History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Testimonial, Rosalyn Deutsche

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It's an honor and a pleasure to introduce Douglas Crimp, whom I've known for more than thirty years. In that time, Douglas has been my fellow student, my inspiring colleague, my attentive editor, my concert, opera, film, and dance-going companion, and, most important, my dear friend.

Testimonial, Henry Abelove

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Douglas Crimp was born in 1944 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where his brother and sister still live. As a boy, Douglas imagined that he might become an architect, and he went to Tulane University specifically to study architecture. But soon after beginning his university life, he shifted his concentration to Art History. One Tulane Teacher of Art History in particular enthralled him. This was Bernard Lehman, an eloquent, learned, and effervescent lecturer, and a campy gay man, whom Douglas credits as a primary influence.

James Abbott Mcneill Whistler: Photographs Of His Paintings And The Art Of Photography, Hiroko Suda

Dissertations and Theses

James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) is an important figure in the development of art photography. His lyrical and atmospheric images were not only admired by modernist painters, but also influenced many photographers who aspired to be artists. His treatment of the subject matter, careful selection of paper, and arduous printing process gave profound inspiration to many of the early twentieth century photographers.

Nonetheless, Whistler's own attitude towards the medium of photography was quite elusive. He never took the camera seriously as a tool of his artistic expression and photography was never included in his oeuvre. The artist never explained his …

Edward Durell Stone: Perception And Criticism, Mary Anne Hunting

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work of the New York City-based architect Edward Durell Stone (1902-1978) has been subject to ongoing critical controversy. Stone achieved phenomenal success, beginning in the 1950s as an architect in the period of the Cold War, with buildings on four continents, in thirteen foreign countries, and in thirty-two states. But an examination of his stylistic progression reveals that Stone increasingly fell out of critical favor as he shifted modernism from the International Style to a more "romantic" modern aesthetic that incorporated decoration along with aspects of monumentality, regionalism, historicism, and fantasy—a progression that can be traced in six of …

Fifth Millennium Anthropomorphic Figurines In Southeastern And Central Anatolia: Comparative Museum Research., Ellen H. Belcher

Publications and Research

The Halaf cultural horizon occurred during the fifth millennium B.C. (uncalibrated) and extended throughout upper Mesopotamia, including southeastern Anatolia. Halaf material culture is well-known for its imaginative and beautifully made architecture, polychrome-painted pottery, geometric stamp seals and figurines. The regional character and variation of Halaf figurine assemblages however, is poorly understood, particularly in southeastern Anatolia. My research and study of these figurines reveals distinct southeastern Anatolian styles and technologies, some of which demonstrate direct connections to central Anatolia.

This article presents preliminary conclusions from a comparative analysis of contemporaneous anthropomorphic figurines belonging to the Halaf and Chalcolithic cultures …

Participation, Claire Bishop

Publications and Research

An anthology of key writings on the topic of participation in art, from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Larry Rivers And Frank O'Hara: Reframing Male Sexualities, Dong-Yeon Koh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1970, Sam Hunter complained that the distinctive persona of proto-Pop artist Larry Rivers had overshadowed his artistic achievement. "Too often he has been taken as an engaging public performer", wrote Hunter, claiming that some critics "make the mistake of confusing his irrepressible exhibitionism with an imagined artistic flaw of fitful or unsteady inspiration". 1 This dissertation presents an alternative proposition regarding the relationship between Rivers' artistic persona and art: that an examination of Rivers' numerous activities inside and outside the artistic arena, such as poetry, jazz, and media, is indeed useful for understanding his work. Particularly, Rivers' involvement with …

Antagonism And Relational Aesthetics, Claire Bishop

Publications and Research

A critique of relational aesthetics, as theorized by Nicolas Bourriaud, and exemplified in the work of Rirkrit Tiravanija and Liam Gillick. Using Laclau and Mouffe's theory of democracy as antagonism, the paper proposes instead a 'relational antagonism' found in certain projects by Santiago Sierra and Thomas Hirschhorn.

Bartolomeo Di Tommaso Da Foligno, Michael Patrick Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Once famous and influential, the fifteenth century Umbrian painter, Bartolomeo di Tommaso (1408/11–1454) has only begun to receive serious scholarly attention within the past few decades. His long obscurity was in part attributable to the fact that he was not born in Tuscany, and did not work in the great art centers of Florence and Siena, facts that by themselves would relegate him to the status of a lesser artist. Further, his paintings have never been easily reconciled with those that art history has classified as Early Renaissance in style and, indeed even when Bartolomeo was influenced by Tuscan painters, …

"Sodoma, Sodoma, Thus Cried The Boys: A Reappraisal Of Gianantoni Bazzi's Life And Work, James Saslow

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The farther back we go from modern into early modern history, the harder it gets to document those facets of an artist's personal life that might provide an anchor for claims to discern forms of homosexual authorial intention—without the probability of which, gay/lesbian studies might indeed collapse into the baldest claim of its detractors, that it is naught but meaningless psychospeculation.

William Henry Aspinwall (1807-1875), Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

William Henry Aspinwall (1807-1875) was a 19th century New York City "merchant prince."

For "The Boys In Blue": The Art Galleries Of The Sanitary Fairs, Evdokia Savidou-Terrono

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Beginning in 1863 and continuing until 1865, the Sanitary Fairs held in Northern cities, to raise money for Union soldiers were the most significant fundraisers of the Civil War. The fairs combined the local with the global, and enticed visitors with relics of the colonial past, interesting artifacts of Native American culture, souvenirs from far away lands, and fascinating technological inventions. For the majority of the fairs however, the art exhibitions were without doubt the most significant, complex and politically charged exhibits, and they are the focus of this paper.

Visitors to the art galleries were attracted by their educational …

Review Of Treasures Of Castilla Y León: A Cultural Season In New York, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Spanish religious art tends to be theatrical in nature. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, for example, the original setting of sculpted figures invariably emulated a stage in order to create a dramatic environment in which light, smells, and sounds were controlled for effect. Just consider the religious sculptures frequently paraded in processions or the statuary placed in chapels and niche-like recesses. Or think also of the dramatic paintings that functioned almost as backdrops for what amounted to the "staging" of the Catholic liturgy. Medium and message, thus, went hand in hand, a dependence that was made even stronger …

Art To Educate: A History Of Public Art In The New York City Public Schools, 1890–1976, Michele Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

"Art to Educate" chronicles a history of public art in the New York City public schools from the beginning until the passage of the City's Percent-for-Art Law in 1982. Its purpose is twofold: to bring to light public artworks in school buildings that are typically ignored in discussions of public art and to create a historical framework for understanding this collection.

To contextualize this collection, "Art to Educate" links public art in schools to school architecture and the Board of Education's school construction programs over the last century; to a consideration of educational theory and viewpoints in art education; and …

Charles M. Kurtz (1855-1909): Aspects And Issues Of A Cosmopolitan Career, Arleen Pancza Graham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Charles M. Kurtz, the first director of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, spent most of his life executing his personal motto, Amorem Arti Promovere, "To Promote the Love of the Arts." During his lifetime he worked as a journalist, the editor and publisher of the National Academy of Design's Academy Notes, the administrator of several circulating exhibitions and the director of the Art Department of the regional Southern Exposition in Louisville and the Annual St. Louis Exposition. He also served as the Assistant Director of Fine Arts for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the St. …

Review Of 1900: Art At The Crossroads, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

There is probably little doubt that the fissure between "high" and "low" culture is more conspicuous nowadays than it ever was. Clement Greenberg, that dashing arbiter of contemporary art, had already sensed it in 1939 when he wrote the seminal essay quoted above, as Adorno also perceived it decades before him. Their foreboding premonitions, however, could not hinder the relentless success of popular culture and the retreat of so-called high art into the safe harbors of the university campus, the museum, and the private sphere.

Painted Slang: The Caricatural Aspects Of French Painting, 1850–1880, Melina V. Kervandjian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A complicated relationship between painting and caricature emerged in France in the 1850s and 1860s when writers like Baudelaire and Champfleury, who were known for their work on painting and painters, produced a number of texts focusing on caricature and caricaturists. Such writings legitimized imagery previously relegated to the realm of "low art" by declaring caricature integral to the aesthetic discourses of the nineteenth century.

The legitimization of caricature also involved a concurrent effort by artists like Honore Daumier, Gustave Courbet, and Paul Cezanne, who incorporated caricatural elements within their painted works. Rather than adopting the traditional strategy of marginalizing …

The Writings Of Russell Sturgis And Peter B. Wight: The Victorian Architect As Critic And Historian, Marjorie A. Pearson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of this dissertation is on the writings of Russell Sturgis (1836–1909) and Peter B. Wight (1838–1925). As part of a movement that professionalized the practice of architecture in the United States, they brought an awareness of the role of architecture to a larger public, both through their buildings and their writings. Their joint beginnings in the American Pre-Raphaelite movement led to their journalistic endeavors in the New Path, published between 1863 and 1865 in New York City. As proselytizers for Ruskinianism in their architectural work and words, this pervasive force was to remain an important influence throughout their …

Review Of La Imagen De Nuestros Músicos: Del Siglo De Oro A Edad De Plata, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

La imagen de nuestros músicos: Del Siglo de Oro a la Edad de Plata is a hefty compilation of 681 portraits of Spanish composers from the Renaissance to the present. The illustrations are organized in four large chapters: "Del siglo de oro a la ilustración", covers the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries; "El primer romanticismo" and "El segundo romanticismo", deal with the first and second half of the 19th century; the final section, "Los músicos de nuestro siglo" focuses on the 20th century. If my numbers are correct, the earliest composer included in the study is the polyphonist Cristóbal de …

Creating Art And Artists: Late Nineteenth-Century American Artists' Studios, Karen A. Zukowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the studios of American painters and sculptors working in the cosmopolitan era of the late nineteenth century. Between the Philadelphia Centennial and World War I, most makers of fine art worked in studios furnished with old furniture, personal mementos, historic relics and superbly-crafted objets d'art, all rich in evocative associations. In these spaces artists made art, taught art, sold art, entertained friends and patrons, and kept house. These studios were often opened to the public, they were featured in newspaper and journal articles, and they appeared in paintings and novels, making them quasi-public places. Born out …

Robert Henri And Cosmopolitan Culture Of Fin-De-Siecle France, Linda Jones Gibbs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American painter Robert Henri (1865–1929) lived in Paris and its environs for nearly eight years between 1888–1900. This dissertation relates the critical impact his extensive exposure to fin-de-siecle French culture had upon his early paintings, his theories about the production of art, and ultimately upon the ideological foundation of the Ashcan School. This is accomplished through analysis of the many significant cosmopolitan elements Henri encountered in France not only in the realm of art but literature, philosophy, and politics.

Henri's rebellion against the art institutional bureaucracy and hierarchy and his non-traditional teaching methods have frequently been attributed to the …

Ana Mendieta, The Iowa Years: A Critical Study, 1969 Through 1977, Julia P. Herzberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the artistic development of Ana Mendieta (born Cuba, 1948; died United States, 1985) from 1969 to 1977 when she lived in Iowa City, attended the University of Iowa, worked as an art teacher, and established herself as an artist. Mendieta is known for her early performance pieces and earth-body sculptures. From the late 1980s her work has been increasingly included in the contexts of feminist art history, performance, photography, work in nature, body art, self-representation, Cuban art, and transcultural identity. Collected by major museums throughout the United States, her work has begun to be included in surveys …

The Ideal Catalogue House: Mail-Order Architecture And Consumer Culture, 1914–1930, Evie T. Joselow

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the mail-order house and its relation to aspects of consumer culture, establishing a context for understanding its popular appeal and its notable presence in the competitive housing market between 1918 and 1930. Fueled by a demand for housing, and widely promoted during a period of economic prosperity which ushered in an interest in consumerism associated with home ownership, the mail-order house, assembled from pre-cut lumber and sold by mail-order suppliers, represented an affordable and appealing means for consumers to acquire the aesthetic and material elements associated with the ideal house and home.

The dissertation articulates the popular …

Tina Modotti's Vision: Photographic Modernism In Mexico, 1923-1930, Sarah Margaret Lowe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a close consideration of photographs by Tina Modotti (1896-1942), whose work marks the beginning of a modernist aesthetic in post-Revolutionary Mexico. Modotti's photographs are distinguished by a formal clarity coupled with incisive social content. Her work was informed by dominant modes of modernist photographic practice manifest in America and Europe in the 1920s.

This study sets out previously unknown biographical information on Modotti in Chapters I through IV. Modotti was among the many expatriate artists and intellectuals who settled in Mexico during the 1920s, when the country was undergoing a cultural Renaissance. This rebirth was stimulated by …

Villas On The Hudson: An Architectural And Biographical Examination, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

A study of Villas on the Hudson: A Collection of Photo-Lithographs of Thirty-One Country Residences (D. Appleton & Co., 1860) depicts floor plans and views of stately homes of 19^th century country gentlemen that were located in today's upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester County, Dutchess County, and even Hoboken, NJ. When published, architecture was in its infancy as a profession and we see representative works of A.J. Davis, J.C Wells, T.R. Jackson and D. Lienau, and others. The accomplishments and interests of the villa’s owners are discussed; and the current status and use of the surviving eleven villas are …

The "Llibre De Franqueses I Privilegis Del Regne De Mallorca": A Source Of Music Iconography, Antoni Pizà, Ramon Rosselló

Publications and Research

The Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca of Palma de Mallorca, Spain, holds numerous collections of manuscripts that have been assembled at random regardless of their unity in subject or time period. The codices kept at the Arxiu comprise many different types of documents whose provenance and compilation history is yet to be determined. One of the most valuable among these codices is the Llibre de franqueses i privilegis del Regne de Mallorca (Codex 1), also known as Códice de los Reyes.

Claes Oldenburg: Sculpture, 1960-1968. A Catalogue Raisonne. (Volumes I And Ii), Susan Ginsburg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A catalogue raisonne presents the complete work of an artist so that we can better understand that artist and the period in which he or she worked. This dissertation presents all the sculptural works made by Claes Oldenburg between 1960 and 1968. I begin with the works of 1960 and continue through 1968. Although no chronological time period can be demonstrated as absolute, this one begins with an exhibition in which Oldenburg became noticed to a wide audience and ends when Oldenburg's ideas about sculpture became involved with public statements made through public sculpture rather than the studio/home/gallery themes that …

The American Academy Of The Fine Arts, New York, 1802-1842. (Volumes I And Ii), Carrie J. Rebora

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1802, Robert R. Livingston, the United States Minister to France, conceived of the American Academy as a salon that would inspire American artists and uplift the minds of others. His brother Edward, Mayor of New York who also believed that the city's leaders were responsible for the cultural enlightenment of artists and the general public, generated financial support from the city's ruling elite. Neither the Livingstons nor the members, however, planned for the Academy's operation. The institution languished until Mayor De Witt Clinton assumed the Academy presidency in 1813. With the help of his friend John Pintard, Clinton placed …

Musical Inspiration As Seen Through The Artist's Eyes, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

The role of inspiration in the creation of a musical work has been a matter for conjecture and research by musicians and psychologists. But the realm of inspiration belongs to the creators themselves, who supply mythology, religion, and science to account for the source of an artwork. Throughout history, painters, too, have given their version of musical inspiration and the process of the creation of the work of art. What is musical inspiration? Where does it come from? What are its effects? The following essay explores some painters' responses by surveying some representative works of art.

The Politics Of Experience: Robert Morris, Minimalism, And The 1960s, Maurice Berger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Robert Morris's oeuvre, unlike the work of most other so-called minimalist artists, is both stylistically and intellectually diverse. His range was broad: expressionist paintings, Duchamp-inspired objects, dances and performances, minimalist sculptures, large scale installations and sound environments, earth and land reclamation works, films and videos, and political acts against the museum, the labor economy, and the Vietnam war. The philosophical sources for Morris's art (he was a philosophy major at Reed College in the late-1950s) are equally rich: Herbert Marcuse, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Jean Piaget, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Charles Sanders Peirce. As choreographer, writer of influential theoretical texts, and …