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Full-Text Articles in Art and Design

Women's Work: The Sublime Is Now, Michelle Blackstone Jun 2023

Women's Work: The Sublime Is Now, Michelle Blackstone

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

What influences the lens through which we view art and the value we ascribe to it? This paper investigates the ways in which the historically gendered philosophy of “The Sublime,” a lack of institutional access, and traditionally gendered materials have acted as impediments for women in the arts. Discussion is given to the ways that masculine rhetoric in terms of “The Sublime” prevented women from attaining what was once considered the highest level of artistic achievement. Further attention is given to obstructions female artists face(d) in terms of gaining intuitional access within the art world. Finally, I examine the ways …


Confronting Contemporary Mythmaking: On Artists’ Engagements With Popular Culture, Jonathan Case Jun 2022

Confronting Contemporary Mythmaking: On Artists’ Engagements With Popular Culture, Jonathan Case

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

This paper begins by outlining an understanding of how the culture industry operates in American culture and explores ways to counter the transmission of modern mythmaking through art. As described in Roland Bathes’s Mythologies, mythmaking in the contemporary context serves to sever current systems of power and coercion from the historic processes of their creation; to naturalize the current neoliberal order and make it seem like the only way things could ever be. This sort of mythmaking is transmitted through popular culture, and many artists have responded to it through their practices. Herein I describe several different artists’ approaches, including …


Wound-Dwelling: Empowerment Through Masochistic Experiences, Nizlyn Jan 2022

Wound-Dwelling: Empowerment Through Masochistic Experiences, Nizlyn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

The psychoanalytic concept of the Skin Ego Theory describes the skin as a passage for pain and pleasure to travel through. Remnants of external experiences as well as internal struggles affect the penetrable barrier of the somatic wrapping and leave inscriptions on the flesh. Through my work, I have been exploring the skin’s ability to protect, envelope, and inscribe meaning through my papercuts, oil paintings, and clay sculptures. I procure the marks on my body through kink and BDSM, which then influence the work. Though my bruises may fade with time, my skin becomes tougher. By recontextualizing Skin Ego Theory …


Three Strikes: The Evolution Of A Creative Practice Through Discovery, Connection, And Structure Or We Should All Be Artists, Anthropologists, And Feminists, Anne Barnes Jun 2020

Three Strikes: The Evolution Of A Creative Practice Through Discovery, Connection, And Structure Or We Should All Be Artists, Anthropologists, And Feminists, Anne Barnes

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

By identifying the three areas that merge to form my artistic practice: discovery, connection, and structure; this thesis uses my creative process as a way to form the link between my intellectual and material impulses, and to identify the connections I make between what abstract painting means to me, my feminist ideals and how they are informed by the gender inequality persistent in the art world today, as well as thoughts I have around the concept of the “feminine” as viewed through the lens of art history. In this way, I demonstrate how these elements are woven together and the …


Being In The Place Of Possibility, Laura Domencic Jun 2020

Being In The Place Of Possibility, Laura Domencic

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

This paper explores my art practice as a phenomenological search for understanding how to be in the world. It begins with a description of my practice as a way to access the place of possibility that exists between faith and doubt. I examine materiality in art making to encourage consideration of both the physical and temporal nature of experience and to find balance with the increasingly incorporeal experience of the digital world. I discuss the materials and processes of drawing, sewing, and printmaking within their historical contexts. This paper connects my practice with artists who consider the act of perception …


Thalassic: Women, Gender, And The Sublime In Relation To Marine Art, Kelsy Patnaude Jun 2019

Thalassic: Women, Gender, And The Sublime In Relation To Marine Art, Kelsy Patnaude

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

The sea may be regarded as a source of tranquility as well as one of unsettling trepidation, ambiguous even in its representation. Those who are called to it must be relentless in the face of uncertainty; what awaits them is the immeasurable sublime. Defined in art as a reference to greatness beyond all possibility of control, the sublime invokes an urge to pursue pleasurable terror in the unmanageable. On heavily trafficked and dangerous seas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the strict gender hierarchy of authority on board ships in seafaring industries was solidified. Thus, the dominance of the male …


Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn Aug 2018

Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn

MFA in Visual Arts Theses

My thesis begins with a primer of the historical concept of “black(ness)” and the roots of its racialization. Intertwined throughout my discussion in Section I, I will highlight a few of my research findings and discuss some of the installation images that I created as I studied the work of contemporary artists who use lexical and literal figurative “blackness” in their work—in particular, the oeuvre of Kerry James Marshall as featured in his retrospective exhibition Mastry. My discourse unfolds with a brief etymological review of both the English word “black” and its precedent conceptual forms in Section II. Section …