History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Plein-Air Drawing And Embodied Vision: Hans Hofmann's Landscapes, 1928-1935, Anna H. Tome

Theses and Dissertations

Hans Hofmann (1888-1966) produced over one thousand black and white drawings during his early and mid-career before becoming known as a master of color and abstraction. This text examines landscape drawings made from 1928-1935 that evidence the role of nature, new perceptual theories, and embodied vision in his artistic development.

The Problem Of Literary Development In Russian Formalism And Digital Humanities, Basil Lvoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The interest of this dissertation is how our understanding of literary development—as gradual or revolutionary; self-governed or socio-politically determined; like or unlike biological evolution—informs the status, meaning, and value of literature and literary studies. The dissertation shows how this problem—most pressing in our post-logocentric age—was addressed at the dawn of contemporary literary theory by the Russian Formalists. The latter are compared with Distant Readers, i.e., the Digital Humanists from, or conducting research in dialogue with, the Stanford Literary Lab: Franco Moretti, Matthew Jockers, Ted Underwood, William Benzon, and others.

This dissertation argues that both Russian Formalism and Distant Reading were …

Tactics For Thriving On Multiplicity: Liliana Porter’S Photo-Drawing-Installations, 1973–Present, Jennifer Bratovich

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Porter’s hybrid 1973 works during a period of transnational artistic mobility. It argues she employed strategies of reproduction and contingency to circulate the works among multiple contexts, and shows how her 2012 revisiting of these works led to their revitalization within current reassessments of Latin American conceptualism.

Sacred Blood And Burning Coal: The Garnet Carbuncle In Early Medieval Europe, Sinead L. Murphy

Theses and Dissertations

The social and religious symbolism of garnets are examined in the context of the Merovingian period. Garnet jewelry was worn by early medieval Christians as symbols of their faith, and after death garnets took on additional religious significance.

Spectacle, Spectatorship, And A New Reading Of The Nine Heroes Tapestries, Katherine L. Rachlin

Theses and Dissertations

This theatrical and performative interpretation of The Nine Heroes tapestries (1390–1410) argues for their connection to civic spectacles, courtly rituals, and enactments of the Nine Worthies in medieval performance traditions such as entry ceremonies. Consideration is given to the tapestries’ materiality, mediality, and their visceral impact on viewers.

Judith Leyster: A Study Of Extraordinary Expression, Nicole J. Cardinale

Theses and Dissertations

Judith Leyster’s innovative application of expression in her Self Portrait serves as the focus, whereby she is shown to blend conventional painting categories, preserve a sense of innocence, and confidently flaunt her skills. In turn, Leyster challenged the male-centric art market and stood apart from her artistic predecessors and contemporaries.

Projections On Glass: Reconsidering Glass Pilgrim Vessels From Byzantine Jerusalem, Roxanne D. Jacobson

Theses and Dissertations

Taking an object-orientated approach, this paper reconsiders a series of glass pilgrim vessels that survive from Byzantine Jerusalem and argues against the previous studies that focused solely on iconography to determine the vessels' function.

Beyond Movements: Senga Nengudi’S Art Within And Without Feminism, Postminimalism, And The Black Arts Movement, Tess Thackara

Theses and Dissertations

An examination of Senga Nengudi's relationship to Feminism, Postminimalism, and the Black Arts Movement. This thesis argues that, while her work overlapped with those three movements and tendencies, she ultimately expanded each of them to absorb greater sets of cultural references and formal criteria into their makeup.

“There Are Bulls And Almost Wild Horses There”: Vincent Van Gogh And The Landscape Of Saintes-Maries-De-La-Mer, Lisa E. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

In May 1888, Vincent van Gogh visited the Mediterranean village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a site with a unique environment and history. This thesis examines how the specific cultural, social, and physical space of Saintes-Maries is represented in the landscapes Van Gogh produced depicting the town.

Mexican Modernism’S Other: The Contemporáneos, Gender, And National Identity, 1920–1940, Joseph S. Shaikewitz

Theses and Dissertations

In postrevolutionary Mexico, a group of artists known as the Contemporáneos redefined the parameters of modernism through personal expressions of otherness and difference. This thesis examines works by artists including Abraham Ángel, Julio Castellanos, María Izquierdo, and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano in relation to shifting discourses surrounding gender and national identity.

Mobilizing Museums Against Aids: Visual Aids And Day Without Art, 1988–1989, Kyle Croft

Theses and Dissertations

This paper provides a historical account and analysis of Visual AIDS’ first Day Without Art in 1989, a day of action and mourning observed at hundreds of art museums in response to the AIDS crisis. Day Without Art marshaled arts professionals to engage in the struggle against AIDS, shifting social roles and responsibilities within art institutions.

Performance, Ritual, And Procession: The Metropolitan Museum Of Art’S Our Lady Of Cocharcas, Evelin M. Chabot

Theses and Dissertations

Statue paintings created in the colonial Andes are extraordinary artworks infused with elements that represent local beliefs and rituals. This study investigates this tradition through The Met’s Our Lady of Cocharcas to reveal the stunning complexity of religious visual art produced during the late colonial period.

Lamin Fofana: Blues, Alaina Claire Feldman, Dino Dincer Sirin, Lamin Fofana

Publications and Research

Catalogue for the exhibition "Lamin Fofana: Blues" presented at Baruch College's Mishkin Gallery in 2020.

Labor And The Picturesque: Photography, Propaganda, And The Tea Trade In Colonial India And Sri Lanka, 1880–1914, Leila Anne Harris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nineteenth-century colonial photographs of workers on tea plantations in India and Sri Lanka – with women in saris gently plucking leaves from lush bushes and men in sarongs operating heavy industrial machinery – are powerful symbols of a chain of production within the British Empire. My dissertation questions how these images of labor support a sense of nation-building that is defined by a new lucrative commodity: British-grown tea. Labor is at the center of my study, which aims to challenge the clear-cut division in current scholarship between representations of workers in industrialized England, and those in rural South Asia. I …

The “Olympiad Of Photography”: Fiap And The Global Photo-Club Culture, 1950–1965, Alise Tifentale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the global photo-club culture of the 1950s through the work of the International Federation of Photographic Art (Fédération internationale de l'art photographique, FIAP), founded in 1950. By 1965 FIAP united national associations of photo clubs in fifty-five countries across Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The regular exhibitions and publications of FIAP provided a unique platform where photographers living in the “second” and “third worlds” were welcome to present their work on equal grounds with their peers from the “first world.” FIAP, I posit, created a nonprofit, egalitarian, and open system of image production …

Weaving Forms Of Resistance: The Museo De La Solidaridad And The Museo Internacional De La Resistencia Salvador Allende, Carla Macchiavello Cornejo

Publications and Research

From the starting point of a 1975 artwork made by Norwegian artist Kjartan Slettemark in Sweden to stop a tennis match in resistance to the Chilean military dictatorship, this article reframes the linear image of networks of solidarity and resistance through the gaps and connectivity of a mesh. It expands the figure of the mesh taken from critical materialism into the affective realm of art, historiography, and art institutions by exploring the cases of the museums Museo de la Solidaridad (1971–1974) and Museo Internacional de la Resistencia “Salvador Allende” (1975–1990). As this article delves into various knots and lacunas of …

Understanding How Perceptions Of Power And Identity Influence Student Engagement And Teaching In Undergraduate Art History Survey Courses, Rebecka A. Black

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

Student engagement in undergraduate art history survey courses has been a concern of art historians for decades. In this article I discuss my dissertation study in which I explored how perceptions of student and teacher identity, acting within classroom power dynamics, influence student engagement and pedagogy in undergraduate art history survey courses. Through concept mapping, interviews, and observations of three instructors and nine students in undergraduate art history survey courses at a public university in southeastern Texas, I explore perceptions of students and instructors regarding self, each other, course content, teaching style, and expectations of one another to understand how …

The Metacognitive And Exploratory Use Of The Concept Map For Thematic Art History Papers In The Survey Course, Leda Cempellin

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This article examines how the introduction of pedagogical interventions in the art history survey class, made by using concept maps beyond an initial brainstorming phase and rather as an active-learning strategy in aid to developing thematic papers, impacts students’ perception of their usefulness. The qualitative and quantitative data gathered included two questionnaires, one submitted periodically throughout the semester and one after the concept map and term paper were completed. Additionally, this study presents a visual analysis of three sample sets of students’ concept maps to illustrate the levels of deep, surface, and non-learning. The results reveal that assigning students the …

Assessing Undergraduate Fashion History Research Via Content Analysis, Justine De Young

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

Undergraduate art history students are often asked to write research essays on specific artworks, but that research is rarely considered publishable or reliable. This article analyzes undergraduate student essays on fashion history to determine whether the research produced can be considered reliable according to generally accepted art historical standards. It employs content analysis to make those determinations in addition to the instructor's own standards and those governing the Fashion History Timeline, an open-access hub of fashion history research. The article investigates the impact of a multi-stage writing and revision process on student writing outcomes and on student grades. Finally, it …

Understanding The Student Perspective Of Art History Survey Course Outcomes Through Game Development, Joshua Yavelberg, Kelly Donahue-Wallace

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This heuristic, design-based research study examines student perceptions of their learning experience in the art history survey course as manifested through a game design process. With the purpose of improving upon the lecture model of the standard art history survey, two sections of a capstone class of interdisciplinary art and design students—who had all taken the survey as part of their degree programs—selected learning objectives and designed games to accompany the introductory class. The researchers used the game design process to understand first how students perceived the survey class, its learning objectives, and the students’ experiences. Then the investigation addressed …

Art History, Art Museums, And Power: A Critical Art History Curriculum, Kristina Elizondo

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

Engaging in the recent tradition of disciplinary and instructional self-critique by art historians teaching at the college level, this teaching practice reflection pursues the question of how an art history survey class can benefit from activities grounded in theoretical texts. In the format of scholarly personal narrative (SPN), a personal background and justification for incorporating critical theory-based lessons into the introductory art history curriculum, including narrative descriptions of four curricular areas and an example museum project, are detailed. The article paints a personal picture as well as extols the general benefits, based on the author’s perspective and experiences, of incorporating …

Addressing Visual Literacy In The Survey: Balancing Transdisciplinary Competencies And Course Content, Sarah Archino

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

Inspired by partnerships between medical schools and museums that produce measurable outcomes in the frequency and sophistication of diagnostic observations through limited art history-based interventions, this paper documents the re-orientation of a traditional art history survey course to explicitly address foundational visual literacy skills. This Spring 2019 pilot implemented a series of exercises and assessments designed to directly target transdisciplinary components of visual literacy and to highlight these competencies through student discussion and reflection with minimal disruption. This study employed content analysis and qualitative coding of pre- and post-tests to capture and characterize the number and types of observations made …

Medicine And The Museum: An Experiential Case Study In Art History Pedagogy And Practice, Marcia Brennan

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This article brings three scholarly and professional perspectives to bear on museum-based learning experiences for undergraduate pre-medical and STEM students. In the first section, Marcia Brennan describes the seminar on “Medicine and the Museum: Clinical Aesthetics and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston” that she teaches at Rice University. Brennan is a modernist art historian, and her discussion focuses on the ways in which classes such as this can contribute meaningfully to undergraduate pre-medical and STEM education. Brennan collaborated with Joshua Eyler, who served as Executive Director of Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence. In the second section, Eyler discusses …

Guest Editor's Introduction To Special Issue On Sotl-Ah, Kelly Donahue-Wallace

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

No abstract provided.

The Medallion Portraits Of Ariadne And Theodora On The Consular Diptychs Of Clementinus And Justinus: Finding Traces Of Helena, Pulcheria, Verina, And The Theotokos, Marguerite B. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the 513 Clementinus Diptych and the 540 Justinus Diptych and their disruption of the secular and masculine character of consular diptychs through the inclusion of Christian symbolism, a cross and an image of Christ, and medallion portraits of the empresses Ariadne and Theodora, respectively.

Something Else Press As Publisher, Rachel High

Theses and Dissertations

This paper considers Something Else Press—founded by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins in 1964—beyond the Fluxus movement and examines the avant-garde publisher in the context of the commercial book industry to elucidate the Press’s key role in recording and historicizing postwar artistic activity during its decade of production.

Somewhere Between Distance And Intimacy: Vija Celmins In California 1962-1981, Jessie Lebowitz

Theses and Dissertations

During her nineteen years spent in California (1962-81), the young Vija Celmins formulated a distinct landscape informed by California’s physical topography as well as the stylistic and materialistic advances resulting from the city’s newfound cultural awakening. With an intimate technical application, Celmins engages viewers with the spatial and optical facets of desert, sea, and sky.

The Chôra Of Dionisy’S Wall-Painting (1500-1502) At The Nativity Of The Mother Of God Sobor, Ferapontovo Monastery, Maria M. Shevelkina

Theses and Dissertations

The structure, spatiality, and wall-paintings of the Nativity church together emulated the Platonist Chôra through transparency, fluidity, circular movement, veils, and Marian imagery. Dionisy’s wall-paintings are studied through a phenomenological lens, considering the process as a reflection of hesychast thought in the post-Byzantine Russian north.

The Modern Formulation Of Chinese Art History And The Building Of A Nation In Early Twentieth-Century China, Chennie Huang

Dissertations and Theses

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Chinese formulation of art history underwent dramatic changes. It moved away from the traditional narratives that did not follow a strict chronology to adopt the Western linear model which emphasizes progress and national identity. Based on the premodern tradition, the modern formulations of Chinese art history began as a political strategy for nation building amid the political upheavals, including military attacks on China that led to the end of Qing imperial rule and the beginning of the Republican era (1912-1949).

In the early 1900s, while exiled in Japan, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873-1929), …

Contemporary Art And Food: An Examination Of Three Case Studies Using Anthropology And Diaspora As Key., Viridiana S. Mayagoitia

Dissertations and Theses

Food-related artworks are as crucial to understanding culture as other mediums in art like painting, installation, sculpture, and drawings. From Greek and Roman mosaics, Egyptian banquet scenes, to Renaissance frescoes and Flemish still-life paintings, the depiction of food and meals has had multiple meanings. Food as a medium in Western contemporary art was introduced in the 1930s by the Italian Futurists’ banquets, which celebrated modernity and technology underlying social and political commentary. It continued throughout the 1960s with performance art, conceptual art, and happenings, and in the 1970s with the Fluxus movement’s exploration of the boundaries between art and life. …