History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Intimate Distance: Negotiating The Urban/Suburban Divide, Whitney L. Sage

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

As a native of Farmington Hills, a suburb thirty minutes outside of Detroit, I have always had a peculiar relationship with the city. As a child I visited Detroit often for family outings to the DIA and Tiger Stadium. Hours later we would be driving on I-96 returning west. All of my early memories of Detroit are happy and warm, however they are seen through the rose-colored glass of wide cultural and geographic separation from the city. In this way, my artwork, which discusses Detroit’s past and present through literal representation, radiates nostalgia and expresses both a sense of intimacy …

The Prosthetic Aesthetic: An Art Of Anxious Extensions, Tiffany Funk

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

The difficulty in ascertaining how the “prosthetic” functions across disciplines derives from the sometimes parallel, and often antithetical definitions given for what it constitutes. Many art historians use the prosthetic to illustrate psychoanalytical methodologies, largely ignoring physical technological devices, cybernetic body augmentation and its social effects – subjects expounded upon by many influential media and cybernetic theorists such as Norbert Wiener, Marshall McLuhan, Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles. Prosthetics are not merely psychic trauma nor virtual signifier, but material artifacts marking autonomy, ability and disability, amputation and extension. A re-evaluation of prosthetics in contemporary aesthetics brings us closer to …

How To Produce Articulate Artists, Peter J. Barr Phd, Christine Reising

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

This twenty-minute Powerpoint presentation will describe the team-taught, year-long Foundations Core Concepts Program at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. It has been in place since 2006 and has successfully integrated a course previously called "Language of Art" (taught by an art historian) with hands-on studio assignments previously taught in a stand-alone design course (taught by a studio professor). We have found that this hybrid approach is extremely effective in developing sensitive and articulate art majors who are prepared to integrate design concepts into all of their artworks and to analyze and describe eloquently both personal and historical works of …

Snapshots, Clichés And Simulacra, Millee Tibbs

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

In his essay “Photography,” Kracauer critiques the abundance of photographic images in illustrated newspapers stating, “The blizzard of photographs betrays an indifference toward what the things mean.”[i] Current digital imaging technologies have turned this blizzard into a complete whiteout. Never before have people had such access to image-making technologies and the ease with which the images are now disseminated. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the snapshot has evolved little and remains a visual cliché - a banal vessel of personal sentimentality.

In this paper I will discuss the use and fetishization of snapshot images in both my …

Babette's Feast And The Goodness Of God, Thomas J. Curry

Journal of Religion & Film

This article attempts to answer the preeminent question Babette’s Feast invites viewers to consider: Why does Babette choose to expend everything she has to make her feast? Of the critical studies made of the film, few have considered analytically crucial the catastrophic backstory of Babette, the violence of which is implied and offscreen. Appreciation of the singularity of Babette’s own personhood and the darker aspects of her experience, and not only how she might act as a figure of Christ, are key to understanding the motivating force behind her meal and its transformative effect: That through the feast Babette lays …

The Transformation Of The Pope: The Agony And The Ecstasy (1965) And The Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Jennifer Mara Desilva

Journal of Religion & Film

In 1965 the film The Agony and The Ecstasy (dir. Carol Reed) presented Renaissance artistic culture, Catholic iconography, and the papal court in Rome to a popular, broad, and non-denominational audience. Based on the novel by Irving Stone (1961), the narrative follows Michelangelo and Pope Julius II through the decoration of the Sistine chapel ceiling (1508-12), outlining a relationship between the two protagonists that suggests some spiritual equality. In the same way that the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) strove for spiritual renewal and an emphasis on the wonder of humankind’s relationship with God, The Agony and The Ecstasy portrays the …

Philosophische Figuren, Frauen Und Liebe: Zu Nietzsche Und Lou, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

A Sketch Of The Affective Classroom: Abject Art, Patrick Kinsman

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Abject art is highly affective, meaning that it generates strong sensations and feelings in viewers. In a classroom, high affect art demands that these reactions be integrated into the relationships between instructor, students and artwork. The affective classroom is then a classroom which summons high affects and walks a careful line between non-dialogic "shock" and a group therapy session, in order to understand affective relationships as proper material for learning. Affect is interactive and communicative by definition, but is unpredictable and uneven. Using my 2012 seminar in Abject Art, I outline the development and experience of teaching a semester of …

Show Me The Semiosis: Grounding Post Structural Theory In Physiological Experience, Michael T. Arrigo

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

Most of my art students experience a very down to earth epistemological relationship to the world. There is what there is. Middle America is a land of dualisms: matter and spirit, mind and body, good and evil. In this uncluttered black and white world, post-structural theory seemingly has little to offer but a range of unnecessary and unattractive grays. This presentation describes how I overcome my students’ resistance to intellectualizing perception and art making. I use a physiological perspective that grounds students’ investigation of art and meaning in an investigation of themselves, their bodies, their perceptual responses, emotional reactions and …

The Interdependence Of Gedi Ruins And The Giriama: A Study Of Ancestral Spirits, Jinn, And The Impact Of Islam, Tucker Deady

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Archaeological site, Gedi Ruins, is well known on the Coastal Province of Kenya as a place of great mystery. It is sacred to many for reasons of spirituality and appeals to both Swahili and Mijikenda, a group of nine tribes living on the coast, as a place of prayer. The Giriama make up one of these nine tribes and, as they have a large community surrounding the site of Gedi Ruins, are the focus of this study. The Mijikenda have a deep connection with their ancestral spirits as well as jinn. While their traditions run deep, there have, however, been …

The Gods Come For Play: Visualizing The Divine In Balinese Theatre, Chandler Payne, John Park

Featured Research

Playwrights, practitioners, and art historians have been shocked and inspired by Balinese theatre time and time again because it reveals the extent of devotion the Balinese have for their religion. Although many researchers have investigated the functionality through the performance aspect of the play, there is a lack of published research devoted how the functionality of the ritual and play are influenced by the physical aesthetic properties of the Barong and Rangda mask. The theatrical aspects are to be considered through investigating these masks in relation to the temple space of the Taman Aran. By investigating the aesthetic properties of …

Mapping Shikoku: Picturing Buddhist Pilgrimage In Contemporary Japan, Anna Maria Ortiz, Chloe Walton, Cody Mcmanus

Featured Research

In this research, we will address this question: Do the modern methods of practicing the Shikoku Pilgrimage stay true to the ancient intent of the pilgrimage? People who embark on the journey to each of the 88 Shikoku temple sites do so to escape to another world of peace and tranquility that they cannot obtain in their regular daily lives. Unfortunately, there is a large gap in scholarship on the topic of the Shikoku Buddhist Pilgrimage: little is written about how the shift from ancient to modern practices of the pilgrimage has changed pilgrims’ experiences. Little is known by Westerners …

Haniwa: Constructing A Sacred Place For The Afterlife, Ashlyn Rawls, Clarissa Aliberti, Rylee Baisden

Featured Research

Haniwa are small, hollow terracotta statues that were placed on aristocratic graves during the Kofun period of Japan, which translates as “old tomb.” These unique figures were rather simple at the beginning of their creation, but over time they became increasingly complex taking the forms of people, animals, and other objects. These fascinating funerary objects serve a greater purpose than just ordinary tomb decorations. The haniwa tie into the Confucianist tradition of being made to be used and to protect the spirits of the dead. Influenced by Confucian tradition, in which “filial piety” is recognized as a high level of …

Ganesha: A Study Of Personal Worship To A Personal God, Madeline Taylor, Katherine Garner, Naomi Purnell

Featured Research

Hindu devotees worship Ganesha when they are beginning a new phase or faces obstacles in their lives. In investigating the personal devotion of Hindu gods in India, we have found that there is a difference between the ways a Hindu worships the god Ganesha at a public shrine than in their own home. The main difference in worship style is that in the home, the worshiper acts as his or her own priest. There is room for greater interpretation in worship style and offerings made to the deity. Since our topic is personal devotion, we were drawn to the private …

Jayavarmin Vii: Achieving Kingship, Ross Seeman, Mckay Whitacre, David Oppenheim

Featured Research

Jayavarmin VII (r. 1181-1218) exemplifies the nature of achieving divine kingship through his life achievements modeled after the life of Buddha. He was viewed by many as a divine-like figure, through his acts of philanthropy and good deeds for the city. Through this philosophy, Jayavarmin VII facilitated the construction of hospitals, several roads and rest houses. The height of Jayavarmin’s reign was during the construction of the Bayon Temple. By this time, Jayavarmin VII believed he had completed his journey to kingship. This is shown through the massive faces carved in the temple representing either Jayavarmin or Buddha himself. From …

Torii And Water: A Gateway To Shinto, Hannah Imson, Amy Kahng, Victoria Lekson

Featured Research

Water symbolizes purity in the Shinto religion and thus holds utmost importance as a method of religious purification. Additionally, scholars and worshippers recognize the role of torii as gateways to the kami, or deities of nature. However, there has not been a documented survey of the relationship between torii and their placement in water, a relationship we feel is significant in understanding Shintoism. We intend to bridge this gap in scholarship by displaying the prevalence of torii placed in or right next to water. We will explore torii from various parts of the world as well as different time periods …

From Genre To Portrait: The Etymology Of The 'Conversation Piece', Ching-Jung Chen

Publications and Research

During the late 1720s and early 1730s, a new type of portrait painting, called the conversation piece, became fashionable in England. This article will trace the origin and evolution of the term "conversation piece" from its earliest appearance in the English language to the present. First used in English for genre pictures in the Dutch tradition as well as Watteau's fetes galantes, the term was adopted for small-scale group portraits around 1730 when this type of portraiture became popular. Long after the rise of the portrait conversation, the term continued to be used for genre pictures. The use of …

Bent Out Of Shape Embodied Knowledge In The Art Of Copper Repoussé, Tierney Brown

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Over the course of a 1,300 year history the Newar art of moulding copper into fine architectural ornaments and full bodied sacred figures has been passed through family lineages and working apprenticeships. Presently the copper repoussé technique has continued to elude a regulated school format instead favoring individual apprenticeships in the workshops and homes of more experienced artists. In a two week short-apprenticeship and study in Sajan Raj Shakya's workshop in Mangchal Tole, Patan I was instructed in the basics of creating copper forms through repoussé and chasing. This experience is documented both in terms of the delineated process for …

50 | The Azor Cemetery Moshe Dothan’S Excavations, 1958 And 1960, David Ben-Shlomo

IAA Reports—Monograph Series of the Israel Antiquities Authority

This volume publishes the results of excavations undertaken in 1958 and 1960 by the Dept. of Antiquities and Museums of the State of Israel. It describes the graves and the finds, in particular the Iron Age pottery, as well as scarabs, seals, glass finds, coins and other small finds, accompanied by a discussion of burial customs at Azor during Iron Age IB–IIA.

Dreaming In Analog: The Marriage Of Vintage Photographic Process And The Contemporary World., Lynn M. Lee

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

"Dreaming in Analog: the marriage of vintage photographic process and the contemporary world" discusses a choice in the photographic arts. That choice is, by many contemporary artists, to take a step back. Slow down. Revisit analog photography as it was originally used. However, because of the fast-paced world in which we live, even these slow, lovely processes are able to be created, completed and shared globally via digital technology and the Internet.

Female Flesh And Medieval Practice In The Later Middle Ages, Megan E. Marzec

Mid-America College Art Association Conference 2012 Digital Publications

My work explores the importance and presence of the female body in medieval religious practice as exemplified in medieval art, religious texts and hagiographies. My research shows that while the reasoning behind female imagery and imagery of the nude is disputed, the prevalence of mandorla-like images, images of the female nude, and images displaying the femininity of Christ suggest the meaningfulness to the medieval viewer. I discuss extensively Julia Kristeva’s writing on the woman as abject and the artistic experience as an element of religiosity. For this research I analyzed works by various artists including Robert Campin, Jan Gossaert and …

Willem Blaeu's 'Asia Noviter Delineata': Expressions Of Power Through Naval Might And Natural Knowledge In Dutch Mapmaking, Joshua W. Poorman

Student Publications

This paper situates Dutch mapmaker Willem Blaeu’s Asia noviter delineata—part of the Stuckenberg Map Collection in the Gettysburg College Special Collections—within the larger framework of Renaissance thought and a shifting colonial balance of power. The map’s pictorial marginalia expresses a Dutch quest for empirical knowledge that echoed contemporary cabinets of curiosities throughout early modern Europe. Similar to these cabinets, Blaeu’s map can be seen as a cartographic teatro mundi, used to propagate Dutch hegemony through both a robust naval presence and an expanding geographic and natural knowledge of the world.

The Iconographic Owl Through The Eyes Of American Artists: From Native Americans To Joseph Cornell, Elizabeth Mcarthur

All Student Theses and Dissertations

The owl has been a symbol for the Americas, as well as the rest of the world since people could write. It is a symbol with many meanings to Native Americans, from guardian to an omen of approaching death; the owl’s presence could be both a blessing and a curse. As western society spread American artists used the owl as a symbol in folk and fine art. Artists like John James Audubon and Alexander Wilson depicted owls in their work to create a visual awareness and to promote the advancement of scientific understanding. During the twentieth century, Joseph Cornell and …

Intention And Interpretation In Hans Namuth's Film, Jackson Pollock, Michael Schreyach

Art and Art History Faculty Research

Because many of Jackson Pollock's most familiar statements are multiply authored, they seem to challenge basic assumptions regarding the transparency of intention to meaning that they are often presumed to enunciate. The fact that Pollock's public declarations about his work are collages, juxtaposing different voices and points of view with his own, complicates our assessment of their validity as univocal expressions of his intentions. In his film Jackson Pollock, Namuth utilizes those statements, many of which concern aspects of Pollock's technical procedure, as part of his strategy to ground the meaning of Pollock's paintings in the processby which …

Classic French Modern, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

This conference paper presented at Art Without History symposium sponsored by the Oskar Reinhart Collection, September 2012, explores the development of modern house museums devoted to collections of 'classic French modern,' works primarily by the Post-Impressionist artists Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, and van Gogh. These museums largely reflect the collecting activities of an international group of collectors that includes the Clark brothers, Duncan Phillips, Chester Dale, and Albert Barnes among the Americans, Samuel Courtauld in Britain, and the Swiss collectors Emil Bührle and Oscar Reinhart. The collections offer an alternative view of Post-Impressionism, one leading not toward the 20th-century avant-gardes, …

Bias In A Just World? Sexual Prejudice, Gender Self-Esteem, And Intimate Partner Violence, Crystal D. Mahoy

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Each year, approximately 835,000 men and 1.3 million women are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV; American Bar Association, n.d). Although the prevalence of same-sex intimate partner violence (IPV) is approximately the same as IPV in heterosexual couples (Alexander, 2002), fewer studies have examined perceptions of IPV in same-sex couples or of IPV perpetrated against heterosexual men compared to heterosexual women. In the current study, Just World Theory (Lerner & Miller, 1978) is used as a framework for understanding factors associated with perceptions of heterosexual and same-sex IPV, including sexual prejudice and gender self-esteem. Perceptions of IPV were examined in …

Caravaggio And The Head Of Goliath, Veronica Polinedrio

Kaleidoscope

No abstract provided.

Remembering Rms Titanic A Century Later, Margaret (Peg) A. Van_Patten Ms.

Wrack Lines

A century after the historic ship sank in the Atlantic Ocean with massive loss of life, the memory still looms large in our imaginations. Marshall Drew, a local artist, was one of the survivors and is remembered by the author. The new Titanic exhibit at Mystic Aquarium offers a way to learn about undersea exploration technology. See this undersea museum as explorer Bob Ballard and the crew first did when they found the remains, and learn about the event, the culture of the time, and the people.

Rhyme Or Reason:That Is The Question?, Jim Roche

Articles

Noting that “the aesthetic should not be limited merely to the way things look” the organisers of this conference sought “in part to address the discursive limitation in architecture and related subjects by broadening the aesthetic discourse beyond questions relating to purely visual phenomena in order to include those derived from all facets of human experience”.

So where does etchics come in? Well, the introductory brochure noted that most philosophical trained aestheticians will say that “the aesthetic is everything” hinting perhaps of the necessity for a more haptic experience of architecture. It also drew on Wittgenstein’s quote that “ethics and …

The Lismullin Enclosure: Design Beyond The Obvious In The Iron Age, Frank Prendergast

Book/Book Chapter

No abstract provided.