History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

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, …

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, …

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 …

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 …

On The Fringe Of Italian Fascism: An Examination Of The Relationship Between Vinicio Paladini And The Soviet Avant-Garde, Christina Brungardt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vinicio Paladini's career as an artist, architect, and cultural critic illuminates the paradoxes of the Italian avant-garde between the World Wars. He emerged as an early proponent of communist-Futurism in 1922 and attempted to integrate futurist techniques with the Marxist theories of Antonio Gramsci. In addition, Paladini provided a direct point of contact between the Russian and Italian avant-garde, traveling to Moscow and reporting to the Italian public on Soviet artists' developments in film, photomontage, and architecture. Yet he struggled to merge his leftist ideology with his artistic practice as Fascism spread throughout Italy. Although he has been largely neglected …

Mobilizing The Collective: Helhesten And The Danish Avant-Garde, 1934-1946, Kerry Greaves

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the avant-garde Danish artists' collective Helhesten (The Hell-Horse), which was active from 1941 to 1944 in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen and undertook cultural resistance during the war. The main claim of this study is that Helhesten was an original and fully established avant-garde before the artists formed the more internationally focused Cobra group, and that the collective's development of sophisticated socio-political engagement and new kinds of countercultural strategies prefigured those of postwar art groups such as Fluxus and the Situationist International. The group and its eponymous journal involved the Danish modernists Asger Jorn, Ejler Bille, Henry Heerup, Egill Jacobsen, …

Native American Chic: The Marketing Of Native Americans In New York Between The World Wars, Emily Schuchardt Navratil

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on four key figures - Morris de Camp Crawford, John Sloan, Amelia Elizabeth White, and René d'Harnoncourt - this dissertation analyzes museum and gallery exhibitions of Native American art mounted in the United States, particularly New York City, during the interwar period, and documents the immediate and lasting impact these shows and their promotion had on the emergence of "Indian Chic" in women's fashion and interior design.

In the late 1910s, Crawford, a research editor for Women's Wear and honorary research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, mounted a campaign encouraging Euro-American designers to seek inspiration in …

Changing Identities In A Changing Land: The Romanization Of The British Landscape, Thomas Ryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will examine the changes in the landscape of Britain resulting from the Roman invasion in 43 CE and their effect on the identities of the native Britons. Romanization, as the process is commonly called, and evidence of these altered identities as seen in material culture have been well studied. However, the manifestations of this process in the landscape have been less well examined. Applying current theories in landscape archaeology, the Selsey peninsula oppidum of the Atrebates and two hillforts of the Durotriges, sites that have been well excavated and examined, will be the focus of this thesis. The …

St. Nicholas Magazine: A Portable Art Museum, Mary Frances Zawadzki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In November 1873, St. Nicholas Magazine: Scribner's Illustrated Magazine for Girls and Boys made its publishing debut. While it was intended to be a literary magazine, visual imagery was an important component of the monthly. Illustrations and reproductions of fine art and architecture from Antiquity, the Old Masters, and contemporary academic artists illustrated fictional serials, accompanied art historical information, and stood alone as art work for the reader to visually consider. Innovative page layouts took their inspiration from the aesthetic theories and art styles popular among those associated with the American genteel tradition. By choosing certain styles for illustration and …

Dynamics And Divisions At The Salons Of The Rose-Croix: Statistics, Aesthetic Theories, Practices, And Subjects, Mary Slavkin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A variety of alternative Salons arose in France following the demise of the official Salon. Within this phrenetic climate for alternative exhibition venue creation, Joséphin Péladan founded the Salons of the Rose + Croix (1892-1897). He framed the Salons as ideologically unified exhibitions at which idealized works focusing on spirituality, tradition, and beauty would engender social reform by encouraging a decadent society to focus on timeless poetic and mystical ideas. Nevertheless, in practice the Rose + Croix functioned mainly as an exhibition venue for artists whose work only loosely responded to the established platform. The exhibited works reveal some overlap …

Changing Identities In A Changing Land: The Romanization Of The British Landscape, Thomas Ryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will examine the changes in the landscape of Britain resulting from the Roman invasion in 43 CE and their effect on the identities of the native Britons. Romanization, as the process is commonly called, and evidence of these altered identities as seen in material culture have been well studied. However, the manifestations of this process in the landscape have been less well examined. Applying current theories in landscape archaeology, the Selsey peninsula oppidum of the Atrebates and two hillforts of the Durotriges, sites that have been well excavated and examined, will be the focus of this thesis. The …

Standard Deviations: Reality, Reproducibility, And Politics In Performance Art Since 1989, Jonah Westerman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Performance art is conventionally seen as having a privileged relation to reality because of the way it insists on the immediate experiences of specific human bodies, the full depth of which can never be adequately reproduced or captured. This understanding of performance as accessing authenticity through ephemerality has long made it a stage for artistic and political subversion. Since the early 1990s, however, a group of European artists responding to processes of globalization that have changed the nature of political economy--the demise of the Soviet Union, NAFTA, and new regulations concerning trade and travel in the E.U.--have developed performance strategies …

Disseminating Devotion: The Image And Cult Of The Black Christ In Colonial Mexico And Central America, Elena Fitzpatrick Sifford

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Following the conquest of Mexico in 1521, Spanish conquerors and friars considered it their duty to bring Christianity to the New World. Even before the task of conversion began, they introduced Christian images, like the cross, to the native peoples they first encountered. Eventually, local artists began to create the sacred objects.

This study is the first in-depth, art historical inquiry into the significance of the most prominent Black Christ crucifix images and cults in various regions of Mexico and Central America from the sixteenth to early nineteenth century. It traces the origin and history of the Black Christ, often …

A Feminist Inheritance? Questions Of Subjectivity And Ambivalence In Paul Mccarthy, Mike Kelley And Robert Gober, Marisa White-Hartman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Feminist art of the 1970s was groundbreaking in many regards and importantly impacted specific projects by three male artists: Paul McCarthy's performance Sailor's Meat (1975), Mike Kelley's installation Half a Man (1989) and Robert Gober's 1989 installation at the Paula Cooper Gallery. Despite the general absence of feminist artists as possible influences in the critical literature on these artists, feminist sources have been hidden in plain sight in regards to these works. These artists all take up the problematic of identity formation within the domestic sphere, which was made a legitimate area of inquiry in art by numerous feminist artists …

The Art Of The Commonplace: Found Sounds In Compositional Practice, Jennifer Stock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation contains a historical analysis of the emergence of found sounds or everyday noises as a compositional strategy in Western art music through the first half of the 20th century. Pioneering works are examined to determine the motives and aesthetic goals that first led composers to bring noise to the musical surface, including the avant-garde collaboration Parade, Futurist noise experiments, and Pierre Schaeffer's early work with musique concrète. These early works are used to create two analytical spectra with which to analyze contemporary pieces that incorporate founds sounds with instrumental music: one spectrum that considers the level of integration …

Infrastructure, Production, And Archive: American And Japanese Video Art Production Of 1960s And 1970s, Ann Atsuko Adachi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing a study on the infrastructure of artistic production and maintenance opens a space in which to examine the relationship between artistic inspiration and knowledge making, the occurrences and the writing of its history. In the case of the comparative study of the emergence of Japanese and American video art, common artistic technique employed may indicate motivations derived from the technical possibility of the video medium, while the study of infrastructure demonstrates how large-scale funding, formation of archives, the establishment of systems of distribution and channels of education affect the emergence and development of video art as a genre. This …

Roma In Lima: Italian Renaissance Influence In Colonial Peruvian Painting, Christa Irwin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The full extent of the long-lasting presence of the Italian Renaissance in colonial Lima has never been explored. This dissertation asserts that the Italian impact on painting in colonial Lima was connected to the authority of Rome, the center of the Catholic Church, and the artistic prestige of Italy in the culture of the sixteenth century. The Italian influence will be made evident through a survey of the careers of three Italian painters, Bernardo Bitti (1548-1610), Mateo Pérez de Alesio (1547-1616), and Angelino Medoro (1567-1631), who traveled to Lima in the end of the sixteenth century and went on to …

If You See Something, Say Something: A Look At Experimental Writing On Art, Charlotte Lucy Latham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Signs all over New York City state, "If you see something, say something," but museum studies repeatedly find viewers do not attend to pictures, just as eye witness testimony is invariably skewed. Ways of seeing have been limited to known ways of discussing. Alternative approaches offer new insights. The first section, "Experiments in Art Writing," examines two texts: T.J. Clark's The Sight of Death, a journal of his daily visits looking at two Poussin paintings, for which he maintains the ambiguity of exploration and argues to keep visual images from their dissolution into political symbols; and, Charles Simic's Dime Store …

Saudi Aramco And The Politics Of Cultural Heritage, Anahid Hanounik Huth

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Culture Heritage in recent decades has become a catch word within world discourse. It is increasingly receiving generous attention in both money and time form private and public sectors on preservation policy. The application of so-called preservation and restoration projects, the alleged care for Cultural Heritage, has become a motive and battle cry of UNESCO, World Bank, private companies, banks, NGOs, European Council, and Western governments' foreign policy. This leads us to ask what is behind this increasing attention, and whether we should see it as Christina Luke 2013 suggested in her article--is Heritage increasingly being seen as a soft …

Households, Landscapes, And Post-Collapse Continuity In Postclassic Jalieza, Valley Of Oaxaca, Mexico, Elise Marie Maragliano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through the lens of household and landscape archaeology, this dissertation examines an Early Postclassic archaeological site located in Jalieza in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. The analysis reviews data collected during an intensive archaeological field survey consisting of mapping and systematic surface collection. The site of Postclassic Jalieza is compared with other Postclassic sites in the Valley, as well as with the Early Classic and Late Classic settlements at Jalieza. The Postclassic component at Jalieza is a single time-period occupation restricted to the Early Postclassic, thus presenting a rare glimpse into this turbulent and little understood episode in the history …

Manuel De La Cruz Gonzalez: Transnationalism And The Development Of Modern Art In Costa Rica, Lauran Bonilla-Merchav

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While scholars are increasingly scrutinizing twentieth-century Latin American art and inserting it into the canon of modern art history, studies of the region usually leap from Mexico to South America, skipping Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. This is not due to a lack of dedicated artistic effort in the isthmus, but rather to poor cultural infrastructure, which made being a modern artist in the region particularly challenging, and the underdeveloped state of local art histories, which have yet to traverse national borders. This oversight of Central American art makes it difficult to grasp the full …

The Role Of Water In The Rise, Prominence, And Decline Of Nabataean Petra, Dennis Cummins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper evaluates the rise of Nabataean Petra, its prominence, and eventual decline. The predominant context is effective water management as a pivotal driving factor in the growth of the Nabataean kingdom, which fostered an environment in which its famous incense trade could develop. Rising incense demand was the catalyst for growth from the first century BC through the first century AD; in AD 106 when Rome annexed the Nabataean kingdom, Petra began its gradual decline. In AD 363 an earthquake destroyed much of the city, and Petra did not return to its earlier prominence. From the outset, water played …

From Berlin To Broadacres: Central European Influence On American Visionary Urbanism, 1910-1935, Margaret Herman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 1920s and 1930s, Eliel Saarinen, Richard Neutra, and Frank Lloyd Wright each designed plans for real and imagined American cities. Saarinen's Chicago and Detroit plans of 1923-1924, Neutra's Rush City Reformed of 1926, and Wright's Broadacre City of 1935 are stylistically unique but all contain a similar fascination with hypothetical transportation networks and high-speed expansion that reflect a common relationship to the development of urban planning as a discrete field in Berlin and Vienna around 1910.

This dissertation will highlight several features of turn-of-the-century Central European planning that played an outsize role in the development of these visionary …

Paris And Havana: A Century Of Mutual Influence, Laila Pedro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation employs an interdisciplinary approach to trace the history of exchange and influence between Cuban, French, and Francophone Caribbean artists in the twentieth century. I argue, first, that there is a unique and largely unexplored tradition of dialogue, collaboration, and mutual admiration between Cuban, French and Francophone artists; second, that a recurring and essential theme in these artworks is the representation of the human body; and third, that this relationship ought not to be understood within the confines of a single genre, but must be read as a series of dialogues that are both ekphrastic (that is, they rely …

Flapper Fashion In The Context Of Cultural Changes Of America In The 1920s, Soo Hyun Park

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study aimed to analyze the key characteristics of flapper fashion, which shaped the American fashion scene in the 1920s, and to review how this trend reflected the society at that time, which was changing fast in terms of the society, economy, and culture. Towards this end, comprehensive scanning of flapper-related images found in a variety of media at the time was done, and it was revealed that flapper fashion indeed reflected the prominent changes in women's role in the society in compliance with the early-20th-century modernity, which was a far cry from the traditions, while at the same time …

Maniera Devota/Mano Donnesca: Women, Virtue And Visual Imagery During The Counter-Reformation In The Papal States, 1575-1675, Patricia Rocco

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The history of women's participation in religious movements during the Early Modern period in Europe has long been less commented upon in modern scholarship than that of their male counterparts. This project will enlarge our understanding of the participation of women in the visual program of the Counter-Reformation in the Papal State of Bologna. The study focuses on Bologna since the city had an unprecedented large group of active women artists as well as being a crucial site of Catholic reform. Knowledge of Bologna's women is still incomplete; therefore this dissertation is structured as a series of interlinked case studies, …

Collective Memory, Women's Identity And The Church, Jo Ana Elise Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Christianity, Judaism and Islam share a deliberative subjugation of women through ideologies, hierarchical structures and performative practices that effectively relegate women to an inferior position. The Christian tradition has one of the longest-standing and most consistent iconographies with regard to the characterization and status of women in society. The Christian church is prototypical of a religious institution iterating an ideology of women's inferiority through various mechanisms that lodge and preserve it in societal collective memory. This study examines three mechanisms used by the Church to preserve collective memory about women's inferior status in society: doctrine, liturgical practices and visual images …

Italians And The New Byzantium: Lombard And Venetian Architects In Muscovy, 1472-1539, Ellen A. Hurst

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how early modern Russian identity was shaped by the built environment and, likewise, how the built environment was a result of an emerging Russian identity. I focus on the years 1472 to 1539 because they were crucial to the formation of this early modern Russian identity. Muscovite princes, seeking to rebuild Moscow's cityscape in a grander style, imported a large community of architects, engineers, stonemasons, and statesmen from Lombardy, the Veneto, and Rome. At least six architects, and an unknown number of masons, from Italy worked in Muscovy during these years, and their presence indelibly changed the …