Cover not available
Part of
The Power of Satire
Edited by Marijke Meijer Drees and Sonja de Leeuw
[Topics in Humor Research 2] 2015
► pp. 147–174

Looking backward. The rhetoric of the back in visual satire

Satire can be confronting. It questions all kinds of issues of politics, society and morality, often from a marginal position. By confronting one issue, the satirist turns his back on others, leaving the reader or spectator behind. This paper investigates some of the spatial strategies in visual satire from the early and later modern period, for instance in the work of Giandomenico Tiepolo and James Gillray, taking a special interest in the rhetoric of the back and the satirical gaze. It argues that the representation of the backs of onlookers to a scene helps to direct the satirical gaze.
Published online: 22 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.2.11gri
References (28)
References
Biard, Michel and Pascal Dupuy (ed.). 2010. Entre scatologie et fantasmes sexuels: le cul et son imaginaire. Paris: Armand Colin. (Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française no. 361).Google Scholar
Courtin, Antoine de. 1671. Nouvelle traité de la civilité qui se pratique en France parmi les honnestes gens. Amsterdam: Daniel Elzevier.Google Scholar
Donald, Diane. 1996. The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III. New Haven and Londen: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gatrell, Vic. 2006. City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-century London. London: Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
George, Mary Dorothy. 1942. Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum VII. London: Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum.Google Scholar
Harms, Wolfgang (ed.). 1985. Deutsche illustrierte Flugblätter des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Vol. 1: Die Sammlung der Herzog August-Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. Vol 1: Ethica, Physica. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Hecht, Peter. 1989. Exh. cat. De Hollandse fijnschilders van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, Maarssen: Gary Schwartz/SDU.Google Scholar
Hegemann, Hans W. 1940. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Berlin: Rembrandt Verlag.Google Scholar
Hill, Draper. 1965. Mr. Gillray, the Caricaturist: A Biography. London: Phaidon PressGoogle Scholar
Hinterding, Erik, Ger Luijten and Martin Royalton-Kisch. 2000. Rembrandt the Print-maker. London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen and Rolf Reichardt. 1996. «Kauft schöne Bilder, Kupferstiche…», Illustrierte Flugblätter und französisch-deutscher Kulturtransfer 1600–1830. Mainz: Schmidt.Google Scholar
Maas, Sander van. 2009. Wat is een luisteraar? Reflectie, interpellatie en dorsaliteit in hedendaagse muziek. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht.Google Scholar
Mariuz, A. 1971. Giandomenico Tiepolo. Venice: Alfieri.Google Scholar
McCreery, Cindy. 2004. The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Meijer Drees, Marijke. 2006. “Goed voor de ogen. Brilmetaforiek in vroegmoderne pamfletten.” In Het lange leven van het pamflet. Boekhistorische, iconografische, literaire en politieke aspecten van pamfletten 1600–1900, ed. by J. de Kruif, M. Meijer Drees and J. Salman, 129–142. Hilversum: VerLoren.Google Scholar
Momo, Arnaldo and Michelangelo Muraro. 1988. “Zianigo: la casa del pittore come autobiografia di Giandomenico Tiepolo.” In Succi 1988, 305–328.
Pignatti, Terisio. 1960. Il Museo Correr di Venezia: dipinti del XVII e XVIII secolo. Venice: Pozza.Google Scholar
Porterfield, Todd. 2011. The Efflorescence of Caricature: 1759–1838. London: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Shaw, James Byam. 1959. “The Remaining Frescoes in the Villa Tiepolo at Zianigo.” The Burlington Magazine 101: 391–395.Google Scholar
Shearman, John. 1992. Only Connect… Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Spieth, Darius A. 2010: “Giandomenico Tiepolo’s Il mondo nuovo: peep shows and the ‘politics of nostalgia.’” The Art Bulletin 92: 188–210. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Starobinski, Jean. 1973. 1789: Les emblêmes de la raison. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Succi, Dario. 1988. “Giandomenico e Lorenzo Tiepolo: virtuosismo e ironia”, resp. “Ironia e delizia comica.” In Exh. cat. I Tiepolo: virtuosismo e ironia, ed. by Dario Succi, 11–23 resp. 53–76. Mirano: Umberto Allemandi.Google Scholar
Sumowski, Werner. 1983. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüle II. Landau/Pfalz: Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt.Google Scholar
Tümpel, Cristian. 2006. Rembrandt en de bijbel: alle etsen. Zwolle: Waanders.Google Scholar
White, Christopher. 1999. Rembrandt as an etcher. A Study of the Artist at Work. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
White, Jonathan. 2007. “Modes of Viewing: From Vasari to Film and Television Culture.” In Italian cultural lineages, ed. by Jonathan White, 28–58. Toronto, Buffalo.Google Scholar
Wolf, Reva. 2011. “Seeing Satire in the Peepshow.” In Seeing Satire in the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Elizabeth C. Mansfield and Kelly Malone, 167–195. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar