Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Art and photography – Canada – 20th century'

Art History
M.A.
This thesis explores the work of photographers: Alice Austen, Alfred Stieglitz, and Berenice Abbott in relation to the American landscape of New York from approximately 1880 through 1940. Although the artwork of Georgia O’Keeffe is not addressed specifically, her role as an artist communicating her modern self image through Stieglitz’s photography is one area of focus in the second chapter. Previous scholarship has drawn parallels between women artists and photographers solely in terms related to their gender identity. In contrast, my project identifies a common theoretical thread that links the work of these artists: namely, that photography allowed professional women of this time to react and rise above the constrictions of gender expectations, and moreover, how their own attitudes based in feminist sensibility enabled them to fashion and broadcast bold, liberated self-images. Inspired by the radical transformations of women’s social roles in the United States, each artist produced photographs that represented the evolving role of women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using visual analysis and historical context associated with the “New Woman” movement, I argue that each artist discussed in this thesis not only challenges the domestic sphere conventionally assigned to women photographers, but also makes new strides by engaging in work that allows for them to autonomously travel within their own territories or new expansive locations. This thesis gives fresh insight as to how photography provided novel opportunities for elevating women’s place in society, as well as in the artistic realm. Overall, photography was an important tool for each artist as these three women act as agents of change by demonstrating a control of womanhood while the role of a female was beginning to become less constrained by the domestic and social norms of society.
Temple University--Theses

This dissertation traces the presence of installation-based practices among artists of Aboriginal ancestry via selected exhibitions across Canada. It begins with a methodological perspective on Canadian art history, federal law, and human science, as a means of establishing a contextual backdrop for the art under consideration. The rise of an Indian empowerment movement during the twentieth century is then shown to take on an international voice which had cultural ramifications at the 1967 Canadian International and Universal Exhibition. Nascent signs of a multi-mediatic aesthetic are distinguished in selected works in Canadian Indian Art '74, as well as through Native-run visual arts programs. First Nations art history is charted via new Canadian art narratives starting in the early 1970s, followed by the development of spatial productions and hybrid discourses in New Work By a New Generation in 1982, and Stardusters in 1986. The final chapter opens with a history of installation art since the Second World War, as related to the pronounced presence of multi-mediactic works in Beyond History in 1989. Post-colonial and postmodern theories are deployed to conclusively situate both the artistic and political concerns featured throughout this study, and lead into the analysis of selected installations at Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives and Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. These 1992 shows in the national capital region ultimately confirm the maturation of a particular socio-political aesthetic that tested issues of Canadian identity, while signifying Aboriginal sites of difference.

This thesis will examine the relationship between art, nationalism and identity as it appears in the context of the 1967 Montreal Universal Exposition. "Expo 67" saw a confrontation between Canadian and Quebecois expressions of nationalism, and we will concentrate on this aspect as it appears through the artistic representations in the different national pavilions.
We will also look into the artworks presented by young Quebecois artists in the more marginal "Youth Pavilion" situated on Ile Sainte-Helene, and will explain how this new generation of artists was able to take advantage of the particular context of the Universal Exhibition in order to implement its own concept of national identity, an identity closely related to popular culture, and thus very different from the image projected by the Quebecois elite of the time.

This research paper places the three Research Projects 2 DIVINE, CARNIVAL, and HER STORIES: THE WENTWORTH WOMEN against the background of memory, remaking history, play, as well as hermeneutics. It is argued that the understanding of a work of art involves participation in its meaning by the audience which is not so much a mere receiver of information as a catalyst of the work's content. This Research Paper also attempts to place the three Research Projects, which when combined are entitled REMEMORIES/IMAGETEXTS, into a feminist remaking of history (in Barbara Kruger's sense), realigning the male-oriented histories with a female presence. Questioning the 'historical document' as the authority on history, and giving alternative versions of the life of Jeanne d'Arc and the life of Sarah Cox Wentworth are some of the concerns in the Research Projects. How these three Research Projects came to be linked is that each was originally exhibited during 1995 for the Twentieth Anniversary of International Women's Year, in venues from Penrith to Paddington. Their making spans many years, and in essence comes down to a fascination with the portrayal of women throughout history.That our images of women originally derived from how women were portrayed in carnival is one of the emerging themes, and that there are a number of different memories of specific events, depending on who is remembering them, and what their (hidden) agenda entails. In moving between time zones, questioning the portrayal of 'woman as sign', and subverting the traditional sign of woman, the artist puts forward the argument that women are the producers of signs and thus not merely objects as represented by signs
Master of Arts (Hons)(Visual Arts)

Orientador: Claudia Valladão de Mattos
Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas
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Resumo: ¿Arte fotográfica e liberdade de expressão: um diálogo entre o Brasil e Cuba ¿ aborda o desenvolvimento da fotografia latino-americana na segunda metade do século XX, a partir de um estudo comparativo e da análise de obras de fotógrafos cubanos e brasileiros, atuantes durante o período 1960-1990. O texto se divide em três grandes partes, correspondentes, cada uma delas, a um decênio, tomando como ponto de partida os gêneros de destaque em cada etapa e as relações destas produções com o contexto histórico e sócio-político em que se desenvolvem. No primeiro capítulo, a partir do conceito de 'fotojornalismo' são analisadas as obras dos artistas cubanos Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez (Korda) e Raúl Corrales, conjuntamente com as dos criadores brasileiros Antônio Luiz Benck Vargas e Evandro Teixeira. No segundo capítulo, tomando como base o conceito de 'fotografia antropológica¿ são submetidas à análise as obras dos artistas brasileiros Walter Firmo, Assis Hoffmann e Claudia Andujar, assim como a produção da fotógrafa cubana María Eugenia Haya (Marucha). Por fim, o terceiro e último capítulo da dissertação parte do desenvolvimento de poéticas de autor por parte dos artistas da câmera na década de 80, e a partir de diversos critérios se aproxima de forma crítica à obra dos fotógrafos cubanos Rogélio López Marín (Gory), Ramón Martínez Grandal e Mario García Joya (Mayito), assim como do artista brasileiro Clóvis Loureiro Junior.
Abstract: ¿Photographic art and freedom of expression: a dialogue between Brazil and Cuba ¿ discusses the development of Latin American photography in the second half of the twentieth century, from a comparative study and the analysis of works of Brazilian and Cuban photographers, working in the period of 1960-1990. The text is divided into three major parts, corresponding, each of them, to a decade, taking as a starting point the notable genres featured at every stage, and the relationship of these productions with the historical and socio-political context in which they develop. In the first chapter, from the concept of 'photojournalism' the works of the Cuban artists Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez (Korda) and Raul Corrales, together with the Brazilian creators Luiz Antônio Vargas Benck and Evandro Teixeira are analyzed. In the second chapter, building on the concept of 'anthropological photography' the works of the Brazilian artists Walter Firmo, Assis Hoffmann and Claudia Andujar, as well as the production of the Cuban photographer Maria Eugenia Haya (Marucha) are put under analysis. Finally, the third and final chapter of the dissertation is based on the development of author poetics by the artists of the camera in the 80's, and using several criteria, we approaches critically to the work of the Cuban photographers Rógelio López Marín (Gory), Ramón Martínez Grandal and Mario García Joya (Mayito), as well as the Brazilian artist Clóvis Loureiro Junior.
Mestrado
Historia da Arte
Mestre em História

This thesis examines the role of photography in making the Canadian Pacific Railway company (CPR) an integral part of Canadian mythology. It focuses on the company's photographic advertising in the 1920s, and the ways in which its increasingly nationalistic transcontinental brochures framed the country, and equated the act of travelling with nation-building and national identity.
The CPR's tourist brochures established a visual vocabulary of the travelling experience, which was readily employed by individuals such as Montreal journalist Frank Randall Clarke. Clarke was sponsored by the CPR to travel across the country in the summer of 1929. His journalistic writing and personal photograph album allow for a rich analysis of the visual culture of the period, and they will be used to illustrate the ways in which the CPR represented Canadian progress, immigration, and tourism.

This thesis is concerned with several aspects of the life and work of the Canadian painter Laura Muntz (1860--1930). It examines in particular Muntz's images of women and children both within the cultural themes and ideologies of the period and from the perspective of contemporary twentieth-century theories of gender. The introduction and literature review outline the broad issues surrounding the artist in her time and present a summary of her critical fortunes in Canadian art historical literature. Chapter one provides a discussion of Muntz's life and artistic production between 1860 and 1898, the year in which she returned to Toronto after a decade of study and work in Europe. The following two chapters are conceived as case studies of single paintings, observed in the context of various discourses that surround them. Chapter two analyses Muntz's Madonna and Child in terms of hereditarian theories, eugenics, maternal feminism and the Canadian social purity movement and considers the broader, psychological implications of gender, specifically in the fin-de-siecle associations of femininity and death. Chapter three examines the imagery in Muntz's Protection with reference to North American Symbolist painters and their relationship to the constructs of the feminine ideal. As a whole, the thesis elucidates the complex layers of meaning that Muntz's images of women and children contributed to the popular conceptions of femininity and motherhood current in her time.

This thesis is an enquiry into the conditions in which various understandings of the newly introduced but vaguely grasped Western notion of ‘art’ emerged and sustained themselves in the name of cultural reproduction in early twentieth-century China. This Western concept of art was translated into Chinese as ‘meishu’, a neologism originally coined in Japanese kanji, and regarded as the embodiment of the ‘national essence’. Through a close examination of five art-related publishing events—the publication of the nationalistic journal Guocui xuebao; the launch of the art periodical Shenzhou guoguangji; the endeavours to compile a book collection on art, Meishu congshu; the making of the text Zhonguo yishujia zhenglüe which claimed to be a history book of Chinese ‘meishu’; and an example of image appropriation from Stephen Bushell’s Chinese Art—this thesis explores the ways in which different ‘neologistic imaginations’ of the term ‘meishu’ were constructed through publishing practices attempting to preserve and reproduce the ‘national essence’, by creating from the existent tradition a category of ‘art’ equivalent to that in the European West. Unlike previous scholarship, which deems any understanding of ‘meishu’ that deviated from the ‘authentic’ European model a ‘misconception’, this thesis sees these disparate understandings of ‘meishu’ as equally valid statements competing for dominance in the discursive field of art. This thesis thus argues that there existed at least three modes of utterances regarding the notion of ‘meishu’ in early twentieth-century China, and that the success of any such given utterance depended upon the acceptance of the authentic quality argued in its strategy of cultural reproduction. This thesis hence not only offers a detailed analysis of each publishing event, but also provides an interpretative framework within which the recognition of these utterances can be analysed by their strategic approaches to claiming cultural authenticity.

In his 1978 biography of Dorothea Lange, Milton Meltzer appraised Lange's 1936 photography in Utah as nothing more than mundane work done for the benefit of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and not for her own benefit as a photographer. Yet, her work in Utah encapsulates the aspirations, goals, and styles of Lange, and gives insight into her vision as a photographer and representative of the New Deal. Through carefully composed photographs, Lange shows the hardships and hope of life in Utah during the Great Depression. This thesis investigates Lange's photographs in order to gain a greater understanding of the FSA in Utah during the Great Depression, the nature of FSA photography, and her work in general. To accomplish these tasks, it will be necessary to investigate the photographs and their captions, the work of other FSA photographers, local histories, contemporary sources, and FSA scholarship. Using these sources, this thesis attempts to identify reasons why Lange took the photographs she did. Using the historical context under which Lange's photographs were made also allows for an examination of Lange's use of visual editing, or, in other words, her artistic manipulation in creating her own vision of the areas she was assigned to photograph. The manner in which she photographed the small rural towns of Consumers, Widtsoe, and Escalante, was not completely indicative of the towns' true nature, or the towns' reality. Rather, the portraits Lange created were personal visions that supported the FSA and her own beliefs and altruistic ideology.

Este trabalho apresenta uma discussão acerca de relações estabelecidas entre a fotografia e a arte contemporânea, a partir de um viés em que a produção artística dialoga com a produção fotográfica de âmbito familiar. A fotografia é assumida como um processo mediador culturalmente construído, levando em conta aspectos de sua conformação tecnológica, bem como de seus usos sociais, ambas dimensões consideradas preponderantes para a produção de significado para estas imagens. Para estabelecer estas relações através de uma perspectiva interdisciplinar, o texto busca integrar pontos de vista de áreas do conhecimento que contribuíram para um entendimento mais complexo da fotografia em seu diálogo com a sociedade, com a tecnologia, com a história e com as artes visuais. Finalmente, elencamos algumas obras dos artistas contemporâneos Nan Goldin, Rosângela Rennó e Sascha Pohflepp que evidenciam estas relações entre as artes visuais e os instantâneos do cotidiano familiar, seja através da imagem fotográfica, da materialidade da fotografia ou dos novos circuitos de circulação e novas práticas oriundas das tecnologias digitais.
This work presents a discussion of relations between photography and contemporary art, where the artistic production dialogue with the photography in the family field. the photograph is assumed as a mediating process culturally constructed, taking into account its technological aspects, as well as their social uses, both dimensions considered preponderant for the production of meaning to these images. to establish these relationships through an interdisciplinary perspective, the text seeks to integrate views of areas of knowledge that contributed towards a more complex comprehension of photography in his dialogue with society, with the technology, with the history and the visual arts. finally, we list some works of contemporary artists nan goldin, rosangela rennó and sascha pohflepp that demonstrate these relationships between the visual arts and snapshots of daily family life, either through the photographic image, the materiality of the photograph or the new circuits and new practices coming of digital technologies.

Cette thèse s’interroge sur l’invention d’une formule : The Eye Club. Inventée par l’historienne américaine Eugenia Parry, elle désigne un regroupement actif dans les années 1960-1990 composé de : Pierre Apraxine, Hugues Autexier, François Braunschweig, Françoise Heilbrun, André Jammes, Gérard Lévy, Harry Lunn, Philippe Néagu, Alain Paviot, Richard Pare, Sam Wagstaff et Robert Mapplethorpe. Ces douze figures vivent entre la France et les États-Unis et sont rattachées par plusieurs facteurs culturels et temporels. Ce «club» n’est pas à proprement parler un cercle de sociabilités, c’est une constellation, une nébuleuse faite de positionnements culturels épars et de projets artistiques divers. La question principale qui a guidé cette enquête est la suivante : en quoi ce Eye Club et ses acteurs, pris individuellement, ont-t-ils contribué à réévaluer la valeur commerciale, esthétique et institutionnelle, de la photographie dans les années 1960-1990 entre Paris et New York ? La chronologie démarre avec les engagements d’André Jammes dans le monde de la photographie au tournant des années 1960 et se termine en 1989, l’année de la mort de Mapplethorpe. L’enquête réalisée dans les archives et auprès des acteurs a fait émerger des noms connus, et d’autres, qui sont demeurés dans les coulisses de l’histoire. Cette étude se propose de lever le voile sur un réseau interdépendant d’acteurs, dont les intérêts communs pour la photographie ont permis de créer le marché de la photographie, tel que nous le connaissons aujourd’hui, et son institutionnalisation. Le premier volume de la thèse propose, dans une perspective transatlantique, une réflexion sur ce regroupement à partir des images et des correspondances. Le second volume rassemble vingt-quatre entretiens réalisés au cours des cinq années de recherche. D’abord avec les figures du Eye Club (Pierre Apraxine, Françoise Heilbrun, Richard Pare et Alain Paviot), puis avec les familles des acteurs du Eye Club et enfin avec diverses personnalités du monde photographique (Frish Brandt, Peter Bunnell, Denis Canguilhem, Sylviane De Decker, Viviane Esders, Patrick Faigenbaum, Philippe Garner, Maria Morris Hambourg, Susan Kismaric, Hans Peter Kraus Jr., Harold Jones, Baudoin Lebon, Eugenia Parry, Françoise Reynaud, Samia Saouma et Daniel Wolf). Ensemble, les deux volumes esquissent une histoire de rencontres entre des passionnés de photographie qui s’est principalement articulée sous une forme orale entre la France et les États-Unis dans les années 1960-1980
This thesis questions the invention of a phrase : The Eye Club. Invented by the American historian Eugenia Parry, it has been designating a grouping active in the 1960s-1980s composed of : Pierre Apraxine, Hugues Autexier, François Braunschweig, Françoise Heilbrun, André Jammes, Gérard Lévy, Harry Lunn, Philippe Néagu, Alain Paviot, Richard Pare, Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe. These twelve characters lived between France and the United States and are connected and related by several cultural and temporal factors. This grouping is not, strictly speaking, a circle of sociability, it is rather a constellation or a nebula made of scattered cultural positions and diverse artistic projects. The main question that guided this survey is the following: in what way does the Eye Club and its individual actors contributed to the re-evaluation of the commercial, aesthetic and institutional value of photography between the early 1960s and the late 1990s among Paris and New York ? The chronology begins with André Jammes' involvement in the world of photography and ends in 1989, the year of Mapplethorpe's death. An inquiry of archives and key players has brought to light some well-known names, and others that remained in the shadow of history. This study aims at unveiling an interdependent network of actors, whose common interests in photography have made it possible to establish, in one generation, the photography market as we know it today. The first volume of the thesis offers, from a transatlantic perspective; an investigation and analysis of this based on photographs and correspondences. The second volume brings together twenty-four interviews conducted over my five years of doctoral research. First with the main protagonists of The Eye Club (Pierre Apraxine, Françoise Heilbrun, Richard Pare and Alain Paviot), then with the families of The Eye Club and finally with various personalities from the world of photography (Frish Brandt, Peter Bunnell, Denis Canguilhem, Sylviane De Decker, Viviane Esders, Patrick Faigenbaum, Philippe Garner, Maria Morris Hamburg, Susan Kismaric, Hans Peter Kraus Jr, Harold Jones, Baudoin Lebon, Eugenia Parry, Françoise Reynaud, Samia Saouma and Daniel Wolf). Together, the two volumes sketch a history of encounters between photography enthusiasts that has, up to now, been mainly articulated in oral form between France and the United States in the 1960s and 1980s

Esta tese de doutorado está centrada na trajetória de vida de Pierre Verger e procura analisar sua inserção no mundo da fotografia. Focalizando o início da carreira, o trabalho dá ênfase a um período pouco conhecido da vida do fotógrafo e, para tanto, a pesquisa privilegiou, a compreensão das ligações de Pierre Verger com o núcleo familiar, dos laços desenvolvidos no grupo de amigos artistas e das demandas do mercado de trabalho. A família proporcionou-lhe o primeiro mergulho no mundo das imagens através dos negócios do pai, mas Verger guardava restrições em relação às obrigações sociais que a posição familiar na sociedade burguesa lhe exigia. Com a adesão ao grupo dos amigos infreqüentáveis, cujos integrantes viviam de maneira muito diferente da qual estava acostumado, Verger estabeleceu uma rede de contatos, formou grupos de trabalho e viagens, dos quais resultaram, a sua iniciação como fotógrafo. O mercado foi cenário tanto de concorrências e disputas quanto também impôs e sofreu a imposição do gosto predominante do período e, desta forma, as imagens que circulavam publicamente provinham dos projetos individuais dos fotógrafos e das encomendas, sendo destinadas às demandas da imprensa, da publicidade, da moda, dos editores de livros e das exposições. Entre o desejo de se livrar dos moldes da família burguesa, a adesão ao grupo de amigos livres e as exigências do mercado, Verger encontrou um caminho para firmar-se como profissional através da produção fotografia de caráter documental e humanista, 14 anos antes de sua chegada ao Brasil.
This doctoral (PhD) thesis is focused on Pierre Vergers life trajectory and searchs to analyse his integration in the photography world. Standing out the beginning of his career this work puts emphasis on a time not much knowing of the photographer life and for this the reasearch has privileged the understanding of Pierre Vergers relations with the core family, with the relations among the group of artists who were his friends and with the market demands. The family provides him the first entrance in the images world throughout his father business. Verger had some restrictions referring to the social obligations that the family status demanded from him in the bourgeoisie society. Verger had settled several contacts when he joined to the not recommended friends who lived in a different way which Verger was accostumed. He settled work groups and travels which had as result his initiation as a photographer. Photography market was in great increase in the between-wars period and had imposed so much competitions and disputes as also the wishing for some subjects which became photographal and, in this way, the images when didnt come from individual projetcs were, more often, produced according to some orders from customers: press, publicity, fashion and book publishers. Among the wish of releasing from the bourgeoisie family, his participation to the not recommended groups of friends and the market demands, Verger had found a path to stand out as profissional throughout the documental and humanist photography production, 14 years before his arrival to Brazil.

Prior to his career as a painter, Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1940) was employed for a number of years as an actor. Indeed the muse of the theatre was a constant influence throughout Sickert’s life and work yet this relationship is curiously neglected in studies of his career. The following thesis, therefore, is an attempt to address this vital aspect of Sickert’s œuvre. Chapter one (Act I: The Duality of Performance and the Art of the Music-Hall) explores Sickert’s acting career and its influence on his music-hall paintings from the 1880s and 1890s, particularly how this experience helps to differentiate his work from Whistler and Degas. Chapter two (Act II: Restaging Camden Town: Walter Sickert and the theatre c.1905-c.1915) examines the influence of the developing New Drama on Sickert’s works from his Fitzroy Street/Camden Town period. Chapter three (Act III: Sickert and Shakespeare: Interpreting the Theatre c.1920-1940) details Sickert’s interest in the rediscovery of Shakespeare as a metaphor for his solution to the crisis in modern art. Finally, chapter four (Act IV: Sickert’s Simulacrum: Representations and Characterisations of the Artist in Texts, Portraits and Self-Portraits c.1880-c.1940) discusses his interest in the concept of theatrical identity, both in terms of an interest in acting and the “character” of artist and self-publicity. Each chapter analyses the influence of the theatre on Sickert’s work, both in terms of his interest in theatrical subject matter but also in a more general sense of the theatrical milieu of his interpretations. Consequently Sickert’s paintings tell us much about changing fashions, traditions and interests in the British theatre during his period. The history of the British stage is therefore the backdrop for the study of a single artist’s obsession with theatricality and visual modernity.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Media and Information Studies, 2008.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 23, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 218-234). Also issued in print.

林曉東.
呈交日期"一九九八年十二月".
論文 (藝術碩士)--香港中文大學, 1999.
參考文獻 (leaves 36-37).
附中英文摘要.
Cheng jiao ri qi "Yi jiu jiu ba nian shi er yue".
Lin Xiaodong.
Lun wen (yi shu shuo shi)-- Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 1999.
Can kao wen xian (leaves 36-37).
Fu Zhong Ying wen zhai yao.
目錄 --- p.1
前言 --- p.3
提要 --- p.4
Abstract --- p.5
Chapter 第一章 --- 現代藝術的起始與界定 --- p.6
現代藝術是甚麼 --- p.6
現代藝術起始之歧見 --- p.7
現代藝術之本文界定 --- p.8
Chapter 第二章 --- 藝術媒介的界定 --- p.11
傳統藝術品的功能指涉´ؤ´ؤ服務對象與之帶來的標準 --- p.11
藝術品的功能指涉之轉向與新媒體的出現´ؤ´ؤ媒介分劃的再界定 --- p.13
Chapter 第三章 --- 圖像的承繼與流傳一攝影術 --- p.18
圖象的特質與文字的關係 --- p.18
攝影術中的原物與複本 --- p.24
Chapter 第四章 --- 從一件藝術作品的完成：反思藝術媒介的本質 --- p.26
Chapter 1. --- 社會文化 --- p.28
Chapter 2. --- 作者 --- p.28
Chapter 3. --- 意念 --- p.28
Chapter 4. --- 製作 --- p.29
Chapter 5. --- 成品 --- p.30
Chapter 6. --- 命題 --- p.30
Chapter 7. --- 觀眾 --- p.31
Chapter 8. --- 觀賞 --- p.31
Chapter 9. --- 討論 --- p.32
Chapter 10. --- 紀錄 --- p.32
Chapter 11. --- 流傳 --- p.32
Chapter 12. --- 時間性 --- p.33
Chapter 第五章 --- 總結 --- p.34
參考書目 --- p.36
附圖 --- p.38

In 1964 Clement Greenberg suffered his greatest setback as the critical arbiter of modern painting. The "Post Painterly Abstraction" exhibition he had helped to organize at the Los Angeles Museum of Art was critically demolished, definitively shattering the myth of invincibility surrounding Greenberg's modernism, an aesthetic which had been a powerful influence in the United States and Canada in the post-war period. For many contemporary critics, the early to mid-1960's is the period in which a stultified and institutionalized modernism was finally usurped by an approach to culture that was less elitist and more socially engaged. The new cultural model that was taking shape within the Kennedy Administration's vision of the New Frontier sought to remotivate a sense of "national purpose" within the United States to counter the nation's preoccupation with consumerism and affluence. The pragmatic liberal concept of culture sought to rework the relationship between work and play in order to promote a new relationship between individualism and civic virtue. The impetus to re-shape the boundaries between art and society under the New Frontier was a direct response to the political and military challenge posed by the Soviet Union in the late-1950s, especially after the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and the inability of the Eisenhower Administration to respond to the anxieties generated by the intense superpower rivalry. This international environment also exacerbated the ongoing tensions between Canada and the United States, culminating in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis . Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker delayed in responding to the U.S. alarm over the presence of Soviet medium range nuclear weapons in Cuba, and the political firestorm that followed this delay highlighted the frictions that had developed in the unequal bilateral relationship between the United States and Canada after World War Two. While the Cold War was approaching its ultimate showdown, Greenberg was proceeding to a geographical margin of North America — Saskatchewan — to participate in the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. Ironically, while Greenberg was extolling the virtues of Canadian abstract painters such as Art McKay and Kenneth Lochhead, going so far as to argue that the Saskatchewan abstract painters were New York's only competition, Los Angeles was asserting itself as New York's cultural rival . As a consequence of the phenomenal post-war growth of the military - industrial complex in the American Southwest, a fierce rivalry was developing with the traditional bases of power in the Northeast. The Southwest, and Los Angeles in particular, was the major beneficiary of the accelerated defense spending resulting from the heightened tensions of the Cold War in the 1950s. Partially in response to a regional dispute over military appropriations, the economic and cultural elites of Southern California sought to counter the pragmatic liberal agenda of the Kennedy Administration by promoting Los Angeles as the Second City of American Art. Greenberg's "Post Painterly Abstraction" exhibition was intended to draw attention to the Los Angeles cultural renaissance and the maturing of the city's independent cultural identity. Thus, Greenberg's sojourn to Saskatchewan at the height of the Cold War and during a crucial period of his formulation of his theory of modernist painting after abstract expressionism provides the focus for an examination of the status of modernism in the early 1960s, especially in the context of U.S.-Canadian relations and interregional rivalry between the Northeast and the Southwest. This thesis seeks to explain the complex cultural and political dynamic of modernist painting in the United States in the Cold War years of 1957 to 1965 and the effect of this dynamic on the development of Canadian modernist painting.

This thesis culminates in an exhibition resulting from the artist’s investigation of the relationship between space and time, and on perception and experience of space with connections to ‘everyday’ ideas of space. A recurring link in this paper is the process of ‘being present’ in relation to spatial viewing. The artist’s studio practice focuses on the visual changes she sees within a particular space or spaces, and how these visual changes are perceived and experienced when presented to the viewer in a photographic image. The intention is to present a photographic image to the viewer that not only changes the space from which it originally came, but also highlights the beauty of the space that may be missed or overlooked. The research questions the way people see, the visual representation of the ‘void’ or ‘empty space’, and spatial representation. The paper also discusses how the artist visually perceives and experiences space. The work of other artists and writers who research space, time and perceptual consciousness are also considered.
Master of Arts (Hons)

(in English) The master's thesis The Chinese Collection of Ludvík Kuba in Historical Context and the Context of his Oeuvre is focused on works, ethnographic interests and contacts of Czech painter Ludvík Kuba in connection with his collection of Chinese art and the context of the popularity of Chinese culture amongst Czech modern painters. The author will also pay attention to the history of collecting Chinese art in former Czechoslovakia and to some objects collected by Kuba in particular. The thesis aims to reconstruct the collection of Chinese art amassed by Ludvík Kuba, using period photographs and information from institutions that house the artist's estate (Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, National Gallery in Prague, Polabské muzeum v Poděbradech, and others.) The artist's book Moje Čína (My China), as well as other sources (period articles, correspondence), will be used as source material, too. The information gathered about Kuba's former collection of Chinese art will serve the purpose of deeper reflection of the extent of Chinese influences in Kuba's art, as well as his role in the process of establishing of Asian art collecting by modern Czech artists of his day.