History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons^™

The Understanding Of The Other In Orientalist And Primitivst Art, Jasmine Groves, Jasmine A. Groves

Honors College Theses

In 1978, Edward Said published Orientalism, a seminal book that shed light on one of the “leftovers” of European colonialism. In it, he describes the West’s attempts to exotify and romanticize the non-Western world. While the Near East, the Far East, and East/Southeast Asia are geographic terms that correspond to specific countries and cultures, the “Orient” is a Euro-American fantasy that only exists to contradict the West. The term is intentionally vague in order to satisfy any and all exotic desires that a consumer may have.

A great deal of European and American artists found inspiration in the exotic …

Optimistic And A Little Flawed, Christian Schultz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The accompanying exhibition to this paper, Optimistic and Flawed is a body of drawings and objects that explores the liminal space between playful and intended actions. Inspired by the landscape of the yard and the actions that take place within, the goalless play of a child and the laborious maintenance of an adult. The value of play exists within labor and labor exists within play. The drawings observe this through the theoretical framework of telic and paratelic motivational states as they relate to drawing. Abstracted yards and landscapes provide a space for the labor of the hand. A history of …

In-Between Spaces, Trinity Kai

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In-between Spaces is a paper based in personal narrative that uses Critical Race Theory and art to analyze the history of photography and systems of discrimination facilitated by hegemonic culture. Body is at the center as a symbol of the physical and psychological impacts systemic inequalities have on people that are classified as other and how one can be absent and present in institutional and public spaces.

Impression, Storm, Victoria Rego, Victoria Anne Rego

All NMU Master's Theses

This novel, set in a cypress swamp near Charleston, South Carolina, explores issues in gender, sexuality, the body, and place. An experiment in form, the novel is structured to replicate the passing of a hurricane over land. This model allows the narrative to expand its scope to encompass the swamp as a larger entity amidst the ecosystem of the coastal south. By weaving together the narratives of the plant, animal, human, ghost, and mythic members of the swamp, the narrative seeks to interrogate the ways that these different levels of an ecosystem intercede upon, assist, and redirect each other in …

Art And Aids: Viral Strategies For Visibility, Stephen Baylor Pillow

Honors Theses

“Art & AIDS: Viral Strategies for Visibility” examines the complex relationships between social stigma, healthcare, homophobia, and mortality, and how these impacted the lives of Western artists and manifested in their works. Most of the art discussed in this thesis was produced during the height of the AIDS crisis (late-1980s to mid-1990s). During this period, gay artists and their allies employed new strategies in their work to inspire activism, and convey intense emotions –– predominantly frustration, grief, and anxiety –– associated with HIV/AIDS. In the U.S., the inaction of the Reagan administration was largely due to widespread homophobia kindled by …

Consumer, Catherine Romsey

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Faculty Mentor: Professor James Janecek, Art and Art History

Race To The Finish: An Obstacle Course With A Biological Twist, Kayli Fagan

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Major: Business Management and Studio Art
Faculty Mentor: Professor James Janecek, Art and Art History

The Button Bash: A Minigame, Miranda Balossi Ventre

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Major: Psychology
Faculty Mentor: Professor James Janecek, Art and Art History

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 …

The Last Prisoners Of War: How Nazi-Looted Art Is Displayed In U.S. Museums, Monica May Thompson

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

How art museums approach NLA is important today because much of the public relies on museums for their education. NLA cases are especially controversial because they are not only legal battles, but ethical ones so museums have to be extra careful approaching them. Even if the museum has won the legal battle the public may not see them as winning the ethical one therefore they might want to avoid displaying this information to the public. However, as we can see with the previous websites, it actually looks worse for museums not to be open and honest about their NLA pieces …

Pistore Panem Petimus: Specialization In The Late-Roman Baking Industry, Jared Benton

Art Faculty Publications

The traditional Roman baker (pistor) is typically thought of as having been horizontally specialized; that is to say he or she performed all the tasks involved in converting raw materials (grain, salt, and water) into bread. This means that they were, in early modern terminology, both millers and bakers. The two professions are generally thought to have vertically specialized within the industry sometime at the end of antiquity. Previously, scholarship has only casually treated this instance of specialization and for the most part it is thought to have been driven by technological innovation, specifically the watermill, which took milling out …

Imaging The Great Irish Famine: Representing Dispossession In Visual Culture, Preface & Introduction, Niamh Ann Kelly

Books/Book Chapters

‘Niamh Ann Kelly's lavishly illustrated book throws new light on the visual culture commemorative of hunger, famine and dispossession in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. Located within the discipline of International Memorial Studies, the text and images both challenge and extend our understanding of Famine history. Examining the visual culture since the time of the Famine until the present, Kelly asks, how do we view, experience and represent the past in the present? To what extent does the viewer insert themselves in this complex process? Is there such a thing as ethical spectatorship? Kelly’s sophisticated yet sympathetic study of the “grievous history” …

Gut Feeling, Shelby Fleming

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Through curated space and abstracted sculptures that reference the viewer’s body, Gut Feeling, acknowledges the viewer’s experience as the focal point of the exhibition. I designed the whole gallery as an art object using both positive and negative space. The sculptures act as one unified system that guides the viewer through the exhibition in a counterclockwise rotation inward. The viewer follows the forms as they puncture through the walls of the gallery, while considering their own body’s relationship to the forms being seen. The viewer directly engages with the scale of the forms, sculptural placement, and sensory experience; these elements …

Paper Making: Finding The Scaffold, Tino Ward

Art Theses and Dissertations

Paper making combines my proclivity towards using found materials and the need to produce my own painting supports. This first part of this thesis chronicles the reasons I arrived at paper as my chosen medium, the objects I began to produce, and the projects that stemmed from those early experiments. The second half outlines my final work, a 1:4 scale model in paper of the 1966 exhibition 10, held in New York at the Dwan Gallery, which showcased the early minimal works of Carl Andre, Jo Baer, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Ad Reinhardt, …

Requisitioned: American War Art Of The Second World War, Spenser Carroll-Johnson

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

The United States requisitioned artists to assist with military objectives and servicemen requisitioned art as a form of rhetoric. This research reexamines the role of “official artists” and thereby extends its definition to include the multitude of art they produced during the Second World War. The underpinnings of this thesis reside during the economic crises of the 1930s that brought about American emergency relief initiatives for artists under the direction of Holger Cahill and, by extension, Edward Bruce. For the first time in history, the American public engaged with state-sponsored art. Due to a symbiotic relationship that formed between the …

An Exploration Of Provenance And Ownership History And The Critique Of Curatorial Practice., Sacra J. Fallen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the art world, the artwork is under evaluation to determine its worth from its historic value to its monetary value. One of the primary strategies used to evaluate the artwork is the work's provenance which can be broken down into the work's collector history and the authenticity of its authorship. The first question to be addressed is: does knowing an artwork's collector history and provenance add to its historic value? The second question to be addressed is: does knowing an artwork's collector history and provenance add to its monetary value? These questions will be supported by two case studies …

Seductive Sacrality: Questioning The Nature Of Seduction Through Golden Age Spanish Paintings Of The Virgin Mary, Nicole V. Jozwik

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Major: Art History
Minor: Spanish, Latin American Studies, and Business and Innovation
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Deborah Johnson, Art and Art History

"Seduction is traditionally understood to have a sexual undertone, but this investigation aims to prove that the seduction of the female nude is not just a manifestation of carnal sexuality, but rather, can be ignited by the qualities of power, motherhood, and salvation.

Spanish Marian images by Zurbarán, Morales, and Machuca will be used to analyze how nudity allures the viewer, but allows the religious message to remain the central force. By referencing John Berger and Laura Mulvey and …

Digital Landscapes Of The Mind, Ashley M. Dicaro

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Major: Health Policy and Management
Minor: Italian and Studio Art
Faculty Mentor: Professor James Janecek, Art & Art History

For my independent study, I used Photoshop extensively. The software allows me to use digital imagery to maintain a specific color palette that translates to the time of day. This color theme is extracted from my personal photographs of favored landscapes, after which I build in layers to create whimsical landscapes. They are whimsical for their non-uniform distortions of perspective and viewing angle, a combination that is amplified by the painterly application of color. Technology allows me to paint, cut, collage …

Art And Terror: Vergangenheitsbewältigung In Relation To The Red Army Faction, Joanie Lange

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Advanced Undergraduate Winner

The Red Army Faction, active from 1970-1998, was an infamous West German far-left terrorist group. Its ideology and numerous terrorist acts not only left a lasting impact upon the politics and culture of Germany, but noteworthy is also the fact that the group inspired the creation of countless works of art. This research paper seeks to understand and explain this phenomenon. It argues that the artworks inspired by the RAF are a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a peculiarly German concept “coming to terms with the past,” most often used in relation to fiction and art exploring the …

Mid 20th Century America Through The Words And Lens Of Allen Ginsberg, Lily M. Conover

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Major: Art History and American Studies
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Deborah Johnson, Art and Art History

Allen Ginsberg began producing provocative poetry in 1955 when he first devoted his life to writing. There was even a court case in 1957 to decide whether or not his most famous piece, Howl, should be banned for its content. All of this press made Ginsberg a famous poet; however, he also had what he called an “amateur hobby,” his photography.

In the same way he wrote, Ginsberg photographed the world around him: members of the Beat Movement, his friends, lovers, etc. Most of the …

Painting And Performing The Past: Representation Of A Historical Marriage In Eighteenth-Century Peru, Xena Fitzgerald

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis establishes the connection between painting and performance as crucial for understanding eighteenth-century representations of the historic marriage of the Inca ñusta (princess) Beatriz Clara Sairitupac and her Spanish husband Martín García Óñez de Loyola. During the eighteenth-century, the marriage was repeatedly commemorated through both paint and theatrical performance as part of the mythologization of the early history of the Viceroyalty of Peru. My study addresses the only two paintings known to remain in their original locations: the Compañía de Jesús in Cuzco and the Beaterio de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana in Lima. I analyze both paintings in conjunction …

The Exchange Happens Here: Net Art's Alternative Currencies, April Riddle

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines three installation pieces from the New Museum and Rhizome’s 2019 exhibition “The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics.” Throughout, I question if net art can act as an alternative currency itself, if different projects can interfere with existing economic systems, and, if so, what they can reveal about changing economic structures.

Ultimately, I explore how Cory Arcangel’s Arcangel Surfware, a lifestyle brand offering products for web-surfing, is representative of works that play with accessibility and inaccessibility and alternative patronage systems in relation to social currency; how Shu Lea Cheang’s Garlic=Rich Air, a browser-based and physical garlic …

International Resonance In The Artwork And Writing Of Jiro Takamatsu, Adrian Ogas

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will argue that the canonical literature concerned with Conceptualism should also reflect the important contributions of artists whose work directly contributes to and engages with the artistic dialogue centered around philosophy, science, and mathematics that was taking place during the 1960s and 1970s. This thesis will explore the post-war Japanese artist Jiro Takamatsu (1936–1998) and his use of point and string throughout his oeuvre, which consists of thematic series of artworks that are constructed through his interest in the ideas of linearity, extension, seriality, and existence.

Takamatsu is placed within art history as an early anti-art, Fluxus-adjacent artist …

Lamin Fofana: Blues, Alaina Claire Feldman, Dino Dincer Sirin, Lamin Fofana

Publications and Research

Catalogue for the exhibition "Lamin Fofana: Blues" presented at Baruch College's Mishkin Gallery in 2020.

Rockhounding, Seafaring, And Other Material Tales For The End Of The World, Noemie Fortin

The Goose

In the face of accelerated environmental degradation and climate instability, the future of the Earth and of all life on earth is difficult to visualize. Therefore, the different mediums through which we consider environmental issues are just as important as the actions we take to address them. Focusing on three projects combining art, science, and activism, this article suggests a compilation of material tales. They tell stories of plastic rocks and aluminum nuggets where the protagonists are partly finely crafted objects, partly waste materials, and sometimes both at once. Artists Kelly Jazvac, Yesenia Thibeault-Picazo, and the collective Studio Swine collaborate …

Capacity, Rachel Baydian

CGU MFA Theses

This Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition by Rachel Baydian is an installation of ceramic sculptures that function as a stand-in for the human body, touching on relationship, interconnectivity, and imperfection. Using abstracted forms that derive from the earth, these art objects are sculpted to mimic nature and its processes. The work highlights our human connection to nature as integrative and vital. Through experience and tactility, there is more of an awareness of space and heightened senses. The work taps into the awe and seduction of the mystery of nature through seemingly ordinary elements of the physical world.

Remembering Eden: A Study Of Garden Imagery In Judeo-Christian Worship Spaces, Luc Berard

Honors Student Works

Vases of flowers, a mural of wildlife, and poetic references to a garden, these artistic elements are all commonplace in Judeo-Christian worship spaces; but why? While all of these are certainly aesthetically pleasing, there is likely much more going on than mere interior decoration. This paper will begin by examining the source of garden imagery in the poetry of the Judeo-Christian tradition, demonstrating the significance and prevalence of Eden in the memory of the Judeo-Christian memory. Following this, the paper will then furnish and analyze several examples of Edenic imagery in the worship spaces, highlighting several important artistic elements shared …

Exhibition "Louisiana's Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist", Leah Wood Jewett, John D. Miles, Christina Riquelmy

Special Collections

In 2020, LSU Libraries Special Collections presented the exhibition “Louisiana’s Natural Treasure: Margaret Stones, Botanical Artist” at Hill Memorial Library, featuring selected original watercolor paintings and archival materials related to the Native Flora of Louisiana project.

A native of Australia, Margaret Stones (1920-2018) achieved an acclaimed international career that spanned three continents. Commissioned by LSU and funded by private donations, more than 200 watercolor drawings of Louisiana plants produced by Stones during the 1970s and 1980s are among the most treasured holdings of LSU Libraries Special Collections.

The Native Flora of Louisiana project was grounded in a long historical tradition …

But Them Can’T Be God: Chinese Textiles In Nigerian Dress And The Art Of Ayo Akinwande, Erin M. Rice

Artl@s Bulletin

This article explores the influence of Chinese actors in the Nigerian textile industry through the lens of a work by the artist Ayo Akinwande. By examining a sartorial practice called aso-ebi, the author argues that the growth of this practice over the course of the 20^th century paved the way for an influx of cheap, printed cloth from China. Akinwande’s work titled, “Win-Win,” uses the metaphor of indigenous dress and patterned fabric to illustrate that Chinese involvement in Nigerian affairs extends beyond textiles to the construction industry.

Review: Natalie Selden Barnes's Honor The Precariat, Annah Krieg

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (2017-2022 archives)

This review details the fall 2017 exhibition of Natalie Selden Barnes's installation, Honor the Precariat, which took place in the Directions Gallery in the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University. By combining data with plexiglass figures in an immersive artwork, Selden Barnes compels the viewer to engage with the complex reality of the majority of university educators, those who are adjunct instructors.