Contemporary Art Commons^™

Transversal Approaches And Ecological Artwork., Madison Deanna Sevilla

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This work explores systematic ecology as it relates to sculpture and language. This project exists in two parts: a written thesis and a thesis exhibition. Although both works explore ecological systems, Unseen: Visualizing Ecological Systems investigates visualizations and concepts of the ecological, whereas this thesis continues the exploration into the ramifications of disruptions in systems. Ecological systems such as the environmental, social/mental, economic, and political define the foundations of our known world and encapsulate all regions of society. No single system can function independently of the rest and all systems contain some aspect of human-system involvement. By using the work …

Meaning In Perception: Metaphor In Figurative Sculpture, Tommy Riefe

Graduate School of Art Theses

The body is the intermediary between the immaterial and material world and allows for the expression of one’s psychological and physical identity. The perception of the body and mind within space and time provides opportunities for change. Representation through figurative sculpture is a common thread over historical time. Works from Greek Classicism, like Kritios Boy, exemplify how a body’s physical condition is directly contingent on an individual’s psychological state. Alberto Giacometti and Antony Gormley further expand upon this as they present the body as a channel between the mind and the surrounding enviroment. Each artist creates alterations in scale, …

The Eighteenth-Century Origins Of Sally Mann’S “New Child”, Victoria L. Pitts

Georgia College Student Research Events

Sally Mann’s 1992 series, Immediate Family, of sixty-five gelatin silver prints captures her three young children—Emmett, Virginia, and Jessie—in various stages of nudity while delighting in the pleasures of childhood games, including roller-skating, swimming, and fishing. Critics have argued that Mann’s overtly sexualized depictions of her children transgress the traditional, unsullied representation of youth in art history. The abandonment of proper social norms for the comportment of children in Mann’s work parallels similarly transgressive themes explored by other twentieth-century photographers, including Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin. Arbus and Goldin reveal the world of outsiders in their depictions of club goers, …

Art History And The Global Challenge: A Critical Perspective, Patrick D. Flores

Artl@s Bulletin

The challenge of globalization and the “decolonization” of our way of thinking have become a major concern for most art historians. While it is still too early to assess the impact on the discipline of the “Global turn”—a turn that is all the more timid that it materializes more slowly in public collections and public opinions than in books—we nonetheless wanted to probe scholars who are paying close attention to the new practices in global art history. Coming from different cultural milieus and academic traditions, and belonging to different generations, they agreed to answer our questions, and to share with …

Art History And The Global Challenge: A Critical Perspective, Jonathan Harris

Artl@s Bulletin

The challenge of globalization and the “decolonization” of our way of thinking have become a major concern for most art historians. While it is still too early to assess the impact on the discipline of the “Global turn”—a turn that is all the more timid that it materializes more slowly in public collections and public opinions than in books—we nonetheless wanted to probe scholars who are paying close attention to the new practices in global art history. Coming from different cultural milieus and academic traditions, and belonging to different generations, they agreed to answer our questions, and to share with …

Art History And The Global Challenge: A Critical Perspective, Atreyee Gupta

Artl@s Bulletin

The challenge of globalization and the “decolonization” of our way of thinking have become a major concern for most art historians. While it is still too early to assess the impact on the discipline of the “Global turn”—a turn that is all the more timid that it materializes more slowly in public collections and public opinions than in books—we nonetheless wanted to probe scholars who are paying close attention to the new practices in global art history. Coming from different cultural milieus and academic traditions, and belonging to different generations, they agreed to answer our questions, and to share with …

Art History And The Global Challenge: A Critical Perspective, Sven Spieker

Artl@s Bulletin

The challenge of globalization and the “decolonization” of our way of thinking have become a major concern for most art historians. While it is still too early to assess the impact on the discipline of the “Global turn”—a turn that is all the more timid that it materializes more slowly in public collections and public opinions than in books—we nonetheless wanted to probe scholars who are paying close attention to the new practices in global art history. Coming from different cultural milieus and academic traditions, and belonging to different generations, they agreed to answer our questions, and to share with …

Yinka Shonibare Mbe's Critiques Of Empire And His Reception In Four Transnational Case Studies, Johanna Wild

Art & Art History ETDs

In the wake of art history’s “global turn”, the installation art of Yinka Shonibare MBE has obtained vast visibility in the established centers of contemporary cultural practice in Europe and beyond. Shonibare is best known for his installations of mannequins that reenact canonized paintings and historical events culled from European modernity. Dressed in deceptively “African” Dutch Wax fabrics, Shonibare’s phenotypically ambiguous and headless mannequins ensnare audiences with a semblance of “exotic” difference, but ultimately resist the fixity of national, cultural, racial and, in some cases, gendered categorization through an incessant semiotic slippage. In his book, The Culture Game (2001), Olu …

Program Booklet: 28th Annual James Porter Colloquium, Department Of Art

28th Annual James Porter Colloquium

No abstract provided.

Ludic Conceptualism: Art And Play In The Netherlands, 1959 To 1975, Janna Therese Schoenberger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, the first extended study on art in the Netherlands in the 1960s and ‘70s, investigates the phenomenon of ludic art, taking its lead from Johan Huizinga’s definition of ‘ludic’ in his seminal Homo Ludens (1938). According to Huizinga, the ludic is characterized by masquerade, freedom, and purposelessness, to which I add my own theoretical contribution—absurdity. I argue that the key instantiation of Huizinga’s ideas is found in the utopian project New Babylon (1959­–74) by Constant Nieuwenhuys. In the 1960s, ludic art was deployed as a strategy of social critique that attacked from an oblique angle, sometimes effectively­, but …

Joseph Beuys And Social Sculpture In The United States, Cara M. Jordan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Alongside the rise of the activist movements in the late 1960s, the German artist Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) proposed his concept of “social sculpture” — a method of fostering creativity, aimed at transforming society through interdisciplinary dialogue — as an alternative to the chaotic political, economic, and social life of postwar West Germany. He sought to heal society through a work of art with holistic and spiritual intentions, centered on the belief that art can include the entire process of living and therefore can be created by a wide range of people beyond artists. Although his ideas are understood and even …

Merchandise, Promotion, And Accessibility: Keith Haring’S Pop Shop, Amy L. Raffel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the peak of his career in New York, Keith Haring took his highly recognizable artistic style and distributed it in the form of merchandise in his Pop Shop, established in 1986. Stemming from his early work displayed on the New York streets, directly within public space, and his explorations into mass media strategies, he learned he could make his work accessible to new audiences outside contemporary art institutions and art circles. He translated his work across several surfaces: from subways or canvases, to everyday functional merchandise, such as buttons, t-shirts, and bags sold in his shop. Responding to a …

I Like America: Painting In The Expanded Field, Isaac Aden

Theses and Dissertations

Using Structuralist theory, Krauss created a Klein group diagram. the diagram included site sculpture, construction, marked sites, and axiomatic structures.Could the same strategy be applied to painting? As I attempted to engage painting from a critical perspective, I formed of a body of work entitled Painting in the Expanded Field.

Men Want To Be Looked At: A Look At The Male Nude In Western Photography, Sandi Harageones

Art 525/Art History 5290 Papers

No abstract provided.

Scholarart Issue 2 Introduction. Sexism, Racism, And Technology: Diverse Subjects Of Scholar Art, Candace Serrano, Debbie Nuno

Art 525/Art History 5290 Papers

No abstract provided.

The Vanishing Race: Dealing With Native Stereotypes Through A Lens, Candace Serrano

Art 525/Art History 5290 Papers

No abstract provided.

Put Another Ken On The Barbie, Timothy Haerens

Art 525/Art History 5290 Papers

No abstract provided.

Let’S Talk: Stereotypes And Subjectification, Rebecca Chrisler

Art 525/Art History 5290 Papers

No abstract provided.

Bruce New: The Night Is Only A Dream, Kentucky Folk Art Center, Bruce New

Kentucky Folk Art Center Exhibition Catalogs

2017 Kentucky Folk Art Center exhibition catalog of artist Bruce New.

Sexism In Art: From The Fundamentals To Art Critiques, Debbie Nuno

Art 525/Art History 5290 Papers

No abstract provided.

Rodcon, Flier, 2017, University Of Northern Iowa. Rod Library.

RodCon Documents

RodCon 2017 at the Rod Library

Saturday, April 1

10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Flier used in promotion of the event.

Rodcon, Program, 2017, University Of Northern Iowa. Rod Library.

RodCon Documents

Inside This Program:

--RodCon 2017 at the Rod Library, Saturday April 1, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
--Welcome to RodCon
--Locations
--Schedule
--What's That? Event Descriptions
--Sponsors

Joe Sartor: Morehead Mind Games, Kentucky Folk Art Center, Joe Sartor

Kentucky Folk Art Center Exhibition Catalogs

2017 Kentucky Folk Art Center exhibition catalog of artist Joe Sartor.

Restoration, Shannon M. Slaight-Brown

Theses and Dissertations

The marks I make in clay have different characteristics, and the physical mark of one’s fingertips or visual record of the hand is personal and intimate. This visible activity is the evidence of my constant presence and control within each object. Its repetitive meditation produces a private relief from my persistent anxieties. This exploration for me is not only visual, but also physical. This is the start of my infatuation with the idea of pattern. It has its own discrete visual language and modes of communication; and through my research I am developing a method of intercommunication.

Radical Dissonance And Haunted Gestures: Rupture And Reverence In The Artwork Of Aja Mujinga Sherrard, Aja M. Sherrard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper serves to establish the studio practice of Aja Mujinga Sherrard within the framework of conceptual art, touching on the flexible use of media, the subversive or political nature of the work, and its relationship to movements and disciplines such as Feminism and Poststructuralism.

The section entitled “Race and Incoherence” addresses the practice of Radical Dissonance—or the creation of ruptures within commonly accepted concepts and social constructions—through the Costuming Kinship Series, 13≠12≠12.2 (Genetics Project), and Body Double. The section entitled ”Art, Loss, and the Unspeakable” traces an emotional shift in her work and speaks directly to the pieces …

A Single Particle Among Billions: Yayoi Kusama And The Power Of The Minute, Isabelle Martin

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama has developed her career through the continued use of the infinitely repeated polka-dot motif, an element that has not only persisted throughout the entirety of her work, but has also become a fundamental aspect of her self-presentation. Kusama has long suffered from a mental affliction called cenesthopathy, which results in intense hallucinations and anxiety attacks. Her use of the polka dot is not only a way for her to visualize her hallucinations, but also an example of the physical commitment (identified by Kusama as self-obliteration) she has to her work—her repeated application of small motifs …

Trauma And Recovery: A Confessional Process, Mia Siracusa

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper is about a confessional painting series, which appropriates Abstract Expressionist techniques, and is on geometric canvas reliefs. The main focus through out the series is the process of my recovery from a traumatic event and the process of the creation of a language through abstraction.

Crooked Data: (Mis)Information In Contemporary Art, N. Elizabeth Schlatter

Exhibition Catalogs

The University of Richmond Museums exhibited Crooked Data: (Mis)Information in Contemporary Art on February 9 through May 5, 2017, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art. The exhibition features art by twenty-one contemporary artists and studios who work with data in nontraditional ways. Some artists incorporate data from known sources, using it as an aesthetic device divorced from its originally intended interpretive function. Others gather and manifest data that might normally be considered not worthy of collecting. And some of the works explore alternatives to standard data visualization forms and practices.

Some of the works featured in Crooked …

Spreading Seeds: Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds And His Performative Personality Received In The West, Wei Wu

Scripps Senior Theses

In 2010, Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds made its debut in Tate Modern, which promoted Ai to be one of the most famous and respected contemporary Chinese artists. This Conceptual art work has multiple layers of meanings, which all corresponds to the Western expectations for a successful contemporary Chinese artist. In fact, the Western art world has long held bias and stereotypes towards international artists. Ai chose to perform his personality to conform to the expectations and Western ideologies, which brought him international fame. On the other hand, other Chinese artists, including Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhou Chunya, don't totally agree with …

Public Art Between Authoritarianism And Democracy (The Case Of The Maidan Protest In Ukraine), Asia Bazdyrieva

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the spatial organization and public art of Kyiv’s Independence Square to address broader social and political realities after the Maidan protests of 2013-14. Using theories of power and ideology, this study demonstrates how the discourse on public art reflects the political situation of post-revolutionary Ukraine, and how public engagement with urban space signals a paradigmatic shift in the developing country’s process of self-identification. The purpose of this thesis is threefold: first, to identify the Soviet ideological approach embedded in the spatial organization of Kyiv’s administrative center (including the Maidan); second, to examine artistic interventions at the site …