History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Dag Hammarskjöld And Modern Art: An Inquiry Into The Aesthetic Values Of The Second Secretary-General Of The United Nations, Shantala M. Dugay

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents original research and previously unpublished information that breaks new ground in the legacy of United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. By providing a new historical perspective of Hammarskjöld’s aesthetic values, this study forges a place for him in art history as a patron and collector of modern art.

The Artist And The "Information" Machine: Conceptualism, Technology, And Design In 1970, Jeremiah William Mccarthy

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the dialectical relationship between conceptualism and design in the year 1970, by focusing on Kynaston McShine’s landmark exhibition Information, held at the Museum of Modern Art. Specifically, it centers on the understudied “information machine,” a film apparatus designed by Ettore Sottsass, Jr., for use within the exhibition.

A Fearsome Beauty: Material And Cultural Exchange Between Venice And The Islamic Near East, Tahera H. Tajbhai

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will explore the relationship between Venice and the Islamic Near East. By examining works from various media, this paper argues that Venetians viewed the Islamic Near East as being ‘awesome,’ and that this view was twofold, as Venetians were both enamored with and fearful of this rising power.

Magazine Politics: Edgardo Antonio Vigo’S Diagonal Cero And Hexágono ‘71, Francisco Javier Rivero Ramos

Theses and Dissertations

This research looks at the magazines Diagonal Cero (28 issues, 1962 – 1968) and Hexágono ‘71 (14 issues, 1971 – 1974) edited by Edgardo Antonio Vigo (La Plata, Argentina 1928 – La Plata, 1997) in order to examine the forms of political commentary incorporated into the magazines.

Sanitation Celebrations: Mierle Laderman Ukeles’S Performative Monument With/For/By Sanmen, Diya Vij

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s work teaches us something new about what monument-making can be when it is socially engaged. The durational process and motivating desire to elicit gratitude for the DSNY labor force of Ukeles’s residency in the Sanitation Department raises pressing questions about the conventional nature of how monuments are typically conceived and executed and to whom these works are directed. Analysis of her three-part performance Sanitation Celebrations: Grand Finale of New York City’s First Art Parade, just one engagement within her long-term performative monument, explicates the intricacies of Ukeles’s process-based performative practice in terms …

Photographing The "Uncelebrated" Truth: The Newspaper Pm, New York 1940-1942, Nancy Wechter

Theses and Dissertations

The left-liberal NYC newspaper, PM, used photography with unprecedented transparency as a crucial element in its mission to inform ordinary working people, teach them to be literate about the photographic message, and encourage them to be a participating audience during the tense period just before World War II.

David Alfaro Siqueiros’S Pivotal Endeavor: Realizing The “Manifiesto De New York” In The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop Of 1936, Emily Schlemowitz

Theses and Dissertations

The Siqueiros Experimental Workshop, initiated by David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) in 1936, is often considered a pivotal moment for the artist. This thesis unveils new documentation about the Workshop, illuminating heretofore-unobserved aspects of the group’s governance, political aims, and theoretical framework put forth by Siqueiros in his critical “Manifiesto de New York.”

The Bauhaus Wall Painting Workshop: Mural Painting To Wallpapering, Art To Product, Morgan Ridler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The wall painting workshop at the Bauhaus was established in fall 1919, the first semester of the famed and influential German school of art, architecture, and design. Over the course of the next thirteen years, the workshop experimented with many techniques, philosophies, and strategies for painting, coloring, and covering wall surfaces. This dissertation analyzes the evolving approaches of the Bauhaus wall painting workshop. Early Masters of Form, Oskar Schlemmer and Wassily Kandinsky, oversaw abstract and figurative murals like those developed for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, and the student wall painters used color to form and mold architectural spaces in, for …

The Photographic Universe: Vilém Flusser’S Theories Of Photography, Media, And Digital Culture, Martha Schwendener

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite accelerated changes in the way we create, view, and experience photographs, critics and scholars in North America continue to read and assign an accepted canon of photography theory, often predicated on old concepts and technologies. This dissertation seeks to remedy that situation. It focuses on the work of Czech-Brazilian philosopher Vilém Flusser (1920-1991), author of such books as Towards a Philosophy of Photography (1983), Into the Universe of Technical Images (1985), and Does Writing Have a Future? (1987), which develop a theory of technical images that reaches beyond photography to include film, television, video, computer, and satellite images. Rather …

Nature And Nostalgia In The Art Of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899), Shannon Vittoria

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is the first comprehensive study dedicated to the work of American painter-etcher Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899), an innovative printmaker and influential interpreter of the American landscape. She began her career in 1863, studying drawing and painting with her husband, artist Thomas Moran (1837-1926). Throughout the 1870s, she exhibited works at both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design, and published wood engraved illustrations in books and popular monthly magazines. Yet it was in the medium of etching that she achieved her greatest recognition: between 1879 and her untimely death in 1899, she …

The Moving Image In Public Art: U.S. And U.K., 1980–Present, Annie Dell'aria

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the work of artists who use moving images in contemporary public art. Specifically, these works are understood through their interactions with spectators and the practices of media consumption and public interaction these passersby negotiate when they encounter a work of moving image-based public art. To this end, I argue, through an analysis of public art, that screen spectatorship is an inherently situated experience.

The project of this dissertation is two-fold. First, I outline a typology of moving image-based public art by dividing significant practices into three categories—the enchanting spectacle, the ludic interface, and the illumination of place. …

Response And Responsibility: The War Veterans’ Art Center At The Museum Of Modern Art (1944–48), Laurel Humble

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1944–48 the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) offered free art classes to World War II veterans through an experimental educational initiative called the War Veterans’ Art Center. This project was run by Victor D’Amico, who served as the museum’s first Director of Education from 1937–69. Building on an existing institutional ethos of experimentation and civil service, D’Amico and his colleagues explored the role of creative engagement in facilitating the transition from military service to civilian life. As they experimented with new pedagogical approaches, they also worked to articulate and share their innovative methods with other professionals and …

Export / Import: The Promotion Of Contemporary Italian Art In The United States, 1935–1969, Raffaele Bedarida

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Export / Import examines the exportation of contemporary Italian art to the United States from 1935 to 1969 and how it refashioned Italian national identity in the process. I do not concentrate on the Italian art scene per se, or on the American reception of Italian shows. Through a transnational perspective, instead, I examine the role of art exhibitions, publications, and critical discourse aimed at American audiences. Inaugurated by the Fascist regime as a form of political propaganda, this form of cultural outreach to the United States continued after WWII as Italian museums, dealers, and critics aimed to vaunt the …

Shadows And Light. Ernie Gehr Exhibitions At The Museum Of Modern Art, Sean M. Fuller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines exhibitions and media installations of Ernie Gehr’s work at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), beginning with the pivotal 1970 show Information, which presented four films by Gehr. Wait (1968), Transparency (1969), Reverberation (1969), and History (1970) were screened alongside work by other avant-garde filmmakers and video artists in a circular viewing booth in the gallery space, in a show featuring works now considered masterpieces of conceptual art. It also considers the two site-specific video works, MoMA on Wheels (2002) and Navigation (2002), which Gehr created for the lobby space at MoMA QNS, …

Transparent Interiors: Detective And Mystery Fiction In The Age Of Photography, Melissa D. Dunn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a meditation on the mutable boundaries that define interior life in the age of photography. I probe these boundaries through selected readings in two literary genres that share conceptual links with photography—detective fiction and mystery fiction. Photography plays an important role in a radical reconsideration of the boundaries between public and private, engaging two dominant and often conflicting cultural values that shape American life at the turn of the twentieth century—the mandate to define and protect privacy and the simultaneous call for greater transparency in public and personal life. Photography, through its perceived transgressions against private life, …

Nothing Behind The Sun, Sebastian Fierro Castro

Theses and Dissertations

painting as a containment exercise, and as such, a tool that allows us to interiorize the world

Silent Protest And The Art Of Paper Folding: The Golden Venture Paper Sculptures At The Museum Of Chinese In America, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

Housed in the Museum of Chinese in America is the Fly to Freedom collection of paper art, which were produced by a traditional folk method of Chinese paper folding. The 123 paper works were created by detainees of the Golden Venture, a freighter used to smuggle undocumented immigrants into the U.S. On the evening of June 6, 1993, the ship ran aground off the Rockaways in New York City and nearly 300 migrants, gaunt from the four-month ordeal at sea, poured out of the cramped windowless hold of the vessel. Several drowned that night, a few escaped, but the majority …

Exchanges Of Identity In Prehistoric Anatolian Figurines, Ellen H. Belcher, Karina Croucher

Publications and Research

This paper examines exchange imagery and ideology of the human body manifested through figurines from prehistoric (7 th –6 th millennia BC) Anatolian contexts. These figurines document local, regional and inter-regional communication of identity, use of materials, ideologies and skills. Taking a new approach to understanding the assemblages, this paper suggests four key themes of analysis: materials and materiality; fractured bodies; gender spectrum; and ambiguities and relationships.

Performing Conquest And Resistance In The Streets Of Eighteenth Century Potosí: Identity And Artifice In The Cityscapes Of Gaspar Miguel De Berrío And Melchor Pérez De Holguín, Agnieszka A. Ficek

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the ways in which Potosí's two most influential colonial artists represented the urban dynamics of race, class and labor in their depictions of the Andean 'City of Silver' during the eighteenth century, when silver production, profits and population were dramatically declining.

Modernism Contested: Gego's Grids And The Aesthetics Of Temporality, Victoria L. Fedrigotti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis traces Gego’s contestation of art historical modernism through examining her relationship to the modernist grid and to her modernist genealogy of Constructivism, Geometric Abstraction, and Kineticism. These two nonlinear developments subvert the teleological conception of progress presumed by Greenbergian modernism, and bring forth Gego’s own aesthetic conception of temporality.

Claudio Perna, Ca. 1970: The Impossibility Of Wholeness, Silvia Benedetti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis identifies two main themes in Claudio Perna’s (1938–1997) work: his use of technology to explore self-representation and his interrogation of mapping as means of knowledge. This study also situates Perna’s conceptual work in relation to his field of human geography, in the specific Venezuelan context.

The Politics And Aesthetics Of American Art During The Cold War: Commissions For Philip Johnson’S New York State Pavilion At The 1964-1965 World’S Fair, Alexandria Valera

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the social and cultural climate surrounding the art commissions for Philip Johnson's New York State Pavilion at the 1964-65 World's Fair. The research presented herein examines how the economic and cultural climate of 1960's America affected the architectural landscape at the World's Fair and how Johnson's Pavilion was integrated into it. Finally, this thesis examines how artworks by John Chamberlain, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and others responded to the commercial premise of the fair itself. This thesis argues that ultimately the artworks presented used the language of commercial art to critique the Fair and the …

Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press And Fluxus, Meghan A. Dellacrosse

Theses and Dissertations

"Archival Enactment, Retelling 'The Big Book': Alison Knowles, Something Else Press and Fluxus," positions Knowles’ Big Book (1966) as a case study of historical methodology and interdisciplinary artistic practice in the post-war period. This comprehensive analysis of Big Book, a work of art no longer extant, contextualizes its publisher, Something Else Press through Dick Higgins’ concept of “intermedia,” and important lesser-known junctures relevant to Fluxus and the group’s leader George Maciunas are illuminated. Knowles' early and lesser-known silkscreen paintings are also examined.

How To Look At Monsters: Staging Female Bodies From The Periphery Of The Seventeenth-Century Spanish World In Baroque Portraiture And Hapsburg Collections, Risa A. Puleo

Theses and Dissertations

This inquiry examines portraits of “monsters”—an early modern term describing those whose bodies challenged socially-constructed categories by deviating from the social norm through differences of race, gender and physical or mental capacity, painted for Hapsburg royals across Europe, who collected specimens, including people, representing the scope of their territories.

Book Review Of A. Victor Coonin, From Marble To Flesh: The Biography Of Michelangelo’S David, Sandra Cheng

Publications and Research

Beginning of Book Review:
“What makes an icon?” is the underlying question of A. Victor Coonin’s book dedicated to Michelangelo’s statue of David. The larger-than-life-size David has a status akin to Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. Its image, whether whole or fragmented, is instantaneously recognizable, making it difficult to look at it afresh, but Coonin manages to reflect on well-trodden ground in a captivating manner. This study demonstrates how the David is more than an embodiment of masculinity but a statue imbued with multi-faceted symbolism that continues to resonate with viewers today.

Recovering The Beauty Of Medusa, Alexander M. Schlutz

Publications and Research

This essay presents a close analysis of P.B. Shelley’s fragmentary ekphrastic poem “On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery.” It places Shelley’s text in its aesthetic, mythological and historico-political contexts to demonstrate how Shelley aims to undo the ideological and representational structures of power that inform human language, art, and history, and which turn Medusa into the monstrous Other as which she appears. In Shelley’s text by contrast, Medusa becomes a figure for a revelatory beauty that cannot become visible in the distorting parameters of a discourse of power that informs our very perception of what …

'The Rhythm Of Our Time Is Jazz': Popular Entertainment During The Weimar Republic, Sharon L. Jordan

Publications and Research

“’The Rhythm of Our Time is Jazz’: Popular Entertainment during the Weimar Republic” examines the widespread interest and influential role held by American ragtime and jazz music throughout German culture from the 1910s until World War II. Many artists incorporated minstrel imagery as a potent indicator of their outsider status during this period or used new materials and rhythmic forms inspired by jazz to fully reflect the technological achievements and dynamic environment of the modern metropolis.

The Print Portfolio And The Bourgeoisie In Fin-De-Siècle Paris, Britany Lane Salsbury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In fin-de-siècle Paris, the print portfolio experienced a popularity that was unprecedented over the course of its long history. Adapted sporadically by graphic artists from the Renaissance onward, prints were produced as series in greater numbers and by a wider range of artists than ever before between 1880 and 1900, and symbolized new, bold, and varied aspirations for the graphic arts as an original and experimental medium. In addition to its stylistic value, artists valued the print portfolio for the subject matter it could cultivate. A growing number of works produced at this time highlighted social issues and expressed political …

Situating Urban Moving Images: Illuminating Place, Annie Dell'aria

Graduate Student Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Let The Record Show: Mapping Queer Art And Activism In New York City, 1986-1995, Tara Jean-Kelly Burk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although scholars increasingly scrutinize late twentieth-century American art produced in relation to social movements organized around feminism, anti-racist politics, health activism, and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) identity, scholars usually fail to address the importance of printed ephemera as a medium of artistic expression. Ephemeral materials, such as posters, are cheap to make and print. They are typically distributed illicitly via un-commissioned wheat-paste campaigns in urban public space. Collectives tend to make their designs copyright-free to encourage wide distribution. Particularly in the era before digital social media, these materials were central to the ways in which communities coalesced in …