Contemporary Art Commons^™

Exhibition "Louisiana's Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist", Leah Wood Jewett, John D. Miles, Christina Riquelmy

Special Collections

In 2020, LSU Libraries Special Collections presented the exhibition “Louisiana’s Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist” at Hill Memorial Library, featuring selected original watercolor paintings and archival materials related to the Native Flora of Louisiana project.

A native of Australia, Margaret Stones (1920-2018) achieved an acclaimed international career that spanned three continents. Commissioned by LSU and funded by private donations, more than 200 watercolor drawings of Louisiana plants produced by Stones during the 1970s and 1980s are among the most treasured holdings of LSU Libraries Special Collections.

The Native Flora of Louisiana project was grounded in a long historical tradition …

Contemporary Art And Food: An Examination Of Three Case Studies Using Anthropology And Diaspora As Key., Viridiana S. Mayagoitia

Dissertations and Theses

Food-related artworks are as crucial to understanding culture as other mediums in art like painting, installation, sculpture, and drawings. From Greek and Roman mosaics, Egyptian banquet scenes, to Renaissance frescoes and Flemish still-life paintings, the depiction of food and meals has had multiple meanings. Food as a medium in Western contemporary art was introduced in the 1930s by the Italian Futurists’ banquets, which celebrated modernity and technology underlying social and political commentary. It continued throughout the 1960s with performance art, conceptual art, and happenings, and in the 1970s with the Fluxus movement’s exploration of the boundaries between art and life. …

“Whose Utopia?” Kimsooja & Bottari Utopia, Younghee Kim Wait

MA Theses

This thesis will explore the progressive evolution of utopia and utopianism in order to answer the question: “Whose utopia?" in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impact on people who were already marginalized, disadvantaged, and discriminated against.

I will first review the writings of Sir Thomas More, Ernst Bloch, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Owkui Enwezor, and Jose Estaban Muñoz tracing the progressive evolution of utopian ideals. I will then introduce and survey the artist, Kimsooja’s oeuvre in relation to salient features from my review of utopia's progression, and gradually revealing her aesthetics of making as revealing utopian …

On The Fluidity Of Honey And Fugitivity Of Sound In Trauma, Ecstasy, And Black Radical Tradition, Evgenia Grant

MA Theses

From Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective to Derridean postructuralist view, to an intersectional force traversing somatic, social, political, and cultural, sound, in its non-linear epistemology, breaks barriers between forms and escapes any structured definitions. Like the insidious stickiness of honey, sound’s viscosity invaginates, spreads onto the interior, and, by triggering memories and the somatic, threatens the very totality of our identities. At that rupturing moment, we are not the ones subjecting sound to be known as an object; instead, in its fugitive protest and agency, sound flips the roles of the knower and the known and establishes new possibilities of relating to …

How Contemporary Curatorial Practice Co-Opts Participatory Art, Caroline S. Eastburn

CMC Senior Theses

Instagram users post photos in art exhibitions all of the time. Contemporary art curators and museums have a role to play in this new phenomenon. Programming and curating participatory art exhibitions allows for the perfect art selfie which draws in visitors from around the world. But, how do curators and museums affect the significance of these artworks by placing them within the Instagram age? This thesis uses the three exhibitions as case studies: Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, Take Me (I'm Yours) at the Jewish Museum in New York, and "Hélio Oiticica: To Organize …

The Photogram Now And Then: An Investigation Of Contemporary Photogram Practice, Susan Melissa Andreas

Senior Projects Spring 2020

My senior thesis is an investigation of contemporary photograms. My thesis is not meant to be a comprehensive study of photograms but rather a look into how specific uses and treatments of it have evolved since its inception in the nineteenth century. A photogram is a photograph made without a camera. The paper begins with a look into nineteenth-century photogram practice to provide general information and context about photograms. The first chapter outlines when the photogram process was invented, who it invented it, how it was used, what its traditional steps were, and what the images looked like. A description …

The Experiential Museum: Immersive Installation Art In The Age Of Social Media, Emily Hope Anastasi

Senior Projects Spring 2020

From the 1960s to today, immersive installation art has transformed along with new technological development. Artists at the forefront of this movement, such as Yayoi Kusama and James Turrell, paved the way for Instagrammable pop-ups such as the Museum of Ice Cream through their experiential qualities. I have chosen these two artists in particular because of their continuous fit online. Both artists have been titled “The most Instagrammable Artist” as their immersive art installations spread throughout social media. As the pop-up museum trend continues to grow, similarities between the immersive pop-up playgrounds and the multi-sensory environments of these two artists …

Embedded: The Bed As An Art Object, Maya Annika Teich

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Thoughts Around The Psychological Attributes Of Fascist Aesthetics, Carolina Mimi King

MA Theses

This paper aims to outline a series of thoughts around the topic of fascist aesthetics. In 1981, Benjamin Buchloh argued that the revival of representational forms after abstraction signaled a political regression toward authoritarianism. It is the hope of this analysis to expand on Buchloh’s argument in light of the recent claims of fascist revival, particularly in the United States. Looking at aesthetic examples of definitive fascism from the early 20th century as well as the aesthetic culture from the latter part of the 20th century around the time Buchloh was writing, this project can function as a lens through …

Helen Frankenthaler : The Calculus For Gender Neutrality Within The Post Abstractionist Color Field Movement, Aelxandra H. Dodge

MA Theses

In a decade marked by the omnipresence of black-and-white television, McCarthyism, the end of the Korean War and the fledgling sounds of rock n’ roll, the 1950s invited American artists to utilize color in forms and abstractions to challenge the domesticated, safe boundaries established by European masters. The 1950s perpetuated dominate male, decision–making stereotyping while subordinating females as submissive, adorned homemakers. Sandwiched between the creative genius and evolution of the U.S abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and the emerging pop artists of the 1960s, the 1950s signaled the development and the ascendency of Helen Frankenthaler. As a woman artist …

The Reemergence Of Celebrity Imagery In Twenty-First Century Art, Maria Olsson Skalin

MA Theses

The frequent reappearance of artistic celebrity imagery and portraits is something to which I have paid particular attention in the last five years of having studied art and art history, and from having worked intimately with contemporary works of art in the commercial art sector. The artist who I was particularly taken with who has for years been relying on found images of celebrities as source material for his art is Sam McKinniss, and my fascination with him is what led me to pursue this study. Observing the trajectory of McKinniss’ career, as well as having interest in depicting the …

Radical Queer Gazes : How Lesbian And Nonbinary Contemporary Photographers Are Destabilizing The Male Gaze, Eliza Mcdonough

MA Theses

Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema laid the groundwork for feminist theory surrounding the objectification of women in media by introducing the concept of the male gaze. Since its publication, theorists and critics have responded by proposing the possibility of alternate gazes such as the female gaze, the black gaze, and the queer gaze. This thesis will analyze those responses along with the psychoanalytical backing of Mulvey’s original theory to determine how the heteropatriachal structure Mulvey presents can be dismantled through alternative identity gazes. Mulvey’s original proposition is limited by her focus on the relationship between white …

Martian Mother, Elizabeth Mcgrady

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between humans and land, through the lens of the scientific and religious, bridging the physical realm with the spiritual. It acts as accompanying material to the project titled Martian Mother, supplementary information to the visual work, and an extension of the proposal, the center of the work. The proposal exists to send myself, or a like-minded individual, to Mars with artificial insemination equipment to give birth to the first Martian, becoming the first Martian Mother. This work is rooted firmly in speculative fiction, creating a nonlinear future framework for a new society and space exploration.

But Them Can’T Be God: Chinese Textiles In Nigerian Dress And The Art Of Ayo Akinwande, Erin M. Rice

Artl@s Bulletin

This article explores the influence of Chinese actors in the Nigerian textile industry through the lens of a work by the artist Ayo Akinwande. By examining a sartorial practice called aso-ebi, the author argues that the growth of this practice over the course of the 20^th century paved the way for an influx of cheap, printed cloth from China. Akinwande’s work titled, “Win-Win,” uses the metaphor of indigenous dress and patterned fabric to illustrate that Chinese involvement in Nigerian affairs extends beyond textiles to the construction industry.

“Other Modernities”: Art, Visual Culture And Patrimony Outside The West. An Introduction, Silvia Naef, Irene Maffi, Wendy Shaw

Artl@s Bulletin

The notion of modernity as a tabula rasa phenomenon that destroys the present in order to build the future is particularly complicated in the case of non-Western settings, where modernization was often understood as erasing local culture in favor of a template borrowed from the West. Historiographies of non-Western arts have mostly followed such a model, viewing fine arts, associated with modernity, as opposed to “traditional” arts, often commodified in the production of nostalgia or marketed for tourists. This article discusses the complexity of art production in non-Western contexts, beyond such reductive classifications.

Mining Maps, Making Meaning: An Interview With Kasia Ozga, Nikoo Paydar

Artl@s Bulletin

In the following interview with Kasia Ozga, the Polish-French-American contemporary artist focuses on her Mapping Aluminum series from 2013-2014, metal relief sculptures that throw light on environmental issues arising from bauxite mining and aluminum processing and smelting. Ozga illuminates how she came to focus on the material aluminum, the context in which she developed the project and selected the mapped sites (the Saint Lawrence River in Massena, NY, the Simandou Mountain Range in Guinea, and Ajka Vezprém County, Hungary), and how borders, cartography and maps figure in her larger body of work.

Tracing The Routes Of Floating Exhibitions: A Fluid Cartography Of Post-War Modernism Around 1956, Laura Bohnenblust

Artl@s Bulletin

This article discusses the phenomenon of floating art exhibitions based on the examples of the Argentinian exposición flotante and the Australian Pacific Loan Exhibition (both 1956). They manifested themselves at the same time as the “second wave of biennials” and can be interpreted as floating national pavilions. Through a spatial analysis of the routes taken across the open ocean, it is shown how the ships’ movements form what can be understood as a ‘negative map’ of canonical art history, oriented around the North Atlantic. This cartographic approach reveals blind spots in art historical research and contributes to the creation of …

The Simultaneous Book: Women's Writing In Contemporary Art, Maryse Lariviere

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Novels written by women authors who don’t adhere to the classification “visual artist” are nonetheless gaining momentum in today's contemporary art world. Yet works by authors such as Chris Kraus or Catherine Millet are often not recognized as artist’s novels because their authors are not or/and do not consider themselves to be visual artists. I contend that we can usefully situate their work within the genre of the artist’s novel by addressing how they invent artistic postures and artistic alter-egos within the autofictional worlds of their texts. My dissertation The Simultaneous Book proposes to open up the definition of the …

Indominable, Kathleen A. Fox

CGU MFA Theses

INDOMINABLE, Kathleen A Fox

The reformation of the feminine portrait from that of idealistic sexual beauty into a portrait of strength, community, longevity, transformation, and inane human foundational essence of societal value. This collection of portraits illustrates the uniqueness that is often overlooked for the fast, idealistic and instantly read images of women hailed as beautiful. These women contain a space they have earned with their strength of character, spirit, and unwillingness to be moved from their places of significance. Created with an expressive abstractive edge to traditional portraiture, these female portraits refuse to be easily glossed over, for their …

Analyzing The Moroccan Artistic Presence At The Centre Pompidou Collections, Sirine Abdelhedi

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This article highlights the cultural, economic, historical, and political criteria that influence the current international policy of the Pompidou Center, particularly a new interest in non-Western art in Arabic-speaking countries. It focuses on works produced by Moroccan artists that are part of the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art - Centre Pompidou in Paris. It includes a brief introduction to some key milestones in Moroccan art history that help contextualize the research project.