for the mass production of lubki, beginning with 1812and proceeding via theCrimean War, theRusso-Turkish War of 1877-78, and theRusso-Japanese War, to theGreat War. The excep tion is chapter three,which traces the attitude of the government and its censors towards the lubok,principally during the last decades ofNicholas Fs REVIEWS 135 reign. Chapter eight pursues the story into the first years of the Soviet regime, when the attemptwas made initially to obliterate the lubok, beforeMaiakovskii andMoor demonstrated itspropaganda value through poster works produced as so-called ROSTA (Russian Telegraph Agency) Windows, which during World War Two were reprised as TASS Windows. An understanding of thenature and limitsof the lubokisobviously of crucial importance. The term itself was firstintroduced by Ivan Snegirev in an essay he published in 1822, entitled 'Russkaia narodnaia gallereia iii lubochnye kartinki', but proved unacceptable tomembers of the Society of theLovers of Russian Literature inwhose Trudyhe published a furtheressay in 1824 entitled 'O prostonarodnykh izobrazheniiakh vMoskovskom mire'. When he eventu ally published his book-length study in 1861, he did not hesitate to call it Lubochnye kartinki russkogonaroda v moskovskom mire. Dmitrii Rovinskii, who, togetherwith Snegirev, is the authority forNorris and for all researchers into the history of the lubok,opted for 'popular pictures' (narodnye kartinki)in his monumental four-volume study of 1881. 'Popular' prints or pictures is the most widely accepted term, certainly beyond the boundaries of Russia, but, as Anthony Griffiths noted in his Preface to Sheila O'Connell's The Popular Print inEngland 1550...

Picturing animals in Britain, 1750-1850

From fine art paintings by such artists as Stubbs and Landseer to zoological illustrations and popular prints, a vast array of animal images was created in Britain during the century from 1750 to 1850. This highly original book investigates the rich meanings of these visual representations as well as the ways in which animals were actually used and abused. What Diana Donald discovers in this fascinating study is a deep and unresolved ambivalence that lies at the heart of human attitudes toward animals. The author brings to light dichotomies in human thinking about animals throughout this key period: awestruck with the beauty and spirit of wild animals, people nevertheless desired to capture and tame them; the belief that other species are inferior was firmly held, yet at the same time animals in stories and fables were given human attributes; though laws against animal cruelty were introduced, the overworking of horses and the allure of sport hunting persisted. Animals are central in cultural history, Donald concludes, and compelling questions about them, then and now, remain unanswered.

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945 , and: Voennyi faktor v povsednevnoi zhizni russkoi zhenshchiny v XVIII–nachale XX vekov , and: Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution (review)

Reviewed by: A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945, and: Voennyi faktor v povsednevnoi zhizni russkoi zhenshchiny v XVIII–nachale XX vekov, and: Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution Gregory Vitarbo Stephen M. Norris, A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945. 291 pp. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006. ISBN-13 978-0875803630. $40.00. Pavel Petrovich Shcherbinin, Voennyi faktor v povsednevnoi zhizni russkoi zhenshchiny v XVIII–nachale XX vekov [The War Factor in the Everyday Life of Russian Women from the 18th to the Beginning of the 20th Centuries]. 507 pp. Tambov: Iulis, 2004. ISBN 5984010081. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye and Bruce W. Menning, eds., Reforming the Tsar’s Army: Military Innovation in Imperial Russia from Peter the Great to the Revolution. 374 pp. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN-13 978- 0521819881. $75.00. In different ways the three works reviewed here posit the centrality of warfare in shaping the course of modern Russia’s historical development. Although warfare exerted a profound influence upon the history of most, if not all, European states in the modern era, wars both large and small played a crucial role in the foundation, expansion, and later collapse of both the tsarist and Soviet empires. If so with war, so it was also with the institution tasked with waging it, the military. As both the primary instrument and the prop of tsarist power, the military played a crucial role in the regime, not only in providing for the physical security of the state but in profoundly influencing political structures, methods of governance, and conceptions of authority. Furthermore, the scope of the military’s interaction with society was arguably broader than that of any other institution. As Bruce Menning and David Schimmelpenninck contend in their introduction, the kinds of military reforms that they analyze in Reforming the Tsar’s Army “have affected Russian society more thoroughly than perhaps any other society during the modern era” (3). The influence was reciprocal. From conscription to repression to local administration, some form of military experience was shared, and hence in part shaped, by nearly every tsarist subject. In light of this, it is telling that in his contributing essay to Reforming the Tsar’s Army, David McDonald still feels compelled to make the case for [End Page 668] the inherent value and broader relevance of military history in the Russian context. He first identifies some of the causal factors responsible for the continuing “outsider status” of Russian military history: the complex nature of the military itself (“a society within a society”), restricted archival access, political antipathies among scholars toward the tsarist regime, and a larger disdain for military history itself. One might also add the emphasis on social history in the 1960s–70s and the linguistic “turn” of the 1990s—movements that, as a rule, did not prioritize analysis of the military. In response, McDonald persuasively suggests a “closer relationship between Russia’s military, political-institutional, and social history than is often evident in the scholarly literature” (307–8). In particular, he notes how the essays in Reforming the Tsar’s Army illustrate several compelling themes: the influential role of the military in shaping the institutions, personnel, and political culture of the tsarist state; the connections between these essays and recent historiographical trends regarding new areas of thematic and chronological focus; and military historians’ engagement with broader conceptual motifs in approaching the late imperial period, including “change vs. continuity” and “Russia vs. the West.” All three of the works under review develop these themes in a number of ways. First, they display an appreciation for the breadth and complexity of the experience of warfare in the Russian context. From diverse perspectives they address the nexus of military, state, and society in a wide variety of forms, including conscription policies, strategic planning, technological modernization, popular culture, imperial ideology, and the unique experience of women. Moreover, all three explicitly emphasize a long and broad historical arc, explore the evolution of this dynamic interaction over multiple decades, and introduce comparisons with developments in...

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945 by Stephen M. Norris (review)

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945 by Stephen M. Norris (review)

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945 by Stephen M. Norris

A War of Images: Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, and National Identity, 1812–1945 by Stephen M. Norris

The Art of Commedia: A Study in the 'Commedia dell'arte', 1560-1620, with Special Reference to the Visual Records

Italian comedians attracted audiences to performances at every level, from the magnificent Italian, German and French court festival appearances of Orlando di Lasso or Isabella Andreini, to the humble street trestle lazzi of anonymous quacks. The characters they inspired continue to exercise a profound cultural influence, and an understanding of the commedia dell'arte and its visual record is fundamental for scholars of post-1550 European drama, literature, art, and music. The 340 plates presented here are considered in the light of the rise and spread of commedia stock types, and especially Harlequin, Zanni and the actresses. Intensively researched in public and private collections in Oxford, Munich, Florence, Venice, Paris and elsewhere, they complement the familiar images of Jacques Callot and the Stockholm 'Recueil Fossard' within a framework of hundreds of significant pictures still virtually unknown in this context. These range from anonymous popular prints to pictures by artists such as Ambrogio Brambilla, Sebastian Vrancx, Jan Bruegel, Louis de Caulery, Marten de Vos, and members of the Valckenborch and Francken clans. This volume, essential for commedia dell'arte specialists, represents an invaluable reference resource for scholars, students, theatre practitioners and artists concerned with commedia-related aspects of visual, dramatic and festival culture, in and beyond Italy.

Lifespan Creativity in a Non-Western Artistic Tradition: A Study of Japanese Ukiyo-E Printmakers

Western cultures' conceptions about creativity emphasize originality and final products; Eastern cultures, skill and process. Does this cultural difference impact how creativity unfolds over the lifespan? To examine this, we investigated Japanese "ukiyo-e" printmaking (c. 1670-1865). Almost 2,000 illustrations of datable prints by 44 artists were found in 36 art books. Career landmarks (earliest, most frequent, and latest illustrated print) and eminence ratings were estimated for each artist. Results are largely consistent with prior research on Western samples: artists' career peaks vary greatly, averaging around age 40, and the most prolific artists usually (but not always) created the most popular prints. However, ukiyo-e artists show a more positive relation between career peak and eminence than Western artists, peak slightly later than their French (but not American) counterparts, and older artists created the most famous prints, compared to the West. Trans-historically, early-peaking ukiyo-e artists are concentrated between 1780 and 1800.

Japanese popular prints: from votive slips to playing cards

The rationale for this book was to expose to a western audience artefacts made using woodblock which are largely unknown outside Japan. The western definition and knowledge of Japanese woodblock is fairly narrowly focused on ukiyo-e and knowledge of other areas is limited. I chose to make the definition as broad as possible to allow for a selection of objects which would be unusual and challenging even for a Japanese audience. The provision of a cultural context to the selected objects was fundamental to the project. Research began with secondary English sources which were extremely limited as this subject has never been covered before. Japanese secondary sources provided extensive background information however in many areas it was insufficient to provide adequate analysis of the objects and their uses. Several research trips to Japan were required to conduct interviews with both practitioners and collectors to complete the investigation of the artefacts. Picture research was particularly challenging due to the ephemeral nature of the objects of research. Due to their perceived lack of cultural status, few collections exist and indeed very few examples survive. I sourced examples from public and private collections in Japan, Germany, Holland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Young America: childhood in 19th-century art and culture

In an era of both optimism and anxiety about the nation's future, Americans in the nineteenth century focused attention on the cultivation and education of children as future citizens. Contemporary portrayals of children--in fine paintings, popular prints, illustrated primers, and advertisements--helped to shape cultural expectations: pictures of hardy country boys, intent schoolchildren, and little girls practicing embroidery were examples of the ways model Americans should look and behave. At the same time, images showing street urchins, young slaves, or children at work in factories reflected troubling conflicts in society. This appealing book explores representations of children in relation to the currents of American culture, including urbanization, immigration, separate spheres of the genders, and the nation's professed devotion to egalitarianism. A generous selection of illustrations includes well-loved works by such artists as Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson, as well as fascinating archival images. With engaging depictions of children from varied economic, racial, and geographic backgrounds, Young America opens a new window on the life and culture of the United States during a century of vast change and growth.

Images of 1812: Ivan Terebenev and the Russian Wartime Lubok

This article explores the articulation of national identity in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. It examines this expression by focusing on the work of Ivan Terebenev, who produced 48 popular prints known as ‘lubki’ between 1812 and 1815. These images represented one of the first attempts by a Russian artist to redefine Russian national identity in the wake of Napoleon's invasion. By mocking the French emperor and emphasising the strengths of the Russian peasants, Cossacks and the Russian spirit in his images, Terebenev established themes that would continue to appear in prints in future Russian wars. Moreover, this article focuses on the reception of these images in Russia as a means of exploring how Russians who encountered them thought about their Russianness. Terebenev's images of 1812, as this article concludes, left a lasting impression on Russian visual culture and national identity.

Collage and social theories: An examination of Bowles's ‘Medley’ prints of the 1720 South Sea Bubble

In this essay, I outline how an interdisciplinary approach might be used to illuminate a series of popular prints having to do with the South Sea Bubble or fmancial crisis in England in 1720. Entitled ‘The Bubblers [sic] Medley, or a Sketch of the Times ...’ the series contains two known prints (figures 1 and 2), produced in the Bowles's shop which, for over a century, was located at 69 St Paul's Churchyard. Although the prints purport to be ‘Memorials’ of the year 1720, they were presumably produced between 1764 and 1793 when Thomas's nephew Carington ran the business, hence the ‘Carington Bowles’ inscription (the practice of updating the inscription line and reissuing old prints has been well documented) Dorothy George suggests that the numbers 22 and 23, in the bottom right corners of figures 1 and 2 respectively, indicate that Carington must have been promoting these prints with a number of others. ‘The Bubblers Mirrour’ may have been one of these since it has a 24 in its bottom right corner (see figure 3). While we cannot know for sure, it seems reasonable to assume that other works from Bowles's shop dealing with the events of 1720 were reissued in this series. This essay will bring to light the unique and ingenious features of the ‘Medley’ pair, which have yet to be recognized. To do so, I compare these two works with a selection of other popular Bubble prints (some of French or Dutch origin). I also draw on Waldman's collage theory and connect its basic principles to the controversial subject of crowd behaviour or what is technically known today as ‘deindividuation.’ Bowles's ‘Medley’ pair may be said to imitate, perhaps even mimic, certain features of the historical phenomenon that they were intended to memorialize; hence a better appreciation of these works comes with an interdisciplinary sensitivity.

The Child Manifestation of Śiva in Contemporary Hindu Popular Prints

AbstractGod posters have become one of the most visible aspects of popular religious culture in South Asia. In this article I argue that the God poster industry has created opportunities for iconographic innovations, but that the God posters nevertheless build on traditional sacred narratives and conceptions of the Hindu gods found especially in the Hindu epics and the Purānas.. Even if the iconographic representation of the child manifestations of Śiva is something new, these God posters rely on the presence of the child manifestations of Śiva in the sacred narratives of the Hindu tradition. While only some of the episodes of Śiva as a child till now have been depicted in the God posters, it is not unreasonable to expect that more episodes involving the manifestation of Śiva as a child will be depicted in God posters in the future.

Icon and devotion: sacred spaces in Imperial Russia

Icon and Devotion offers the first extensive presentation in English of the making and meaning of Russian icons. The craft of icon-making is set into the context of forms of worship that emerged in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century. Oleg Tarasov shows how icons have held a special place in Russian consciousness because they represented idealized images of Holy Russia. He also looks closely at how and why icons were made. Wonder-working saints and the leaders of such religious schisms as the Old Believers appear in these pages, which are illustrated with miniature paintings, lithographs and engravings never before published in the English-speaking world. By tracing the artistic vocabulary, techniques and working methods of icon painters, Tarasov shows how icons have been integral to the history of Russian art, influenced by folk and mainstream currents alike. As well as articulating the specifically Russian piety they invoke, he analyzes the significance of icons in the cultural life of modern Russia in the context of popular prints and poster design.

Currier & Ives: America Imagined

Currier & Ives prints have always been an important if unexamined part of America's visual heritage. When the Iowa artist Grant Wood wanted to show that his Dinner for Threshers (1934) captured an authentic slice of Americana, he hung a once-popular Currier & Ives lithograph on the wall of the farmer's dining room. In the 1930s and 1940s, when it became vital for intellectuals and John Q. Public alike to find some usable past—some common heritage—to which to cling in troubled times, Harry T. Peters's book of Currier & Ives reproductions, in its several editions, became the first coffee-table book to displace the illustrated Bible in American homes. The past we see in the mind's eye today comes in large part from the workshop of Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives, nineteenth-century purveyors of what they called “Cheap and Popular Prints” for the masses. The virtues of Bryan F. Le Beau's groundbreaking study of the Currier & Ives phenomenon are many. First, he places the images, the technology, and the method of making art by mass production in the historical context of a diverse nation with an insatiable appetite for news of disasters, political figures, celebrities, scenery, and public events. Currier began his career with a lithographic view of the fiery wreck of the steamboat Lexington in January of 1840. In 1876, the partners observed the national centennial with more than forty views of key moments in the colonial era— and with the first image of Gen. George Armstrong Custer's defeat at Little Bighorn. The news and history were both treated as pieces of important graphic information, and information, rather than fine art, was the ultimate value of the product.