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Honors Theses

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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Contemporary Art

Contemporary Environmental Art: The Multidimensional Relationship Between Black Communities And The American Landscape, Sophia Perkins Apr 2023

Contemporary Environmental Art: The Multidimensional Relationship Between Black Communities And The American Landscape, Sophia Perkins

Honors Theses

Contemporary environmental art can be inspired by personal experience and reflections between the artist and their surroundings. Black women have a unique interaction with and relation to their environment. I would like to unpack the relationships between Black women and the environment by exploring a few different artists’ work, and by dissecting the effects race and gender have on one’s view of the natural world. I have studied the work of four artists: Torkwase Dyson, Allison Jane Hamilton, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Calida Garcia Rawles. Environmentally, I have a specific interest in bodies of water / Black waterways because of …


Politics And War In The Cannes International Film Festival: An Analysis Of The Festival’S Unifying Agenda, Julia Grace Wood May 2022

Politics And War In The Cannes International Film Festival: An Analysis Of The Festival’S Unifying Agenda, Julia Grace Wood

Honors Theses

Since its inception, the Cannes International Film Festival was envisioned as a means of using film as a method of diplomacy. In fact, the first two decades of the two-week long festival on the banks of the French Riviera sought to unify politically divided nations in the years following World War II and into the Cold War. My research seeks to identify the political agenda of the festival in the early years and how the Cannes International Film Festival promoted transnationalism and unity between divided nations. I argue that the festival was able to accomplish its unifying agenda through the …


The Woman Behind The Whitney, Breanna Epp Mar 2022

The Woman Behind The Whitney, Breanna Epp

Honors Theses

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as a prominent sculptor and patron to artists in the early 1900s. Her art collection was the largest of American art at the time, and she led the nation into an appreciation of its own native art. Native in this context specifically means any art that was made in America, not strictly art made by the indigenous people of the Americas. Tackling her entire life, from growing up in the Vanderbilt family to her death, I provide an overview of her interactions with the art …


Art And Aids: Viral Strategies For Visibility, Stephen Baylor Pillow Apr 2021

Art And Aids: Viral Strategies For Visibility, Stephen Baylor Pillow

Honors Theses

“Art & AIDS: Viral Strategies for Visibility” examines the complex relationships between social stigma, healthcare, homophobia, and mortality, and how these impacted the lives of Western artists and manifested in their works. Most of the art discussed in this thesis was produced during the height of the AIDS crisis (late-1980s to mid-1990s). During this period, gay artists and their allies employed new strategies in their work to inspire activism, and convey intense emotions –– predominantly frustration, grief, and anxiety –– associated with HIV/AIDS. In the U.S., the inaction of the Reagan administration was largely due to widespread homophobia kindled by …


Disabling The Abled Eye: Disability In Contemporary Art, Audrey Washuta Jan 2021

Disabling The Abled Eye: Disability In Contemporary Art, Audrey Washuta

Honors Theses

In this thesis I examine the disability identity reflected in contemporary art history. This thesis utilizes theorists in disability studies to expose the lack of meaningful discourse regarding the disabled experience. By focusing on the need to dismantle the abled lens and highlighting disabled artists themselves, I bring to light the need for disability to be viewed as a social construct and not something to be fixed or eliminated. I highlight the importance of bringing disability to contemporary art as it fosters a space for the disabled narrative to come to light. I also highlight that the field of the …


Contemporary Handicraft, Textile Art, And Feminist Social Critique, Kaitlynn Blow Jun 2020

Contemporary Handicraft, Textile Art, And Feminist Social Critique, Kaitlynn Blow

Honors Theses

My thesis looks at the work of female contemporary artists who use what has historically been considered “women’s craft” such as embroidery, knitting, stitching and other various textile arts. Since the Women’s Art Movement of the 1970s, women have used these creative outlets to express discontent and injustice in their lives revolving around gender and identity. In my research, three main themes emerged as addressed in each chapter. The first theme addresses the topic of domesticity and memory including unseen female labor, such as domestic chores and motherhood, and how fabric holds memories. Chapter two covers gender politics- specifically the …


My Exploration Of Treasures From The Mind Of David Park, Brittany Schwartz Jun 2020

My Exploration Of Treasures From The Mind Of David Park, Brittany Schwartz

Honors Theses

My honors thesis, “My Exploration of Treasures from the Mind of David Park” draws attention to communicate my sense of the female figure to the viewer, while taking particular gestures from the figures of the Bay Area painter David Park’s work. I seek to convey how the self or essence of being can appear on canvas. David Park resonated with me because of his eye for exceptional color combinations, physicality he builds with substance on canvas, use of bold mark-making and simplicity of forms. I am manipulating David Park’s representations of figures and making my own compositions, applying drybrush, oil …


What The Walls Say: Finding Meaning And Value In Tel Aviv’S Street Art, Rachel R. Bird Jan 2018

What The Walls Say: Finding Meaning And Value In Tel Aviv’S Street Art, Rachel R. Bird

Honors Theses

This thesis explores street art in Tel Aviv, Israel through anthropological concepts of value. By defining street art as an interstitial practice—one that exists between permeable, socially defined boundaries and is characterized differently by different power structures—I attempt to define some of the different regimes of value that apply to street art. Using the emerging market of “street art tours” as a fieldwork site, I look at how street art is presented and re-presented to both tourists and locals. By situating my research in a historical and geographic context, I hope to understand the ways different value schema, from economic …


Beauty Is Born Of The Rain: Walter Inglis Anderson's Art And Isolation, Chloe Evelyn Huff Jan 2015

Beauty Is Born Of The Rain: Walter Inglis Anderson's Art And Isolation, Chloe Evelyn Huff

Honors Theses

Walter “Bob” Inglis Anderson: naturist, painter, and ceramicist. Some say he was mad, while others were inclined to say that he was merely passionate regarding nature and his watercolors. However, he is highly regarded as one of the most talented artists east of the Mississippi. In the following pages, his life, art, and battles with a mental illness will be spread out and investigated closely with the primary goal of observing whether his bouts of illness affected his art. To investigate this relationship, it is necessary to examine Walter Anderson’s early life and art, along with his progression into mental …


Art Is Dead?: A Criticial Analysis Of Arthur Danto's End Of Art Theory, Laura M. Ginn Apr 2005

Art Is Dead?: A Criticial Analysis Of Arthur Danto's End Of Art Theory, Laura M. Ginn

Honors Theses

The idea of art as a reductive process is not new within the art world. In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg created the piece "Erased DeKooning" for which he erased a painting by DeKooning and displayed the end product (a blank canvas). The author found herself considering the way in which art has changed over the course of the twentieth century. The 20th century could be viewed as a time in which the main purpose of art was to destroy all artistic conventions and redefine art. Some would say art has come out unfocused and without a purpose. The author explores the …


The Reemergence Of The Goddess Image In Contemporary Art, Tara E. Patrick Dec 1993

The Reemergence Of The Goddess Image In Contemporary Art, Tara E. Patrick

Honors Theses

The goddess image, and its use in art and life, has a long history. The historical uses are explored through a brief history, followed by an expansion and discussion of the contemporary uses of the goddess image in the art of three Michigan artists: Ann Burian, Katheryn Trenshaw, and Ruth Zachary. The goddess image in art reflects a change in the spirituality of contemporary times.