Modern Art and Architecture Commons^™

Profanation, Tsahi Zac H. Hacmon

Theses and Dissertations

This paper attempts to provoke an Israeli American dialogue that comes through profanity of conventional architecture. I am creating this dialogue by displaying two main subjects in proximity to each other: border architecture from Israel and institutional architecture or non-places in New York.

The Commodity Club: Commodity Fetishism In Modern Art And Tattoos, Shelby Maiden

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The current culture of commodity fetishism that surrounds both modern art and tattoos are disproportionately a part of the perpetuation of an artificial sense of society and community. It promotes the notion that by simply by inking the deeper layers of their skin or by spending millions on a painting that somehow one becomes elevated and enters an elite space, or club, of people like them.

The Work Of Living Art, Empathy, And The Creation Of An Aesthetics Of Perception In The Early Twentieth Century, Sarah Peil Winstead

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Adolphe Appia (1862-1928), theorist and pioneering voice of the New Stagecraft Movement in twentieth century theatre, was a transformative influence on the history of scenic design. This paper looks at the links between Appia’s theories in theatre scenic design and contemporaneous German aesthetic theory. At the time German theorists like Adolf Hildebrand and August Schmarsow developed an aesthetic theory, Einfülung or empathy theory, based on the connection between the human body and perception. I will argue this theory influenced not only Appia and his contemporaries it also shaped the landscape of mid-century theatre design. Appia’s own theories revolved around three …

The Disjointed Moment : Marking, Mapping, And Making The Real In William Eggleston's Election Eve (1976)., Joel Darland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the photographic book Election Eve (1976) produced by photographer William Eggleston. Eggleston’s photographs represent a complex network of connections between material objects and the potential truth of depiction. The often-nondescript locations that Eggleston photographed in Sumter County, GA in October 1976 appear specific at the outset, but quickly lose their adherence to the supposed realities that they depict. Since his first major exhibition in the mid 1970s, Eggleston’s photographs have presented difficulty because they from often-disparate material sources. Despite of the complexity of Eggleston’s engagement with both art and non-art photography, scholarship continues describe Eggleston’s “snapshot aesthetic” …

Lauretta Vinciarelli In Context: Transatlantic Dialogues In Architecture, Art, Pedagogy, And Theory, 1968-2007, Rebecca Siefert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation centers on the interdisciplinary work of Italian-born artist, architect, teacher, and theorist Lauretta Vinciarelli (1943-2011), a key yet relatively unknown figure who occupies a historic place in the 1970s revival of architectural drawings, Columbia University’s housing studio, Peter Eisenman’s influential Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) in New York, and architectonic trends in contemporary painting. She was the first woman to have drawings acquired by the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, in 1974), she was among the first women to teach architecture studio courses at Columbia University (hired in 1978), …

Le Paradigme « Art Africain » : De L’Origine À Sa Physionomie Actuelle, Henri Kalama

Artl@s Bulletin

This study relooks at the problematic concept of "African Art". The conceptual evolution of "African Art" coincides with three realities: firstly, that the art discovered in Africa was described as uncivilized; secondly, that this art capitulated with the colonial past of Africa; finally, that this art of an underdeveloped continent. In such a context of emergence, this art has been or is still exploited by ambitious and interested promoters. Hence, there is an imperative need for contemporary artists to overcome all these influences to produce works whose ontological values and universality cannot be challenged.

In-Between: The Spaces Of Modernity, Elisa Fabris Valenti

LSU Master's Theses

During the past three years as a graduate student, I have experienced loneliness. Having recently emigrated from Italy, I have often asked myself why I am experiencing such hard times adjusting to a different country. My thesis explores this question. Referring to Marc Augé’s idea of non-place, I have chosen a geographical and spatial starting point to approach my work. Italian cities are built around the central piazza where social, political, and economic life revolves. In my thesis, I depict American spaces that lack specific location and create solitude within the urban corridors. Private feelings, such as loneliness, are paradoxes …

Evidence: Photographic Image, Fact, Document Syllabus, Ellen Handy

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for an interdiscilpinary undergraduate course on Photography and Evidence.

The Influence Of Politics On Modern Art: A Curated Exhibit Of Art Reflecting The 2016 Presidential Election, Naama Malomet

Senior Honors Projects

This project explores the ways in which recent politics in America has inspired contemporary artists to engage in the current political climate and use art as a means of expressing political ideals. Art has been, and always will be, used as one of the ways artists express opinions and ideas. Art engages individuals in visual dialogue, creating conversations between the artist and viewer. It has the power to influence and inspire viewers, directing them towards new ideas and opinions as well as new perspectives on social and political issues. Throughout the history of art, politics and social issues have inspired …

Arh 141 Introduction To The History Of Modern Art, Sharon L. Jordan

Open Educational Resources

A study of the principles of art applied to visual forms, with emphasis on modern art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe and the United States.

The full course site is available at https://arh141.commons.gc.cuny.edu/.

Modern American Cover Art: The Great Gatsby Through Time, Jessica Harrell

Senior Theses

Book jackets and cover art are, more than anything, an advertising tool used to attract consumers, promote book sales, and establish company identity. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a staple in the canon of American literature whose cover art has drastically transformed in the ninety years since its original publication. This thesis traces these changes over time, focusing specifically on publishing history, art history, American culture, and thematic interpretations. In doing so, I found that the most substantial influences on these covers were publishing house identity, design trends, and available artistic techniques. Ultimately, The Great Gatsby’s cover …

Bloomsbury's Byzantium And The Writing Of Modern Art, Elizabeth Sarah Berkowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Bloomsbury’s Byzantium and the Writing of Modern Art” examines the role of Byzantine art in Bloomsbury art critics Roger Fry’s and Clive Bell’s narratives of aesthetic Modernism. Fry, in his pre-World War I and interwar writings and teachings on art, and Bell, in seminal texts such as Art (1914), have been branded by art historiography as the prime movers in a Formalist, teleological narrative of Modern art still prevalent in textbooks today. Fry’s and Bell’s ideas were later adopted by important Modernist authors and cultural figures, such as Alfred H. Barr, Jr., first director of New York’s Museum of Modern …

Women’S Suffrage In American Art: Recovering Forgotten Contexts, 1900-1920, Elsie Y. Heung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1920, women in the United States finally won the right to vote. The campaign for suffrage, which began in the 1848, with the first women’s rights convention held at Seneca Falls, NY, involved the efforts and enthusiasm of countless women who believed that they both deserved and needed the right to vote. This dissertation investigates the ways in which women artists both responded to and contributed to this divisive movement through painting and sculpture during the final decades of the campaign, when visual culture and propaganda played a crucial role in advancing the suffrage and anti-suffrage agendas. The literature …

Exploring The Knoedler Gallery's Premium Picture Market, 1872-1934, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

This paper was first delivered at the conference Art Dealers, America and the International Art Market, 1880-1930 sponsored by the Getty Research Institute, The Getty, Los Angeles, CA, January 2018. The essay is based on research conducted at the GRI Special Collections’s archival holdings of materials belonging to the New York art gallery M. Knoedler & Co. The paper outlines a quantitative methodology for approaching the Getty’s data set, which was created through the transcription of Knoedler’s 11 painting stock books covering the gallery’s operations from 1872 to its closing in 1970. The paper explores the advantages of concentrating on …

Contesting Representations Of Gender And Womanhood In Mexico The Photomontages Of Lola Álvarez Bravo, 1935–1958, Alana Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

Lola Álvarez Bravo (1903–1993), a Mexican photographer, photojournalist, portraitist, and teacher created approximately thirty photomontages during the span of her fifty-year career. This thesis argues that Álvarez Bravo turned to photomontage during targeted periods of her career in order to contest and challenge prevailing discourses on motherhood and femininity. A close analysis of eight photomontages produced between 1935 to the last printed in 1958 make evident the manifold ways Álvarez Bravo represented gender as a contested, political, and personal concern.

Photography And Modernisms, Ellen Handy

Open Educational Resources

Today we live in a post-modern era, but for most of the 20th century, modernism was the dominant perspective in the arts and culture at large. And photography was the perfect modern medium. It literally provided artists and audiences with a new vision, using the technology of the camera to frame modern experience. As a recently invented medium with ties to mass media, photography departed from many fine art traditions. The drastic multiplicity of avant garde movements within which photography operated produced a constellation of loosely linked modernisms, rather than single avant garde program.

Almost all of the many avant …

Walter Gropius, Mies Van Der Rohe And Marcel Breuer: Designing For America, Shiri Chapman-Daniel

MA Projects

Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer: Designing for America examines interior and furniture projects by the three European modern designer after emigrating to the U.S. in 1938. Many of these projects are not very well known, or are commonly discussed solely in terms of architecture, yet the interiors in fact reveal interesting and significant developments in Gropius, Mies and Breuer's work. The exhibition highlights the evolution of their designs, as well as the extent to which they were affected by American tendencies and innovations and their lasting impact.

Moral Rights: The Economic Ramifications Of Moral Rights Under Vara In The U.S., Akilah Chandler

MA Theses

When balancing the interests of the art market gatekeepers including patrons, dealers, and auction house intermediaries, with the interest of artists, artists have always bared the shorter end of the stick. It has been almost 30 years since the U.S. legal system acknowledged moral rights and a lifetime that artist have had to defend those rights. However, the question remains— how has the art market balanced these conflicting interests and at what expense? This paper will explore the effects moral rights have on an artist’s market and with that, the overall art market. This paper will also cover the ramifications …

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 …

Listening To An/Other Voice: Gender, Creativity, And The Divine In The Works Of Female Christian Mystics And Women Surrealists, Stephanie Garboski

Honors Theses

This thesis will compare two groups, Christian women mystics and women surrealists, by analyzing select works by Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning. This analysis will involve a comparative, theoretical approach that draws connections between the way in which both groups utilize varying literary and artistic forms, symbols, and polyglottery. I will utilize Bourdieu’s terms of cultural production as a framework in which to better understand how women of both fields are used for their creativity and supposed connection to an/other, which is the source of inspiration native to each field, God and the unconscious. …