Digital Commons Network^™

Artistic Agency, Feminine Labor, And The Female Body In Buddhist Hair Embroideries Of The Ming And Qing Dynasties, Chloe Y. Lai

Honors Papers

Hair embroideries were an entirely female and Buddhist practice in late Imperial China, and thus operate within the bounds imposed on women by societal structures of economy and labor, and moral expectations of Confucianism and Buddhism. This was not a common practice and mostly limited to a few gentry women already connected to the art world through their husband or father (an already small demographic). Recent scholarship on Chinese Buddhist hair embroidered works by the art historian Li Yuhang analyzes them as objects of religious devotion and ritualized practice that involves repetition and incorporating the body to accumulate karmic merit, …

The Realness Or, Liquid Smoke Or, This Is What The F••K Boutta Happen, Octavia M. Burgel

Honors Papers

This research uses personal and theoretical frameworks to unpack paradoxical notions of Blackness in both it’s political and chromatic understandings as related to my studio practice. Jared Sexton posits the color Black as simultaneously all-consuming and incomprehensible; a necessarily contradictory state. I utilize this concept in addition to material histories that span from Pompeii to modern day New York City and art historical references as foundational explanations of my work. Written in both formal and intimate voices, this text is an extension of my studio practice, situated at the nexus of the realization and subversion of binary states of existence.

The Stigmatization Of Vaginal Masturbation And Its Effect On Sexual Pleasure, Hannah I. Berk

Honors Papers

Starting in ancient times and continuing for the next several centuries vaginal and penile masturbation were viewed as unnatural in the religious sense as well as unhealthy. Physicians such as Galen and Hippocrates decided that masturbation caused physical damage including spinal cord deterioration. Until the mid-20th-century there was heavy punishment for those who masturbated, these punishments ranged from clitoridectomy and circumcision to straight jackets. It was not until 1948 when Alfred Kinsey published a study titled, “Sexual Behavior In The Human Male," that feelings towards masturbating started to shift. The study found that masturbation does not cause ill health. Although …

A Child Could Do That: Communicating Fragmented Memories Outside Of Their Context, Rachel Weinstein

Honors Papers

Undergraduate Honors Thesis exploring the relationship between memory and language, and their visual expression.

A Thesis Is Not A Diary And Other Myths, Erin Irene Wolf

Honors Papers

How do you write about a feeling you do not understand? How do you organize what is purposefully messy? How can you name a ghost of something that you push into the world with your hands? In this thesis, I will explain my practice, form, and material as a way to illuminate my art, along with various readings and philosophies that I use to guide the work.

Circular Inspirations: Medieval Mediterranean Influence In The Treasury Of San Marco, Claire Rasmussen

Honors Papers

San Marco’s composite objects combine art of contrasting style and origin, resulting in a united piece made out of two or three discrete parts. These objects defy easy categorization; they were made into composite objects by the Venetians, far from where much of the source material was from, with specific intent. I argue that the composite objects should be viewed as translations, which requires repositioning the object's exact origin point as only one component of its identity, rather than its defining aspect. Rather than classify the objects by their "first life", I will instead organize them based on the different …

Destierro And Desengaño: The Disabled Body In Golden Age Spanish Portraiture, Colin C. Sanborn

Honors Papers

This paper analyzes the role of the disabled body in Golden Age Spanish court portraiture, focusing in particular on Diego Velázquez's work for Philip IV. Although this body of work has been examined extensively, few scholars have investigated what it implies about 17th-century Spaniards' conception of human divergence, and fewer still have done so without falling back on outdated models of disability. I thus hope to demonstrate through this thesis both disability's continued cultural importance and the utility of an analysis grounded in contemporary disability theory. Expanding upon Tobin Siebers' concept of "disability aesthetics" and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theory of "misfitting," …

Mapping Architecture As Archive: Stories In The Walls, Caitlin Anne Mccuskey

Honors Papers

My work explores the relationship between memory and architectural space, narrative and structure. It treats architecture as a physical archive, a record of the past and the present. I work with drawing, screen print, and sculpture to tease out and interpret these narratives. Connecting bodies, space, and time, I am inspired by the stories in the walls.

Yangzhou Latin Tombstones: A Christian Mirror Of Yuan China Society, Mengtian Bai

Honors Papers

In 1950s, two fourteenth-century tombstones with Latin inscriptions were discovered in Yangzhou, China. Both tombstones were made for an Italian merchant family. The tombstones bear Christian iconography such as the Last Judgment, the Virgin and Child and the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria, while non-western details are represented as well, including the Mongol garments, Chinese furniture and Islamic and Nestorian gravestones. My research considers the dynamic matrices of various religious and ethnic groups, which concomitantly arrived in Yuan China under an overarching control of the Mongol Empire. By valorizing the pictorial language on the tombstones, I will illustrate how …

Haunted By Solitude: Isolation And Communal Representation In Zanele Muholi's Archive, Michelle Marie Fikrig

Honors Papers

This paper focuses on contemporary South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s (b. 1972) extensive photographic archival project, Faces and Phases, which documents South Africa’s black queer community. The series exists not only as a book published in 2014, but as an exhibition that has been shown globally. In the introduction to their book of the Faces and Phases series Muholi states their goal as “[articulating] the collective pain [black lesbians] as a community experience” (emphasis mine). Yet the series, composed of over two hundred black and white portraits, is made up of photographs of individual black lesbians. This paper explores the …

This Unleavened Bread: Matzot As An Insight Into Iberian History, Culture, And Power Dynamics, Sadie Gelman

Honors Papers

This paper examines the appearance of matzo, the unleavened bread consumed by Jews on Passover, in Spanish medieval manuscripts. Through a close analysis of decoration present in these depictions, this project will answer the following questions: why are matzot embellished in a certain way, where does this decoration come from, and what does this decoration signify? Given the constantly shifting power dynamics and cross-cultural relations in Iberia, I argue that the social and political climate of Iberia influenced how the matzo was viewed and depicted in Haggadot. Furthermore, I emphasize that the decoration of the matzot wafers were not inspired …

Old Fields And New Fields: Ceramics And The Expanded Field Of Sculpture, Robert J. Lewis-Nash

Honors Papers

Part One of this research considers the relationship of ceramics to sculpture through the lens of art vs. craft criticism. Utilizing Rosalind Krauss' concept of the expanded field of sculpture as a focal point, this research examines contradictions in Krauss' argument for the exclusion of ceramic media from the mantle of sculpture, as well as current responses to this exclusion as it exists today. The responses considered aim to argue for ceramics' place in the expanded field, and to question the need for further criticism on this issue, suggesting there are more relevant questions facing the field of ceramics than …

I Am The Luchadora: Countering Exotification Through Printed Installation, Margaret Landa Middleton

Honors Papers

In this body of work I use printmaking to look critically at the commercial consumption of Mexican culture in popular media, using my own experience as a mixed Mexican-American as a lens. I consider how my experience of cultural identity, family history, and assimilation has complicated my interaction with Mexican culture within the United States. My work questions how cultural identity is reduced to stereotypes, employing the reproducibility of print to mimic the proliferation of simplified and exotified portrayals of Mexican-Americans in popular culture. I attempt to contradict this assumed cultural experience by producing work that asserts my own. By …

Official Rebrand And The Importance Of Queer Adornment, Mi Leggett

Honors Papers

In altering and regenerating, I strip clothes from gendered confines. This reuse explores the value of originality and reinterpretation. This action is also one of empowerment in its disregard for the typical sanctity of consumer products. Furthermore, renewing old clothing references the psychological, political, and environmental consequences of excessive accumulation and consumption.

The parallel practices of art and fashion in my work inform each other in both their material and the contemplation of fashion's function. My fascination with the meaning behind personal style derives from how what we wear signifies, particularly within the queer communities of which I am a …

Sound And Silence In The Forge: Work, Space, And Communication In Early Cistercian Monasticism, Jacob Bradley Roosa

Honors Papers

This research considers the place of artisans and manual labor, specifically blacksmiths and metalworking, within Cistercian monasticism in 12th and 13th century Europe. Stressing the dual importance of daily prayer and manual labor in strict silence, the Cistercian order of monks sought to reform traditional monastic practices they saw as excessive and far removed from their guiding set of regulations, the Rule of St. Benedict. Their growing numbers in the 12th century led them to establish a second class of monks, known as lay brothers, who provided the majority of each monasteries’ manual labor and who were largely prevented from …

Building The Post-Industrial Community: New Urbanist Development In Pittsburgh, Pa, Steven Alexander Niedbala

Honors Papers

The first part will explain the concept of community in the context of postindustrial theory. I will analyze the narrative of postindustrialism to argue that this concept of community constitutes not a reaction to a unique set of historical circumstances but rather a strategical shift in capitalist development. In the second part, I will describe how the perceived failure of architectural modemism inspired the theorization of the city as a phenomenological entity. I will describe how this conception of the city inspired efforts to systematize urban diversity through the development of a visual linguistics. The urban planning movement known as …

A Solution To “The Woman Question”: Envisioning The Japanese Woman In The Bijin-Ga Of Japan's Modern Print Designers, Amanda Tobin

Honors Papers

My essay addresses the portrayal of women in early 20th-century Japanese prints. I examine the "bijin-ga," or "pictures of beautiful women," of Shin-hanga (New Prints) and Sosaku-hanga (Creative Prints) artists, focusing on the "after the bath" trope. These artists claimed to create woodblock prints that were both Japanese and modern, updating aesthetics and techniques. Their chosen subject matter, however, represents a psychological anchor against the widespread social changes of the Taisho Period (1912-1926) in Japan, during which time "new women" and "modern girls" were crafting public roles for women based on political activism and liberated sexuality.

Image And Illustration In Jean Fouquet's "Grandes Chroniques De France", Erik Inglis

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article studies the miniatures that Jean Fouquet painted for a mid-fifteenth-century copy of the Grandes Chroniques de France. I argue that the contextual interpretation of illuminated historical manuscripts must begin by determining how specific events were selected for illustration. In Fouquet's Grandes Chroniques, the choice of subjects is more closely related to the preexisting structure of the text than to the manuscript's immediate political context, indicating that his pictures were more important as images than as illustrations of specific events. Having distinguished image from illustration, I then discuss how his images contributed to the book's persuasive visual appeal, mining …

To Judge A Book By Its Cover: An Exhibition Of American Publishers' Bindings From The Oberlin College Library, Dina B. Schoonmaker, Oberlin College Library

Exhibition Catalogs

Exhibition Dates: March 7 to June 7, 1993
The goal of this exhibition is to show the evolution of cloth binding in the United States through the nineteenth into the first decade of the twentieth century.

Fine Rough English Diamond: George Cruikshank 1792-1878, Oberlin College Library

Exhibition Catalogs

Exhibition Dates: March 10 to May 1, 1992
This small exhibition honoring George Cruikshank on the 200th anniversary of his birth spotlights his work as a book illustrator.

An Album Of Caricature Drawings By Pietro De Rossi, Richard Hemphill

Honors Papers

A leather-bound album in the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich, is filled with one hundred and twenty caricature drawings. Although reference has often been made to them since their first publication in 1931, and various attempts, largely unsuccessful, have been made to attribute the drawings, they remain little studied and an enigma in the history of the art of caricature in Italy.

First, as I will propose through this study, it is crucial to the understanding of seventeenth-century caricature. Second, on the basis of a very close relationship between the drawings in Munich and a series of prints after designs by …

Ex Libris Frederick Binkerd Artz: Celebrating An Exceptional Friend Of The Oberlin College Library, Oberlin College Library

Exhibition Catalogs

Exhibition Dates: November 1986
An exhibition of selections from the collections of Frederick B. Artz '16, a French and medieval historian at Oberlin College.

Black And White And Read All Over: A Show Of Artists' Books, Art Department, Oberlin College, Oberlin College Libraries

Exhibition Catalogs

Exhibition Dates: April 30 to May 17, 1984
The curators of this show, members of a seminar entitled The Artist and the Book, studied the book as an art form. As part of their work for the class, they assembled this exhibition. Some students also produced their own artists' books, which have been included.

Felix Vallotton’S Intimites: “Le Cauchemar D’Un Erudit”, Lisa Marie Holst

Honors Papers

At the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century, amidst lively experimentation in the graphic arts, there emerged in Paris an artist whose striking woodcuts soon brought him the recognition and the esteem of his contemporaries . Félix Vallotton's woodcuts represented to many a uniquely modern application of the venerable technique of printing from a carved block of wood . Within a year of his first experiments in the medium, Vallotton was highly praised in print by Octave Uzanne in an article entitled "La Renaissance de la gravure sur bois : un néoxylographe" as the progressive figure in …

The Feasibility Of Using Thermography To Detect Subsurface Voids In Painted Wooden Panels, Bruce Frederick Miller

Honors Papers

Thermography is a technique whereby the structure or condition of an object is studied by means of precisely measuring temperature variations over the surfaces of the object. The research which is described in this thesis was undertaken to determine whether thermographic techniques could be applied to the field of art conservation to detect subsurface voids within painted wooden panels. It must be stressed, however, that this research was carried out as a feasibility study with no attempt being made to establish or refine a technique that could be immediately applied to the examination of works of art.

The text of …

Head Studies By Balthasar Denner, Gail Feigenbaum

Honors Papers

The scars of the Thirty Years War had only begun to heal when Balthasar Denner was born in 1685. The war started in 1618 to determine whether the German States would be dominated by Catholic interests or by Protestantt . Entwined, however, with the religious alliances were a myriad of political and feudal quarrels in which external European powers were quick to meddle. Eventually, the affairs of the soul and conscience of Germany were left to foreign mercenary troops to settle. By 1634, all semblance of unity in both the Protestant Union and the Catholic League had vanished; Germany became …

Contemporary Chinese Painting In Taiwan, Linda Margaret Graves

Honors Papers

This study is based on interviews with the painters, the limited literature which has been published in English or Chinese on art topics in Taiwan, and mainly on the study of the works in the painters' studios and at exhibitions.

Basic to such an investigation are certain questions regarding the relation of these young artists to traditional Chinese painting: on what basis can these painters be aligned with Chinese tradition; is it not possible that they are so influenced by the western 'isms' that they should simply be called Chinese who paint western style pictures; is it necessary to make …

Saint Sebastian Attended By Irene: An Iconographic Study, Carolyn Kinder Carr

Honors Papers

The artists of the Baroque, rejecting the traditional conception of Sebastian, portray the formerly invincible saint as wounded, suffering, no longer victoriously partaking of the fruits of his glorious martyrdom, but being found and cared for by Irene, the widow of the Christian martyr Castulus.

Such a change in iconography involves both a shift of the outward and visible as well as the intrinsic content of the pictorial matter. the significance of this thematic revolution has often been overlooked because it parallels the stylistic developments of the age, which, until recently, have captured more fully the imagination of art historians. …

A Study Of Depth Representation In Pictorial Art: The Psychology Of Development As Basis For A Theory Of Art Instruction, Patricia Tool Mchugh

Honors Papers

The main objective of the study is to propose a provisional plan for an improved teaching program aimed at the development and application of "spatial" relationships in the graphic arts. In the previous section, we have mentioned the role of past experience in building up the perceptual level. However, teaching requires that we make the best possible use of student's existing level of experience, and build upon that in planning the optimum use of the present experience. By the proper use of the immediate learning situation, we may assist students to become more aware of and project their understanding of …

The Design And Execution Of A Mural, Patricia Finley

Honors Papers

This paper is the description of the artist's process in planning, designing, and execution of a mural for the Boys' and Girls' Room in the Oberlin Public Library. The whole purpose of this paper is that of viewing the creative process as precisely as possible. However, it may be wise to make a few remarks which touch upon the more general nature of the mental and emotional process of creativity to the extent that I have been able to generalize from my experience in plastic organization.