According to the CAA, “Ross Barrett recovers the history of the artist and a landmark painting of an American laborer. Rooting his analysis in close observation, the author enlivens a work that could easily be dismissed as little more than an academic study of a male model. Calling attention to the title Hall gave his 1858 painting (The Dead Rabbit, a term New Yorkers applied to a street rowdy), to bruises on the man’s torso, and to the brick clutched in his right hand, Barrett identifies the figure as a working class, Irish immigrant. Barrett calls on an arsenal of resources—history, biography, iconography, pedagogical practices in the academy, reports and illustrations in the popular press, theories of the body and spectatorship, and ancillary images of the male athlete in mid-nineteenth-century America—to build a clear and convincing case for reading class conflict and civil disorder in this material body.”
Congratulations to Ross for receiving this prestigious award!
More information at: CAA News