rneuman@fsu.edu
2034 William Johnston Building

https://fsu.academia.edu/RNeuman

Dr. Robert Neuman specializes in two areas of art history: early modern European art, with an emphasis on social, political, and religious history; and American popular art, in particular Hollywood film, animation, and theme parks. The recipient of several research awards, including grants from the French Government and the Millard Meiss Fund, he has also received the University Teaching Award.

Dr. Neuman’s monograph, Robert de Cotte and the Perfection of Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France, is the only comprehensive examination of the French royal architect during a period when Paris became the global center of courtly fashion.

His book, Baroque and Rococo Art and Architecture, is the first in-depth history of one of the great periods of Western art, spanning the years 1585 to 1785. The text treats the major media: painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, and architecture as well as gardens, furniture, tapestries, costume, jewelry, and ceramics.

Dr. Neuman’s most recent monograph, From Hollywood to Disneyland: Walt Disney’s Dream Park and the Influence of American Movies, argues that in designing the world’s first theme park, its creators tapped into motion-picture storylines and cinematic clichés while adopting many of the skills and production techniques used to make Golden-Age films.

Dr. Neuman currently divides his research time between the Rococo painter Antoine Watteau and Disney’s live-action movies filmed in England in the early 1950s.

Completed Dissertations

Sarah Buck, “Nicolas II de Larmessin’s Les Costumes Grotesques(c. 1695): Prints and Professional Habits in the ancien régime.”
Michelle Demeter, “Imagineering a Nostalgic Past and Utopian Future: Walt Disney’s Attractions at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair.”
Segundo Fernandez,”David Cox Reconsidered: Landscape, Theater, and the Book of Nature.”
Mery-et Lescher, “The Little Studio That Could: Walt Disney Feature Animation’s Florida Studio (1989-2004).
Keri Watson, “‘Black Saturday’: Eudora Welty’s Unpublished Photographic Essay of Depression-era Mississippi.”
Julianne Sandlin, “Religious Orders and Catholic Reform: Parisian Churches during the Reign of Louis XIII.”
Barbara J. Johnston, “Sacred Kingship and Royal Patronage in the Vie de la Magdalene: Pilgrimage, Politics, Passion Plays, and the Life of Louis of Savoy.”
Preston McLane, “Alessandro Magnasco and the Painterly Picaresque.”
Bernardine Heller-Greenman, “The Monument du costume of Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune in the Context of Rousseau and the Ancien Régime.”
Steven Salyers, “The Theme Park as Art and Narrative: A Case Study of the Disney-MGM Studios.”
List of FSU Art History dissertations

Graduate Seminars

• Eighteenth-Century Paris, Global Capital
• Early Modern Women
• Gardens and Landscape Architecture
• Walt Disney and the American Century
• Hollywood’s America

Selected Publications

From Hollywood to Disneyland: Walt Disney’s Dream Park and the Influence of American Movies (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2022).

“Toad, Alice and Peter: From England to Disney-Land and Back Again.” In Interpreting and Experiencing Disney: Mediating the Mouse, edited by Priscilla Hobbs, chap. 3. London: Intellect, 2022.

Baroque and Rococo Art and Architecture. Pearson: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2013.

“Disney’s Final Package Film: The Making and Marketing of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949).”  Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 14, no. 2 (2019), 149–163.

“Illusions of Grandeur: A Harmonious Garden for the Sun King.” In Gardening Philosophy for Everyone: Cultivating Wisdom, edited by Dan O’Brien, 163-77. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.

“Main Street, USA.” In Disneyland and Culture: Essays on the Parks and Their Influence, edited by Kathy Merlock Jackson and Mark I. West. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010.

“Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A., and Its Sources in Hollywood, U.S.A.” Journal of American Culture 31 (2008); 83-97.

“Now Mickey Mouse Enters Art’s Temple: Walt Disney at the Intersection of Art and Entertainment.” Visual Resources 14.3 (1999): 249-61.

Robert de Cotte and the Perfection of Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

“Projects for the Church of Saint-Louis de Versailles in the Parc-aux-Cerfs.” Eighteenth-Century Life 17 (1993): 182-93.

“Watteau’s L’enseigne de Gersaint and Baroque Emblematic Tradition.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 104 (1984): 153-64.

Awards

University Teaching Award 1986-87