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American Beauty: Nineteenth-Century Landscapes, Katherine Gelshenen Rafferty

Theses and Dissertations

Using Thomas Cole’s 1836 “Essay on American Scenery” as a touchstone, “American Beauty” argues that Cole’s influence on American landscape painting goes well past the second generation of Hudson River artists, to include painters such as George Inness, Alexander Wyant, Edmund Darch Lewis and other late nineteenth-century artists. These artists had different life experiences, different technique and for the most part a different spiritual outlook. Yet the fundamental message of Cole’s essay—that citizens and artists should value American scenery for its pristine wildness—carries through to the end of the century and is evident in their art. Cole’s “Essay” is visionary …

Abstraction And Libidinal Nationalism In The Works Of John Boyle And Diana Thorneycroft, Matthew Purvis

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examines the work of Canadian artists John Boyle and Diana Thorneycroft. It analyzes their imagery in aesthetic, political, and strictly materialist terms using the theoretical work of Wilhelm Worringer, Wyndham Lewis and Gilles Deleuze. Both artists have appropriated elements of Canadian history (historical figures, cultural archetypes and aspects of material culture) to create art works that are alienating and abstract. With Boyle, this has involved constructing a wall of noise to operate as a territorial marker, one that both parodies and reinforces the traditions of the nation. His art has been one devoted to nonsense, nihilism and a …

Reflections On A Collection: Revisiting The Uwm Icons Fifty Years Later, Laura Jean Louise Sims

Theses and Dissertations

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Art Collection is home to a sizable donation of Byzantine and post-medieval icons and liturgical objects. Central to this thesis exhibition catalogue are the thirty-two Greek and Russian icons from this collection and their history with collector Charles Bolles Bolles-Rogers. Reflections on a Collection: Revisiting the UWM Icons Collection Fifty Years Later contextualizes the history of icon collecting in the United States and examines the collecting history of these icons.

By first focusing on icon collecting and scholarship in Greece and Russia towards the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, this catalogue traces …