Art and Design Commons^™

Atlanta: Reconstructing A Fractured History, Clayton Odom

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Today we live in a world where the development of our cities has resulted in the destruction of historical and magnificent architecture that stood as monumental symbols of human achievement and evolution. This has been a problem for Atlanta in which the foundations of the city's architectural heritage and legacy has been destroyed as a result of Atlanta's fragmented development over time, leaving the city's architectural legacy and history in a state of fragmented ruin. For Atlanta, it is important to restore this lost architectural heritage by reconstructing the memory of the city's destroyed architectural icons by recreating and reassembling …

Art In The Age Of Financial Crisis, Conor Mcgarrigle, Marisa Lerer

Articles

This issue addresses the long financial crisis of 2008 and the nature and diversity of artistic responses to it. This financial crisis is understood as a globalized result of late capitalism that nonetheless is experienced differently at local, regional, and national levels. It is multi- faceted in nature, a phenomenon that has historical roots and precedents that inform contemporary responses. Artists are not restricted to engage with the economy through one specific vehicle of inquiry or one type of medium and message. Therefore, the central question that this issue poses is: what is the artist’s role in finance, crisis, and …

Laboratoire DéBerlinisation: Art, Finance, And The Legacies Of Colonialism In Contemporary African Art: An Interview With Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Conor Mcgarrigle, Marisa Lerer

Articles

Mansour Ciss Kanakassy (b. 1957) is a Berlin-based Senegalese artist whose practice addresses the legacy of colonialism in contemporary Africa, in particular as it is expressed in the financial systems of the former Francophone colonies of West Africa, where the currency, the CFA franc, historically tied to the French franc, is now pegged to the euro. The acronym CFA originally stood for Colonies Françaises d’Afrique – French Colonies of Africa – and now Communauté Financière Africaine – African Financial Community. In 2001, Ciss Kanakassy created the Laboratoire Déberlinisation (Déberlinisation Laboratory), a multifaceted project that traces contemporary African issues to the …

Layered Histories, Interpretive Desires, Rachelle Dang

Theses and Dissertations

I aim to excavate source material from the past and reinterpret its significance in the present through art. I merge history with the contemporary through acts of appropriation and material exploration, creating conditions for the viewer to grapple with colonial legacies in an affective space of visual experience.

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

Mind In Hand, Anna Olson

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

This thesis explores the intersection of art and psychology as it manifests in my art practice, particularly in the medium of weaving. The contemporary frameworks of memory and archive provide the basis of this discussion, as well as findings from the field of Art Therapy. Difficult emotions like loss and grief often show up in my work, and I will discuss how artists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Sophie Calle also utilize these concepts. In weaving, I capture my internal mental states, memories, and perceptions of the future in a variety of found and gifted objects. Guided by the precedents set …

The Nature Of My Nature; A Story About Relationships, Andrew Mcilvaine

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

As a second generation Hispanic, I am a painter whose work is informed by my personal experience of displacement and longing to belong. In turn, I hope, this longing inspires an important dialogue about place, memory, otherness and belonging. I work in small, intimate scale, evoking narratives of vastness yet also of solitude. The landscape and the natural environment I represent, become populated by anonymous creatures. Both animal and human, posed in semi-natural and semi-artificial settings.

I was born in Texas and grew up in Missouri. The images I produce are often tranquil and surreal yet are grounded through …

Four Sights Of The Patient (Ophelia), Cecily Ann Fergeson

Graduate School of Art Theses

I make work in a variety of media, largely dealing with the imagery and material of the human body. My current work attempts to reckon with the following subjects: a reclamation of the notion of the so-called medical gaze and its historical record in photography; the idea that receiving the medical gaze transforms patients’ bodies; the idea of illness as an uncanny and intimate experience; and, finally, the act of metaphorically retracing the body’s material journey through the medical institution as it exists today. In this text, I discuss my practice in the context of critical theory, a recent observation …

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own …

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the …

Envisioning Shadows In Romantic Ekphrasis And Early Photography, Joseph Kevin Tuvera Sebastian

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis seeks to investigate ekphrasis as a mode of description and as a rhetorical strategy that produces literary affect. In particular, it considers the Romantic poet John Keats’s ekphrastic works to argue that he employs visual strategies of obscurity, which are rooted in

Edmund Burke’s concept of the Sublime, in order to register the formation of Poetic Consciousness. These visual strategies are observed in literal obscurity, which is expressed in shadows as a poetic conceit; they are also demonstrated in what this thesis terms notional or poetic obscurity, which involves mental abstractions that engage the imagination by challenging it …

Snapshot In A Squiggle: How Painting Terminology Illuminates Short Fiction, Jennifer Pretzer

Senior Honors Theses

This paper will demonstrate that painting terms can offer a helpful avenue to understand short fiction, particularly abstract short fiction. After defining abstraction, realism, and the short story, it will trace relevant stages in the evolution of both painting and short fiction to show how and why the media share similar elements. In this examination, the paper will discuss which features of painting correspond with certain features of short fiction. Based on the essential elements of short fiction, as well as the features mentioned above, the paper will analyze examples of short stories that exemplify how painting parallels short fiction …

Wearing Art History: Fashion As An Art, Sofia Killion

Senior Theses

Fashion is often seen as a frivolous craft which many believe to lack substance. Fashion however has for generations drawn inspiration from one of the very things that defines culture and that is art. Some of the most successful fashion designers of our time have drawn inspiration directly from masterpieces of art. The Spanish fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972) was heavily inspired by his countrymen including Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), and Francisco Goya (1746-1828). The Italian fashion designers Domenico Dolce (1958-present) and Stefano Gabbana (1962-present) created a Fall 2013 collection that was significantly inspired by the Byzantine …

Representations Of Mainstream And Marginalized Subjects In The Work Of Diane Arbus, Grace Short

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis considers the photographs of the twentieth-century photographer, Diane Arbus. In America during the 1950s and 60s, Arbus photographed both marginalized and mainstream subjects including dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, debutants, socialites, and celebrities. At one point in her career, she expressed an interest in family portraiture and, indeed, a number of her images depict families.

Scholars who have written about Arbus, such as Susan Sontag, Carol Armstrong, Anthony W. Lee, and John Pultz, have formulated theories about Arbus’s motivations, although their findings focus on individual features of her work. Sontag argued that Arbus exploited her unorthodox sitters whereas Armstrong …

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 …

Art For All: The Artistic Journey Of Julia Elizabeth Tolbert, Julie L. Woodson

Student Scholarship

Progressing from a student, concentrating on absorbing foundational skills and techniques to an intentional, expressionistic painter, Julia Elizabeth Tolbert spent twenty years of her life creating art. Using formal educational opportunities as a way to escape the life intended for her, she found art to be a freeing and meaningful endeavor. She experimented greatly in both style and medium, working with movements such as the Ashcan school, Regionalism, and Cubism and creating works in watercolor, oil, encaustic, pencil, clay, and more, all in pursuit of a professional artistic career. Though physical and visual limitations ultimately prevented her longterm success, Tolbert …

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), …

Bird Symbolism In Italian Devotional Paintings From The Thirteenth To The Seventeenth Century, Sarah Poisner

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Madonna and Child images represent a significant portion of the paintings produced during the Medieval and Early Modern periods. Beginning in the thirteenth century, Italian painters began to embed symbolic birds into these works to create further points of reference and significance. This paper will examine the long history of bird symbolism and why Christian artists used different species of birds to create specific meanings. Hundreds of Madonna and Child paintings which include a bird were made between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there has been no in-depth analysis of this motif in over seventy years. Since the publication …

Hiding In The Archives: The History Of The Art History Department At Dominican University Of California, Maura Wilson

Senior Theses

When students register for classes, they often take for granted the subjects that they register for. To these students their classes represent a means to an end. However, in the midst of the registration rush, when the registering student takes a moment to consider the time and work that had to be invested in to establishing these subjects, they might find a new appreciation for the classes that they are taking. This work is a tribute to the work of Dominican University faculty members who had to work hard to bring to fruition the Art History department as it exists …

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 Us’S Economic Promises Are Over: An Interview With Miguel Luciano, Marisa Lerer, Conor Mcgarrigle

Articles

Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. The island was left without electricity and clean water for months. However, the natural disaster was not the only cause of this lasting devastation. The financial fall-out from predatory loans, which led to Puerto Rico’s inability to invest funds in its own infrastructure, caused an enduring humanitarian disaster. Artist Miguel Luciano (b. 1972) in this interview discusses his work in relation to the 2017 Puerto Rican debt crisis and the legacy of the over 100-year span of Puerto Rico’s colonial status as a US territory, which gives the US disproportionate control over …

The Significance Of Cloth In The Narrative Of The Life Of Christ As Represented In Dieric Bouts' "Life Of Christ Altarpiece", Mary-Margaret Mcleod Pilling

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the materialistic importance of cloth in the life of Jesus Christ and relates it to the disassembled Life of Christ Altarpiece painted by the Renaissance artist Dieric Bouts. References to cloth in the scriptural accounts of Christ’s life support the claim that there is deep theological significance to fabric. The medium of each of the paintings that comprised the altarpiece is a flax linen canvas, which, combined with the references to cloth throughout the compositions, parallels these references to cloth in the scriptures. The entire artwork serves as a metaphor for the Eucharist resting on linen on …

How To Be The Perfect Asian Wife!, Sophia Hill

Art and Art History Honors Projects

“How to be the Perfect Asian Wife” critiques exploitative power systems that assault female bodies of color in intersectional ways. This work explores strategies of healing and resistance through inserting one’s own narrative of flourishing rather than surviving, while reflecting violent realities. Three large drawings mimic pervasive advertisement language and presentation reflecting the oppressive strategies used to contain women of color. Created with charcoal, watercolor, and ink, these 'advertisements' contrast with an interactive rice bag filled with comics of my everyday experiences. These documentations compel viewers to reflect on their own participation in systems of power.

Bye Bye Biodiversity: Insects, Art And Climate Change, Bekka Ord

Art and Art History Honors Projects

Bye Bye Biodiversity explores the intersection between insects, art and climate change. This project examines two insect species impacted by climate change, the eastern larch beetle (Dendroctonus simplex) and the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). As the larch beetle population booms and devastates Northern forests, the monarchs’ numbers decline. Climate change is often conveyed through numbers and graphs, but equal weight needs to be placed on the visceral in order to create an emotional reaction and connection. This project aims to create that emotional response to the scientific reality of climate change and its impact on two …

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 …

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 …

Fusing Both Arts To An Inseparable Unity: Frank O'Hara As A Visual Artist, Daniella M. Snyder

Student Publications

Frank O’Hara, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a published poet in the 1950s and 60s, was an exemplary yet enigmatic figure in both the literary and art worlds. While he published poetry, wrote art criticism, and curated exhibitions—on Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock—he also collaborated on numerous projects with visual artists, including Larry Rivers, Michael Goldberg, Grace Hartigan, Joe Brainard, Jane Freilicher, and Norman Bluhm. Scholars who study O’Hara fail to recognize his work with the aforementioned visual artists, only considering him a “Painterly Poet” or a “Poet Among Painters,” but …

Perspectives Of Italian Fresco: Creation And Conservation, Sarah Linder

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The purpose of this study is to survey the history of Italian fresco technique and tradition and modern conservation practices employed to preserve works. Fresco, a medium used by masters, such as Michelangelo, is a method of painting directly onto wet plaster. This method incorporates pigment and surface as one. This project analyzes the most prevalent examples of traditional fresco found in Pompeii and nearby villas in Boscoreale, Italy. Since their discovery, these locations have undergone and continue to exist under varying conservation projects. In order to further the study of modern conservation techniques, I attended the Ortolan Studio in …

Rattled, Manya Jacobson

Art and Art History Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Canonical Poses And The Gaze, Sarah Oakley

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My work deals with the nude female form and the various depictions that it has taken on. From the early oil paintings from masters like Ingres and Titian, through Playboy centerfolds of the 50s-70s, and continuing all the way up to the contemporary nude iPhone selfie, I explore questions of the gaze, ownership, and commodification of the female form. Starting with my painted Selfie Series and ending with my embroidered pillows, I touch on a variety of framing devices for the female nude and its representation of sexuality in modern culture.