Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Australian art history - 20th century'
To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Australian art history - 20th century.
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Australian art history - 20th century.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Anderson, Zoe Melantha Helen. "At the borders of belonging : representing cultural citizenship in Australia, 1973-1984." University of Western Australia. History Discipline Group, 2009. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2009.0176.
Full textAbstract:
[Truncated abstract] This thesis offers a re-contextualisation of multiculturalism and immigration in Australia in the 1970s and 80s in relation to crucial and progressive shifts in gender and sexuality. It provides new ways of examining issues of belonging and cultural citizenship in this field of inquiry, within an Australian context. The thesis explores the role sexuality played in creating a framework through which anxieties about immigration and multiculturalism manifested. It considers how debates about gender and sexuality provided fuel to concerns about ethnic diversity and breaches of the 'cultural' borders of Australia. I have chosen three significant historical moments in which anxieties around events relating to immigration/multiculturalism were most heightened: these are the beginning of the 'official' policy of multiculturalism in Australia in 1973; the arrival of large numbers of Vietnamese refugees as a consequence of the Vietnam War in 1979; and 1984, a year in which the furore over the alleged 'Asianisation' of Australia reached a peak. In these years, multiple and recurring representations served to recreate norms as applicable to the white heterosexual family, not only as a commentary and prescriptive device for migrants, but as a means of reinforcing 'Australianness' itself. A focus on the body as a border/site of belonging and in turn, crucially, its relationship to the heterosexual nuclear family as a marker of 'cultural citizenship', lies at the heart of this exploration. Normative ideas of gender and sexuality, I demonstrate, were integral in informing the ambivalence about multiculturalism and ethnic diversity in Australia. Indeed, for each of these years I examine how the discourses of gender and sexuality, evident for example in parliamentary debates such as that relating to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, were intricately tied to ongoing concerns regarding growing non-white ethnicity in Australia, and indeed, enabled it. ... In pursuing this contribution, the work draws critically upon recent innovative interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of sexuality and immigration, and draws upon a broad range of sources to inform a comprehensive and complex examination of these issues. Sources employed include the major newspapers and periodicals of the time, Parliamentary debates from the Commonwealth House of Representatives, Parliamentary Committee findings and publications, speeches and polemics, and relevant legislation. This inquiry is an interrogation of a key methodological question: can sexuality, in its workings through ethnicity and 'race', be used as a primary tool of analysis in discussing how whiteness and 'Australianness' reconfigured itself through normative heteropatriarchy in an era that claimed to champion and celebrate difference? How and why did ambiguities concerning 'Australianness' prevail, concurrent with progressive and generally politically benign periods of Australian multiculturalism? The thesis argues that sexuality through the construction of the 'good white hetero-patriarchal family' both informed, and enabled, the endurance of anxieties around non-white ethnicity in Australia.
2
Penazzi, Leonardo. "The fellow (novel) ; and Australian historical fiction, debating the perceived past (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0070.
Full textAbstract:
Novel The Fellow What is knowledge? Who should own it? Why is it used? Who can use it? Is knowledge power, or is it an illusion? These are some of the questions addressed in The Fellow. At the time of Australian federation, the year 1901, while a nation is being drawn into unity, one of its primary educational institutions is being drawn into disunity when an outsider challenges the secure world of The University of Melbourne. Arriving in Melbourne after spending much of his life travelling around Australia, an old Jack-of-all-trades bushman finds his way into the inner sanctum of The University of Melbourne. Not only a man of considerable and varied skill, he is also a man who is widely read and self-educated. However, he applies his knowledge in practical ways, based on what he has experienced in the
3
Brown, Sarah. "Imagining 'environment' in Australian suburbia : an environmental history of the suburban landscapes of Canberra and Perth, 1946-1996." University of Western Australia. School of Humanities, 2009. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2009.0094.
Full textAbstract:
Australia is a suburban nation. Today, with increasing concern regarding the sustainability of cities, an appreciation of the complexities of Australian suburbia is critical to the debate about urban futures. As a built environment and a cultural phenomenon, the Australian suburbs have inspired considerable scholarly literature. Yet to date, such scholarly work has largely overlooked the changing environmental values and visions of those shaping and residing within suburban landscapes, and the practices through which such values and visions are materialised in the processes of suburban development. Focusing on the post-war suburban landscapes of Canberra and Perth, this thesis centralises the environmental, political and economic forces that have shaped human action to construct suburban spaces, paying particular attention to the extent to which individual understandings and visions of 'environment' have determined the shape and nature of suburban development. Specifically, it examines how those operating within Australias suburbs, including planners, developers, builders, landscape designers and residents have imagined the 'environment', and how such imaginaries have shifted in response to varying spatial, temporal and ideological contexts. Tracing the shifting nature of environmental concern throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century, it argues that despite the somewhat unsustainable nature of Australia's suburban landscapes, the planning and development of such landscapes has long been influenced by and has responded to differing understandings of 'environment', which themselves are the product of changing social, political and economic concerns. In doing so, this thesis challenges a number of perceptions concerning Australian suburbs, environmental awareness and sustainability. In particular, it contests the assumption that environmental concern for Australia's suburban development emerged with the urban consolidation debates of the 1980s and 1990s, and analyses a range of environmental sensibilities not often acknowledged in current histories of Australian environmentalism. By examining, for example, how the deterministic and economic concerns of differing planning bodies, along with the aesthetic and ecological concerns of various planners, are intertwined with the housing and domestic lifestyle preferences of suburban homeowners, this history brings to the fore the often conflicting environmental ideas and practices that arise in the course of suburban development, and provides a more nuanced history of the diversity of environmental sensibilities. In sum, this thesis enhances our understandings of the changing nature of environmental concern and illuminates the complex, still largely misunderstood, environmental ideas and practices that arise in the processes of suburban development.
4
Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette. "Keeping mum : representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature - a fictocritical exploration." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054.
Full textAbstract:
[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.
5
Lyons, Sara J. "The sacrifice of honey (fiction) ; The depiction of the media in The shark net, Evil angels and The sacrifice of honey (thesis)." University of Western Australia. English, Communication and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2006.0055.
Full text
6
Santos, Beatriz, and res cand@acu edu au. "From El Salvador to Australia: a 20th century exodus to a promised land." Australian Catholic University. School of Arts and Sciences, 2006. http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/digitaltheses/public/adt-acuvp126.25102006.
Full textAbstract:
El Salvador, the smallest and the most densely populated state in the region of Central America, was gripped by a civil war in the 1980s that resulted in the exodus of more than a million people. This thesis explores the causes that led to the exodus. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part contains a historical and theoretical analysis of El Salvador from the time of conquest until the 1980s. An examination of the historical background of the socio-economic and political conflict in El Salvador during this period sets the scene for an account of the mass exodus of Salvadorans in the 1980s. The second part of the thesis involves a qualitative study of Salvadoran refugees, which concentrates on their experiences before and after arriving in Australia. The study explores both the reasons for the Salvadorans’ becoming refugees and their resettlement in Melbourne. In an effort to explain some of the reasons for the socio-economic and political conflict in El Salvador in the 1980s, some concepts and ideas from different theoretical perspectives are utilized: modernisation theory, world-systems theory, dependency theory, elite theory, Foco theory of revolution and economic rationalism. The historical account covers the period from the expansion of the European world economy in the 16th century up to the political conflict of the 1980s. When the Salvadorans began to arrive in Melbourne, the micro-economic agenda in Australia was based on economic rationalism. This shifted the focus away from the state and onto a market-based approach that emphasised vigorous competition and fore grounded a non-collective social framework. The changes to policies in the welfare and immigration areas resulting from this shift are examined for their impact on the resettlement experiences of Salvadoran refugees. The United States foreign policy is also delineated because of the impact it had on the political, economic and social situation in El Salvador. The thesis focused on the time-period from the 1823 Monroe Doctrine to the era of the Cold War of ‘containment of communism’. The Catholic Church has also played a major influence in the political, social and religious life of Salvadorans. The changes that occurred in the post-1965 renewal of the Catholic Church were influential in the political struggles in El Salvador. The second part of the thesis involves a qualitative research study of a small group of 14 Salvadoran refugees. Participants were selected from different professional, educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. The study examines their flight from El Salvador, their arrival in Australia and their long-term experiences of resettlement. Tracking the experiences of refugees over a considerable period of time has seldom been the focus of a research study in Australia. The Salvadorans have been under-researched and no longitudinal studies have been conducted. The Salvadorans who took part in the study became refugees for diverse reasons ranging from political/religious reasons to random repression but certainly not for economic reasons. Their past experiences have influenced their resettlement in Australia and their attempts to build their lives anew have been fraught with difficulties. The difficulties in acquiring a working knowledge of the English language have often led to a downgrading in their professional and employment qualifications, isolation from the mainstream community and the experience of loneliness for the older generation. In addition, many of the participants still experience fear both in Australia and in their home country when they return for a visit. The findings indicate that the provision of extra services, such as counselling, could facilitate their resettlement and integration into Australian society.
7
Gleeson, Damian John School of History UNSW. "The professionalisation of Australian catholic social welfare, 1920-1985." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. School of History, 2006. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/26952.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis explores the neglected history of Australian Catholic social welfare, focusing on the period, 1920-85. Central to this study is a comparative analysis of diocesan welfare bureaux (Centacare), especially the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide agencies. Starting with the origins of professional welfare at local levels, this thesis shows the growth in Catholic welfare services across Australia. The significant transition from voluntary to professional Catholic welfare in Australia is a key theme. Lay trained women inspired the transformation in the church???s welfare services. Prepared predominantly by their American training, these women devoted their lives to fostering social work in the Church and within the broader community. The women demonstrated vision and tenacity in introducing new policies and practices across the disparate and unco-ordinated Australian Catholic welfare sector. Their determination challenged the status quo, especially the church???s preference for institutionalisation of children, though they packaged their reforms with compassion and pragmatism. Trained social workers offered specialised guidance though such efforts were often not appreciated before the 1960s. New approaches to welfare and the co-ordination of services attracted varying degrees of resistance and opposition from traditional Catholic charity providers: religious orders and the voluntary-based St Vincent de Paul Society (SVdP). For much of the period under review diocesan bureaux experienced close scrutiny from their ordinaries (bishops), regular financial difficulties, and competition from other church-based charities for status and funding. Following the lead of lay women, clerics such as Bishop Algy Thomas, Monsignor Frank McCosker and Fr Peter Phibbs (Sydney); Bishop Eric Perkins (Melbourne), Frs Terry Holland and Luke Roberts (Adelaide), consolidated Catholic social welfare. For four decades an unprecedented Sydney-Melbourne partnership between McCosker and Perkins had a major impact on Catholic social policy, through peak bodies such as the National Catholic Welfare Committee and its successor the Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission. The intersection between church and state is examined in terms of welfare policies and state aid for service delivery. Peak bodies secured state aid for the church???s welfare agencies, which, given insufficient church funding proved crucial by the mid 1980s.
8
Baguley, Margaret Mary. "The deconstruction of domestic space." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 1998. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/35896/1/35896_Baguley_1998.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
Introduction:
I find myself in the pantry, cleaning shelves, in the laundry, water slopping around my elbows, at the washing line, pegging clothes. I watch myself clean shelves, wash, peg clothes. These are the rhythms
that comfort. That postpone. (The Painted Woman, Sue Woolfe, p. 170)
As a marginalised group in Australian art history and society, women artists possess a valuable and vital craft tradition which inevitably influences all aspects of their arts practice. Installation art, which has its origins in the craft tradition, has only been
acknowledged in the art mainstream this decade; yet evolved in the home of the 1950s. The social policies of this era are well documented for their insistence on
women remaining in the home in order to achieve personal success in their lives. This cultural oppressiveness paradoxically resulted in a revolution in women's art in the environment to which they were confined. Women's creative energies were diverted and sublimated into the home, resulting in aesthetic statements of individuality in home decoration. As an art movement, women's installation art in the home provided the similar structures to formally recognised art schools in the mainstream, and include: informal networks and training (schools); matriarchs within the community
who were knowledgable in craft traditions and techniques and shared these with younger women (mentorships); visiting other homes and providing constructive
advice (critiques); and women's magazines and glory boxes (art journals and sketch books). A re-examination of this vital period in women's art history will reveal the
social policies and cultural influences which insidiously undermined women's art, which was based on craft traditions.
9
Zabecki, D. T. "Operational Art and the German 1918 Offensives." Thesis, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1826/3897.
Full textAbstract:
At the tactical level of war the Germans are widely regarded as having had the most
innovative and proficient army of World War I. Likewise, many historians would agree that
the Germans suffered from serious, if not fatal, shortcomings at the strategic level of war. It is
at the middle level of warfare, the operational level, that the Germans seem to be the most
difficult to evaluate.
Although the operational was only fully accepted in the 1980s by many Western
militaries as a distinct level of warfare, German military thinking well before the start of
World War I clearly recognized the Operativ, as a realm of warfighting activity between the
tactical and the strategic. But the German concept of the operational art was flawed at best,
and actually came closer to tactics on a grand scale. The flaws in their approach to operations
cost the Germans dearly in both World Wars.
Through a thorough review of the surviving original operational plans and orders, this
study evaluates the German approach to the operational art by analyzing the Ludendorff
Offensives of 1918. Taken as a whole, the five actually executed and two planned but never
executed major attacks produced stunning tactical results, but ultimately left Germany in a far
worse strategic position by August 1918. Among the most serious operational errors made by
the German planners were their blindness to the power of sequential operations and
cumulative effects, and their insistence in mounting force-on-force attacks.
The Allies, and especially the British, were exceptionally vulnerable in certain
elements of their warfighting system. By attacking those vulnerabilities the Germans might
well have achieved far better results than by attacking directly into the Allied strength.
Specifically, the British logistics system was extremely fragile, and their rail system had two
key choke points, Amiens and Hazebrouck. During Operations MICHAEL and GEORGETTE, the Germans came close to capturing both rail centers, but never seemed to
grasp fully their operational significance. The British and French certainly did. After the
Germans attacked south to the Marne during Operation BLUCHER, they fell victims
themselves to an inadequate rail network behind their newly acquired lines. At the
operational level, then, the respective enemy and friendly rail networks had a decisive
influence on the campaign of March-August 1918.
10
Asbury, Michael. "Hélio Oiticica : politics and ambivalence in 20th century Brazilian art." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2003. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/8953/.
Full textAbstract:
This study investigates the presence of ambivalence as a strategy of cultural politics from modern to contemporary art in Brazil. It focuses on the development of modern art leading to the work of Hélio Oiticica, whose approach to avant-garde practice in Brazil was concurrent with intense articulations between the forces of social change and re-evaluations of the legacy of Modernism. The thesis has a strong historiographical emphasis and is organised in three parts: Part one attempts to view the emergence of Modernism in Brazil beyond the prevailing interpretations that emphasise its inadequacy compared to canonical paradigms. Part two discusses the development of abstraction in Brazil, particularly that associated with the constructivist tradition and its relationship with the prevailing positivism of a nation that saw modernity as its inevitable destiny. Such a relationship, between art and ideology, implicitly questions the purported autonomous nature of modern art. Again, what emerged were definite regional distinctions, themselves based on seemingly universal theoretical propositions. The context of Hélio Oiticica's emergence as a constructivist-oriented artist is discussed in order to establish the theoretical foundation for his subsequent articulations between notions of avant-garde and Brazilian popular culture. Part three deals with Oiticica's theoretical and artistic proposals. It centres on the artist's transition from a position concerned primarily with the aesthetic questions of art, to one in which art became engaged on a social, ethical and ultimately political level. Oiticica's relationship with concurrent developments in theatre and later in music and cinema is given particular attention. The artist's questioning of the divides between such fields of specialisation, socio-cultural borders or categories of creative production is argued to have arisen out of Oiticica's lessons from Neoconcretism as well as his individual creative approach to relations of friendship. The latter integrated the wider concept of participation that eventually drove the work through the apparent equivocation between national culture and avant-garde practice. The study concludes with an analysis of the artist's posthumous dissemination and its relation with today's contemporary Brazilian art.
11
Feng, Huanian, and 馮華年. "The reception of western art history in Republican China." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2002. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31227326.
Full text
12
Arthur, Brid Caitrin. "Envisioning Lhasa: 17-20th century paintings of Tibet's sacred city." The Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437525195.
Full text
13
Taylor, Grant D. "The machine that made science art : the troubled history of computer art 1963-1989." University of Western Australia. Visual Arts Discipline Group, 2005. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2005.0114.
Full textAbstract:
[Truncated abstract] This thesis represents an historical account of the reception and criticism of computer art from its emergence in 1963 to its crisis in 1989, when aesthetic and ideological differences polarise and eventually fragment the art form. Throughout its history, static-pictorial computer art has been extensively maligned. In fact, no other twentieth-century art form has elicited such a negative and often hostile response. In locating the destabilising forces that affect and shape computer art, this thesis identifies a complex interplay of ideological and discursive forces that influence the way computer art has been and is received by the mainstream artworld and the cultural community at large. One of the central factors that contributed to computer art’s marginality was its emergence in that precarious zone between science and art, at a time when the perceived division between the humanistic and scientific cultures was reaching its apogee. The polarising force inherent in the “two cultures” debate framed much of the prejudice towards early computer art. For many of its critics, computer art was the product of the same discursive assumptions, methodologies and vocabulary as science. Moreover, it invested heavily in the metaphors and mythologies of science, especially logic and mathematics. This close relationship with science continued as computer art looked to scientific disciplines and emergent techno-science paradigms for inspiration and insight. While recourse to science was a major impediment to computer art’s acceptance by the artworld orthodoxy, it was the sustained hostility towards the computer that persistently wore away at the computer art enterprise. The anticomputer response came from several sources, both humanist and anti-humanist. The first originated with mainstream critics whose strong humanist tendencies led them to reproach computerised art for its mechanical sterility. A comparison with aesthetically and theoretically similar art forms of the era reveals that the criticism of computer art is motivated by the romantic fear that a computerised surrogate had replaced the artist. Such usurpation undermined some of the keystones of modern Western art, such as notions of artistic “genius” and “creativity”. Any attempt to rationalise the human creative faculty, as many of the scientists and technologists were claiming to do, would for the humanist critics have transgressed what they considered the primordial mystique of art. Criticism of computer art also came from other quarters. Dystopianism gained popularity in the 1970s within the reactive counter-culture and avant-garde movements. Influenced by the pessimistic and cynical sentiment of anti-humanist writings, many within the arts viewed the computer as an emblem of rationalisation, a powerful instrument in the overall subordination of the individual to the emerging technocracy
14
Warmus, Sarah E. "The lost generation: truth and art." Thesis, Boston University, 2004. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/27792.
Full textAbstract:
Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses.PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you.
2031-01-02
15
Hattam, Katherine, and katherine hattam@deakin edu au. "Art and Oedipus." Deakin University. School of Communication and Creative Arts, 2003. http://tux.lib.deakin.edu.au./adt-VDU/public/adt-VDU20070816.121927.
Full text
16
Ganczak, Iwona. "At the crossroads of politics and culture : Polish dissident art of the 1980s." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=83104.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis will examine the political and social significance of the new artistic language that emerged in Poland in the 1980s. The new artistic language pertains to symbols, imagery and themes that originated in the discourse of the opposition and can be defined as the amalgam of the traditional religious vocabulary and time-specific symbols of oppression under Communism. The most prominent in this category are the symbols of the cross, the flowers, the national red and white flag, exclusively contemporary symbols such as the "television-people" as well as an array of traditional religious vocabulary. This unusual relationship between symbolic language of art and the symbols of the Church and the Solidarity accounted for the inherently political nature of dissident art. This thesis will discuss dissident art in context of the contemporary discourses: the discourse of the Communist Party, the Church, John Paul II and Solidarity.
17
蕭芬琪 and Fun-kee Siu. "The case of Wang Yiting (1867-1938): a uniquefigure in early twentieth century Chinese art history." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2000. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31223357.
Full text
18
Kaji-O'Grady, Sandra 1965. "Serialism in art and architecture : context and theory." Monash University, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2001. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/9120.
Full text
19
Smith, Olga. "Between reality and fiction : the art of French photography since the 1970s." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610275.
Full text
20
Heath, Karen Patricia. "Conservatives and the politics of art, 1950-88." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d62a078b-4009-40a8-8765-1a4f5e0fbcbc.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis offers a new policy history of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency responsible for providing grants to artists and arts organisations in the United States. It focuses in particular on the development of conservative perspectives on federal arts funding from the 1950s to the 1980s, and hence, illuminates the broader evolution of conservative political power, especially its limits. The most familiar narrative holds that the Endowment found itself caught up in the Culture Wars of the late 1980s when Christian right groups objected to certain federal grants, particularly to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Robert Mapplethorpe's Self-Portrait with Whip. This thesis, however, uncovers the older origins of conservative opposition to state support for the arts, analyses conservative conceptions of art, and illuminates the limited federal role the right sought to secure in the arts in the post-war period. Numerous studies have analysed the meanings and origins of the Culture Wars, but until now, scholars had not examined conservative approaches to federal arts politics in a historical sense. Historians have generally been too interested in explaining change to the detriment of examining continuity, but this approach under-emphasises the long-term tensions that underlie seemingly sudden political eruptions. This work also offers a deep account of the conservative movement and the arts world, an area that has so far been almost completely ignored by scholars, even though a focus on marginalised players is essential to understanding the limits of conservatism. In a general sense then, this thesis evaluates the range and diversity of the conservative movement and illuminates the overall odyssey of the right in modern America. In so doing, it provides a new insight into the ways we periodise political history and also invites a broader view of how we understand politics itself.
21
Levi, Rachel M. "A Digital Crisis? Art History and Its Reproductions in the 20th and 21st Century." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/689.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis analyzes the emergence, presence, and use of digital reproductions in the scholarship of art history and how these reproductions impact individual encounters with art. It will address matters related to the authenticity of reproductions, the development of modern technologies, and the rise of new media, reflecting on issues related to integrating technology into the discipline and proposing how to deal with the digital reproductions in the study of art history.
22
White, Steven Robert. "A confluence of thinking: The influence of 20th century art history on American landscape architecture." Thesis, The University of Arizona, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/278634.
Full textAbstract:
Since beginning my graduate studies in landscape architecture, I have encountered many situations in class in which references to art were used. I discovered a connection in the usage of the jargon of art in landscape architecture study. People, for the most part, do not know what landscape architects do or who we are. In this thesis I will make the case for aligning the profession of landscape architecture with the fine arts and humanities. An art history component in the curriculum and education and training of landscape architects would augment their design and presentation skills in the workplace. I have included the results of a survey questionnaire that I sent to 65 landscape architecture teaching faculty representing 38 landscape architecture programs in the United States. These individuals held either a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, a Master of Fine Arts degree, or they had a scholarly research interest in art.
23
Buffington, Adam. "In Relation to the Immense: Experimentalism and Transnationalism in 20th-Century Reykjavik." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1587637102245713.
Full text
24
Hojdyssek, Gunter Art College of Fine Arts UNSW. "From laughing at the world to living in the world." Awarded by:University of New South Wales. Art, 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/43091.
Full textAbstract:
Born in 1938 in Poland, I epxperienced wartime Berlin and post-war Stalinism. My first job, at sixteen, was with the East Berlin States Opera and the Bertold Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. The play writes Betrtold Brecht and Buechner had the strongest influence on me. Brecht's play 'Mutter Courage and her children' and Georg Buechner's 'Woyzech' encapsulated the harsh realities of post-war Europe, and confirmed my desire for social justice and reform. Yet, the main influence on my work comes from my own life experience. My life in Australia has become a kind of exile-a deprivation of the origin of my culture and my cradle. After nearly forty years in Australia I feel a little displaced. Yet I left Europe voluntarily to escape from the very culture and history I now miss. I am experiencing a common dilemma of migration. I belong neither here nor there-a kind of dislocation. There exists a twilight zone in the in-between time-a discontinuity of my Berliner development. Artists such as Kaethe Kollwitz, John Heartfield, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckman influenced my teenage years. Later, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Georg Baselitz. I work with found objects, such as toys crafted by human hand. I am giving them a new meaning, a new being. They are meditations on the conflict of war, where women and children are the primary victims of political fragmentation. My sculptures evoke memories of a childhood stolen. They take on a menacing character reminding the viewer of the effects war has on humanity. But Art is the reflector and searcher; it is our way to enlightenment. Joseph Beuys introduced the concept of an expanded notion of art ("der erweiterte Kunstbegriff???) to surpass the boundaries of modernism with in art, science, spirituality, humanism and economics. He drew attention to the potential of human creativity. Art, against all odds, is poetry to life.
25
Brankovich, Jasmina. "Burning down the house? : feminism, politics and women's policy in Western Australia, 1972-1998." University of Western Australia. School of Humanities, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0122.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines the constraints and options inherent in placing feminist demands on the state, the limits of such interventions, and the subjective, intimate understandings of feminism among agents who have aimed to change the state from within. First, I describe the central element of a
26
Hellman, Michel. "Art, identité et Expo 67 : l'expression du nationalisme dans les oeuvres des artistes québécois du Pavillon de la Jeunesse à l'Exposition universelle de Montréal." Thesis, McGill University, 2005. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=98928.
Full textAbstract:
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.
27
Rivest, Mélanie. "Nouveau théatre et nouveau roman : la quête d'un art perdu." Thesis, McGill University, 2004. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=79975.
Full textAbstract:
The histories of the Theater and of the Novel have rarely been linked to one another. Nevertheless, studying the evolution of the two arts as of the seventeenth century, allows us to pinpoint and define the sources of contamination. It is more precisely in the nineteenth century that the history of both the Theater and the Novel became envenomed, going from fresh influences to disloyal relations during which time the Theater faded by admitting romanesque realism to take the stage. By denying its capacity to reveal the "real", the Theater failed its possibilities and let its art be disinterested from the theatricality showing all that should have been evoked. Men of theater participated at recapturing the theatrical art so to regain confidence on stage and near 1950, an avant-garde movement flourished to favor a renewal of vitality for the theater with a new language which utilizes all of what the scene could provoke. This "New Theater" is soon followed by a similar romanesque enterprise, the "New Novel", a group of novelists also wishing to acknowledge the right to explore a new style of writing.
28
Cheng, Christina Miu Bing, and 鄭妙冰. "Postmodernism: art and architecture in Hong Kong." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1991. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31949861.
Full text
29
Jordan, Christopher. "Steering taste : Ernest Marsh, a study of private collecting in England in the early 20th century." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2007. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5253/.
Full textAbstract:
The primary aim of this thesis is to focus attention on the bourgeois, 'un-named' collector. The driving force behind most museum and art gallery collections of the Victorian and Edwardian period. British museum and art gallery records of gifted collections, bequests and loans usually note their donors. However, with a few notable exceptions, little is known about the collectors, their activities and motivation in making such presentations. Using the interests and activities of the Quaker miller and collector Ernest Marsh (1843-1945) as a case study, this thesis explores how in the period 1890-1945 a collector came to be a key agent in the construction and manifestation of taste in British Applied Arts and to a lesser degree in the Fine Arts. Through primary visual and documentary evidence of the Marsh home, and reference to contemporary and later commentaries it considers the relative influences of husband and wife on decorating and furnishing the domestic interior, the evolution of taste, and, for Ernest Marsh, its impact upon his artistic interests within the public arena. By examination of private papers, metropolitan and provincial art gallery and museum archives it also considers evidence of the inter-relationships between donors and curators, and the mutual advantages and disadvantages accruing to both, particularly focussing on the processes in bringing about changes in individual and institutional collecting policy. Further, by review of records of, in particular, the Contemporary Art Society and the Greenslade archive, it examines the degree to which private benefactors and those in public or semi-public office, acting as fund-raisers and spenders exercise influence through patronage of particular practitioners, choice of works and initiating new designs.
30
Thompson, Susannah Ruth. "Birth pains : changing understandings of miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death in Australia in the Twentieth Century." University of Western Australia. School of Humanities, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0150.
Full textAbstract:
Feminist and social historians have long been interested in that particularly female ability to become pregnant and bear children. A significant body of historiography has challenged the notion that pregnancy and childbirth considered to be the acceptable and 'appropriate' roles for women for most of the twentieth century in Australia - have always been welcomed, rewarding and always fulfilling events in women's lives. Several historians have also begun the process of enlarging our knowledge of the changing cultural attitudes towards bereavement in Australia and the eschewing of the public expression of sorrow following the two World Wars; a significant contribution to scholarship which underscores the changing attitudes towards perinatal loss. It is estimated that one in four women lose a pregnancy to miscarriage, and two in one hundred late pregnancies result in stillbirth in contemporary Australia. Miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death are today considered by psychologists and social workers, amongst others, as potentially significant events in many women's lives, yet have received little or passing attention in historical scholarship concerned with pregnancy and motherhood. As such, this study focuses on pregnancy loss: the meaning it has been given by various groups at different times in Australia's past, and how some Australian women have made sense of their own experience of miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death within particular social and historical contexts. Pregnancy loss has been understood in a range of ways by different groups over the past 100 years. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when alarm was mounting over the declining birth rate, pregnancy loss was termed 'foetal wastage' by eugenicists and medical practitioners, and was seen in abstract terms as the loss of necessary future Australian citizens. By the 1970s, however, with the advent of support groups such as SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Support) miscarriage and stillbirth were increasingly seen as the devastating loss of an individual baby, while the mother was seen as someone in need of emotional and other support. With the advent of new prenatal screening technologies in the late twentieth century, there has been a return of the idea of maternal responsibility for producing a 'successful' outcome. This project seeks to critically examines the wide range of socially constructed meanings of pregnancy loss and interrogate the arguments of those groups, such as the medical profession, religious and support groups, participating in these constructions. It will build on existing histories of motherhood, childbirth and pregnancy in Australia and, therefore, also the history of Australian women.
31
Kennedy, Shane Michael. "Expressionist Art and Drama Before, During, and After the Weimar Republic." PDXScholar, 2015. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2508.
Full textAbstract:
Expressionism was the major literary and art form in Germany beginning in the early 20th century. It flourished before and during World War I and continued to be the dominant art for of the Early Weimar Republic. By 1924, Neue Sachlichkeit replaced Expressionism as the dominant art form in Germany. Many Expressionists claimed they were never truly apart of Expressionism. However, in the periodization and canonization many of these young artists are labeled as Expressionist.
This thesis examines the periodization and canonization of Expression in art, drama, and film and proves that Expressionism began much earlier than scholars believe and ended much later than 1924. This thesis examines the conflicts in Germany that led to Expressionism and which authors and artists influenced Expressionists. It will also show that after Expressionism ceased to be the dominant art form in Germany, many former Expressionists continued to use expressionistic form in their works but ceased to use expressionistic content. This thesis argues that both the periodization and canonization of Expressionism should be expanded to include all works that may be classified as having expressionistic form.
32
Bellettiere, Giovanna Marie. "AMERICAN FEMINISM: THE CAMERA WORK OF ALICE AUSTEN, ALFRED STIEGLITZ, AND BERENICE ABBOTT." Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2019. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/578947.
Full textAbstract:
Art HistoryM.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
33
Hennig, Sybille. "The machine and painting: an investigation into the interrelationship(s) between technology and painting since 1945." Thesis, Rhodes University, 1986. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009435.
Full textAbstract:
Introduction: We, i.e. contemporary Western man, live in a society which has increasingly embraced Science and Technology as the ultimum bonum. The Machine, i.e. Science and Technology, has come to be seen as an impersonal force, a New God - omniscient, omnipotent: to be worshipped and, alas, also to be feared. This mythologem has come to pervade almost every sphere of our lives in a paradigmatic way to the extent where it is hardly ever recognized for what it is and hence fails to arouse the concern it merits. While some of the more perceptive minds - such as Erich Fromm, Rufino Tamayo, Carl Gustav Jung, Konrad Lorenz and Arthur Koestler, to mention but a few - have started ringing the alarm bells, the vast majority of our species seem to plunge ahead with their blinkers firmly in place (more or less contented as long as they can persude themselves that these blinkers were manufactured according to latest technological and scientific specifications). Man’s uniquely human powers - his creative intuition, his feelings, his moral and ethical potential, have become sadly neglected and mistrusted. Homo sapiens – “homo maniacus” as Koestler suggests? - is now at a crossroads: he has reached a point where the next step could be the last step and result in the annihilation of man as a species. Alternately, avoiding that, there is the outwardly less drastic but essentially equally alarming possibility of men becoming robots, while a third alternative has yet to be found. While it does appear as if a lot of young people, noticeably among students, have started reacting against the over mechanization of life, these reactions often tend to follow the swing-of-the-pendulum principle and veer towards the other extreme, throwing out the baby with the bathwater and falling prey to freak-out cults in a kind of mass-irrationalism, rejecting science and technology altogether. Artists who by their very nature perhaps are particularly sensitive - in a kind of seismographic way - to the currents and undercurrents of their age, have become aware of the effects of science and technology on our way of living, and many of them have in one way or another taken a stand in relation to the position of man in our highly technological world. Looking at the art produced over the last four decades, it is truly astonishing to what extent our changed world reflects in our art - a world and a Weltbild very different from that of our ancestors even just a few generations ago. The purpose of the present study is to survey some of the observations and commentaries that painters and certain kindred spirits from the sciences over the last few decades have offered, in the hope of, if not answering, at least defining and posing anew some of the questions that confront us with ever-increasing urgency.
34
Behin, Bahram. "Aspects of the role of language in creating the literary effect : implications for the reading of Australian prose fiction /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1997. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phb419.pdf.
Full text
35
Uecker, Jeffry Lloyd. "From Promised Lands to Promised Landfill: The Iconography of Oregon's Twentieth-Century Utopian Myth." PDXScholar, 1995. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5026.
Full textAbstract:
The state of Oregon often has been viewed as a utopia. Figures of speech borrowed from the romantic sublime, biblical pilgrimage, economic boosterism, and millenialist fatalism have been used to characterize it. The visual arts also have responded to Oregon's utopian myth. During the nineteenth century, the landscape was a primary focus for utopian art. In the twentieth century, past human achievements, recreation, agriculture, and industry have joined the environment as themes which inspire utopian imagery. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that twentieth-century art that responds to Oregon's utopian myth has given rise to an iconography which both energizes and reflects the development of that myth and which informs an important component of the state's identity. Using as a criteria that which idealizes Oregon as a place, an inventory of utopian art was compiled. It includes over 300 works of visual art, plus a number of artists for whom utopian subjects served as a consistent element. From this information, dominant themes were identified which demonstrate the existence of iconography, or visual symbolism, that expresses Oregon's utopian myth. Through the themes of natural environment, heroic images of Oregon's human past, and interaction between humans and the environment-plus numerous sub-themes-the artistic evidence demonstrates that visual imagery and symbols play an important role in how Oregonians define themselves and their history. It also suggests what form the state's utopian myth, identity' and the decisions made by its people may take in the next century.
36
Lloyd, Johannah M. "The province of art : the aesthetic in the advent of modernism to London, 1910-1914." Thesis, McGill University, 1987. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=63769.
Full text
37
Jardine, Boris Samuel. "Scientific moderns." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610691.
Full text
38
Kirk, Elizabeth Gail. "Neo-orientalism : ugly women and the Parisian avant-garde, 1905-1908." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/28091.
Full textAbstract:
The Neo-Orientalism of Matisse's The Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra), and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, both of 1907, exists in the similarity of the extreme distortion of the female form and defines the different meanings attached to these "ugly" women relative to distinctive notions of erotic and exotic imagery. To understand Neo-Orientalism, that is, 19th century Orientalist concepts which were filtered through Primitivism in the 20th century, the racial, sexual and class antagonisms of the period, which not only influenced attitudes towards erotic and exotic imagery, but also defined and categorized humanity, must be considered in their historical context.
My introduction is an investigation of current art historical scholarship which has linked the manipulation of form by Matisse and Picasso and shifting avant-garde practice in Paris in the years 1905 - 1908, when Cubism displaced Fauvism, to the concepts of Orientalism and Primitivism. The problem of the ideological content of images of women, which I undertake to address, arises from these studies which rely upon the assumed metaphysical fascination with the exotic or the intuitive, personal concern for erotic symbolism by the artists as a solution to meaning. The absence of a rich critical discourse surrounding the paintings encourages my approach to the problem of meaning whereby in Chapter One I examine images of women produced in Paris in the specific discourses of popular and official culture in 1906. These representations of the female are identified as ideological constructions which functioned in relation to the important and broader issues of the moment affecting the dominance of French culture: class struggle and neo-colonialism.
In Chapter Two the "ugly" women of Matisse's The Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) and Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon are analysed as intended avant-garde transformations
of images of female prostitutes and compared with the Images of women In popular and official culture and with each other, In recognition of their function within the historical context of their production. In conclusion I suggest that the difference in meaning between these paintings by Matisse and Picasso was Ideological, operating within the context of class struggle and neo-colonialism, and defined by their distinctive conscious and unconscious use of Primitivism.Arts, Faculty of
Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of
Graduate
39
Singley, William Blake. "Recipes for a nation : cookbooks and Australian culture to 1939." Phd thesis, 2013, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/109392.
Full textAbstract:
Cookbooks were ubiquitous texts found in almost every Australian home. They played an influential role that extended far beyond their original intended use in the kitchen. They codified culinary and domestic practices thereby also codifying wider cultural practices and were linked to transformations occurring in society at large. This thesis illuminates the many ways in which cookbooks reflected and influenced developments in Australian culture and society from the early colonial period until 1939. Whilst concentrating on culinary texts, this thesis does not primarily focus on food; instead it explores the many different ways that cookbooks can be read to further understand Australian culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Through cookbooks we can chart the attitudes and responses to many of the changes that were occurring in Australian life and society. During a period of dramatic social change cookbooks were a constant and reassuring presence in the home. It was within the home that the foundations of Australian culture were laid. Cookbooks provide a unique perspective on issues such as gender, class, race, education, technology, and most importantly they hold a mirror up to Australia and show us what we thought of ourselves.
40
Corzatt, Adam David. "NAÏVE ART AND ITS REFLECTION IN SWEDISH MUSIC." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1238767722.
Full text
41
Byers, Mark. "After the new failure of nerve : Charles Olson and American modernism, 1946-1951." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:02478ea1-832a-4ecc-9c47-a264ba746c49.
Full textAbstract:
One medium has dominated accounts of American art in the years following the Second World War. The period witnessed, in the words of one critic, a 'Triumph of American Painting', with advances in the easel picture far surpassing those in other media. Whilst more recent accounts have nuanced this view, drawing attention to developments in music and sculpture, literary contributions to the new American modernism have gone almost without assessment. Were there advances in literature comparable to those of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, David Smith and John Cage? Drawing extensively on his unpublished writings, After the New Failure of Nerve reveals the poet Charles Olson to have been the keenest literary advocate of the new American avant-garde and one of the most astute observers of its conditions and possibilities. Paying special attention to unpublished notes, lectures, and correspondence, the thesis utilises Olson's early writings in order to examine the momentum given early postwar modernism by a potent contemporary reaction against abstract rationality, a reaction identified at the time as a 'New Failure of Nerve'. Born of recent disillusionment with 'scientific' Marxism and New Deal progressivism, the thesis demonstrates the several ways in which this 'New Failure of Nerve' fuelled vanguard American art from the middle of the Second World War to the end of the decade. It argues that the new critique of abstract rationality - which was also reflected in the contemporary American work of the Frankfurt School - defined the way American artists understood the function of postwar modernism, the posture of the postwar modernist artist, and the status of the postwar modernist artwork. This pivotal moment in the history of modernism was shaped, I contend, by a philosophical critique explored most ambitiously by an American poet.
42
Forward, David William. "The keyboard repertory as a reflector of art nouveau in music /." Title page, contents and introduction only, 1993. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phf745.pdf.
Full text
43
Stephen, Ann. "Looking through conceptual art : a dialogue between Ian Burn and his collaborators." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2003.
Find full textAbstract:
A monograph on Ian Burn poses major problems and opportunities for art historical inquiry. A central dilemma concerns the challenge that his Conceptual art raises for biography. How is it possible to turn a conversational practice into a monograph?
In Looking Through Conceptual Art Bum's dialogical art is engaged in a series of imaginary and actual encounters with the work of other artists. The ten chapters mark out the passage of a life through a series of exchanges. Each chapter begins at a specific historical moment however its internal dynamic pursues a conversational rather than a temporal logic. Their breadth-from regional landscape with Albert Namatjira, self-portraiture with Bum's Australian masters, appropriation with Sidney Nolan, abstraction with Piet Mondrian,
collaboration with Mel Ramsden, Conceptual art with Art & Language, provincialism with Jackson Pollock, the political legacy of Conceptual art with Fernand Leger and the readymade with 'Em Malley'-represents the challenge that Bum poses for Conceptual art. The structure loosens the diachronic inevitability of biography and traces instead a non-linear surface that articulates and frames the spacing between different cultures, practices and collaborations.
Three fundamental questions inform all the conversations and are at the heart of Bum's practice: How is it possible to make art from a different (marginal) place? What role can
painting and perception play in Conceptual art ? And what are the political implications of Conceptual art?
44
Von, Veh Karen Elaine. "Transgressive Christian iconography in post-apartheid South African art." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002220.
Full textAbstract:
In this study I propose that transgressive interpretations of Christian iconography provide a valuable strategy for contemporary artists to engage with perceived social inequalities in postapartheid South Africa. Working in light of Michel Foucault’s idea of an “ontology of the present”, I investigate the ways in which religious iconography has been implicated in the regulation of society. Parodic reworking of Christian imagery in the selected examples is investigated as a strategy to expose these controls and offer a critique of mechanisms which produce normative ‘truths’. I also consider how such imagery has been received and the factors accounting for that reception. The study is contextualized by a brief, literary based, historical overview of Christian religious imagery to explain the strength of feeling evinced by religious images. This includes a review of the conflation of religion and state control of the masses, an analysis of the sovereign controls and disciplinary powers that they wield, and an explication of their illustration in religious iconography. I also identify reasons why such imagery may have seemed compelling to artists working in a post-apartheid context. By locating recent works in terms of those made elsewhere or South African examples prior to the period that is my focus, the works discussed are explored in terms of broader orientations in post-apartheid South African art. Artworks that respond to specific Christian iconography are discussed, including Adam and Eve, The Virgin Mary, Christ, and various saints and sinners. The selected artists whose works form the focus of this study are Diane Victor, Christine Dixie, Majak Bredell, Tracey Rose, Wim Botha, Conrad Botes, Johannes Phokela and Lawrence Lemaoana. Through transgressive depictions of Christian icons these artists address current inequalities in society. The content of their works analysed here includes (among others): the construction of both female and male identities; sexual roles, social roles, and racial identity; the social expectations of contemporary motherhood; repressive role models; Afrikaner heritage; political and social change and its effects; colonial power; sacrifice; murder, rape, and violence in South Africa; abuses of power by role models and politicians; rugby; heroism; and patricide. Christian iconography is a useful communicative tool because it has permeated many cultures over centuries, and the meanings it carries are thus accessible to large numbers of people. Religious imagery is often held sacred or is regarded with a degree of reverence, thus ensuring an emotive response when iconoclasm or transgression of any sort is identified. This study argues that by parodying sacred imagery these artists are able to disturb complacent viewing and encourage viewers to engage critically with some of its underlying implications.
45
Ferris, Natalie. "'Ludic passage' : abstraction in post-war British literature, 1945-1980." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5b3034e6-3a32-4684-b8a0-eb91cfc756c6.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis traces a line of literary experimentation in post-war British literature that was prompted by the aesthetic, philosophical and theoretical demands of abstraction. Spanning the period 1945 to 1980, it observes the ways in which certain aesthetic advancements initiated new forms of literary expression to posit a new genealogy of interdisciplinary practice in Britain. It is the first sustained chronological study to consider the ways in which a select number of British poets, authors and critics challenged the received views of their post-war moment in the discovery of the imaginative and idealizing potential of abstraction. At a time in which Britain became conscious of its evolving identity within an increasingly globalised context, this study accounts for the range of Continental and Transatlantic influences in order to more accurately locate the networks at play. Exploring the contributions made by individuals, such as Herbert Read, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Christine Brooke-Rose, as well as by groups of practitioners, such as the British concrete poetry movement, small press initiatives and Art & Language, this thesis offers a comprehensive account of the evolving status of abstraction across cultural, institutional and literary contexts. The discussions build a vision of an era that increasingly jettisons the predetermined critical lexicon of abstraction to generate works of a more pragmatic abstract inspiration: the spatial demands of concrete poetry, language as medium in the conceptual artwork, the absence of linear plot in the new novel.
46
Moore, Zachary Stephen. "Voices of the Exhibition:The Rise of Ekphrasis during the 20th Century through Imagism and Visual Art Museums." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1431087392.
Full text
47
Collins, Curtis J. 1962. "Sites of Aboriginal difference : a perspective on installation art in Canada." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=38172.
Full textAbstract:
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.
48
Brazil, Kevin. "The work of art in postwar fiction, 1945-2001." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f8102451-09cf-4f92-8e6e-e7c1ced2641c.
Full textAbstract:
'The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001' explores the responses of postwar novelists to visual art by focusing on the work of Samuel Beckett, William Gaddis, John Berger and W.G. Sebald. In doing so, it opens up a new approach to understanding the relationship between fiction and art in the postwar period as a whole, for what distinguishes these writers is that they use an engagement with visual art in order to historicize their own work as distinctly 'postwar' fiction. This thesis shows that in the writings of these novelists, long running aesthetic issues in the study of the relationship between text and image are reformulated and transformed: medium specificity; ekphrasis; and visual representation as a model for literary realism. Drawing throughout on original archival research, The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001 traces what T.J. Clark terms the 'processes of conversion and relation' between art, its contexts and its commentators, and it is by studying these mediations that the literary consequences of the work of art for these writers are shown. With a historicizing approach throughout, and an interest in the ways in which postwar novelists mediate their engagement with art through history, this thesis contributes to a new understanding of the literature and art of the postwar era, or what Amy Hungerford has called 'the period formerly known as contemporary'. This thesis offers a revisionary account of a relationship previously subsumed under the dominant logic of postmodernism, which according to Fredric Jameson was defined by a 'waning of historicity'. In returning historicity as method and theme to the study of the relationship between literature and art since 1945, The Work of Art in Postwar Fiction 1945-2001 shows the diverse ways in which postwar writers historicized their writing, and reflected on their techniques, in dialogue with visual art. Concerning itself with the distinct challenges posed by focusing on what Hannah Ardent called the 'most recent' past, this thesis also develops new ways of thinking more broadly about the relationships between literature, art and history. Chapter 1, 'Reviewing Postwar Fiction', situates this thesis within recent debates in literary studies surrounding what Mark McGurl has termed a discipline-wide 'hegemony of history'. Chapter 2, on Samuel Beckett, argues that Beckett's postwar art criticism responds to a specific strand of Marxist humanist aesthetics developed after the war, and it studies Beckett's manuscripts to show the relationship between this criticism and the composition of The Unnamable. Chapter 3 discusses William Gaddis's 1955 novel The Recognitions, arguing that the novel pivots around some of the central cruxes of postwar American aesthetic debate: Clement Greenberg's theory of abstraction, and Michael Fried's identification of the problem of 'art and objecthood'. Chapter 4 discusses the work of the British art critic and novelist, John Berger. It shows that Berger's critical account of Cubism shaped the narrative forms of his novels A Painter of Our Time and G., and that these narrative innovations were central to his theory of the artistic and revolutionary 'moment'. Chapter 5 focuses on the relationship between photography, painting and aesthetics in the work of W. G. Sebald. It argues that aesthetic concepts such as 'the readymade' and 'objective chance' offer a better account of Sebald's engagement with art than accounts which draw on trauma theory. The thesis concludes with a short discussion of how the writers studied in this thesis have influenced the contemporary fiction of Jonathan Franzen, Teju Cole, and Tom McCarthy.
49
Blake, Tamlin. "South African botanical art : a study of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imagery." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/52458.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Botanical art consists of a complex combination of scientific fact and aesthetic awareness, and is concerned with more than the realistic representation of a plant and its flowers. It goes beyond the visual description of scientific information and speaks about the contributions artists have made through history to the conventions of both art and science. It contains a unique visual language, conventions which we read intelligently and an evolved tradition, and it is this language and the development of these conventions within the genre of South African botanical art, which this thesis investigates. In South Africa botanical art developed as a direct result of European interest in the flora and the colonisation of this country by the West. A brief history of responses to South African plants is discussed in the Introduction in order to begin to establish an understanding of this tradition and to contextualise the contributions made by 19th-and 20th -century South African botanical artists. Now that postmodernity has called for the reassessment and questioning of 'given truths', alternative ways of assessing botanical art are slowly evolving. Through study and the comparison of botanical art and artists of South Africa their evaluation as artists is reconsidered. This issue of defining art and artists is the subject of Chapter One of this study. Some of the factors that have a bearing on this include: relationships between text and image; art and science; art and illustration; and how society's expectations of gender roles affect the production of botanical art. In order to establish a context from which to discuss plant imagery in South Africa, it is important to study the history and development of botanical art in this country. Chapter Two discusses the emergence and development of this art form and its artists, starting with a short description of people and events from the 1600s and then takes a comprehensive look at developments in the 19th and 20m centuries. For the artists working within the genre of botanical art, the conventions and inventions are often explicitly formulated. It is an art based on the logic, scrutiny and informative tradition of science, where the main objective is to represent a plant's structural essence. Fundamental to our response to botanical art, however, is the style and technique employed by the artist. Chapter Three is devoted to a detailed discussion of the work of selected contemporary South African botanical art and artists. By comparing their work it is possible to establish trends and developments in representation and the role played by mediums and techniques in this highly skilled art form. Since this research has both a theoretical and a practical component, Chapter Four is devoted to discussion of my own work within the botanical art genre. I describe and illustrate several related series of paintings and explore established conventions and ways of developing my own stylistic identity as a botanical artist.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Botaniese kuns bestaan uit 'n komplekse kombinasie van wetenskaplike feite en estetiese bewustheid, en is gemoeid met baie meer as net die realistiese voorstelling van 'n plant en sy blomme. Dit gaan verder as net die blote visuele uitbeelding van wetenskaplike informasie, en behels die bydraes wat kunstenaars deur die geskiedenis tot die konvensies van beide kuns en die wetenskap gemaak het. Botaniese kuns besit 'n unieke visuele taal, konvensies wat intelligent gelees word, en 'n ontwikkelde tradisie. Hierdie tesis ondersoek juis hierdie spesiale taal en ontwikkeling van konvensies binne die genre van Suid-Afrikaanse botaniese kuns. Botaniese kuns in Suid-Afrika het ontwikkel as In direkte gevolg van Europese belangstelling in die flora, en Westerse kolonialisasie van hierdie land. In die Inleidingword daar kortliks gekyk na die geskiedenis van die hantering van Suid-Afrikaanse plante, en het ten doelom eerstens 'n begrip van hierdie tradisie daar te stel, en tweedens om die bydraes van 19de en 20ste eeuse Suid-Afrikaanse botaniese kunstenaars te kontekstualiseer. Sedert Postmodernisme die herevaluering en bevraagtekening van gegewewe waarhede aangewakker het, is die ontwikkeling van alternatiewe maniere van kyk na botaniese kuns stadig besig om plaas te vind. Deur die bestudering en vergelyking van botaniese kuns en kunstenaars van Suid-Afrika, word die botaniese kunstenaar se status as kunstenaar uitgelig. Hierdie kwessie oor die defmieëring van kuns en kunstenaars is die onderwerp van Hoofstuk 1 van hierdie werkstuk. 'n Paar van die faktore wat In invloed op laasgenoemde het, sluit in: verhoudinge tussen beeld en teks; kuns en wetenskap; kuns en illustrasie; en hoe kwessies van geslag soos waargeneem deur die samelewing die produsering van botaniese kuns beïnvloed. Dit is belangrik om die geskiedenis en ontwikkeling van botaniese kuns in Suid-Afrika te bestudeer, sodat daar 'n konteks geskep kan word waarbinne die afbeelding van plante in hierdie land bespreek kan word. Hoofstuk 2 behandel die totstandkoming en ontwikkeling van hierdie kunsvorm en sy kunstenaars, en begin met 'n kort beskrywing van mense en gebeurtenisse van die 1600s wat gevolg word deur 'n uitgebreide kyk na ontwikkelinge gedurende die 19de en 20ste eeue. Vir die kunstenaars wat werk binne die genre van botaniese kuns, is die konvensies en bevindings van die medium dikwels breedvoerig geformuleer. Dit is 'n kunsvorm gebasseer op die logiese, navorsbare en insiggewende tradisie van die wetenskap, waar die hoofdoel die voorstelling van 'n plant se strukturele essensie is. Fundementeel in die benadering tot botaniese kuns is die styl en tegniek wat deur die kunstenaar gebruik word. Hoofstuk 3 word gewy aan 'n gedetailleerde bespreking van die werk van geselekteerde kontemporêre Suid-Afrikaanse bot~iese kuns en kunstenaars. Deur hul werk te vergelyk is dit moontlik om tendense en ontwikkelings in die voorstelling en aanbieding van botaniese kuns te bepaal, en wat die rol van verskillende mediums en tegnieke in hierdie hoogs geskoolde kunsvorm behels. Weens die feit dat hierdie navorsing uit 'n teoretiese en praktiese komponent bestaan, word Hoofstuk 4 gewy aan 'n bespreking van my praktiese werk binne die genre van botaniese kuns. Ek beskryf en illustreer verskeie verwante reekse werke en kyk na bestaande konvensies en die maniere hoe my eie stilistiese identiteit as botaniese kunstenaar kan ontwikkel binne die medium.
50
Sun, Christine Yunn-Yu. "The construction of "Chinese" cultural identity : English-language writing by Australian and other authors with Chinese ancestry." Monash University, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, 2004. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/5438.
Full text