Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Building The Egyptian Canon In Early 20th-Century Germany: The Case Study Of Georg Steindorff’S Excavations, Darby Linn

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a historiographic study of Germany Egyptology in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with particular focus on how the different stakeholders involved in that academic environment – scholars, curators, donors and financiers, the German museum-going public, as well as Egyptian people who worked on archaeological excavations – influenced the development of the scholarly canon of ancient Egyptian art. The “canon” is an art historical concept from designating certain objects, styles, and forms as representative of a culture, time period, or artistic movement. Consequently, the canon establishes an artistic hierarchy according to European aesthetic standards that excludes …

The Art Of Patron Sainthood: St. Teresa, Santiago, And The Early Modern Spanish Empire, Laura Martin

Art History Theses and Dissertations

In 1618 and 1626, the Castilian Cortes, supported by the Spanish Crown, named Spaniard St. Teresa of Ávila as Spain’s co-patron saint. This declaration, supported by many cities in the empire, including Ávila, Salamanca, Valladolid, and Mexico City, was still opposed by many who saw this as an insult to the standing patron, St. James, called Santiago in Spanish. Historians have studied this period because it helps explain social, cultural, and political conflicts within the empire. However, the art of this period has not been studied in depth. This thesis examines the artistic production related to the so-called co-patronage, including …

Living In A Material World: The Petite Singerie Of Eighteenth-Century Chantilly, Sydney Fitzgibbon

Art History Theses and Dissertations

From 1735 to 1737, French artist Christophe Huet painted a series of wooden panels in a boudoir utilized by Caroline de Hesse-Rheinfels, the Duchesse de Bourbon, at the estate known as Chantilly. This thesis analyzes the messages posed by said space, exploring the complex narratives propagated by its paintings and decorative scheme as insights into a particular aristocratic milieu.Throughout the immersive boudoir, Huet utilized the singerie motif—through which monkeys caricatured human dress and pursuits—cementing the room’s nickname as the Petite Singerie. Despite the artist’s incorporation of these satirical monkey figures, the paintings of the Petite Singerie functioned as inventories of …

Miming Modernity: Representations Of Pierrot In Fin-De-Siècle France, Ana Norman

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the commedia dell’arte character Pierrot through the lens of gender performance in order to decipher the ways in which he complicates and expands understandings of gender and the normative model of sexuality in fin de siècle France. Beginning with a case study of a chromolithograph by Jules Chéret, the first chapter of this thesis traces the perceived relation between Pierrot and the bohemian artist, and the underlying tensions between the male dominated artistic sphere and increasingly emancipated women. In contrast, Chapter II complicates the dominant impression of Pierrot’s association with the artists of bohemian Montmartre, and instead …

Colonialism, Cohabitation, And Charismatic Llamas: Representations Of Animals In Felipe Guaman Poma De Ayala's El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno, Laura Varela Mejia

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the role of animals, specifically llamas, in El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, a manuscript that dates to 1615-16, and was hand-written and illustrated by the Andean author Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Through the lens of animal studies, I analyze the manner in which Poma represented llamas to convey greater ideas surrounding the nature of colonial life under the Spanish empire, as well as the nostalgic remembrance of Inca practices before the conquest.

My study focuses on three of the Corónica’s drawings: “The second age of the world: Noah,” and how its reinterpretation …

Care, Collectivity, And Disabled Futurity, Madison Whitaker

Art History Theses and Dissertations

How does care manifest in contemporary art? How do artists visualize kinship? These are some of the questions guiding this thesis. In considering the depiction of care in contemporary art, there is a limited application of the concept. Understood through the scope of feminist discourse on the sexual division of labor, care becomes restrained the context of familial obligation according to the nuclear family structure, such as in the case of parental obligation. This characterization of care implies that it is a burden upon the care provider and functions to exploit labor, especially on the part of women. However, this …

As Above, So Below: Italian Amuletic Practices Following The Black Death, Danielle Pigeon

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the production of amuletic rings in the Italian peninsula following the arrival of Yersinia pestis during the mid-fourteenth century. By examining patterns of ornamentation on a selection of Italian rings, I establish connections to the trauma experienced by individuals left in the wake of the plague and argue that these objects offered a sacralized model of protective adornment to counteract the threat of a fatal and seemingly unstoppable illness. Italian amuletic rings can thereby be read as a material response to the anxieties of mass death and bodily horrors that accompanied outbreaks of the Black Death.

The …

Painting And Performing The Past: Representation Of A Historical Marriage In Eighteenth-Century Peru, Xena Fitzgerald

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis establishes the connection between painting and performance as crucial for understanding eighteenth-century representations of the historic marriage of the Inca ñusta (princess) Beatriz Clara Sairitupac and her Spanish husband Martín García Óñez de Loyola. During the eighteenth-century, the marriage was repeatedly commemorated through both paint and theatrical performance as part of the mythologization of the early history of the Viceroyalty of Peru. My study addresses the only two paintings known to remain in their original locations: the Compañía de Jesús in Cuzco and the Beaterio de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana in Lima. I analyze both paintings in conjunction …

International Resonance In The Artwork And Writing Of Jiro Takamatsu, Adrian Ogas

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will argue that the canonical literature concerned with Conceptualism should also reflect the important contributions of artists whose work directly contributes to and engages with the artistic dialogue centered around philosophy, science, and mathematics that was taking place during the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis will explore the post-war Japanese artist Jiro Takamatsu (1936–1998) and his use of point and string throughout his oeuvre, which consists of thematic series of artworks that are constructed through his interest in the ideas of linearity, extension, seriality, and existence.

Takamatsu is placed within art history as an early anti-art, Fluxus-adjacent artist …

The Exchange Happens Here: Net Art's Alternative Currencies, April Riddle

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines three installation pieces from the New Museum and Rhizome’s 2019 exhibition “The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics.” Throughout, I question if net art can act as an alternative currency itself, if different projects can interfere with existing economic systems, and, if so, what they can reveal about changing economic structures.

Ultimately, I explore how Cory Arcangel’s Arcangel Surfware, a lifestyle brand offering products for web-surfing, is representative of works that play with accessibility and inaccessibility and alternative patronage systems in relation to social currency; how Shu Lea Cheang’s Garlic=Rich Air, a browser-based and physical garlic …

"Silent Salesmen," Skeptical Consumers: American Images In A Divided Berlin, 1949-67, Lauren Richman

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes the visual language of American cultural images disseminated in Cold War Berlin and investigates how such institutional, lens-based media played a role in the country’s grappling with its postwar identity. Divided Berlin, with porous borders from 1949 to 1961, embodied a “final frontier,” “Western showcase;” a synecdoche of larger American geopolitical interests during a time when information and images defined the Cold War. Existing art historical studies of Cold War-era visual propaganda emphasize the prototypical East/West, communist/capitalist dichotomies, but often do not focus on the impact of the United States as Germany’s most prolific western occupier.

Across …

Traces Of Identity: Portraiture In The Work Of Teresa Margolles, Alexandra M. Perez

Art History Theses and Dissertations

Teresa Margolles, born in Culiacán, Mexico, is a socially engaged conceptual artist whose work examines the causes and consequences of death from the 1990s to the present in her home country. Margolles’s work has been largely discussed in the context of death and violence, and this thesis expands upon this literature by including the concepts of identity and portraiture. By examining how Margolles’s installations, sculptures, and photography use material remains to display identity and memorialize victims, this thesis argues that Margolles not only creates memorials, but also portraits of the fallen victims.

Using the frameworks of portraiture, the index, and …

Always In-Formation: The Presence Of Sound In The Work Of Dan Graham, Jennifer Smart

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues for a reconsideration of the role sound plays in the work of the American artist Dan Graham. Graham regularly used his work as a means of drawing viewer’s attention to the seemingly infinite multiplicity of the subjective experience which shapes their encounter with the visual art object. I argue Graham’s engagement with music and his involvement in the multidisciplinary art scene of Downtown New York City in the 1970s and 80s shaped and encouraged his interest in this greater sensorial environment in which a work of art is encountered. Through performance, video, and architecture, Graham has attempted …