History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

God As Cult Initiate: Dionysos And The Eleusinian Mysteries In Greek Vase-Painting, Anthony F. Mangieri

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Gee, He Has No Brushstroke: Gender Performance In Andy Warhol’S Oxidation Paintings, Anthony J. Morris

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Van Gogh's Ghost Paintings: Chapters 1-3, Cliff Edwards

World Studies Publications

One of the most significant and revealing paintings by the world famous artist Vincent van Gogh was never seen by anyone but the artist himself. The painting was so important to the artist that he painted it twice. He was so conflicted about the painting that he destroyed it twice. Cliff Edwards argues these two unique paintings Vincent created and destroyed are at least as important to understanding the artist and his work as are the two thousand or more paintings and drawings that do exist. In Van Gogh's Ghost Paintings, Edwards invites his readers on a journey that …

Women Surrealist Photographers And Their Response To The Objectification Of Women In Male Surrealist Art, Lois X. Nguyen

UROP Posters

Objectification of women in Male Surrealist art depicted the male gaze in its darkest form, through the ideas of the uncanny, fetish, and convulsive beauty. Women were treated as objects throughout Surrealist photography and painting instead of as human subjects. Their femininity and beauty were valued to the extent of held belief that a woman’s destiny is to be beautiful and be present for the male gaze. Women Surrealists have gained notoriety in the last sixty years for their presence in the Surrealist movement and for their diligence in providing the female perspective in opposition to the male perspective.

This …

Bracquemond, Ruskin, The Haviland-Hayes Service, And Rookwood: Japonisme And Permanence In Art Pottery, Emily G. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

There are two principle arguments in this thesis. First, this thesis will show that Félix Bracquemond had a profound impact on late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century ceramics in America. Second, this thesis will illustrate how John Ruskin’s principle that pottery is “more permanent than the Pyramids” encouraged reform of the ceramic arts and shaped the Art Pottery Movement of the late nineteenth century. After this thesis introduces Bracquemond as an innovator in ceramic decoration and the dissemination of Ruskin’s principle, the thesis will examine two instances in the American Art Pottery Movement in which Bracquemond’s and Ruskin’s influence can be detected. The …

Voz Alta: The Sound Of A Collective Memory, Sarah E. Kleinman

Graduate Research Posters

Voz Alta is a participatory, voice-activated public light installation designed by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer as a memorial for the Tlatelolco massacre, which occurred on October 2, 1968 in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco, Mexico. In the Plaza, Lozano-Hemmer has synchronized a megaphone with a 10 kW Xenon robotic searchlight. As each participant speaks into the megaphone, the searchlight shines to the uppermost floor of the towering Centro Cultural Tlatelolco (CCT) building where three additional searchlights instantaneously strobe, dim, and brighten, illuminating the nocturnal landscape in horizontally fixed, tangential beams. Although the aesthetic, social, historical, and political aspects of …

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

K-12 Educational Programs In Contemporary Art Museums: An Examination Of University And Non-University Non-Collecting Institutions Of Contemporary Art, Susan Moser

Theses and Dissertations

This museum thesis project will provide an overview of kindergarten through 12^th-grade (K-12) educational programs at six non-collecting art institutions within the United States, contextualized within a selected historiography of art museum education. This project is designed to aid the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA). The ICA is a non-collecting institution that will be located on VCU’s Monroe Park campus. As the ICA staff sets out to articulate a vision and scope for its K-12 education programs, it will benefit from the information offered in this thesis project, especially given that there is no existing …

The Architecture Of Knowledge: The Jesuit College Of Oaxaca (Xvi-Xix Centuries)., Marina Mellado Corriente

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE ARCHITECTURE OF KNOWLEDGE: THE JESUIT COLLEGE OF OAXACA (XVI-XIX CENTURIES).

By Marina Mellado Corriente, MA.

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art Historical and Curatorial Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2015

Major Director: Michael Schreffler, Associate Professor, Department of Art History

The educational endeavor that the Jesuits – members of the religious order known as the Society of Jesus – carried out in Mexico in the course of the colonial period, when this territory belonged to the Viceroyalty of New Spain (sixteenth to nineteenth …

Reviving Project:A Chinese-American Culture Exchange Project, Yushan Cassie Sun

UROP Posters

Through art exhibitions in Beijing, China and Richmond, Virginia, Reviving project 01 aims to help promote/ revive a craft technique in Qinghai, China that is disappearing due to the urbanized surroundings.

American artist were invited to collaborate with people from Qinghai to make new pieces incorporating original crafted pieces.

Queer Mysticism In The High Middle Ages: Pain, Love, Earth, And The Female Body In The Illustrations Of Hildegard Of Bingen’S Scivias, Becky Bushnell

UROP Posters

Many view Hildegard of Bingen as one of the most important female theologians of the 12th century, and her writing and sphere of influence is remarkable considering her gender. Many scholars, like Barbara Newman, Caroline Walker Bynum, and Carolyn Worman Sur, agree that Hildegard’s portrayals of God in Scivias are distinctly feminine. Scholars like Karma Lochrie, Sheryl Chen, and Flora Lewis have written on Christ’s wound as a metaphor for the womb or vulva. Yet what scholars don’t seem to focus on, as Lochrie writes in “Mystical Acts, Queer Tendencies,” is the ways that the work of many female mystics …

Conjoined Lucuma Fruit Vessels: Evolution & Context In Nasca Art, Carley Elder

Theses and Dissertations

The function of a ceramic vessel is often evaluated in relation to its form. Vessels with complex forms can be challenging to analyze from this perspective and require a different approach. One such example is an overlooked yet long-lived specialized vessel type in the form of conjoined lúcuma fruits found throughout the ancient Andes. The main object of this study is a Nasca version of this vessel type in the Virginia Museum of Fine Art. This study explores the relationship between form and iconography, rather than function. It examines how Nasca potters adopted the conjoined lúcuma form vessel and adapted …

Thomas Jefferson’S Designs For The Federal District And The National Capitol, 1776-1826, Craig A. Reynolds

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines six major points: 1) it argues that Jefferson is an architect of the United States Capitol, having direct and final say over its design; 2) it asserts that Jefferson set two nationally influential models of architectural taste as part of his movement to reform American architecture, first in Richmond as the Virginia State Capitol and second in Washington as the United States Capitol; 3) it explores those models to define what Jefferson called “cubic” and “spherical” architecture; 4) it suggests that Jefferson used his political appointments to maximize his influence over the design of the United States …

G.A.M.E.: A Hypermedia Edition Of James Mcneill Whistler’S The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies, Amy Colombo

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation, G.A.M.E., refashions James McNeill Whistler’s book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, into a hypermediated facsimile text and archive. By remediating the text, the socio-historical context of the Victorian time period in which Whistler lived is reestablished, making his book more accessible to twenty-first century audiences. The era studied in this dissertation includes the expansion of the idea of celebrity, the power of the press, and the concept of art for art’s sake from 1863 through 1892. In order to showcase these concepts, archival materials, such as personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, and published pamphlets, from this period were …

The Triumphs Of Alexander Farnese: A Contextual Analysis Of The Series Of Paintings In Santiago, Chile, Michael J. Panbehchi

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines a series of nine paintings depicting the battles of Alexander Farnese in Flanders created by the Cuzco School of Painters in eighteenth-century Peru. This research asks why and how paintings depicting sixteenth-century European battles were meaningful in the eighteenth century. Due to an absence of archival documentation on the authorship, production and patronage of the series, the research method is contextual. Starting with a formal and iconographic analysis of the paintings centered on a comparison between the paintings and the engravings upon which they are based, differences in the use of space and the conspicuousness of individual …

Dīpaṅkara Buddha And The Patan Samyak Mahādāna In Nepal: Performing The Sacred In Newar Buddhist Art, Kerry Lucinda Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Every four years, in the middle of a cold winter night, devotees bearing images of 126 Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other important deities assemble in the Nepalese city of Patan for an elaborate gift giving festival known as Samyak Mahādāna (“The Perfect Great Gift”). Celebrated by Nepal’s Newar Buddhist community, Samyak honors one of the Buddhas of the historical past called Dīpaṅkara. Dīpaṅkara’s importance in Buddhism is rooted in ancient textual and visual narratives that promote the cultivation of generosity through religious acts of giving (Skt. dāna). During Samyak, large images of Dīpaṅkara Buddha ceremoniously walk in procession to the …

Continuity And Change In A 19th Century Illustrated Devi Mahatmya Manuscript From Nepal, Katherine Smith

Theses and Dissertations

In the Hindu tradition of the Indian subcontinent, worship of the goddess has long been practiced as supreme embodiment of the divine. Around the second century, a Sanskrit Purana (ancient Hindu text that extols deities) titled the Markandeya Purana details the battles of the supreme Goddess Durga against the illusions and negative energy in the universe. This textual version of the Devi Mahatmya “Praise of the Goddess” serves as the foundation for the nineteenth century Nepalese illustrated Devi Mahatmya, commissioned by Tej Bahadur Rana from Pokhara district in Nepal. Because the folios closely follow the textual Devi Mahatmya, …

The Presentation Of Incorruptibility: The Praesentia Of The Female Saint, Kristina M. Keogh

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation inserts the incorruptible body into the discussion of image devotion and relic veneration that followed the Council of Trent’s (1545-1563) decrees concerning the use of images, which affirmed Thomas Aquinas’s position that worship is passed from representation to archetype. This is addressed in terms of the image and the relic within the same sacred space, primarily in the context of the chapels of S. Caterina de’ Vigri (1413-1463; canonized 1712) in Bologna and S. Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi (1566-1607; canonized 1669) in Florence, where there were not only man-made representations of the saint, but also the whole and …

Fred Kabotie, Elizabeth Willis Dehuff, And The Genesis Of The Santa Fe Style, Jessica W. Welton

Theses and Dissertations

Those scholars who have overlooked the relevance of Fred Kabotie and the Santa Fe Style he developed have missed an important historical segment of early Native American painting. This dissertation underscores the convergence of diverse intellectual, artistic and cultural backgrounds, especially those of Kabotie and Elizabeth Willis DeHuff, his first art teacher, which led to the formation of the Santa Fe Style in 1918. This style was formative for Dorothy Dunn’s later Studio School at the Santa Fe Indian Boarding School.

This first generation of the Santa Fe Style of watercolor painting was empowered by highly educated men and women, …

Personal Profile: Amanda Ndemo Archeological Accessibility Through 3-D Laser Scanning, Rebekah Rifareal

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

The familiar signs that chide visitors to refrain from touching historical artifacts in museums would have no place in Dr. Bernard Means’ Virtual Curation Laboratory. Thanks to the innovative, fast-paced world of 3-D scanning, senior Amanda Ndemo had an archeological site at her fingertips, all while staying in Richmond for the VCU Honors Summer Undergraduate Research Program (HSURP).

Early Connections Between Film And Emerging Media As Evidenced In The Animated Worlds Of Adam Beckett, Pamela Turner

Kinetic Imaging Publications and Presentations

Making a “film” today rarely involves a journey to the lab as images are more often recorded digitally and not on celluloid. Even video’s electromagnetic record is transformed to bits and bytes. There is no frame to splice. The visual material exists as a virtual reference only. As McLuhan points out, new media doesn’t replace the old, existing media, but changes it. Theorists often point to the photograph and its impact on the painting. A similar event was the emergence of video technology and its ensuing relationship with film, a relationship whose differences have become increasingly transparent.

Looking at the …

The Photographer's Wife: Emmet Gowin's Photographs Of Edith, Mikell Waters Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Exemplified in the oeuvres of photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, and Emmet Gowin, the photographer's wife is a distinctive subject in twentieth-century American fine-art photography that fuses the domains of public and private life through the conflation of art and marriage. The transgressive nature of this juncture can be located in a confluence of gazes - the artist's, the subject's, and the viewer's - that are embroiled in constructing subjectivities. The phrase "photographer's wife" underscores an assumed imbalance of power reflecting a binary of active/passive, artist/model, and husband/wife. It is this study's contention that the complexity of the …

The American Encaustic Tiling Company (1875-1937) And 'Art Tiles' In The West Franklin Street Historic District, Richmond, Virginia, Erika June Schmelzer

Theses and Dissertations

According to the tile historian Thomas Bruhn, the period between 1870 and 1930 was the only period when tiles had a significant role in American ceramics. One of the leading tile companies during this period was the American Encaustic Tiling Company of Zanesville, Ohio, which created high-quality art tile. Virginia Commonwealth University has a virtual gallery of American Encaustic tiles in a four-block range along West Franklin Street. In particular, Virginia Commonwealth University has embossed tile fireplace surrounds in three houses that can be matched up to the American Encaustic catalogue of ca. 1890. Two of these houses have tile …

The Seated Cleopatra In Nineteenth Century American Sculpture, Kelly J. Gotschalk

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Cleopatra as presented in the work of three nineteenth century American sculptors: Thomas Ridgeway Gould, Edmonia Lewis and William Wetmore Story. It illuminates their work in the context of the nineteenth century and within the history of Cleopatra's image. Victorian opinions of Cleopatra's nature are exposed by examining the Egyptian Queen in essays and literature of the period, including works by Anna Jameson, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Bronte, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Theophile Gautier. By studying the role of Cleopatra in these literary examples, the notion of some recent scholars of Cleopatra as a feminist symbol is dispelled and …

Tiffany Windows In Richmond And Petersburg, Virginia, Rachel M. Bradshaw

Theses and Dissertations

Louis Comfort Tiffany began his career as a painter in the 1860's, illustrating his love of color and nature through genre scenes and landscapes. Unfulfilled as a painter he established a successful interior design firm, L. C. Tiffany and Associated Artists, designing interiors for America's rich and elite, all the while trying to bring his vision of beauty within their reach. He is greatest remembered by his contributions to the industry of colored glass and the development of Tiffany Studios. Inspired by the colors in the stained glass windows of the twelfth and thirteenth century and by the lack of …

Unraveling An Ancient Peruvian Tapestry Sampler: A Study Of Weaver Education In The Ica Valley, Peru, Elizabeth Sara Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

A tapestry from the Ica Valley of Peru (A.D. 900-1476), in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia, is the subject of this study. This thesis is an attempt to demonstrate that the tapestry is an example of a textile form known as a "sampler." Woven as a learning tool and template by an apprentice and an expert weaver within the style and reflecting the iconography of Ica art.

A three-part approach is taken to examine the Ica tapestry. First, it is necessary to prove that the piece is a sampler, woven in an apprenticeship situation, …

Florine Stettheimer: A Re-Appraisal Of The Artist In Context, Melissa (Liles) Parris

Theses and Dissertations

Florine Stettheimer was an independent painter and eminent "art hostess" among the avant-garde in New York City during the years between the World Wars. In 1916, Stettheimer rather suddenly affected a naive or unschooled style that did not fit within any academic or vanguard movement. This new style, what I have termed conscious naiveté, can be considered the genesis of Stettheimer's mature works. Contemporaneous critical appraisals after the shift in style undervalued the inventive modernity of her work and unfairly “feminized” her style.

Divine Imagination: Correlations Between The Kabbalah And The Works Of William Blake, Mikell Waters Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The intention of this thesis is to investigate correspondences which exist between the Kabbalah and the recondite world of William Blake's imagery. Particular attention will be paid to the symbiotic relationship or word and image and the dialectical approach to salvation which is common to both Blake and the Kabbalah. The attempt will be made to locate correlations between depictions or several or Blake's characters and components or the kabbalistic Tree of Life. In doing so, this writer hopes to show that Blake's familiarity with the Kabbalah was instrumental in enabling him to give form to the visionary experience upon …

A Pilgrim's Progress And Preface, Cliff Edwards

World Studies Publications

Preface and chapter one of Cliff Edward's book, Van Gogh and God.

From the preface: "My purpose in this book is to help us move in the direction that sensitive art critics have pointed out, to enter the territory that theologians have generally ignored: the creative spiritual quest of Vincent van Gogh that he expressed in both word and image. It is my conclusion, after several years of investigation, that an understanding of van Gogh from the perspective of his spiritual search is a key to the unity of the artist's life and work, casting new light on many of …

An Exhibition Of Recent Work By Robert Colescott, Susanne K. Arnold

Theses and Dissertations

My thesis project involved organizing, curating, designing and mounting a temporary traveling exhibition of recent work by Robert Colescott, a nationally-known black American artist. The Eye of the Beholder: Recent Work by Robert Colescott was installed at the Marsh Gallery of the University of Richmond September 7-28, 1988. It included 12 large-scale acrylic paintings on canvas and four framed drawings completed since 1981. Colescott's figurative paintings are known for their satirical commentary on society in America and on the history of Western art.