History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Apotheosis Of The Public Realm: Civic Classicism In New York City's Architecture, Paul Andrija Ranogajec

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the years around the consolidation of Greater New York in 1898, a renewed interest in republican political theory among progressive liberals coincided with a new kind of civic architecture. For the first time in American history, cities and the urban public emerged as crucial parts of democratic citizenship, at least for progressives such as Frank Goodnow, Frederic Howe, and Herbert Croly. At the same time, New York City was promoted as the nation's cultural and commercial capital: the "American metropolis," in Croly's words. Architects, too, played a key role in articulating the city's and the urban public's new status …

Yayoi Kusama: Biography And Cultural Confrontation, 1945–1969, Midori Yamamura

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Yayoi Kusama (b.1929) was among the first Japanese artists to rise to international prominence after World War II. She emerged when wartime modern nation-state formations and national identity in the former Axis Alliance countries quickly lost ground to U.S.-led Allied control, enforcing a U.S.-centered model of democracy and capitalism. As a result, the art world became increasingly internationalized. This interdisciplinary study is the first attempt to comparatively examine postwar artistic developments in Japan, the United States, and Europe, through a focus on Kusama. I consider Kusama not so much in terms that seek to aggrandize the uniqueness of the individual, …

The Museum Of Modern Art's "What Is Modern?" Series, 1938-1969, Jennifer Tobias

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1938 and 1969, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) poses the question of What Is Modern? (WIM) in a series of books, traveling exhibitions, and a symposium. This dissertation argues for the WIM project as a sustained if minimally effective effort to influence popular American perceptions of modern art, architecture, and design, at the same time embodying tensions inherent to the museum and its notions of that modernism.

MoMA is an unquestionable influence on modern art history. WIM is a significant component of this influence, yet scholarship on the series is minimal. Hiding in plain sight, the series offers …

Modern Time: Photography And Temporality, Kris Belden-Adams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the fluid relationship of photography to time. Many theorists have noted that photography has a distinctive manner of representing temporality. Roland Barthes, for example, wrote that the photograph has a peculiar capacity to represent the past in the present, and thus to imply the passing of time in general. As a consequence, Barthes argued, all photographs speak of the inevitability of our own death in the future. Moreover, he linked photography's peculiar temporality to its capacity for a certain kind of realism: "false on the level of perception, true on the level of time." Barthes's analysis poses …

Colombian Artists In Paris, 1865-1905, Maya Jiménez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation brings together a group of artists not previously studied collectively, within the broader context of both Colombian and Latin American artists in Paris. Taking into account their conditions of travel, as well as the precarious political and economic situation of Colombia at the turn of the twentieth century, this investigation exposes the ways in which government, politics and religion influenced the stylistic and thematic choices made by these artists abroad. For those who were pensioned artists and who were restricted by a defined political agenda, their artistic experimentation was limited, while the more radical artists were typically wealthy …

The Church And Convento Of Santo Domingo Yanhuitlan, Oaxaca: Art, Politics, And Religion In A Mixtec Village, Sixteenth Through Eighteenth Centuries, Alessia Frassani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The mission-building campaign undertaken in the Americas in the years following the Spanish conquest (1521-1546) is the largest and most ambitious evangelical and artistic enterprise in the history of the Catholic Church. In the span of just a few decades, Spanish mendicant friars, at the head of the missionary efforts, established hundreds of conventos (missions) in both colonial cities and provinces. These institutions did not merely accommodate friars. Planned to carry out doctrinal, educational, and liturgical activities, they soon became booming economic and cultural centers.

This dissertation focuses on the convento in the Mixtec town of Yanhuitlan in Oaxaca, southwestern …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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. …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Gertrude Kasebier: Her Photographic Career, 1894-1929, Barbara L. Michaels

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The photographer Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) is best known for her affiliation with Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession. However, as this study shows, she also conducted a successful career as a studio portraitist in New York, and contributed to popular illustrated magazines.

Chapters are devoted to Mrs. Kasebier's professional development, including her education at Pratt Institute, her successes in photographic publications and exhibitions, and her friendships with such photographers and artists as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, F. Holland Day, Baron Adolf de Meyer, Robert Demachy, Frances Benjamin Johnston, and Auguste Rodin. Her portraits of Rodin and his studio are analyzed.

Her …

Universal Expositions Of The Second Empire: A Study In Art And Politics (Volumes I And Ii), Patricia Mainardi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the Second Empire (1852-1870), the world of art changed rapidly from one that had preserved many aspects of centuries old tradition, to one that developed most of the attitudes and institutions of our modern era. Universal Expositions, combining art and politics, acted as catalysts for many of these changes. This study attempts to assess the significance of these first international exhibitions of contemporary art, presented in the context of Industry and Commerce. It treats in depth the painting of France, England, Belgium, and Germany, and the fate of history, genre, and landscape painting during this period. It also examines …