1. Stevens, Wallace, “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” in The Palm at the End of the Mind, ed. Stevens, Holly, (New York: Vintage, 1972), 210.Google Scholar My attention was drawn to this quote by Karsten Harries, “Space, Place, and Ethos,” unpublished manuscript. An earlier version of this essay appeared as a chapter in my dissertation, “The Present and the Past in the Work of Charles Sheeler,” Yale University, 1989. For helpful comments on this text, my thanks go to Douglas Winblad, Jules David Prown, Wanda Corn, Alan Trachtenberg, Nicholas Adams, Ann Gibson, Ellen Chirelstein, and Rebecca Zurier. I also thank Deborah Dash Moore, who granted me money from the Helen D. Lockwood Fund, American Culture Program, Vassar College, to pay for photographs.

2. See the author's dissertation, just cited; as well as Davies, Karen [Lucic], “Charles Sheeler in Doylestown and the Image of Rural Architecture,” Arts Magazine 59 (03 1985): 135–3Google Scholar9; “Charles Sheeler: American Interiors,” Arts Magazine (05 1987): 44–47Google Scholar; “Charles Sheeler and Henry Ford: A Craft Heritage for the Machine Age,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 65 (1989): 36–47Google Scholar; and Charles Sheeler and the Cult of the Machine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

3. Autobiographical notes, Charles Sheeler Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution (hereafter, AAA), microfilm roll Nsh 1, frame 48.

4. Charles Sheeler interview by Friedman, Martin, 06 18, 1959Google Scholar, AAA, Tape 2, pp. 4–6.

5. Sheeler, Charles to Arensberg, Walter, 08 28, [c. 1917–1918]Google Scholar, Charles Sheeler Papers, Arensberg Archives, Twentieth Century Department, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

6. Sheeler, to Stieglitz, Alfred, 06 13, 1917Google Scholar, Alfred Stieglitz Archives, Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. I have found no evidence to indicate that Stieglitz ever accepted Sheeler's invitation.

7. Ibid.

8. Some of the images survive only in the form of photographic negatives. The best reproductions of the entire series are in Stebbins, Theodore E. Jr., and Keyes, Norman Jr., Charles Sheeler: The Photographs (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1987).Google Scholar

9. Therefore I am never surprised to find the image inverted in publications, even in such authoritative texts as Brown, Milton et al. , American Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Decorative Arts, Photography (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), fig. 415.Google Scholar

10. This is the same stairway that appeared in Stairwell and Stairs from Below, but those views were from the second story of the house, whereas The Open Door is from the first floor.

11. See Freud, Sigmund, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans, and ed. Strachey, James, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (London: Hogarth, 1957), 11: 107Google Scholar; and The Interpretation of Dreams in Standard Edition, 4: 314.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., 5:355.

13. Ibid., n. 2.

14. Ibid., 354.

15. Ibid., 4: 285–86.

16. Sheeler would address the erotic directly in a photographic series of a nude woman done a few years later. His future wife was his model. The truncation, depersonalization, and fragmentation of her figure are disturbing in ways similar to the images of the Doylestown house (see Stebbins, and Keyes, , Charles SheelerGoogle Scholar, plates 24–29).

17. For a critique of Freud's drive theory, see Kohut, Heinz, How Does Analysis Cure? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 1. Other critics disclaim Freud's biologism (see, for instance, Mitchell, Juliet, Psychoanalysis and Feminism: Freud, Reich, Laing and Women [New York: Vintage, 1974], 401–402).Google Scholar I will have more to say about Kohut's theories later in this essay.

18. Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon, 1969), xxxi.Google Scholar Like Jung and Freud, Bachelard tended to universalize his observations based on the material he studied, assuming that poetic thinking of every culture and every time embodied the same archetypal structures. Bachelard was openly ahistorical in his approach: “For here the cultural past doesn't count.… The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed” (Ibid., xi). All such systems of analysis that claim to transcend historical context are vulnerable to criticism, yet, despite Bachelard's methodological limitations, his analysis provides suggestive insights into Sheeler's imagery.

19. Ibid., xxxii.

20. Ibid., 6.

21. Ibid., 5–6.

22. Ibid., xxxii.

23. Ibid., 58–59.

24. Ibid., 222.

25. Ibid., 224.

26. Ibid., 17–19.

27. Ibid., 25–26. Bachelard distinguishes his interpretation of the symbolism of staircases from that of traditional psychoanalysis:

Dreams of stairs have often been encountered in psychoanalysis. But since it requires an all-inclusive symbolism to determine its interpretations, psychoanalysis has paid little attention to the complexity of mixed revery and memory. That is why, on this point, as well as on others, psychoanalysis is better suited to the study of dreams than of daydreams [and the art derived from them]. The phenomenology of the daydream can untangle the complex of memory and imagination; it becomes necessarily sensitive to the differentiations of the symbol. And the poetic daydream, which creates symbols, confers upon our intimate moments an activity that is polysymbolic. Our recollections grow sharper, the oneiric house becomes highly sensitized. … When we recall the old house in its longitudinal detail, everything that ascends and descends comes to life again dynamically. We can no longer remain … men with only one story. [26]

28. Ibid., 20.

29. See Lacan, Jacques, “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in Ecrits: A Selection, trans. Sheridan, Alan (London: Tavistock, 1977), 1–7.Google Scholar

30. Kahn, Edwin, “Heinz Kohut and Carl Rogers,” American Psychologist 40 (08 1985): 893–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar My description here of the underlying premises of Self Psychology is necessarily simplified and schematic. Kahn's article presents a fuller explanation of its theoretical foundation. My thanks go to Kenneth Kline for introducing me to the literature on Self Psychology and for numerous helpful comments on this aspect of my study.

31. Ornstein, Paul H., introduction to The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut: 1950–1978, by Kohut, Heinz (New York: International Universities Press, 1978), 22.Google Scholar

32. Kohut, , How Does Analysis Cure? 16, 18.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., 18.

34. Freud does concede, however, that by channeling fantasies into art, the artist might achieve “through his phantasy what originally he had achieved only in his phantasy — honour, power and the love of women” (Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis in Standard Edition, 16: 376–77Google Scholar; and Spector, Jack, “The State of Psychoanalytic Research in Art History,” Art Bulletin 70 [03 1988]: 49–76).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Kohut, , How Does Analysis Cure? 76.Google Scholar

36. Ibid., 44.

37. Schapiro, Meyer, “Nature of Abstract Art,” in Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: George Braziller, 1978), 193.Google Scholar

38. Quoted in Ibid., 204.

39. Kohut, , How Does Analysis Cure? 60.Google Scholar

40. Harries, Karsten, The Meaning of Modern Art: A Philosophical Interpretation (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 153.Google Scholar

41. Kohut, , How Does Analysis Cure? 60.Google Scholar

42. Of course, this motif had a complex prehistory in the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods (see Blum, Shirley Neilsen, “The Open Window: A Renaissance View,”Google Scholar in the exhibition catalogue by the Neuberger Museum, The Window in Twentieth-Century Art [Purchase: State University of New York at Purchase, 1986], 9–16Google Scholar; and Gottlieb, Carla, The Window in Art: From the Window of God to the Vanity of Man [New York: Abaris, 1981]).Google Scholar

43. Eitner, Lorenz, “The Open Window and the Storm-Tossed Boat: An Essay in the Iconography of Romanticism,” Art Bulletin 37 (12 1955): 285–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. Troyen, Carol, “The Open Window and the Empty Chair: Charles Sheeler's View of New York,” American Art Journal 18 (1986): 38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Quoted in Torczyner, Harry, Magritte: The True Art of Painting (New York: Abradale/Harry N. Abrams, 1979), 102.Google Scholar

46. James had just made a trip to the United States in 1904 after many years living as an expatriate abroad. The parallels between James's life and that of the fictional Brydon are striking.

47. James, Henry, “The Jolly Corner,” in The Complete Tales of Henry James, ed. Edel, Leon (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964), 12: 194.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., 201.

49. Ibid., 213.

50. Ibid., 218.

51. Ibid., 220–21.

52. Ibid., 222–23.

53. Ibid., 226.

54. Kohut, Heinz, “Psychoanalysis and the Interpretation of Literature: A Correspondence with Erich Heller,” Critical Inquiry 4 (Spring 1978): 449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar