Art as Image: Prints and Promotion in Cincinnati, Ohio ed. by Alice Cornell (review)

BOOK REVIEWS eth century to develop a middle ground in which the old Middle West could celebrate its unique cultural traits while recognizing that the new Midwest remained entangled in a larger national culture. In the late nineteenth and twentieth century some authors even went so far as to depict a bucolic and homogeneous rural Midwest where New England values had become paramount. Some, however,resisted their region's semicolonial economic and cultural status while others criticized the petit bourgeois attitudes they found there and pointed out that it resulted in a good deal of poverty and alienation. While Watts says ( 218) that historian Andrew R.I.. Cayton has overemphasized the degree of cultural harmony in the Midwest ( see Cayton and Peter Onuf' s The Midwest and tbe Nation: Retbinking tbe History of an American Region), Cayton does discuss the strains upon midwestern culture and harmony created by industrialization and the growth of a commercial society in the region. Moreover, Watts prematurely suggests that most westerners had descended from postRevolution ary immigrants by 1860 when William Dean Howells wrote about Abraham Lincoln. ( 172) And he seems to exaggerate the number of eastern Europeans who lived in the Middle West before the Civil Wan His comment,for example,saying that the antebellum Old Northwest had " a powerful eastern and central European and immigrant population " ( 118) is derived from a brief reference in James Davis' s Frontier Illinois to settlement in one Illinois county. In sum,Watts certainly argues correctly that a very diverse population lived in the antebellum Old Northwest, but much of that diversity reflected newcomers from several parts of the United States. Unfortunately,Watts also claims that future President Grover Cleveland was born in Ohio (199), but Cleveland, of course, was actually a native of New Jersey. While clearly this book could have been strengthened in certain respects, Edward Watts raises significant issues about cultural selfperceptions in the Ohio River Valley before the Civil War,and about the roles that authors in the region played in reflecting and shaping those perceptions. Jeffrey P.Brown New Mexico State University Alice Cornell, ed. Art as Image:Prints and Promotion in Cincinnati, Obio. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001 235 pp. ISBN: 082141335X ( cloth), 49.95. rt as Image is an important book,the first published study of its kind to examine nineteenth century printmaking in Cincinnati. Unfortunately ,the title does not quite make its purpose apparent,along with its ambiguity and lack of dates. As the preface states, the essays are " intended to provide both an introduction to Cincinnati printing history and a glimpse of some of the city' s intriguing prints and printers. The common thread through prints, newspapers, posters, portfolios, playing cards, and expositions is the use of prints for promotion. They are advertisements, news media, advertising, propaganda, and educational tools." ( vii) Collectively,the authors do not argue the point of promotion"nor do they all discuss art"; many of the images fit better under the heading of " visual culture." The anthology is a unique collaboration between two publishers. Ohio University Press produced the hard copy while the University of Cincinnati Digital Press created a Web site featuring brief chapter abstracts as well as reproductions,many in color, whereas the 157 images in the book are all black and white. The seven chapters are papers slated for the cancelled 1999 Historical Print Conference in Cincinnati. Graphic designer Noel Martin,active in Cincinnati since the 1940s, summarized " Early Printing and Publishing in Cincinnati"from 1793 to the 18905 in terms of early newspapers, schoolbooks, OHIO VALLEY HISTORY 74 almanacs,river guides and maps,a comic weekly,a journal about astronomy,and reference publications on Cincinnati,and compiled a good bibliography. Virginius C. Hall, retired Associate Director of the Virginia Historical Society,wrote a delightful overview of " Cincinnati as Seen by Some Early Engravers," ca. 18121848 . He states that much of the early printmaking was ephemeral and unsigned , providing an enormous quantity of illustrative material to a young,rapidly growing community ."( 56) Hall provides often witty descriptions for fortyseven varied illustrations. Emil KlauprechtOhio Valley German American "is Richard Askren' s condensation of his 1996 U.C. Master's thesis. An immigrant from...