Browsing by Subject "Art history"
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Item Adventures on paper and in travesía : the School of Valparaíso visualizes America, 1965-1984(2015-05) Bravo, Doris Maria-Reina; Reynolds, Ann Morris; Giunta, Andrea; Flaherty, George; Henderson, Linda; Lara, Fernando; Cárcamo-Huechante, LuisSince 1984 faculty at the School of Architecture and Design at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (PUCV) have experimented with the concept of the traveling studio. In contrast to the typical, one-off trip abroad undertaken by most schools, the Valparaíso group has made their trips an annual journey into their backyard: the wildernesses of South America. Most importantly, these curriculum-based trips, known as travesías (crossings), are rooted in the School of Valparaíso’s manifesto: Amereida I (1967). This poem emerged from the first travesía of 1965. The revamped School of Architecture at the PUCV had only been up and running for a decade when a group of professors decided to embark on a two-month journey through the wilds of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. This trip was the first opportunity to test their radical philosophy: making poetry the source of their creative process. As they met with locals, installed small-scale works, and elaborated performances, the poetic word was always present. Moreover, this first travesía inspired the participants to collectively write Amereida I, an epic poem that blends the Aeneid, conquest-era chronicles, and abstract drawings of the South American continent. At the heart of Amereida I is a summons to perceive the continent’s abandoned “interior sea” through direct observation and experience. Though many of the School’s activities give poetry a central place, the travesías alone can fully carry out the ambitions outlined in Amereida I. This dissertation explores the arc of inspiration and realization between the first travesía, Amereida I, two exhibitions held at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, and the 1984 travesías. What unites these activities is the South American continent. Over the course of 19 years (1965-1984) the School of Valparaíso visualized America in a number of ways: impromptu murals, drawings within a poem, chalkboard renderings, and finally movement through real space. Through this visual thread I will address several questions about the School of Valparaíso—are they closed off to the world; does their rhetoric resonate beyond their community; and, what are they proposing through their version of America?Item Andy Warhol's cinema beyond the lens(2013-05) Weathers, Chelsea Lea; Reynolds, Ann MorrisThis dissertation examines a small selection of the hundreds of films made by Andy Warhol and his collaborators between 1963 and 1968. Each chapter contextualizes a particular aspect of Warhol's filmmaking in terms of the artistic and cultural circumstances that informed it. Through an analysis of the content of specific films, rather than just their formal or stylistic tendencies, I discuss how the filmmaking process might have functioned for those involved in the films' production, as well as how those films might have functioned for specific spectators. The first chapter is a speculation on how Warhol might have understood filmmaking as a method for creating concrete connections between feelings and things -- for collecting imagery with his camera in order to create a historical catalog of people and their emotions. This first chapter also considers how some art critics in the 1960s used Warhol's early silent films as exemplars for their own anti-formalist art-historical and critical discourses. The second chapter examines the relationship between Warhol's films and the proliferation of amphetamine use amongst his collaborators. Amphetamines functioned to perpetuate for its users a way of life based on an alternative conception of time, and often involved a continued engagement with bad feelings, which fueled much of the creativity of the artistic community whose locus was Warhol's Factory in the mid-1960s. As such, many of Warhol's films from this period exhibit what I term an "amphetamine aesthetic" -- visual clues that suggest the effects of long-term amphetamine use by its participants. The third chapter is an analysis of a single film, Lonesome Cowboys. Participants in the film's production used the conventions of the Hollywood Western film genre to create a circumscribed space for transforming their everyday lives and their relationship to contemporary politics in the late 1960s. All of these chapters explore the effects of Warhol's particular approach to filmmaking, which involved Warhol's own detached style of directing, as well as his cultivation of an ultrapermissive environment in which his collaborators -- actors, directors, writers, and technicians -- felt free to experiment. This environment was predicated on the idea that the boundary between the space in front of the camera and the world beyond it was simultaneously arbitrary and deeply imbricated. Such a fluid boundary between the world inside and outside the scope of Warhol's camera is in part why some spectators, watching his films a half-century after they were made, might still find new meanings for the present in the films themselves.Item The art of manipulation : gender inequity and the picture study movement(2012-08) Kern, Jasmin Nikol; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Bain, Christina BThis study locates and examines the relationship between societal gendered expectations in nineteenth century United States and the content of a picture study manual published at the turn of the century: Lucy Langdon Williams Wilson’s Picture Study in Elementary Schools: A Manual for Teachers (1909). Critical analysis of the images, artists, and content of the picture study manual provides insight into the relationship between curricular materials and the social climate during which they were produced. Recognition of this connection will enable art educators and curriculum developers to produce materials and textbooks conscious of the potential bias and marginalization of students.Item Bataille's Manet : the subject at risk(2007-08) Bynum, Cord Isaac; Shiff, RichardThis study investigates Georges Bataille’s monograph Manet, published in 1955 as part of Albert Skira’s accessible "Taste of Our Time" series. I discuss Bataille’s text as a concentrated expression of his socio-philosophical thinking, one that reconsiders the art historical narrative of Manet’s modernism in the author’s own terms. Focusing on Bataille’s sociological schema, as influenced by psychoanalysis and German phenomenology, I discuss his notions of sacrifice, sacred communication, sovereignty, and animality as they inform his discussion of the production and reception of Manet’s art. Emphasis is given to Bataille’s theory and activity associated with the College of Sociology, his discussion of Manet’s incorporation of chance and "indifference" into his painting process, and the crowd’s affective reaction to the exhibition of the artist’s work. I also attempt to establish parallels between Bataille’s vision of Manet and historical and critical precedents. In doing so, I address art historical interpretations of the text, which remains largely misunderstood or misappropriated within the field of art history. Ultimately, the goal of this study is to elucidate some of the complexities of Bataille’s loaded argument and demonstrate its potential use-value for art historical research.Item Bodies politic, bodies in stone : imagery of the human and the divine in the sculpture of Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyú, Guatemala(2013-05) Henderson, Lucia; Guernsey, Julia, 1964-; Stuart, David, 1965-Bulldozed, effaced, and paved over by the buildings and winding streets of Guatemala City, the vast majority of the archaeological remains of Kaminaljuyú are now lost to us. This early site, which reached its peak during the Late Preclassic period (ca. 300BC-250AD), was once the largest and most influential site of the Maya highlands and one of the most important sites of early Mesoamerica. This dissertation, begun as an art historical salvage project, is at once documentary and analytical. It not only focuses on recording and preserving the Late Preclassic bas-relief stone sculptures of Kaminaljuyú through accurate technical drawings, but also provides cautious and detailed analyses regarding what this iconography can tell us about this ancient site. In essence, the following chapters approach, flesh out, and describe the bodies of Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyú---the stone bodies, the divine bodies, and the human bodies that interacted with them across the built landscape. They discuss topics like human sacrifice, the Principal Bird Deity, and the myriad supernatural forms related to water and wind at Kaminaljuyú. They consider the noisiness of performance, the sensory impact of costumed rulers, and the ways in which these kings utilized the mythical, supernatural, and divine to sustain their rule. In addition to untangling the complex iconography of these early sculptures, these chapters give voice to the significance of these stones beyond their carved surfaces. They contemplate the materiality of stone and the ways in which the kingly body and sculpted monuments were inscribed, made meaningful, and performed to establish and maintain ideological, socio-political, and economic structures. In essence, then, these chapters deal with the interwoven themes of stone and bone and flesh and blood; with the structuring of human, sculpted, and divine bodies; and with the performative role these bodies shared as transformative spaces where extraordinary things could happen. In other words, this dissertation not only addresses stone carvings as crucial points of access into the belief structures and political strategies of Kaminaljuyú, but as active participants in the social, economic, and ideological processes that shaped human history at this ancient site.Item Bound together : being-with gay and lesbian leather communities and visual cultures, 1966-1984(2012-12) Campbell, Andrew Raymond, 1982-; Reynolds, Ann MorrisBound Together elucidates how gay and lesbian leather communities, in the years between 1966 and 1984, contested and expanded fungible notions of sex, community, and history, mostly through material and visual cultural systems: dress codes such as the hanky code, architectural spaces (bars, bathhouses, private clubs), garments, posters, advertisements, newsletters, films, and performances. In examining visual and material cultures, procedures of archival research, as well as the physical states of key archives associated with historic gay and lesbian leather communities, this dissertation opens out a discussion of a set of visual documents and terms rarely considered within the discipline of art history, or academia at large. Through rigorous rhetorical experimentation Bound Together seeks to propose new ways of writing histories. Long and short chapters are interpolated, telescoping between historical leather communities and key works of contemporary art which reformat 1970s documents and visual sources. Jean Luc-Nancy’s conception of “being-with,” a state of coterminous existence that lies at the foundation of being and subjecthood, provides an ideal framework for coming to terms with the challenges of writing leather histories. Nancy’s notion is one that privileges mutual and relational difference. The structure of Bound Together works similarly, building a set of differential modes of viewing, analyzing and writing. In this way I wish to, in the words of Tilottama Rajan, use “history as the condition for an internal distanciation and for self-reflection on what we do,” and to furthermore present alternatives to a discipline’s often “routinized, even commodified […] repeatable techniques.”Item A culture of dissonance : Wassily Kandinsky, atonality, and abstraction(2014-05) Boland, Lynn; Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, 1948-A Culture of Dissonance: Wassily Kandinsky, Atonality, and Abstraction by Lynn Edward Boland, Ph.D. Supervisor: Linda D. Henderson Wassily Kandinsky's interest in music as a source for abstraction in painting has often been noted in the scholarship on his art. However, no studies have sufficiently explained how the artist employed musical strategies, especially as he was developing his abstract style in the first decade of the twentieth century. Kandinsky's looked primarily to Arnold Schoenberg's new musical idioms and theories, and he was deeply inspired by highly dissonant music, but his ideas were set within a much broader context that further suggested and encouraged the expressive and transformative power of dissonance. By the late nineteenth century, extended passages of dissonance were common in musical compositions. At the same time, the concept of dissonance as a positive force was suggested in a wide range of late nineteenth-century literature, including the writings of Friedrich [should be this spelling throughout] Nietzsche, occult authors, popular texts on physics and experimental psychology, as well as within music and art theory. Close readings of Kandinsky's theoretical texts and selected works of art provide insights into how he might have understood and employed these concepts in his formation of an abstract style. Kandinsky's paintings Impression III (Concert) of 1911 and Composition VII of 1913 are the primary artistic foci of this study, along with his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art and the anthology Der Blaue Reiter, which he co-edited. This dissertation will seek to restore the concept of musical dissonance and its application in the visual arts to its historical context for Kandinsky. This will facilitate more informed formal analyses of Schoenberg's music and Kandinsky's paintings, which, in turn, suggest strategies of atonal musical composition applied to abstract painting. Additionally, this dissertation will establish an artistic context of visual dissonance that goes beyond Kandinsky, including artistic movements in France and Russia, allowing additional comparisons and a consideration of the larger impact of these ideas.Item Differing discourses on art between art history and philosophical aesthetics(Texas Tech University, 2009-05) Haggard, Amy L.; Check, Ed; Calkins, Laura; DeVriese, Todd; Erler, Carolyn; Webb, Mark O.The disciplines of Art History and Philosophical Aesthetics both study and discuss art; however, they do so in dissimilar ways. This dissertation investigates how scholars of either field address primary questions, and how such questioning reveals disciplinary differences in methodologies, analyses, and assessments. Through analysis of responses to the questions of “what is Art?†and “how should Art be evaluated?†this dissertation investigates a historical tracing of approaches to these two questions by important scholars in the fields, including Aristotle, David Hume, Arthur Danto, Giorgio Vasari, Johannes Winckelmann, Erwin Panofsky, and Linda Nochlin in order to discern whether such investigation will reveal relevant discrepancies between the fields. Through this investigation, certain historical trends become evident. Too, certain commonalities and differences between these major voices become evident. Ultimately, however, this direct comparison of questions does not identify the major reasons for discrepancies between the fields for several reasons. Primarily, this format of question comparison derives from the field of philosophy, and analyzing two fields by means of the methodology of one disproportionately advantages that field. Further, discerning the agreements and disagreements of particular scholars reveals differences of opinion between these particular scholars, yet fails to reveal systemic discrepancies between the fields. Conclusions reached in this project, then, suggest that differences between the fields are ingrained in the different natures of either discipline. This project ultimately concludes, then, that some means of translating between the fields, such that either can better understand the other, would enhance cross-disciplinary discussions of the arts.Item Digging through time: psychogeographies of occupation(2015-12) Simblist, Noah Leon; Reynolds, Ann Morris; El-Ariss, Tarek; Mulder, Stephennie; Di-Capua, Yoav; Flaherty, GeorgeThis dissertation is about the relationship between contemporary art and politics in the case of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Specifically, I look at the ways that artists have dealt with the history of this region and its impact on the present, using four moments as the subject of the following chapters: ancient Palestine, the Holocaust, The nakba, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The historiographical impulse has a particular resonance for artists making work about the Middle East, a political space where competing historical narratives are the basis for disagreements about sovereignty. I focus on works by Avi Mograbi, Gilad Efrat, Ayreen Anastas, Amir Yatziv, Yael Bartana, Omer Fast, Khaled Hourani, Dor Guez, Campus in Camps, and Akram Zaatari. A number of patterns emerge when we look at how these artists approach history. One is the tendency for artists to act like historians. As a subset of this tendency is the archival impulse, wherein artists use found photographs, film or documents to intervene in normative representations of history. Another is for artists to act like archaeologists, digging up repressed histories. Another is to commemorate a traumatic event in a way that rejects traditional forms of memorialization such as monuments. At the core of each chapter are examples of artistic practices that use conversation as a medium. I analyze these conversations about history as a dialogical practice and argue that this methodology offers a uniquely productive opportunity to work through the ideologies embedded within the psychogeographies of Israel-Palestine and Lebanon. Within these conversations and other aesthetic structures, I argue that these artists emphasize the all too common challenge in producing new forms of civic imagination – the tendency to address historical trauma though repetition compulsion and melancholia. They react to this challenge by engaging collective memory, producing counter-memories and, in some cases, produce counterpublics.Item The evaluation of contemporary art with art historical and market criteria : the 3C Model(2011-12) Richter, Till Florian Alexander; Shiff, Richard; Magee, Stephen P.; Barnitz, Jacqueline E.; Rather, Susan W.; Mahajan, VijayFor the most recent contemporary art no art historical or price records exist that can testify of its value. However, the market for contemporary art is enormous and the art historical interest in it is equally important. If we can find out how to evaluate contemporary art, it will further the art historical understanding, the market transparence and the sales of contemporary art thus having an influence also on the creation of art (William Grampp). The art historical verdict and the market verdict are linked. This has been proven by a number of economists (Frey, Galenson, Grampp). The question is how they are linked. Basically, both art history and the market contribute to the creation of value in art. What is it that makes art valuable? What are the criteria used in art history and in the market to evaluate art? The focus is on European and US American art between 1970 and today. Evaluation, be it aesthetic or financial, is a process of decision making. Decisions are based on criteria that must be conscious at least after the decision is made (Clement Greenberg). In the art world, certain decision makers are more influential than others. Therefore the dissertation analyzes the most influential positions in art theory and in the art market and distills the essential criteria used. The dissertation seeks to advance the research on this fundamental question of the evaluation of art through a more comprehensive and interdisciplinary study than those previously undertaken. It presents a model that integrates the most important criteria from both sides and allows a more reliable evaluation of contemporary art. The 3C Model explains the ensemble of Quality-Value-Price through three criteria: Change, Connectivity and Context (Time, Space, People). The 3C Model can be used as a general basis in the discourse on value and quality. It is a structural method that can be applied to almost any art from any period. The model is exercised here using Gerhard Richter, François Morellet, Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Sophie Calle and Pipilotti Rist as examples.Item Experimentation, diversity, and feeling : Adolph Gottlieb’s career in painting reconsidered(2013-08) Katzin, Jeffrey James; Shiff, RichardAdolph Gottlieb’s (1903–1974) mature career in abstract painting has been described in previous scholarship in terms of three phases: the time of his Pictograph paintings, beginning in 1941; a period of transition primarily involving his Imaginary Landscape paintings, beginning in 1951; and the time of his Burst paintings, from 1956 until his death. Dividing the artist’s career into early, transitional, and late periods has provided scholars with a clear and tidy narrative as a basis for interpretations of his work. However, in this thesis I argue that this schematization, created in hindsight, has obscured the character of Gottlieb’s working process as it occurred in real time. By nature, Gottlieb would not have been content to produce only a few narrow varieties of painting over a thirty-year period. I thus advance a new conception of Gottlieb as an inventive and constantly adventurous artist. ----- To make these claims, I examine Gottlieb’s written and spoken statements in order to define his central terminology (words like “feeling” and “self-discovery”) and to investigate his interests in myth and alchemy. I find that his work in painting was deeply intuitive and literally experimental—Gottlieb could not predict whether a painting would succeed until he had completed it, and so his career was an iterative process of painting, observing the results, and then painting again. I go on to consider Gottlieb’s paintings themselves as a record of how this experimental process functioned in practice. By presenting his diverse body of work in its full breadth, I demonstrate that the artist was not limited by his major styles, and indeed that he always presented himself with multiple possibilities. I conclude that Gottlieb’s work remains vital because he worked without an end goal or predetermined outcome in mind, and instead gave himself over to a continuous process of creativity and discovery.Item Gardner through the ages : an investigation of Helen Gardner and the 1926 and 1936 editions of Art Through the Ages and A Century of Progress exhibitions(2015-05) Parkinson, Kirstie Jane; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Bain, ChristinaThis thesis examined the life of Helen Gardner and explored changed made to the American art history chapters in the second edition of her text book, Art Through the Ages. Arguably the first comprehensive art history text, introduced to American readers in 1926. Ten years later, Helen Gardner released her second edition of Art Through the Ages (1936). A comparison between the first and second editions reveals that there are many more differences seen than just the physical characteristics of the two editions. Gardner claims in the Preface of the 1936 edition that she rewrote the chapter on American art history. This thesis investigated those changes. For the chapters titled "Art in the United States: The Nineteenth Century", I have compared it with the 1926 edition chapter, "America: The United States From Its Colonization to 1900 AD". By exploring changes made in the second edition when compared to the first, I have been able to theorize why Gardner revised American art chapters. In the decade between the published first and second editions, many historical events occurred, but two were the most salient. In 1933 and 1934, the Chicago Art Institute presented two exhibitions to the public named A Century of Progress. This study provides and supports a historical position that these exhibitions profoundly affected the image and content selection of Helen Gardner's second edition in her American art chapters of her book Art Through the Ages.Item A glimpse behind the curtain : understanding Charles Willson Peale’s use of allegorical forms in museum education(2011-12) Barras, Lindsay Elizabeth; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Mayer, MelindaThis thesis examines Charles Willson Peale’s utilization of visual metaphors within his founding institution, The Philadelphia Museum. After establishing himself as a portrait painter, it became second nature for Peale to employ an aesthetic approach when developing museum exhibits and programs. Throughout his practices he continuously used imagery and objects to represent broader fields of research, along with his views as a naturalist and American patriot. By using these allegorical forms to arouse the public’s curiosity, he was able to attract more visitors to his museum and subsequently draw them into the learning process.Item Imag[in]ing the East : visualizing the threat of Islam and the desire for the Holy Land in twelfth-century Aquitaine(2012-05) Morris, April Jehan; Holladay, Joan A.; Peers, Glenn; Mulder, Stephennie; Heng, Geralding; Patton, Pamela A.Epic dichotomies – threat/desire, Islam/Christianity, Orient/Occident, fear/lust, self/other – have fundamentally shaped the conceptualizations, images, and imaginings of the interaction between East and West. The Holy Land was the locus of both sensations in the twelfth-century West. Islam, arisen from the Arabian Peninsula and spreading steadily, embodied the strongest threat to western Christendom that it had yet faced, both militarily and theologically. The vividly imagined “East,” particularly Jerusalem, was the locus of spiritual and material desire. These intertwined notions underlie the ideological, theological, and historical perceptions of the Crusades, in their own time as today. This project seeks to explore the dual image of the East in the twelfth-century West through the prime dichotomy that has, both historically and presently, shaped Western perceptions of the dar-al-Islam: the East as at once threat and object or source of desire. Both this dichotomy and the examinations of individual sites and objects in which it is expressed nuance and challenge earlier scholarly assertions regarding visual representations of Crusading, and posit new interpretations of iconographic traditions and their semiotic functions in the twelfth-century Aquitaine. This dissertation is arranged as a series of investigative essays into monuments and objects that express the presentation and development of these divergent ideas in the twelfth-century Aquitaine. The first half of is comprised of three interrelated examinations of material objects that illuminate Western concepts of Islam and Muslims. Various iconographic traditions, I argue, were created and modified to express the mechanisms by which Christendom attempted to define, and respond to, these evident threats to self and territory. The second half of this project focuses on the material manifestations of desire, primarily through the deployment of Orientalized architectural forms and the utilization of relics and objects related to the East. Although these trends, as my conclusion discusses, reached their true apex in the decades after the loss of Jerusalem in 1187, these early examples typify the range of cultural notions centered on the desire to possess and control the sanctity of the Holy Land.Item Looking forward together : three studies of artistic practice in the South, 1920-1940(2012-12) Lindenberger, Laura Augusta; Reynolds, Ann Morris; Bremen, Brian; Chambers, Eddie; Hake, Sabine; Smith, CheriseIn this dissertation, I provide three studies of artistic practice in the era of the Great Depression. In each chapter, I write about a different set of artists working in the southeastern United States: I write about Walker Evans and the artistic and literary community located in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana (1926-1941); Edwin and Elise Harleston and their portrait studio in Charleston, South Carolina (1922-1931); and Bill Traylor and the artists who founded the New South Gallery and Art School in Montgomery, Alabama (1939-1940). Drawing from public and private archival collections, I consider how these artists made works that represented the South while they also made connections with artists and visual communities elsewhere; these connections placed them in dialogue with artists of the Harlem Renaissance, of American Regionalism, and of the Mexican Mural Movement. Although the artists in each chapter were from different Southern cities, they shared similar interests in the importance of developing and participating in artistic community. I situate each study in this dissertation in relation to a type of artistic practice. These types of artistic practice—documentary, portraiture, and exhibition—served as loci for Southern artists’ ideas about time and place. Southern studies have been haunted by the idea that the South always looks backward, to the past. In these three studies, I consider how Southern artists and their contemporaries in other places took different approaches to referencing the past and imagining a future for the South. The works made by these Southern artists—which are linked by their complicated relationships to race, history, and place—are largely absent from histories of American and 20th century art. Their absence tells us much about the stakes behind history writing. By bringing these studies into dialogue with other, existing, art historical contexts and communities, I trace how historical absence is constructed and why such absences are important to consider. The works in this dissertation are also linked by their difference from a kind of Modernism; in their multiple and discrepant modernisms, the artists in this dissertation made work which was both modern and not-modern, which looked backward while pushing forward.Item Menstruation in Hellenistic art : a new reading of the Tazza Farnese(2016-05) Lichty, Virginia Malcolm; Papalexandrou, Athanasios Christou, 1965-; Clarke, JohnThis thesis explores the relationship between the two engraved scenes on the Tazza Farnese, arguing that the iconography served as a protective device and displayed metaphorical symbols of menstruation, fertility, family, and rejuvenation for a parthenos of the Ptolemaic court. Of particular interest are the aspects least researched within the lengthy scholarship on the Tazza: the shape, material (sardonyx), and the Gorgoneion. Scholars have done an extraordinary job of interpreting and analyzing the iconography of the interior figures, the date, and the style of the Tazza, yet the shape, material, and the Gorgoneion have received little attention. Generally, these subjects are mentioned in passing or quickly referred to in a couple of sentences within the literature of the Tazza; however, my premise is that these elements were meaningful for contemporary viewers. This thesis seeks to extensively research and discuss these unpopular facets of the Tazza, especially with the aid of ancient literature on stones and the Gorgoneion, to propose a new reading of the Tazza Farnese. In reviewing these aspects of the artifact, I argue that the Tazza was a sumptuous apotropaic agent for menstruation, fertility, and reproduction in the form of the material, shape, allegories and mythical creatures. Chapter One focuses on the unique shape, the material and its sensory qualities, and an analysis of ancient literature concerning gems and their magical qualities. Chapter Two focuses on the Gorgoneion and its iconography, with an elucidating discussion of the Gorgon’s Hellenistic representation as an homage to her original beauty and function as a symbol of fertility and rejuvenation. Chapter Three connects the interior figures, representing an allegory of the Nile, to the Gorgoneion as they serve through the motifs of menstruation, fertility, family, and rejuvenation, to present to a young woman the metamorphosis of her body into a woman and her duties as a wife in Ptolemaic society. The implied references of flowing liquids (as seen in the blood of the Gorgoneion, the Nile, the breastmilk of Isis, and the veins of sardonyx) and cyclical occurrences (the inundation of the Nile and the ecdysis of snakes) have led to my argument that the Tazza Farnese was a celebratory gift intended for a female on the cusp of transitioning into a woman.Item On female witches and woodcuts : Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus(2016-08) Srsic, Elizabeth C.; Smith, Jeffrey Chipps, 1951-; Holladay, Joan AThe present Master’s thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of two influential series of witchcraft prints and drawings: the woodcuts of Ulrich Molitor’s De lamiis et pythonicis mulieribus and three of Hans Baldung’s works. I will begin with a discussion of the role that gender played during the witch trials and how it influenced two of the woodcuts in De lamiis. Following the discussion of gender, I will examine the remaining De lamiis woodcuts in the context of the text and other visual sources. Finally, I will end with three of Hans Baldung’s witchcraft images, describing how they reflected and expanded established motifs.Item Out of the vacuum : viewer agency and receptions of Goya's Saturn(2012-05) Batario, Jessamine M.; Shiff, Richard; Clarke, John R.This thesis takes the form of a meta-criticism of the hermeneutics of the art-historical enterprise. I begin with an immanent critique of the discipline, paying careful attention to where art historians shift the interpretive focus in the spectrum of maker--object--viewer. After advocating for an increase in our consideration for the viewer in the present context, I then present a synoptic reception model for the interpretation of images in both their original forms and reproduced states. These two modes of viewing hinge upon spatial constructions: that of real spaces (e.g., museums, galleries, etc.) and virtual spaces (e.g., the Internet and other ephemeral media). Instead of relegating reproduced images to the art-historical basement, I argue for the productive interpretation of reproductions through a staged theoretical intervention between Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Walter Benjamin. In order to demonstrate the use of my reception model, I conclude with a case study of a particular image--Francisco de Goya's Untitled (Saturn Devouring One of his Children) of 1820-1823. From the painting's beginnings in a farmhouse in Spain through the vicissitudes of nearly 200 years of grafting--from mural to canvas, Madrid to Paris and back again, and as a reproduced image in its "afterlife"--I analyze the aura of the image as imputed by its viewers. I argue that each subsequent reproduction of the image does not necessarily cause a loss of aura, but that conversely and paradoxically, aura actually increases. I analyze the act of viewing itself not as a passive act of visual consumption, but as an interactive process of cumulative production. In this fashion, the reproduced image can play a significant role in the formation of identities and possesses the phenomenological potential to lead to increased self-awareness.Item Palatial soundscapes : music in Maya court societies(2014-05) Duke, Bethany Kay; Stuart, David, 1965-Music is a powerful force. It highlights social hierarchies and relationships. It is a means by which the ordinary everyday can be transformed into the sacred. It has the ability to change our daily routine. How though, was music used, and in what ways did it function in the courtly society of the ancient Maya? In Classic Maya iconography we frequently find scenes of dance performance, ritual, or palace scenes depicted with musicians. Rarely however, are musicians the central focus of the action taking place. Were Maya musicians simply a background ‘soundtrack’ to the primary action unfolding or were they an integral part of Maya courtly life?This thesis conducts an iconographical analysis of the representations of music, musical instruments, and musicians among the Maya along with the consideration of archaeological evidence. The evidence considered comes primarily from the iconography of musicians and musical instruments depicted on several painted ceramic vessels but also takes into consideration iconography found in the murals of Bonampak and the paintings at Naj Tunich Cave, as well as archaeological evidence that appears in the form of preserved instruments at sites such as Pacbitun and the Copan Valley. For the ancient Maya, music was segmented. This is seen in the types of instruments and their groupings as portrayed in Maya iconography. These groupings denote differing categories of musical forms and functions which pertain to particular settings, such as interior palace settings as compared to exterior public settings.In exploring these images, many characteristics common to the depiction of musicians in interior palace settings become apparent that are not see in depictions of musicians in exterior public settings. First, the musicians are depicted kneeling, seated, or standing still. Second, they are located furthest from the most prominent figure. Third, acoustics do not affect instrument choice. Fourth, the form of attire varies more greatly in interior settings than in exterior settings. Finally, the order of instruments remains as standard as those in exterior settings. These scenes provide further evidence of instrument specialization and musical segmentation in Maya music and emphasize the significance music held in Ancient Maya Culture.Item Pan-American dreams : art, politics, and museum-making at the OAS, 1948-1976(2012-12) Wellen, Michael Gordon; Giunta, Andrea; Barnitz, Jacqueline; Guridy, Frank; Reynolds, Ann; Smith, CheriseIn the 1950s and 1960s, the Organization of American States (OAS), a multinational political organization headquartered in Washington, DC, attempted to mediate U.S.-Latin American political and cultural relations. This dissertation traces how, in the United States, Latin American art emerged as a field of art historical study and exhibition via the activities of the OAS. I center my analysis on José Gómez Sicre and Rafael Squirru, two prominent curators who influenced the circulation of Latin American art during the Cold War. Part I focuses on Gómez Sicre, who served as head curator at the OAS from 1946 to 1981 and who founded the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976. I offer an analysis of Gómez Sicre’s aesthetic tastes, contextualizing them in relation to his contemporaries Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Marta Traba, and Jorge Romero Brest. I also discuss his efforts to build a network of art centers across the Americas, indicating how his activities fed into a Cold War struggle around notions of the “intellectual.” Part II examines the activities of poet and art critic Rafael Squirru, who served as Director of Cultural Affairs of the OAS from 1963 to 1970 and who theorized Latin American art in terms of the “new man.” I reconstruct how the phrase “new man” became a point of ideological conflict in the 1960s in a battle between Squirru and his political rival, Ernesto Ché Guevara. Throughout this dissertation, I indicate how Gómez Sicre and Squirru framed modern art within different Pan-American dreams of future world prosperity, equality, and cooperation. By examining the socio-political implications behind those dreams, I reveal the structures and limits of power shaping their influence during the Cold War. My study concentrates on the period from the founding of the OAS in 1948 to the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in 1976, and I contend that the legacies of Pan-Americanism continue to affect the field of Latin American art today.