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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472071869 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 12/26/2012 |
| Pages: | 264 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
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Are We There Yet?
Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism
By Alison Byerly
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2013 University of MichiganAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-07186-9
CHAPTER 1
A ROOM WITH A VIEW: THE VICTORIAN PANORAMA
It is difficult to overstate the popularity of scenic panoramas in mid-nineteenth-century London. Interest in panoramas among people of all classes surged in the years 1845 to 1850, but they were a staple of the London entertainment scene from the 1830s through the 1870s, with numerous competing panoramas running concurrently during most of that time. Richard Altick, in his indispensable book The Shows of London, describes the panorama craze as one example among many of the Victorian fascination with "mimetic effects." Dioramas, moving clockwork figures, tableaux, waxworks, and other simulations of reality were immensely appealing to a culture that loved exhibitions of all kinds, some of which provided "tangible evidence of nature's variety and man's ingenuity," others of which "depicted an illusory reality" (51). As we will see, panoramas often bridged these two categories, presenting scenes that conveyed real information about natural landscapes and manmade structures, but that also pleased viewers with their illusionistic virtuosity.
In the period between 1820 and 1860 there were often dozens of panoramas or panorama-type scenic exhibitions in London at any one time. There were several exhibition spaces devoted exclusively to panoramas, most notably the Panorama in the Strand, which opened in 1802 and lasted until 1831, and the Panorama in Leicester Square, operated by John and Robert Burford from 1823 to 1861. These spaces were designed to exhibit 360-degree scenes that the spectator viewed from a central point. This format had developed at the end of the eighteenth century and was a logical extension of the growing interest in topographic views and maps. Large trompe l'oeil wall paintings had graced a number of aristocratic homes of the period, and in 1787 an artist named Robert Barker patented a scheme he had conceived for overcoming the perspectival problems inherent in painting a circular, 360-degree landscape painting. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had initially expressed skepticism at his efforts, admired the panorama eventually presented by Robert and his son Henry Barker in 1791, "Panorama of London from the Albion Mill, Southwark." Over the years, the city of London would prove a surprisingly popular subject for panoramas in London itself, suggesting that the vantage point afforded by panoramas was distinctive enough to be valued even by those with ready access to the real scene. The anonymous watercolor panels that comprise the circa 1810 "Rhinebeck panorama of London," now at the Museum of London, convey a sense of the extraordinary detail and attention to perspective that were typical of the genre.
The London panorama was followed by the even more successful "Grand Fleet at Spithead" in the same year, one of many panoramas that functioned as a kind of reportage. The naval theme proved popular, and in 1795 Barker's panorama "Lord Howe's Victory and the Glorious First of June," depicting a victory of the previous year, would establish the value of panoramas as newsreel-like depictions of virtually current events. As Stephan Oettermann notes, "The panorama ceased to be just one form of entertainment among others in the mind of the British public; it succeeded in linking itself with patriotism and national pride" (107). Panoramas depicting battles, natural disasters, and other newsworthy events would continue to be popular, and even panoramas that were primarily scenic in nature would make every effort to be au courant. Burford's 1848 Panorama of Paris, for example, coincided with the height of interest in revolutionary events in France, an advantage noted by the Illustrated London News, which described it as a "well-timed addition to the sights of the metropolis" that represented "that focus of Republican excitement, the Place de la Revolution," as well as "vast processions" moving toward the Chamber of Deputies ("Burford's Panorama of Paris," June 1848, 373). Only a few weeks earlier, the Illustrated London News had produced its own scenic depiction of the Revolution, a fold-out view of the Hall of the National Assembly and the "Proclamation of the Republic" (ILN 12, May 1848, 309–10).
Panoramas were also seen as a source of useful information about other countries, which suggests that after a century of Grand Tours, "knowing" another country was generally understood to mean seeing the major sights of its major cities. The degree of contemporary interest in specific places can be charted by enumeration of the foreign capitals and historic cities featured in panoramas. Although mountain and river views were popular subjects of moving panoramas, cities were by far the favorite subject of static representations. The experience of standing in the center of a 360-degree picture was perhaps more comparable to the real experience of surveying a city skyline than that of viewing a mountain or river prospect; most natural landscapes would generally be viewed from a lower angle, and would probably present a "better" view from a single direction. The experience of surveying an entire city, in all directions, however, was well suited to circular representation, and created a parallel between the immersive experience of the panorama and the actual experience of being in the city itself. A partial list of cities featured in panoramas (in many cases, more than one) in London over the century, as reflected in surviving programs and advertisements, includes London, Paris, Cairo, Vienna, Hong Kong, Damascus, Benares, Cabul, Edinburgh, Rome, Berlin, Constantinople, Moscow, Delhi, Venice, Canton, Messina, Naples, Jerusalem, Nimrod, Calcutta, Florence, Geneva, Bombay, New York, Lima, Antwerp, and Dublin. As we will see, viewers seem to have enjoyed the totalizing perspective of the panorama, its capacity to make vast urban spaces seem "knowable."
Although panoramas provided access to exotic or unknown locations, paradoxically, one of the most popular panoramas ever shown in London was a panorama of the city itself. This panorama, which opened at the Colosseum in 1829, though it was not fully completed until 1832, resulted from the unique opportunity presented by renovations to the spire of St. Paul's earlier in the decade. An artist, Thomas Horner, secured permission to climb the construction scaffolding at the very top of the spire for the purpose of completing a series of sketches of London. The meticulous detail of the 2,000 sketches he ultimately produced formed the basis for a painting that took years, and many hands, to complete. Though not a financial success, it was an enormous popular success, and a standard sight to visit in the metropolis for many years. Strong public interest in the mechanics of producing such a massive painting is evident in the popular series of lithographs of the project produced by the same print seller who printed tickets and other advertising materials for the exhibition. Ackermann's five prints, "The Colosseum: The panorama of London seen from a painter's platform," document the gradual process of erecting the platforms needed to access the enormous wall space of the painting, as well as the painting process itself. The final print depicts the panorama and the viewing platform as they appeared just before the panorama opened.
A permanent viewing platform was erected in the center of the building, so that visitors could see the panorama from a central vantage point, on two levels. This control of the viewer's visual access would become a hallmark of stationary panoramas, which often attempted to reproduce a specific viewing environment. The platform of the London panorama was in part a replica of the actual painter's scaffold that Thomas Horner had used for his sketches in 1821, so that viewers looked out from behind railings and ropes that created the illusion of being perched atop the spire of St. Paul's.
This sort of foreground scenery was often used to help create a transition from the actual space of the viewer to the imaginary space of the panorama. As late as 1881, such faux terrain was satirized in a Punch cartoon that depicted viewers of the "Charge at Baladash" panorama in Leicester Square commenting on the lifelike figure of a man in the foreground — who is in fact another spectator who has leapt over the railing to retrieve his hat (Hyde, 174).
Sometimes, foreground scenery turned into a complete stage set. The most successful panorama exhibitions tried to create an "authentic" environment around the display of the panorama itself. Albert Smith was a master at manufacturing ambience intended to reinforce his audience's sense of entering a foreign land. For "Ascent of Mont Blanc" (1851–56), Smith converted the Egyptian Hall into a Swiss scene that included a full-scale chalet exterior; a pool of water, surrounded by rocks and plants and containing live fish; miscellaneous baskets, knapsacks, and other items strewn picturesquely about the hall; and vines and creepers hanging from the rafters. In his second season, Smith added ten Saint Bernards, who would trot about the auditorium delivering packets of chocolate to children. A subsequent show, "Mont Blanc to China," required audiences to enter through an Oriental foyer where they could purchase souvenirs like willow-pattern plates with Smith's picture. The chalet was replaced with a Chinese pagoda (Altick, 475–77).
Jonathan Crary, commenting on Richard Wagner's capacity for "illusion-making" in his productions at Bayreuth, suggests that Wagner's strategies resembled those of the diorama, "which was based on a ... disruption of an intelligible distance between viewer and illusory scene." Crary notes that "numerous firsthand accounts [of dioramas] stressed the visual disorientation that confounded conventional pictorial cues about the relative proximity of near and far objects" (1999, 252). The same might be said of panoramas, which also attempted to disorient the viewer's "real" perception so as to situate him or her more firmly in the illusory space of the panorama. Crary emphasizes the difference between such a "process of optical disorientation" and conventional theatrical distance, which does not involve the same kind of "perspectival breakdown" and does not compel the viewer's attention to the same hypnotic degree (253–54). Even the most vivid theatrical dramatizations took place on a raised stage, carefully framed by the proscenium, so that the audience understood themselves to be at a safe remove from the action. Panoramas, however, sought to erase the distance between audience and representation, fully immersing the viewer in the scene before him or her.
The panorama "Paris by Night" featured in the Colosseum in 1848 was notable for the success with which it synthesized foreground and background perspectives into a complete illusion of place. The perspective of the panorama assumed that the viewer was hovering over the Tuileries in a balloon, and a typical review in the Illustrated London News noted that "the illusion is admirably carried out, even down to the cords supposed to dome from the netting of the balloon between which the spectator looks at the view." The reviewer praises the elevated perspective itself, noting that "by this novel plan a much better coup d'oeil is obtained than by sketching the localities from the summit of a building, by which means the principal feature in a city is always lost." The reviewer concludes, "Nothing can be more perfectly deceptive nor minutely correct than this view" ("The Colosseum," 1848, 312). Another viewer, the visiting American William Wells Brown, agreed: "Nothing can surpass the uniformity of appearance which every spire, and house, and wood, and river — yes, which every shop-window, ornamented, presented. All seemed natural, from the twinkling of the stars above us, to the monkey of the organ-man in the market-place below" (quoted in Altick, 157). These two commentaries encapsulate many of the characteristics that made panoramas satisfying: coherence, uniformity, distance, and the creation of an imaginary space for the viewer to occupy.
Thus we see that a key characteristic of panoramic exhibitions was their attempt to create a complete immersive experience, a mediated space that would attempt to blur the boundaries separating reproduction from reality. This attention to transitional spaces and theatrical effort to evoke ambience would eventually be transferred to other forms of exhibitions and museum displays, both in England and on the Continent. In London, panoramas were used to created realistic backgrounds at such varied venues as the Exeter Change menagerie, the Egyptian Hall, and the London Museum (Oettermann, 127). In Colonizing Egypt, Timothy Mitchell notes that the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 included a block-long reproduction of a Cairo street for the viewer to stroll through, complete with donkeys, realistic buildings, and deliberately worn and dirtied wall paint. Mitchell describes the bemusement of a set of Egyptian visitors who passed through the facade of a mosque to find, not a space for contemplation, but an "Egyptian cafe" featuring dancing girls and whirling dervishes (4–5).
The anthropologist Franz Boas, in his capacity as curator of the anthropological collections of the American Museum of Natural History in the 1890s, described the specific visual qualities needed to create a successful illusion in a museum display. He emphasized the importance of introducing a darkened setting and organizing material around a single, central perspective, then concluded, "The only place from which such an effect can be had is in a Panorama Building" (Jacknis, 102; quoted in Dias, 172). Boas's interest in importing some of the illusory qualities of the panorama into the world of the museum demonstrates the extent to which the panoramic perspective had infiltrated not just the world of public entertainment but the intellectual culture of the nineteenth century.
Anne McClintock has pointed out the Victorian middle class's "peculiarly intense preoccupation with boundaries," and suggests that "as colonials travelled back and forth across the threshold of their known world, crisis and boundary confusion were warded off by fetishes, absolution rituals, and liminal scenes" (133). One way of enhancing the realism of the panorama experience was to create imaginary boundaries that would need to be crossed by the viewer, so that the panorama itself became a kind of liminal space in which one dwells temporarily, secure in the knowledge that the journey back to the known world will not be an arduous one.
It is worth noting in this context that the Colosseum introduced the first passenger elevator in London, an "ascending room" that would whisk visitors to the upper level of the two-story viewing platform. The sudden disorientation of finding oneself instantly transported to a strange place no doubt reinforced the magical quality of the panoramic illusion awaiting one at the top. It is tempting to compare the probable reaction of a Victorian riding such a contraption for the first time to Fredric Jameson's late twentieth-century description of an elevator ride in the lobby of the Bonaventura Hotel in Los Angeles. Jameson describes elevators as being less a form of movement than "reflexive signs and emblems of movement proper," in which the "narrative stroll has been underscored, symbolized, reified, and replaced by a transportation machine which becomes the allegorical signifier of that promenade we are no longer allowed to conduct on our own" (42). The passenger is denied the power to control his own movements or, ultimately, the scene that awaits him. Jameson's elevator lands him "in one of those revolving cocktail lounges, in which, seated, you are again passively rotated about and offered a contemplative spectacle of the city itself, now transformed into its own image by the glass windows through which you view it" (43). Los Angeles as seen from the Bonaventura, like the panorama of London as seen from the upper gallery of the Colosseum, becomes a representation of itself. Homi Bhabha describes Jameson's anecdote as "the mise-en-scène of the subject's relation to an unrepresentable social totality," an image of the "postmodern panopticon" in which "you lose your bearings entirely" (1984, 217), but this form of disorientation and displacement does not seem distinctively postmodern compared with the Victorian experience. As we will see, the panoramic perspective provided a temporary means of projecting oneself into another space and adopting a new perspective on either a scene you thought was familiar or a place that you were "seeing" for the first time.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Are We There Yet? by Alison Byerly. Copyright © 2013 University of Michigan. Excerpted by permission of The University of Michigan Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: Travel and the Art of the Real,PART 1. GOING NOWHERE: PANORAMIC TRAVEL,
1. A Room with a View: The Victorian Panorama,
2. The Passing Scene: Moving Panoramas,
3. Wish You Were Here: Marketing the Experience,
4. Watching the Grand Tour,
5. Moving Pictures: The View from a Balloon,
6. Surveying the Scene: The Panoramic Gaze,
7. The Hypothetical Tourist,
PART 2. TOTAL IMMERSION: NAVIGATING THE THAMES,
1. No Place Like Home: The Thames as England,
2. Journey to the Interior,
3. You Are Here: The Guided Tour,
4. Blogging the Trip: Three Men in a Boat,
5. Back to the Future: News from Nowhere,
6. River of Oblivion: The London Thames,
7. Change of Pace: The Rush toward Leisure,
PART 3. HIGH-SPEED CONNECTION: THE RAILWAY NETWORK,
1. Frankenstein's Monster: The Cyborg Engine,
2. Neither Here nor There: The Body in Transit,
3. User's Manuals: The Railway Guide,
4. Chat Rooms: The Social Space of Trains,
5. Game Over: The Railway Journey as Dream and Nightmare,
6. The Matrix: Railway Junctions as Non-Spaces,
7. World Wide Web: Information Networks in Sherlock Holmes and Dracula,
8. Moving through Media,
Conclusion,
Notes,
Works Cited,
Index,