American Art and Architecture Commons^™

Uncommon Ground: Grant Wood And Russell Lee's Divergent View Of Iowa, James R. Swensen

Faculty Publications

GRANT WOOD'S American Gothic (1930) has likely been reproduced, parodied, and lampooned more than any other painting in American history (Figure 1). As scholars Wanda Corn, Steven Biel, and others have observed, the scene of an Iowa farmer and his daughter (often erroneously thought to be his wife) has proven to be remarkably adaptable for nearly a century.¹ An early example of its adoption occurred 11 years after Wood's work was finished, when it was appropriated by Gordon Parks, a young Black photographer. Created for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and under the aegis of administrator Roy Stryker, Parks …

America’S Forgotten Laborers: The World Of Enslaved Craftsmen, Zack Dow

Emerging Writers

This article examines the underrepresented world of enslaved artisans in the American south. In the minds of many, enslaved Americans were confined to unskilled plantation labor. While such labor constituted a large part of the work of the enslaved, master craftspeople go unrecognized, perpetuating an imagine of unskilled, nominal workers that undermines the accomplishments of the millions of black artisans working at the time.

Piecing It Together: Analysis And Treatment Of A Painted Silk Flag, Katya Zinsli

Art Conservation Master's Projects

Painted flags and banners lie at the intersection of painting and textile conservation. The 37^th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment’s battle flag from the Civil War presented challenges and advantages of bridging the two disciplines by providing an opportunity for study and experimentation for a graduate student from the Patricia H. and Richard E. Garman Art Conservation Department at SUNY Buffalo State College. This study was conducted to better understand the materials and degradation products present in a painted Civil War flag, which then informed the subsequent treatment of said flag. By characterizing the materials, the severe damage in …

(Dis)Possessed Black Youth: How America's Architecture Challenges Coming Of Age In Twentieth And Twenty-First Century African American Women's Literature, Margaret Frymire Kelly

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation advances studies of Black childhood, particularly Black girlhood, by examining how African American women writers depict the troubled journey to adulthood in stories of segregation, immigration, and incarceration. I argue that authors of four representative literary works emphasize architectural structures as well as ancestral hauntings among which Black children grow up. Without examining the material structures, we cannot understand the strategies these haunted Black youth deploy to reach adulthood. Examining the architectural structures that the protagonists of Maud Martha (1953), Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), Zami (1982), and Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) grow up in and around, I demonstrate …

The Real And The Digital: Female Agency And Resisting The Male Gaze In Lynn Hershman Leeson’S Works, Kelly Chou

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis focuses on three major feminist works by multimedia artist, Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941), that grapple with the construction and potential of female identity. Considering the works within the context of Laura Mulvey’s seminal text “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” this paper will attempt to elucidate how Hershman Leeson’s works have engaged with the male gaze and its social and cultural implications on female identity in visual spheres. This research demonstrates how Hershman Leeson’s efforts to understand the limitations and boundaries for women reflect the same phenomenons observed by Mulvey within “Visual Pleasure.” Rejecting this, Hershman Leeson also …

The Contribution Of Artists Sydney Laurence, Belmore Browne, And Olaus Murie To The Preservation Of Public Land In The Northwest United States, Madelyn Brodie

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis analyzes the impact of artists Sydney Laurence (1856- 1940), Belmore Browne (1880- 1954), and Olaus Murie (1889- 1963) and the contribution that their artwork had to the conservation of United States public lands. This thesis examines the conservation initiatives that were brought into effect during the early 1900s, the personal motivations of these artists to preserve the land, and the interactions between these artists and the United States government which demonstrates their involvement in land preservation. The impact that the artists had on tourism which extended the conservation movement is also addressed. Artworks created by Laurence, Browne, and …

Across The West And Toward The North: Norwegian And American Landscape Photography, Shannon Egan, Marthe Tolnes Fjellestad

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Across the West and Toward the North: Norwegian and American Landscape Photography examines images from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a historical moment when once remote wildernesses were first surveyed, catalogued, photographed, and developed on both sides of the Atlantic. The exhibition demonstrates how photographers in the two countries provided new ways of seeing the effects of mapping and exploration: infrastructure changes, the exploitation of natural resources, and the influx of tourism. As tourists and immigrants entered “new” lands—seemingly unsettled areas that had long been inhabited and utilized by Indigenous people in both countries—they “discovered” beautifully remote landscapes …

Bonded By Nature: The Prevalence Of Landscape Subjects Within Abstract Expressionism And Their Sources In American Art, Aileen F. Marcantonio

Theses and Dissertations

Landscape subjects reappear throughout Abstract Expressionism. Although it is often overlooked, landscapes were perhaps a natural subject for a group of artists that were known to work from their environment. When we focus on the landscape subjects, we gain a better understanding of Abstract Expressionism and its place within the canon of American art.

"Never Forget": Embodied Absence And Extended Relations Of Care After 9/11, Sophie L. Riemenschneider

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a reflection on how loss was articulated in the wake of 9/11. The terror attacks engendered a memorial style that sought to give shape to grief, acknowledging it without filling it in or erasing it. This new style, which I term embodied absence, exists across a range of mediums, from literature to architecture. It is such a potent memorial form because it also captures the traumatic process, which is prolonged, layered, and potentially open-ended. However, despite their ability to mirror the nature of trauma, instances of embodied absence never verbalize the attacks’ root trauma—the disconnect between our …

The U.S.–Mexican War: Visualizing Contested Spaces From Parlor To Battlefield, Erika Pazian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The U.S.-Mexican War[1] (1846-1848) was a watershed event that transformed the North American continent politically, socially, and ideologically. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico lost approximately half of its national territory in the north, and the United States acquired the modern states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Both nations were plagued by internal conflicts after the war, and each was plunged into civil war within fifteen years of its conclusion.

During this time of turmoil, Mexican and U.S. artists created and recreated myriad images …

Painting Outside Of The Lines: How Race Assignment Can Be Rethought Through Art, Giovanni Mella-Velazquez

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

For centuries art has been used to make us think about our own human experiences. Unfortunately, works usually reflect the era which they were painted in; this has led to various artists showing, maintaining, and therefore reinforcing racist thoughts in our cultures. Art can be used to create a new narrative for our race assignments and their meanings. The idea of loving one's roots has been prevalent in many cultures, but in art form a disconnect between history and the everyday experience can arise which could miss the mark in helping us redefine our own race. Therefore, artwork which empowers …

Mammy And Aunt Jemima: Keeping The Old South Alive In Popular Visual Culture, Angela G. Athnasios

Honors College Theses

Throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth century, American popular visual culture produced racist portrayals of Black Americans. Literature, illustrations, minstrelsy, film, and television are notorious for promoting such unflattering images. Each of these media typified African Americans as exaggerated caricatures with dark skin, bulging eyes, bright-red lips, and goofy smiles. The creators of these stereotypes project their racist beliefs into popular culture. This in turn heavily influences the way other races view people of African descent, as well as how Black people view themselves. From mammies, to Jezebels, to pickaninnies, and everything in between, the message ultimately conveyed in these …

Dating Deborah Hall: A Portrait Reconsidered, Brian E. Hack

Publications and Research

The elaborate, full-length portrait of Deborah Hall (1766, Brooklyn Museum) is one of the landmarks of Colonial portraiture, having earned its place in the canon for the pictorial innovations displayed by its creator, the enigmatic William Williams (1727-1791). The dominant narrative holds that Hall, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Philadelphia printer David hall, tends her roses in an imaginary Garden of Love, surroundings Williams adapted from symbols of beauty and chastity found in emblem books of the period. The scholarly assumption is that the painting served to promote Deborah's marital suitability to potential suitors visiting the Hall residence. The current …

Making Memories: A Consumer-Based Model Of Authenticity Applied To Living History Sites, Muhammet Kesgin, Babak Taheri, Rajendran S. Murthy, Juilee Decker, Martin Joseph Gannon

Articles

Purpose: Underpinned by the consumer-based model of authenticity (CBA), this study investigated whether leisure involvement, object-based and existential authenticity, host sincerity, and engagement stimulate positive memorable visitor experiences in a distinctive commercial hospitality setting: a living history site. Methodology: Quantitative data were gathered from living history site visitors (n=1004), with partial least squares structural equation modelling used to test the hypothesized relationships. Findings: The results confirm the inclusion of the hypothesized relationships between leisure involvement, sincerity, and authenticity, relative to engagement and subsequent memorability. The findings suggest that engagement can be a predictor of positive memorable experience, contingent on CBA …

Of Homespun Opulence: An Analysis Of Jane Freilicher's Pastoral Abstraction In Parts Of A World, Grace Wolfe

Anthós

During a period of bold abstraction and American individuality, Jane Freilicher’s landscape and still-life paintings stand out for their figurative nature. Her use of color and tone to conjure the simple pleasure of life at home enrapture the viewer in a simultaneously universal yet personal experience. Upon closer inspection of her work, it becomes clear that although figurative in nature, Freilicher’s paintings abstract the pastoral to express identity in an urban environment. This essay examines Freilicher’s 1987 work, Parts of a World, in context with pastoral works throughout art history to understand the ways in which Freilicher both reflected …

Understanding The Importance Of Statues: Symbols Of Racism In Modern Society, Theresa Vanwormer

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Whether it is a monument, statue, plaque, or mural, the values and ideologies that are memorialized on public land reflect what reality the people of a country are choosing to remember. The United States’ political and racial history has led to the creation of controversial memorials, including memorials that honor the Confederacy and its leaders, influencing moral concepts based in racism, violence, and oppression. The continued veneration of these symbols on public land sends the message to the Black community that their oppressors are honored as heroes and that the society they live in still allows for their abuse. Annette-Gordon …

Willoughby, Ginny (Fa 1379), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Folklife Archives Project 1379. “Restoration and Tradition: Andy Mills’ Work on the Felts Log House,” a paper written by WKU student Ginny Willoughby about the Felts log house, a Logan County, Kentucky structure now situated on the campus of Western Kentucky University. The paper details the history and design of the house and the process of its current restoration. Includes comments from Andy Mills, interviewed by Willoughby as he performed restoration work on the house.

Hagan, Brooklyn (Fa 1378), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Folklife Archives Project 1378. “The Felts Log House: Past, Present and Future,” a paper written by WKU student Brooklyn Hagan about the Felts log house, a Logan County, Kentucky structure now situated on the campus of Western Kentucky University. The paper details the history of the house and its restoration. Includes comments from Andy Mills, interviewed by Hagan as he performed restoration work on the house.

The Integration Of Art, Architecture, And Identity: Alfred Kastner, Louis Kahn, And Ben Shahn At Jersey Homesteads, Daniel S. Palmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the New Deal, the United States government created the Jersey Homesteads co-operative in order to help a group of Jewish immigrant garment workers from New York City during the economic downturn of the Great Depression. This dissertation examines how a 1930s utopian enclave utilized modernist art and architecture to express the radical back-to-the-land agrarian idealism and socialist ideology of its settlers. The flat-roofed, concrete buildings that housed these Jewish garment workers were designed by German architect Alfred Kastner (1900-1975), with his then unknown assistant Louis I. Kahn (1901-1974). These unornamented, functionalist buildings adapted avant-garde European architectural forms into an …

The Stylistic Development Of Jean Despujols (1886-1965), Kelly M. Ward

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis is the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the life and most extant works by Jean Despujols. The French and later naturalized American painter, writer, poet, philosopher, deep-thinker, and mystic was best known for his Neoclassical and academic style. This thesis briefly discusses the artist’s beginnings as a young painter at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux and in Paris, his sketches in the trenches of the First World War, his time at the Villa Medicis after winning the distinguished Rome Prize, and his paintings and thoughts as a philosopher and political writer throughout his life. An outstanding …