Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Visual arts and media arts, n.e.c'
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1
Graham, Deborah Jane. "The manifestation of national identities in late eighteenth-century Scottish art, c.1750-1800." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/110988/.
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This dissertation seeks to explore how national identities were manifest in eighteenth-century Scottish art. Understanding national identity to be a cultural and political phenomena, it considers symbols of national identity and examines in aesthetic and economic terms how the fine arts were both implicated in, and capable of expressing, the significant changes in national identity apparent in Scotland following the ’Forty-Five. The first chapter concerns itself with the issue of art and identity in Scotland between cl750 and 1800, and surveys the relevant literature, before introducing other significant issues pertinent to this research: the Enlightenment and Improvement. Chapter two recognises that previous studies of Highland portraits have examined them from an ‘external’ perspective. It investigates the implications of this for the viewer, and proceeds to analyse them from an ‘internal’ perspective intended to reveal the sitters’ motivations, to conclude that they are aristocratic images of authority, and its loss. The construction of the myth of the Highlands is thus expounded visually. If these symbols offer little evidence for an identity in flux, it is questionable whether individuals’ portraits can express national identity. Yet such a claim, it will be argued in chapter three, can be made through the desire to collect and order portraits by nation, and its relation to the Enlightenment discourse of the role of the individual in forming civil society. In this context, in chapter four, the aesthetic qualities of Allan Ramsay’s 1753-4 portraits will be argued as having been of particular significance to their Scottish sitters, being formed by Ramsay’s participation in Enlightenment Edinburgh society. Evidence for this position will be adduced through his paintings and writings, though the influence of physical setting is also considered. Finally, in chapter five, a study of Edinburgh art markets in comparison with those of English provincial cities addresses the question of whether Scotland was a nation, or province of England. The synthesis of existing literature and an original survey of art-related newspaper advertising reveals the Edinburgh market to be distinctive, though increasingly reliant upon London. The co-existence of local and national culture is found to be an important dialectic in the market, just as the dialectic between Scottish and British culture was found to be so generally in this dissertation. In conclusion, chapter six argues that while Scottish art must be considered as part of the history of British art, the desire amongst Scots to be part of a British nation was a significant force in shaping Scottish visual culture.
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Dunlop, Anne Elizabeth. "Advocata nostra : central Italian paintings of Mary as the Second Eve, c.1335-c.1445." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1997. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/2889/.
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This thesis is a close examination and analysis of the creation and reception of a group of eighteen Central Italian paintings of the Madonna with Eve presented reclining at her feet, images which draw on one of the fundamental themes of Mary's cult, her role as the Second Eve. Modern writers have sometimes been taken aback by these panels; in recent studies of women in history, Mary and Eve are often assumed to have been defining stereotypes of positive and negative feminine behaviour, and these works make a blatant juxtaposition of the two. Yet this imagery was obviously attractive to Trecento and Quattrocento patrons: this paradox lies at the heart of this thesis, which seeks to determine what these paintings might have meant to those who commissioned them and who first worshipped before them. To do so, this thesis begins by introducing the questions raised by the works; it then discusses textual and oral traditions linking Mary and Eve for Trecento and Quattrocento viewers, in order to suggest a range of possible associations for the imagery. There are then four case studies, intended to particularise the general themes of the pairing through specific images and contexts. The first focuses on Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes at the former Cistercian abbey of S. Galgano, which were created, it is suggested here, by a member of that community in Mary's honour. The next chapter looks at the political and eschatological implications of images of Mary's rule as the Second Eve in the Papal States, discussing frescoes in S. Agostino, Montefalco, S. Gregorio Maggiore, Spoleto, and the Camposanto in Pisa, as well as a panel attributed to Carlo da Camerion, now in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Eaton, Natasha Jane. "Imaging Empire : the trafficking of art and aesthetics in British India c.1772 to c.1795." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2000. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/34755/.
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This dissertation explores the complex entanglements of an artistic traffic between two distinct 'visual economies' in eastern India, c.1772-c.1795. Both late Mughal and early colonial cultures were undergoing transformation, to the extent that during this era the nascent colonial artistic diaspora collapsed. Three inter-related areas will be interrogated: the prestation and commercial circulation of imagery between London, Calcutta and Murshidabad, the dichotomies of political and aesthetic spheres, and colonial representations of late Mughal culture as embroiled by such frameworks. Chapter one examines India-painted subjects in a metropolitan aesthetic sphere, thus acting as crucial juxtaposition for the refiguration of British art in Calcutta, which is the subject of the following section. Hastings' regime wielded British art as part of an intensely spectacular colonial governmentality, but his successor Cornwallis, took a tougher line with devastating effect. A diversity of competing, derivative idioms ousted professional colonial painting forever; its artistic schema penetrated to 'grass-roots' level through the creation of a 'Company School' which transposed the practice of the patua caste. Chapters five to seven investigate nawabi perceptions of British imagery. Hastings introduced the gifting of large-scale portraits; artefacts ill-suited to Indian interiors and aesthetic interiority - perhaps not even viewed as 'art'. The final chapter, through representations of the nawabs of Murshidabad and Lucknow, traces the evolution of British pictures as accoutrements of Mughal sovereignty. By 1795 both courts possessed permanent if 'hybrid' expositions of colonial imagery which transgressed established Indian and British classifications, as well as indicating more profound redefinitions of Indian comportment, consumption and taste. The intersection of 'visual economies' by way of an exploration of diverse zones of transculturation and processes of translation, provides a vital lens for recovering Indian and British agency - both elite and subaltern, in the oft-uneasy formation of a colonial aesthetic forum.
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Murrieta, Flores David Alejandro Jerzy. "Situationist margins : The Situationist Times, King Mob, Black Mask, and S.NOB magazines." Thesis, University of Essex, 2017. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/20919/.
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This thesis parts from the premise that avant-garde art collectives produce discourses meant to articulate the opposition to the art/life divide as one that interrelates fields such as aesthetics, politics, philosophy, and even economics. By utilizing a comparative framework, it plays on the complementarity and differences between four 1960s groups that formed very specific organizations directed at challenging society, in one way or another related to the Situationist International: The Situationist Times (France), King Mob Echo (UK), Black Mask and its transformations (US), and S.NOB (Mexico). Through the medium of magazines, they intended to reach a mass audience that in the act of reading and looking at their images and texts would be prompted to discern organizations that undermined the world-system. Thus, the Situationist Times attempted to form a (people’s) movement that in an applied creativity that rejected the metanarrative of progress would be able to realize the malleability of history. King Mob followed a conspiratorial logic with the idea of a dis-organized mass suddenly acting in concert against states. Black Mask and its transformations played with the idea of a war for territory, the occupation of a ‘free zone’ by a community in the midst of a dominated world. Finally, S.NOB’s idiosyncratic anarchism came from an opposition to the totalizing discursive practices of the Mexican Revolution, giving primacy to fragmentation and an anti-organizational bent; while it had no direct relationship to any of the above groups, it shows how their techniques and theories develop out of an engagement with Surrealism and past avant-gardes. S.NOB provides not a counterpoint but a contextual revelation of the limits of these collectives, in the Bataillean sense that opens all of them up to a ‘contamination’ with historicity and thought that treats all of them as equal in scope and importance.
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Rozier, Emily Jane. "The galaunt tradition in England, c.1380–c.1550 : the form and function of a satirical youth figure." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2016. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6656/.
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The subject of this doctoral study is the satirical figure known as the ‘galaunt’, as depicted in English literature and visual art c.1380–c.1550. It combines close textual analysis with investigation of established youth tropes, contemporaneous material culture, and socio-political concerns. It begins by establishing the breadth of the galaunt corpus and the figure’s significance, before tracing the etymology of galaunt and the cultural antecedents of the late medieval tradition in order to establish its hitherto unidentified Classical origins. The study goes on to explore the fundamental aspects of the galaunt’s semiotic makeup: youth; licentiousness; sartorial extravagance; and problematic masculinity. Despite the cultural significance of the late medieval galaunt, it has received little scholarly attention and the true significance of the figure’s role as Wayward Youth is yet to be established. This doctoral thesis moves away from previous scholarship, which has interpreted the figure as an instance of social-mobility discourse, and instead unravels the tradition’s complex conflation of established youth stereotypes and socio-political concerns to reposition the galaunt as a Vice figure symbolising errant youth. The thesis argues for a reappraisal of the significance of youth to late medieval social discourses, particularly in regard to questions of masculinity and status.
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Rye, Caroline. "Living cameras : a study of live bodies and mediatized images in multi-media performance and installation art practice." Thesis, Edinburgh Napier University, 2000. http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/5886.
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This thesis is concerned with multi-media performance and installation art practices which foreground the live body in combination with mediatized images. The research is conducted through the making and examination of a number of the researcher's own art works. Practical multi-media performance and installation projects are analysed within the context of specific performance and visual cultural theories in order to advance their contribution to critical and cultural fields. The research champions a symbiotic relationship between theory and practice. Practical works were undertaken and exhibited as solo or collaborative art projects. These works then formed the basis for individual ‘case studies' and were subjected to a critical review informed by a variety of theoretical frameworks including feminist, psychoanalytic and poststructuralist philosophy. This practice-based methodology is contextualised by the mapping of historical and contemporary critical discourses for the field of multi-media performance. The ‘reflection-on-action' results in an understanding of the mechanisms and effects of multi-media performance as a cultural practice. Specifically this thesis aims to answer the question as to whether multimedia performance can form the basis for an ‘interrogation' of our contemporary media dominated society? Through a practice-led enquiry it unpacks the dynamics between a meeting of live bodies and mediatized images, concentrating on the differences and similarities of their experiential sensory qualities. The research then extends these findings into social and political contexts through a comparison with other ‘reality' and ‘identity' re/producing cultural practices. The study concludes that cameras and recorded images used within live and/or time based art contexts can counteract the conventional constitution of mediatized images. To the extent that mediatized images can also be said to reflect and in turn constitute human subjectivity, multi-media performance, therefore, can provoke a re-evaluation of culture and its associated human activities and behaviours.
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MacLeod, Anne Margaret. "The idea of antiquity in visual images of the Highlands and Islands c.1700-1880." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2006. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1085/.
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This thesis addresses the textual bias inherent in the historiography by exploring the value of visual images as a source of evidence for cultural perceptions of the Gàidhealtachd. Visual images stood at the sharp end of the means by which stereotypes were forged and sustained. In part, this was a direct result of the special role afforded to the image in the cultural and intellectual climate of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe. This thesis looks at the evolution of visual interest in the Highlands and Islands on two fronts, documentary and aesthetic, and pays particular attention to the way in which the two main functions of the image in society came to be intertwined. This thesis argues that the concept of antiquity was the single most powerful influence driving the visual representation of the Highlands and Islands during a long period from c. 1700 to around 1880, and indeed into the twentieth century. If something could be regarded as ancient, aboriginal, dead, or even dying, it acquired both documentary and aesthetic value. This applied to actual antiquities, to customs and manners perceived as indigenous and ‘traditional’ to the region, and, ultimately, even to the physical landscape. Successive chapters explore what might now be classified as the archaeological, ethnological and geological motives for visualising the Highlands and Islands, and the bias in favour of antiquity which resulted from the spread of intellectual influences into the fine arts. The shadow of time which hallmarked visual representations of the region resulted in a preservationist mentality which has had powerful repercussions down to the present day. The body of evidence considered – which embraces maps, plans, paintings, drawings, sketches and printed images by both professionals and amateurs – must be viewed as a rich and valuable companion to the written word.
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Spooner, Rosemary Gall. "Close encounters : international exhibitions and the material culture of the British Empire, c.1880-1940." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2016. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7386/.
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Apparitions of empire and imperial ideologies were deeply embedded in the International Exhibition, a distinct exhibitionary paradigm that came to prominence in the mid-nineteenth century. Exhibitions were platforms for the display of objects, the movement of people, and the dissemination of ideas across and between regions of the British Empire, thereby facilitating contact between its different cultures and societies. This thesis aims to disrupt a dominant understanding of International Exhibitions, which forwards the notion that all exhibitions, irrespective of when or where they were staged, upheld a singular imperial discourse (i.e. Greenhalgh 1988, Rydell 1984). Rather, this thesis suggests International Exhibitions responded to and reflected the unique social, political and economic circumstances in which they took place, functioning as cultural environments in which pressing concerns of the day were worked through. Understood thus, the International Exhibition becomes a space for self-presentation, serving as a stage from which a multitude of interests and identities were constructed, performed and projected. This thesis looks to the visual and material culture of the International Exhibition in order to uncover this more nuanced history, and foregrounds an analysis of the intersections between practices of exhibition-making and identity-making. The primary focus is a set of exhibitions held in Glasgow in the late-1880s and early-1900s, which extends the geographic and temporal boundaries of the existing scholarship. What is more, it looks at representations of Canada at these events, another party whose involvement in the International Exhibition tradition has gone largely unnoticed. Consequently, this thesis is a thematic investigation of the links between a municipality routinely deemed the ‘Second City of the Empire’ and a Dominion settler colony, two types of geographic setting rarely brought into dialogue. It analyses three key elements of the exhibition-making process, exploring how iconographies of ‘quasi-nationhood’ were expressed through an exhibition’s planning and negotiation, its architecture and its displays. This original research framework deliberately cuts across strata that continue to define conceptions of the British Empire, and pushes beyond a conceptual model defined by metropole and colony. Through examining International Exhibitions held in Glasgow in the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods, and visions of Canada in evidence at these events, the goal is to offer a novel intervention into the existing literature concerning the cultural history of empire, one that emphasises fluidity rather than fixity and which muddles the boundaries between centre and periphery.
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Van, Zyl Christa Engela. "‘Swartsmeer’ : ’n studie oor die stereotipering van Afrika en Afrikane in die populere media." Thesis, Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/1886.
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Thesis (MA (VA)(Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2008.This thesis consists of a study that identifies and analyses the origins, nature, and spectrum of different stereotypes of Africans in popular texts. The past can only be explored through texts, which are unavoidably mediated, re-interpreted, fictional and temporary. No text can be read in isolation – it is imperative to gain knowledge about the social and ideological context in the analysis of any historical text. History shows that racism is a constructed concept, and the roots of stereotypical perceptions of the ‘Other’ can be found in antiquity – in Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece and the Jewish Torah, as well as during the Middle Ages. A historical synopsis is given of the conception and development of racial stereotyping through the ages until the present. The study demonstrates how stereotypes gradually adapt with history, politics, and ideology. Stereotypes are in my opinion not necessarily constructed on purpose. Stereotypes are developed and based on historical events, but are transformed in time to fulfil new purposes. My conclusion is that racist stereotypes of Africans are created in the West, by the West, for the West. In many ways, the adaptation of the stereotypes of Africans act as a timeline for Western involvement on the continent. The stereotypical portrayal of Africa as the Dark Continent, “White Man’s Burden” and Godforsaken Continent will firstly be studied. Secondly, the depiction of African-Americans, especially in American popular culture, is discussed through stereotypes like Mammy, Uncle Tom, Jezebel, and Buck. The theme of my practical component, a two part series about the Cape Carnival, discusses the stereotype of the “Jolly Hotnot” or “Coon” and examines the portrayal of Africans as comical. The study shows the important role popular media plays in spreading and reaffirming stereotypes. Stereotypes are often used as a survival method to make the multiplicity of reality manageable, recognisable, and understandable. Stereotyping becomes problematic if the stereotypes are used as generalisations to marginalise a group in terms of features such as skin colour. A type of “cultural decolonisation” would be necessary to counteract this marginalisation, through popular culture created by in Africa, by Africans, for Africans and international popular culture.
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Behrendt, Frauke. "Mobile sound : media art in hybrid spaces." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2010. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/6336/.
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The thesis explores the relationships between sound and mobility through an examination of sound art. The research engages with the intersection of sound, mobility and art through original empirical work and theoretically through a critical engagement with sound studies. In dialogue with the work of De Certeau, Lefebvre, Huhtamo and Habermas in terms of the poetics of walking, rhythms, media archeology and questions of publicness, I understand sound art as an experimental mobile and public space. The thesis establishes and situates the emerging field of mobile sound art by mapping three key traditions of mobile sound art - locative art, sound art and public art - and creates a taxonomy of mobile sound art by defining four categories: 'placing sounds', 'sound platforms', 'sonifying mobility' and 'musical instruments' (each represented by one case study). In doing so it develops a methodology that is attentive to the specifics of the sonic and mobile of media experience. I demonstrate how sonic interactions and embodied mobility are designed and experienced in specific ways in each of the four case studies - 'Aura' by Symons (UK), 'Pophorns' by Torstensson and Sandelin (Sweden), 'SmSage' by Redfern and Borland (US) and 'Core Sample' by Rueb (US) (all 2007). In tracing the topos of the musical telephone, discussing the making and breaking of relevant micro publics, accounting for the polyphonies of footsteps and unwrapping bundles of rhythms, this thesis contributes to understanding complex media experiences in hybrid spaces. In doing so it critically sheds light on the quality of sonic artistic experiences, the audience engagement with urban, public and networked spaces and the relationship between sound art and everyday media experience. My thesis provides valuable insight into auditory ways of mobilising and making public spaces, non-verbal and embodied media practices, and rhythms and scales of mobile media experiences.
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Irvine, Victoria. "The development of the use of models in Scottish art, c.1800-1900, with special reference to painting and the Trustees' Academy, Edinburgh." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6179/.
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This thesis suggests that a range of major and some minor Scottish nineteenth-century artists’ approaches to figurative art, c.1800-1900, were informed by, and in some cases decisively influenced by, the prevalence of naturalism as fostered by the Trustees’ Academy, Edinburgh. The Trustees’ Academy was selected as a case study for this thesis due to its prominent position in art education as a leading Scottish institution, particularly for the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite scholars noting the far-reaching influence of certain nineteenth-century Scottish artists, such as David Wilkie, discussions of Scottish figurative painting predominantly focus on the personal development of artists’ oeuvres or artists, and grouped generally by style or chronology. Moreover, there is no dedicated published study on the nineteenth-century history of the Trustees’ Academy and its pedagogical methods; similarly, the discussions of Scottish naturalism have formed part of larger contributions related to specific artists and movements. This thesis presents new research from unpublished archive papers related to the Trustees’ Academy in the National Archives of Scotland, and it adopts a contextual and comparative approach by exploring the history of the TA and its pedagogical approaches in relation to wider trends in Scottish art and as relevant in England and abroad. Following discussions established by Duncan Macmillan and John Morrison, it suggests that naturalism developed in Scottish figurative painting as a conceptual motif and as a stylistic tool. The conceptual strand was rooted in poetry, which explored both the ‘Celtic’ and ‘pastoral’, with each being evocative of a romanticised, ‘natural’ way of life. This thesis proposes that naturalism, as a style, was more fully developed in the nineteenth century, in part developed by artists’ pursuit of personal depictions of Scotland’s land and people. Naturalism, as posited by this thesis, was part of Scotland’s wider search, post-Union, for its national identity within its ‘union-nationalist’ framework. By elucidating this new approach in Scottish artists’ depictions of the figure, this study aims to enhance our understanding of Scottish nineteenth-century systems of art education and approaches by artists to the model, and to contribute to research on Scottish national identity in nineteenth-century painting.
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Michael, Georgia. "Imaging divinity : the 'invisible' Godhead in early Christian art c.300-c.730." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7318/.
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Representations of the Holy Trinity have increasingly come under scrutiny, exposing two competing paradigms at opposite ends of the theological spectrum: the legitimacy and the illegitimacy of imaging the Triune God with focus on the invisible Father who was imaged as an individual from Late Antiquity and beyond. An overview of these two conflicting views has unveiled a number of inconsistencies in how the Early Christian iconography of God the Father and the Trinity has been interpreted. This thesis provides a unique re-evaluation of the surviving Trinitarian visual material between c.300 to c.730. Primarily, this study collates pictorial evidence preserved in the mediums of sarcophagi, catacomb frescoes, mosaics, illuminated manuscripts and an icon that depicts Divinity. It proceeds to critique modern misconceptions of the identity, form, meaning, function and reception of the depictions. The thesis traces the visual shift amid overt and covert images of Divinity by decoding important artworks such as the Ashburnham Pentateuch and the Codex Amiatinus; Christians visualised explicitly the ' invisibility' of God but created an unprecedented invention, the depiction of the Father through Christ's image. The innovative depiction heralded future visual formulas of Divinity echoing the complexities of Trinitarian material culture of the Mediterranean world.
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Prophet, Jane. "Taste, teaching and the Utah teapot : creative, gender, aesthetic and pedagogical issues surrounding the use of electronic media in art and design education : with particular reference to hypertext applications." Thesis, University of Warwick, 1994. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/39005/.
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This investigation charts a number of complementary explorations at the site of electronic media in art practice and design and media education. Artists are increasingly using video and computer technology in the production of their work, and these shifts are reflected in the way design and media courses are taught in Higher Education. This study seeks to relate a number of often contentious issues, but complex questions are central to any debate about the use of electronic imaging technologies by artists and the implications for teaching and learning. In this respect, the thesis is informed by my dual role as an artist using electronic media and as a lecturer in video and digital imaging in the Media Department at the University of Westminster. The study is based on a particular model of action research, and seeks after the manner of Glaser and Strauss (1967) to "ground" theory in the aggregate perceptions, understandings, and artistic or pedagogical orientations of those seeking to bring order to their own experiences in the settings. The text is arranged in eleven chapters. It begins by introducing the boundaries of the phenomena under study (which is necessarily ragged and untidy and challengingly gritty, since the composite issues have yet to have attracted any clarity of exposition, and the field is in any case characterised by imaginative leaps and cross-fertilisation) and the methodological and idealogical stances adopted. Methodologically the thesis is wide-ranging and eclectic, although also contained within the kind of feminist epistomology proposed by Sandra Harding (1992), Marnier Lazreg (1994) and others. It then moves on to examine a number of focal points and issues related to the use to which electronic media is put by artists. These topics include my own sustained attempts to develop non-linear computer systems for mapping associative thoughts, and a more general and more detailed study of the principles and characteristics of these systems when they are used for holding information about knowledge domains. Following this, there is a chapter dedicated to the application of these principles to a particular knowledge domain, colour theory, with the aim of designing a computer aided learning package. The interconnections between all the topics, issues and themes studied in the text are highlighted in the middle of the thesis before moving on to more specific investigation of the issue of gender in both technological education and creativity, with an emphasis on the use of imaging technologies by women artists. The impact of these technologies in terms of shifting aesthetic values and tastes forms the basis of the final chapter, and a conclusion seeks to offer both a tentative intellectual synopsis and to indicate how the exercise has influenced and affected my work as an artist. I am aware that to some extent this arrangement challenges both the linear quality of conventional research reportage and academic distrust of promiscuously interpenetrating ideas. I trust that this form of discourse, deliberately chosen, is experienced as working within its own terms.
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Shaw, Michael. "The fin-de-siècle Scots Renascence : the roles of decadence in the development of Scottish cultural nationalism, c.1880-1914." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/6395/.
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This thesis offers a cultural history of the Scots Renascence, a revival of Scottish identity and culture between 1880 and 1914, and demonstrates how heavily Scottish cultural nationalism in this period drew from, and was defined by, fin-de-siècle Decadence. Few cultural historians have taken the notion of a Scots Renascence seriously and many literary critics have styled the period as low point in the health of Scottish culture – a narrative which is deeply flawed. Others have portrayed Decadence as antithetical to nationalism (and to Scotland itself). The thesis challenges these characterisations and argues that there was a revival of Scottish identity in the period which drew from, and contributed to, Decadent critiques of 'civilisation' and 'progress'. The thesis considers literature alongside visual art, which were so interdependent around the 1890s. It focuses on three main cultural groups in Scotland (the circle that surrounded Patrick Geddes, the Glasgow School and writers of the Scottish Romance Revival) but it speaks to an even wider cultural trend. Together, the various figures treated here formed a loose movement concerned with reviving Scottish identity by returning to the past and challenging notions of improvement, utilitarianism and stadialism. The first chapter considers the cultural and historical background to the Scots Renascence and reveals how the writings of the Scottish Romance Revival critiqued stadialist narratives in order to lay the ground for a more unified national self. The second chapter demonstrates how important japonisme and the Belgian cultural revival were to the Scots Renascence: Scottish cultural nationalists looked to Japan and Belgium, amongst other nations, to gain inspiration and form a particular counter- hegemony. The final three chapters of the thesis explore how a unifying myth of origin was developed through neo-Paganism, how connections to an ancestral self were activated through occultism, and how such ideas of mythic origin and continuation were disseminated to wide audiences through pageantry. In doing so, the thesis charts the origins, development and dissemination of the Scots Renascence, while situating it within its historical and international contexts.
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Bellinetti, Maria Caterina. "Building a nation : the construction of modern China through CCP's propaganda images." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30913/.
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To date, the study of Chinese propaganda photography has been limited. While some research has been made on post-1949 photography, the photographic production of the pre-1949 period has not been sufficiently explored. Focusing on the years of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), this thesis aims at addressing this gap in the literature and at providing an analysis of how the Chinese Communist Party exploited photography for propaganda purposes during the war. Through the images taken by Party-affiliated photographers and printed on the Jin Cha Ji Pictorial, the first Communist photographic propaganda magazine, this study aims to show how this type of visual propaganda aimed not only at narrating the events of the war against Japan, but also at creating a new idea of the Chinese nation. This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first, The Jin Cha Ji Pictorial: A Brief History presents the history of the magazine and the work of the CCP affiliated photographers who contributed to its creation and popularity. Chapter two, The Geography of a Revolution, explores how a new cultural landscape was visually constructed to create the basis of the political legitimation that the CCP needed during wartime. Chapter three, Becoming Modern Women, investigates the symbolic and ideological value of the spinning wheel in 1943 in relation to women’s contribution to the war effort and the thorny issue of women empowerment. Lastly, chapter four, Moulding the Future looks at the visual representation of childhood and discusses the issue of militarisation and masculinisation of childhood during wartime. This study ends with few considerations on the propagandistic, historical and artistic value of Communist propaganda photography during the Second Sino-Japanese War as well as a reflection on how the symbolic and ideological significance of some of the photographs presented here are still recognisable in contemporary Chinese propaganda.
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Georgiou, Andriani. "The cult of Flavia Iulia Helena in Byzantium : an analysis of authority and perception through the study of textual and visual sources from the fourth to the fifteenth century." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2013. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/4175/.
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The symbolic role of Helena throughout the Byzantine period has never been considered in any detail. Many of the literary sources, particularly historiographical and hagiological texts, are not easily accessible and have not been translated. The visual sources referring to Helena, such as works of late Roman and Byzantine art, coinage, illustrated manuscripts, reliquaries, and wall paintings, have never been collected. My thesis collects and re-evaluates the textual and visual evidence from the fourth to the fifteenth century in order to explore the origins and development of Helena's cult; the emergence of a Helena-legend with symbolic and metaphorical functions; and the ways that the Byzantines reconstructed, judged, and appreciated her role. Special attention is given to the relationship between word and image, as well as the influence exerted on them by contemporary political and social developments. This thesis demonstrates that memories of Helena as an empress and as a saint were manufactured in several distinct stages over several centuries; and that her role differed in the eastern and western halves of the former Roman empire. The evidence is analysed thematically and in chronological order.
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Brod, Undine. "“C” is for Ceramics – It Also Stands for: Collecting, Community, Content, Confusion, and Clarity." The Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1309449467.
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