Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Visual Studies
Confronting Contemporary Mythmaking: On Artists’ Engagements With Popular Culture, Jonathan Case
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 …
Illusions Of "Blackness" In Contemporary Visual Culture, Michaël Dorn
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 …