History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Cross Cultural Presentation On Latin American Artists [Modern Languages And Literatures], Ernesto Menendez-Conde

Open Educational Resources

I have used this high-stakes assignment in the last four semesters, in the ELS103 Intermediate Spanish I class. However, it was considerably revised during two Center for Teaching and Learning sponsored seminars at LaGuardia Community College: “Bringing Global Learning Competency into Your Class” and “The Pedagogy of the Digital Ability.” These seminars allowed me to have a better understanding about how to scrutinize contexts in order to bring assignments closer to the Global Learning Core Competency and the Digital Communication Ability. The “Bringing Global Learning Competency into Your Class” seminar in particular shaped my thinking about the design and content …

The South Korean “Meta-Avant-Garde,” 1961–1993: Subterfuge As Radical Agency, Sooran Choi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation examines South Korean performance and conceptual art from 1961 to 1993 during the Cold War military dictatorship, and focuses on the dynamics of socio-political tension between the military dictatorship and the opposition of political dissidents comprised mostly of artists, students, and intellectuals, who defined themselves as “avant-garde artists.” Censored and suppressed by both the authoritarian government and the complacent art establishment, these art movements were omitted from conventional South Korean art history, and oftentimes dismissed as derivatives of Western art. My dissertation offers a critical revision of these activities by framing them instead as forms of radical dissent. …

Writing With Light: Cameraless Photography And Its Narrative In The 1920s, Karen K. Barber

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cameraless photography’s resurgence in the 1920s has long been discussed by art historians and critics as either a facet of modernist “new photography,” or as a specialized practice associated with prominent figures of the interwar avant-garde. In their discussions of the medium, scholars have aligned cameraless photography with specific movements, groups, schools, or individuals, as a means of situating its emergence and subsequent popularity in the 1920s. This dissertation broadens the understanding of cameraless photography (also referred to as photograms) and its narrative by shifting the focus to the publications responsible for the medium’s articulation and dissemination in the years …

Visualizing Knowledge In The Illuminated Manuscripts Of The Breviari D’Amor, Joy Partridge

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Diagrams blur the line between text and image; they are both tools for communicating linguistic meaning and powerfully evocative visual forms. However, scholarship on medieval diagrams has focused primarily on their didactic functions, emphasizing the ways in which monks and other scholars used diagrams as tools for learning—about everything from Christian theology to ancient philosophy—and for developing modes of thought that support such learning. In the late Middle Ages, as education expanded beyond the realm of the intellectual elite, new book types emerged. One of which, the encyclopedia, endeavored to simultaneously instruct and delight a broader, non-monastic and non-scholastic audience, …

The Labyrinth And The Cave: Archaic Forms In Art And Architecture Of Europe, 1952–1972, Paula Burleigh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the prevalence of spatial archetypes as potent symbols that manifested in art, architecture, exhibition design, and urban planning in the aftermath of World War II and into the Cold War. Owing to the dual influence of structuralism and phenomenology in French intellectual culture, many examples discussed here were produced in France or made by artists who spent significant time there. These figures include Jacqueline de Jong, Paul Virilio, Claude Parent, André Bloc, and the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel (GRAV), all of whom made projects evoking speculative realities that oscillated between utopian and dystopian.

Given their focus …

Modern Arts And Pueblo Traditions In Santa Fe, 1909–1931, Elizabeth S. Hawley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines art produced in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico during the early twentieth century, putting the works of Pueblo artists who lived in the area into dialogue with the works of Anglo-American modernists who traveled there. I take as case studies three artists whose practices are linked by both circumstance and agenda: Maria Martinez, a famed Pueblo potter; John Sloan, a leading member of The Eight and the Ashcan School; and Tonita Peña, a Pueblo watercolor painter. Weaving together Anglo-American and American Indian art history – which are too often bifurcated into separate accounts, omitting rich histories …

Research Paper Assignment For Modern Art In Latin America, Anna Indych-Lopez

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Art Of The Harlem Renaissance, Joshua I. Cohen

Open Educational Resources

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, known during that time as the Negro Renaissance, affected a sea change in literary and artistic production. Whereas the early-20^th-century avant-gardes in Europe had looked to black culture only as “primitive” inspiration, Harlem Renaissance practitioners asserted their status as agents of modern history and creators of black modernism. This important and tumultuous transformation can be tracked in the artistic expressions of the period, and in relation to key texts that shaped the movement. Planned visits to Harlem sites and collections, as well as to timely exhibitions elsewhere in New York, …

Losing Its Way: The Landmarks Preservation Commission In Eclipse, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has an admirable history of protecting the city's historic character. Increasingly in recent years, the commission has backed away from proactively designated sites of historical, architectural, or cultural significance as city landmarks. At the same time, the commission has shown greater deference to the owner of a property when deciding whether to designate, and to the wishes of the owners of designated properties in matters of regulation, notwithstanding that owner consent is nowhere in the landmarks law. At the same time, the commission has introduced new definitions, such as “period of significance,” contributing/non-contributing, and …

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.

Painting, Geography, And The Body: Charting The First Two Decades Of Mary Corse’S Art, Sarah A. Meller

Theses and Dissertations

Mary Corse has always maintained her position on the periphery, and her work has generally been excluded from art historical scholarship. This study illuminates the ways in which the first two decades of Corse’s practice were in fact in dynamic dialogue with broader impulses and concurrent trends operating at the time.

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.

Representing Struggle: Raquel Forner’S Social And Political Engagement In The 1930s And 1940s, Diana Flatto

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Raquel Forner’s engagement with current events in her paintings from the 1930s and 1940s. Uncovering her realist style, each chapter focuses on a thematic area of her work over these years: the female figure and representation, religious iconography, and wartime.

The Romance Novel Cover, Jessica D. Spears

Theses and Dissertations

Romance novel covers dating from the 1980s and 1990s reflect complex and contradictory ideas about gender, power, and sexuality. The covers overflow with stereotypes of what women are attracted to such as enormous pink roses, lush folds of silk, and hair long enough for Rapunzel. To this socially acceptable women’s imagery, the covers add two less reputable aspects: sexual imagery and, occasionally, suggestions of female submission. Since the association of romance and conventional femininity is so strong, the covers make a visual argument that submission and sexuality are things that a conventional woman wants. Readers have to deal with what …

Rising Above The Faithful: Monumental Ceiling Crosses In Byzantine Cappadocia, Alice Lynn Mcmichael

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The design of Byzantine architecture created viewing conditions that reveal social and spatial contexts of Christian ritual, private devotion, and expressions of identity. This is apparent in the decoration of ceilings, which were crucial visual elements within spatial relationships in late antique and medieval architecture but are rarely discussed because few examples survive. However, Byzantine Cappadocia, a region that is now central Turkey, has a high number of extant medieval ceilings in its rock-cut architecture. About eighty monuments there have monumental ceiling crosses that were painted or carved in relief between the sixth and eleventh centuries. In this dissertation the …

Cellist, Catalyst, Collaborator: The Work Of Charlotte Moorman, Saisha Grayson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When classically trained cellist Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991) moved to New York City in 1957, she swiftly positioned herself at the intersection of experimental music, performance, video, and the visual arts. She interpreted works by composers like John Cage, collaborated with artists such as Nam June Paik, and founded and organized the New York Avant Garde Festival from 1963 to 1980. This dissertation argues that Moorman’s career sheds new light on what it meant to be an artist in this post-medium-specific moment and proposes that Moorman’s deterritorialization of authorship exerts pressure on traditional art histories. The generative dynamics of her collaborations …

Shadows Of Empire: The Mughal And British Colonial Heritage Of Lahore, Naeem U. Din

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Pakistani city of Lahore is the capital of the Punjab province. The city itself has existed for over a thousand years. In 1947 the British rule in the Indian subcontinent ended, resulting in the partition of British India into the modern states of India and Pakistan. At the time the Punjab province was also partitioned, with the western half (including Lahore) going to Pakistan and the eastern half being awarded to India. Prior to partition, Lahore served as an important administrative and commercial center under the Mughal Empire (1526–1799), the Sikh Empire (1799–1849), the British East India Company (1849–1858), …

Creating 1968: Art, Architecture, And The Afterlives Of The Mexican Student Movement, Mya B. Dosch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The student movement of 1968 in Mexico City staked a claim to urban space. Through mass gatherings in the Zócalo, posters in the streets, and marches past prominent landmarks, student activists countered the spectacles of national unity designed in preparation for the 1968 Olympic Games. These competing claims to space came to a head on October 2, 1968, when government agents fired on activists and bystanders gathered in Tlatelolco Square, killing dozens and imprisoning thousands more. Scholars and essayists have since framed 1968 as a watershed moment in twentieth-century Mexican history and the massacre at Tlatelolco as a “wound” …

The Other At War: Performing The Spanish-Cuban-American War On U.S. And Cuban Stages, Juan R. Recondo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Spanish-Cuban-American War, declared by the United States on April 25, 1898, marks a colonial shift in the history of the Caribbean and solidified the expansionist thrust of the United States outside national borders. Theatres in turn-of-the-century New York, which at this point was one of the theatrical centers of the nation, debated for audiences the imperialist character of the U.S. The Cuban struggle and the resulting Spanish-Cuban-American War permeated U.S. drama, thereby portraying a Caribbean in need of salvation by the military intervention of the United States. New York stages of the time became locations where various cultural representations …

Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dory Agazarian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about how historical narratives developed in the context of a modern marketplace in nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it explores British historicism through urban space with a focus on Rome and London. Both cities were invested with complex political, religious and cultural meanings central to the British imagination. These were favorite tourist destinations and the subjects of popular and professional history writing. Both cities operated as palimpsests, offering a variety of histories to be “tried on” across the span of time. In Rome, British consumers struggled when traditional histories were problematized by emerging scholarship and archaeology. In London, …

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), …

Transformations: Suburban Cordoba During The Umayyad Caliphate, 929-1009, Carmen M. Tagle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It has been noted how long it took for the Muslim presence in Iberia, starting in 711 BCE, to materialize into significant works of architecture. The continuous military campaigns, necessary to consolidate control of the Peninsula, were undertaken by a relatively small group of incoming Arab and Berber troops. This naturally limited the potential scope of construction to repairs of the Hispano-Roman infrastructure found in the conquered areas, mainly in the middle and the South of the Iberian Peninsula. The old walled city of Cordoba, locale of Roman and Visigoth rulers, served as the capital of the new emirate, …

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

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for an interdiscilpinary undergraduate course on Photography and Evidence.

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/.

Ode To The Sea: Art From Guantanamo, Erin L. Thompson, Charles Shields, Paige Laino

Publications and Research

Exhibition catalogue for “Ode to the Sea: Art from Guantánamo” (October 16, 2017-January 26, 2018, President's Gallery, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York). Detainees at the United States military prison camp known as Guantánamo Bay have made art from the time they arrived. The exhibit displays some of these evocative works, made by eight men: four who have since been cleared and released from Guantánamo, and four who remain there. They paint the sea again and again although they cannot reach it. The catalog includes contributions by Trevor Paglen, Solmaz Sharif, Natasha Trethewey, Jericho Brown, and current and …

Prints On Display: Exhibitions Of Etching And Engraving In England, 1770s-1858, Nicole Simpson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the long nineteenth century, in cities throughout Europe and North America, a new type of exhibition emerged – exhibitions devoted to prints. Although a vital part of print culture, transforming the marketing and display of prints and invigorating the discourse on the value and status of printmaking, these exhibitions have received little attention in existing scholarship. My dissertation aims to answer the question of when, where, and how did print exhibitions emerge during this period. It examines the initial development of these displays in England, home to the earliest print exhibitions and an innovative exhibition culture, from the 1770s …

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 …

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 …

The Bronx Was Brewing: A Digital Resource Of A Lost Industry, Michelle Zimmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Bronx: a bucolic oasis laden with history, a suburb within city-limits, an urban warzone, and thanks to the recent renaissance, a phoenix of progress rising from the proverbial ashes of the fires that burned through the borough in the 1970’s. But many people are unaware that the Bronx also brewed.
Uncovering the brewing industry of the Bronx tells not only the story of the lost industry, but it also communicates the narrative of the development of the Bronx. The brewers were German immigrants who developed a thriving industry by introducing lager beer to the United States by taking advantage …