History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

Diane Arbus: Documenting The Abnormal, Lyla Cornman

Art History Senior Papers

The late Diane Arbus once said, “Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that’s what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw…there’s a point between what you want people to know about you and what you can’t help people knowing about you.”[1] Arbus was aware that no one is exempt from others’ gaze, including herself, a theme repeated throughout her work. In this essay, I will be examining the work of Diane Arbus that showed intimate …

Maile Andrade: Contemporary Oceania, Grace Turner

Global Contemporary Artist Analysis Archive

No abstract provided.

Cuban Art After The Revolution: 1960s-1970s, Elvis Fuentes

Open Educational Resources

This presentation features Cuban art after the Communist Revolution of 1959. It includes the rise of documentary photography and poster design as state-sponsored propaganda art, as well as changes in the visual arts from abstraction to figuration. It includes a brief chronology of Cuban art in the 20th century.

Art Brut, Grotesque, Nouveau Realisme, Elvis Fuentes

Open Educational Resources

An overview of the most salient artistic movements in Postwar Europe: Art Brut, L'Informel, Grotesque, Nouveau Realisme

Introductory Art History Essay Assignments, Vanessa Troiano

Open Educational Resources

Midterm and final essay assignments with a model essay for an undergraduate survey course of Art History from prehistory to contemporary art.

Arth 100: Introductory Survey Of Art, Vanessa Troiano

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for an introductory undergraduate Art History course, surveying the discipline from pre-historic to contemporary art.

As Above, So Below: Italian Amuletic Practices Following The Black Death, Danielle Pigeon

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the production of amuletic rings in the Italian peninsula following the arrival of Yersinia pestis during the mid-fourteenth century. By examining patterns of ornamentation on a selection of Italian rings, I establish connections to the trauma experienced by individuals left in the wake of the plague and argue that these objects offered a sacralized model of protective adornment to counteract the threat of a fatal and seemingly unstoppable illness. Italian amuletic rings can thereby be read as a material response to the anxieties of mass death and bodily horrors that accompanied outbreaks of the Black Death.

The …

Arth 100: Introductory Survey Of Art: Discussion Board Prompts, Vanessa Troiano

Open Educational Resources

Discussion board prompts for an online, undergraduate, Introduction to Art History course, surveying the discipline from prehistory to contemporary art.

The Last Horseman: Albrecht Dürer’S Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, Megan L. Crosby

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes Albrecht Dürer’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse through comparisons with examples from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, as well as the artist’s own numerous representations of Death. These comparisons will show the way Dürer interpreted and changed the iconography of the Four Horsemen.

Care, Collectivity, And Disabled Futurity, Madison Whitaker

Art History Theses and Dissertations

How does care manifest in contemporary art? How do artists visualize kinship? These are some of the questions guiding this thesis. In considering the depiction of care in contemporary art, there is a limited application of the concept. Understood through the scope of feminist discourse on the sexual division of labor, care becomes restrained the context of familial obligation according to the nuclear family structure, such as in the case of parental obligation. This characterization of care implies that it is a burden upon the care provider and functions to exploit labor, especially on the part of women. However, this …

Art 201: Arts And Civilization I, Cuny School Of Professional Studies

Open Educational Resources

Introduces art and the academic discipline of art history. Using the discipline’s technical vocabulary, analyzes the standard visual, material and symbolic components of art. Addresses cultural products created from the Neolithic through to the end of the Western Middle Ages. Analyzes the purpose of art. Examines painting, drawing, sculpture and architecture in historical, political and cultural context. Analyzes art's function within society. Critiques how successive movements and styles are indebted to the past and to influences from other sources. Introduces key movements, important artworks and the biographies of individual artists.

Colonialism, Cohabitation, And Charismatic Llamas: Representations Of Animals In Felipe Guaman Poma De Ayala's El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno, Laura Varela Mejia

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the role of animals, specifically llamas, in El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, a manuscript that dates to 1615-16, and was hand-written and illustrated by the Andean author Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Through the lens of animal studies, I analyze the manner in which Poma represented llamas to convey greater ideas surrounding the nature of colonial life under the Spanish empire, as well as the nostalgic remembrance of Inca practices before the conquest.

My study focuses on three of the Corónica’s drawings: “The second age of the world: Noah,” and how its reinterpretation …

David Alfaro Siqueiros And “Los Vehículos De La Pintura Dialéctico-Subversiva:” Four Principles To Create Revolutionary Artwork, Joy Zanghi

Student Publications

As one of the most distinguished Mexican muralists, David Alfaro Siqueiros played an important role in Mexican political and artistic history in the twentieth century. Despite the violence that took place in the first half of 1900s in Mexico, art flourished during this period. Inspired by the democratization that characterized the revolution, political art became common during the early twentieth century, and as Mexicans grappled with post-revolutionary identities, many artists, including Siqueiros, turned to communism as the way forward. In his speech “Los vehículos de la pintura dialéctico-subversiva,” delivered in 1932, Siqueiros delineated how to meld revolutionary ideology with the …

Carpets As Signifiers Of Historical Change: The Azerbaijani Carpet Industry From The Mid-Nineteenth To Late Twentieth Century, Jill Boggs

Senior Theses

The Azerbaijani carpet industry, long recognized as an important piece of Azerbaijan’s cultural heritage, transformed dramatically between the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries in response to political, economic, and social changes that took place under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. During this period, the carpet industry began to use modern weaving techniques and materials, favored factory production over traditional hand-woven designs, and created pieces for exportation rather than personal or community use. These developments contribute to two historical schools that view the Soviet Union as either a prison of nations, stifling non-Russian cultures, or a nursery of ethnic identities, …

Abstract Temptation: Vanessa Bell’S Artistic Journey Amidst Temptations Of Her Own, Maggie Perry

Student Research

My research paper, “Abstract Temptation: Vanessa Bell’s Artistic Journey Amidst Temptations of Her Own,” provides a study into four of her most influential and thought-provoking paintings with links to the theme of temptation and legacies. While analyzing the ethical consequences of temptations, I suggest that temptations are not always bad. They can lead to unethical, and selfish decisions that can harm our legacies; however, if we choose to fight temptation and make the best decisions ethically, the world and our legacies will benefit. The paintings I chose to analyze––Iceland Poppies, Studland Beach, Nude with Poppies, and Interior with a …

The Use Of Egyptian Blue In Funerary Paintings From Roman Egypt, Margaret Sather

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This paper explores the use of the synthesized pigment Egyptian blue in the encaustic and tempera funerary portraits of Graeco-Roman ruled Egypt in the 1st-3rd centuries CE. Recent developments in non-destructive imaging analysis technology have aided research institutions and museums in detecting the presence of this pigment. New questions have arisen based on these findings of Egyptian blue in the depiction of flesh and hair of these subjects, particularly because blue is so rarely used as a standalone pigment in works of this category. These analyses have challenged assumptions that Egyptian blue was a rare and valuable pigment during the …

Sea-Level Rise And Settlement At Ta’Ab Nuk Na, Belize: Analyses Of Marine Sediment From The I-Line, 4m Transect, Conner B. Flynt

LSU Master's Theses

The ancient Maya of Mesoamerica created a culture with writing, religion, and vast trade networks. These trade networks are evident on the southern coast of Belize, where archaeologists have found sites dedicated to salt making. One of these sites, Ta’ab Nuk Na, was the subject of this thesis. Sediment and charcoal samples were collected from this site by the Underwater Maya Research Group led by Heather McKillop and E. Cory Sills. For my thesis research, I subjected these samples and components within them to loss-on ignition, radiometric dating, and microscopic analysis. Loss-on ignition was used to ascertain organic material percentage …

Of Body And Mind: Bioarchaeological Analysis Of Nineteenth And Early Twentieth Century Anatomization And Institutionalization In Siena, Italy, Jacqueline M. Berger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Institutional bioarchaeology is a growing sub-field within bioarchaeology, particularly social bioarchaeology as informed by the biocultural approach. However, the majority of studies in this vein have primarily addressed English-speaking contexts, to include analyses of institutional assemblages preserved archaeologically, and anatomical collections. The present study examines of the Siena Craniological Collection (SCC) - located in Siena, Italy. The collection was assembled between 1862-1931, and originally contained remains of 1,122 patients from both the general and mental hospitals in operation in Siena during this period (Brasili-Gualandi & Gualdi-Russo, 1989a). In addition to demographic analysis of the Siena Craniological Collection as a whole, …

The Eight Grids: A New Method To Enhance Students’ Sketching Skills In The Schools Of Architecture, Mohamad Tohme

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Sketching is one of the required courses for architecture and design students in higher education since it is considered a necessary skill for architects and designers. However, the lack of visualization skills and practice, students were met with difficulties in grasping the complex concepts of this course, concurrent with the teachers’ lack of familiarity with the various methods. The aim of this paper is to find a new method that allows students to carry out their sketches by examining the problems faced by first-year undergraduate students at the Faculty of Architecture, Design & Built Environment in BAU, Lebanon. To achieve …

The Distribution Of Food Preparation Artifacts In Field D At Tall Jalul, Jordan, Rebecca A. Bates

Honors Scholars & Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium Programs

The Andrews University Institute of Archaeology Madaba Plains Project houses many of the artifacts that were found, recorded, sketched, photographed, and brought to the Siegfried H. Horn Museum for further research. These artifacts are then used to help archaeologists understand the history of the Madaba Plains, Jordan, and its significance to the Bible. Food preparation artifacts like grinders, pounders, mortar and pestles, and stone bowls, are some of the most frequently excavated artifacts at Tall Jalul. This poster examines the relationship between domestic living spaces and food preparation artifacts suggesting that the concentration and distribution of these artifacts can give …

Miraculous Monstrosity: Birth And Female Sexuality In The Illuminated Scivias And Cloisters Apocalypse, Jenna M. Mckellips

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper compares the illuminations in two medieval apocalypses, the Cloisters Apocalypse and Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, to inspect their similar constructions of female sexuality, motherhood, and monstrosity. It first analyzes the monstrosity of female sexual organs found in Hildegard’s portrayal of the Church and the Mother of the Antichrist. The paper then goes on to consider the uncanny slippage between images of birth and death in the Cloisters’s depiction of John and the Woman of Revelation 12. Ultimately, the paper not only explores the monstrosity of female bodies in apocalyptic manuscripts, but also concludes that medieval women’s …

Take Your Time, Terry A. Ratzlaff

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

I see the world not as one seamless world but as a world composed of other worlds, built on top and within one another. They exist harmoniously, bound not by space but by time. In an instant I can move from one world into another where I can exist in two worlds simultaneously—in space, I am here. In time, I am there.

Worldmaking is a conceptual process of seeing connections and making distinctions within our lived reality.1 It is a process of dividing and organizing parts into collections that represent different narratives. Only through suitable arrangements can we handle vast …

Late Bronze Age To Early Iron Age Ceramic Vases: The Documentation And Identification Of Odu's Cypriot Vase Collection, Jordan L. Staten, Sekoyah M. Mcglorn, Noelle E. Jessup

Undergraduate Research Symposium

ODU's Special Collections department has in its care a collection of five Cypriot vases, dating to the late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age on the island of Cyprus. The vases in Special Collections and University Archives came to ODU in 1968 from Dudley Cooper, who received them from the government of Cypress in 1963. This collection has never been studied intensively before. As a group, we have drawn to scale, measured, photographed, and created three-dimensional renderings of each vase in the collection. Through careful documentation of the vases, we have been able to identify reasonable comparanda for them among …

Empress Nur Jahan And Female Empowerment: A Critical Analysis Of A Long-Forgotten Mughal Portrait, Angela N. Finkbeiner

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of a seventeenth-century watercolor portrait of the Mughal EmpressNur Jahan (r. 1611-1627). Titled Nur Jahan Holding a Musket and created by court painter Abu’l Hasan, the painting has not been the subject of a scholarly work before. In this unorthodox depiction of a female, Nur Jahan is shown sporting androgynous attire while actively loading a matchlock musket. Through visual and textual analysis, I read this portrait as a symbol of an empowered female and argue that once its meaning is decoded it can serve as a complex historical document that complicates Nur Jahan’s persona. Moving …

Analyses Of Woodland Check-Stamped Ceramics In Northwest Florida, John D. Blackburn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research compares prehistoric check-stamped ceramics from two northwest Florida sites, Sunstroke (8Li217) and Roy Whitfield (8Gu52), to investigate change through time in pottery manufacture of this ubiquitous type from the Early to Late Woodland Periods, about 100-1000 C.E. These sites are about 60 km apart and connected by waterways in the middle and lower Apalachicola valley drainage system. The Roy Whitfield site is considered Early Woodland based on other diagnostic pottery types, and the Sunstroke site has been radiocarbon-dated to the Late Woodland Period. Check-stamping is a common form of ceramic surface treatment across the Woodland Period and beyond, …

‘The House Which Samuel Built’: Negotiating Jewish Identity In The Mudéjar Synagogues Of Medieval Toledo, Shelby Barbee

Art History Senior Papers

The Jewish presence in Spain in the Middle Ages has long been a subject of considerable interest and study in a variety of fields.[1] Remarkably, a handful of synagogues from this period survive to the present. Toledo, in particular, is home to two such structures: The El Transito synagogue of the 14^th century and the Synagogue of Santa Maria La Blanca from the early 13^th century.[2] Both were built under Christian kingship and are stylistically Mudéjar, meaning that while they were built after Toledo was reconquered and did not have Muslim patrons, the structures contain …

Seasonality, Labor Organization, And Monumental Constructions: An Otolith Study From Florida’S Crystal River Site (8ci1) And Roberts Island Shell Mound Complex (8ci40 And 41), Elizabeth Anne Southard

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades, archaeological research has provided evidence that some mounds in the southeastern United States were constructed in short episodes. A large work force would have been required to accomplish these monumental projects. Shell mounds, in particular, provide an opportune type of architecture to investigate whether seasonal aggregations of laborers gathered at sites to engage in large-scale work projects because these mounds are constructed of aquatic resources that leave signatures for what time of the year they were caught or harvested. This study investigates whether the residents of the Crystal River site (8CI1) and Roberts Island (8CI40 and 41) …

Politics Vs. The Environment: The Spatial Distributions Of Mississippian Mound Centers In Tampa Bay, Adam J. Sax

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Safety Harbor culture that resided in West-Central Florida during the Mississippian period (~1000-1500 CE) was distant from the Mississippian heartland but built similar platform mound complexes and exhibited social hierarchies despite practicing an estuarine lifestyle that likely did not rely on extensive agriculture. To determine whether this coastal culture exhibited similar spatial patterns of platform mound centers to traditional inland cultures, GIS spatial analyses including distance matrices, density analyses, and least cost analyses (LCA) were performed within the Safety Harbor geographical nexus of Tampa Bay. The results were able to detect temporal changes in settlement patterns and estimate the …

Our Story, Our Homeland, Our Legacy: Settlement Patterns Of The Geechee At Sapelo Island Georgia, From 1860 To 1950, Colette D. Witcher

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Gullah Geechee are descendants of enslaved Africans who worked on the island coastal plantations of Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Northern Florida. The Gullah Geechee are known for having retained African cultural connections and practices in the United States through intergenerational knowledge transmission. On Sapelo Island, Georgia, during their 250 years on the island a least 15 historic communities have been acknowledged as representative of their distinct presence on the island. Hog Hammock which was established in 1878, is the last intact Gullah Geechee owned community, due to forced abandonment of the other communities during the early 1950s. …

Microstructure And Damage Assessment Of Some Ptolemaic Pottery Objects At Tell Abu Yasin In Sharkia, Egypt: Case Study, Walid ᾿El-Ghareb ᾿El-Ghareb

Journal of the General Union of Arab Archaeologists

(En)

Tell Abu Yasin is one of the most important sites in Sharkia governorate and dates back to Ptolemaic age. Many tests and analyses were performed to diagnose damage manifestations of some pottery pieces. The research has proven that the clay used in that pottery is Nile Clay, while tempers are sand, grog, and limestone powder. The used shaping technology was potter wheel, surface treatment is slip layer, and the burning atmosphere inside the kiln was reduced for the first pot and oxidized to the second and third piece. Pottery objects suffer from physiochemical damage by soil sediments, in addition …