Modern Art and Architecture Commons^™

A Northwest Perspective: A Comprehensive Survey Of Sally Haley's Life And Career, Mary Timbrook

University Honors Theses

Sally Haley is a successful artist who built a long career in the second half of the 20th century as a painter in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been part of several solo and group exhibitions within museums and galleries across the country and she was awarded the Oregon Governor's Award for the Arts in 1989. She is best remembered for her unique still life paintings, frequently painted in egg tempera, which sold immensely well during her lifetime and after. Haley trained at the Yale School of Art in the late 1920s and early 30s, where she learned to paint …

From It-Girls To Obscurity: What Happened To The Stettheimer Sisters?, Catherine Pierce Higgins

MA Theses

This dissertation explores the lives and impact of the three Stettheimer sisters, Florine, Carrie and Ettie, cultural innovators, and major influencers of a distinctive, feministic strand of American modernism in New York between 1914 and 1950. The Stettheimer sisters did not use their privilege to assimilate into society but to create an alternate artistic universe, resisting the male hierarchies of the dominant avant-garde. By controlling a salon, an intellectual and creative social center where artists, writers, and intellectuals such as Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O’Keeffe and Carl Van Vechten held court, they were able to create an environment in which femininity, …

Reconstructing The Surreal: Female Artists And The Transformation Of Surrealist Aesthetics, Erin Regan

MA Theses

This thesis examines the role and legacy of female artists who took part in the Surrealist visual art movement of the early 20th century. Canonical accounts have historically privileged the contributions of male artists, marginalizing women to the fringes of the movement by framing female artists as being primarily relevant as muses for their male peers. This study contests this historiographical misconception, relying upon visual analysis and archival research, as well as drawing from psychological, feminist, and postmodern theory, ultimately arguing that their artistic and theoretical innovations fundamentally restructured Surrealism’s visual vocabulary, theoretical objectives, and cultural legacy. This thesis is …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

Painting The Other: Mary Cassatt's Spanish Portraits And The Feminine Gaze, Delaney Batter

Undergraduate Theses in Art History

The historical viewing of women artists, in conjunction with Mary Cassatt’s biography and later depictions of women and children, suggests that Cassatt's gender is identified within the art historical canon as an essential component to the interpretation of her work. The language attached to Cassatt's work is most often taken from discourses surrounding female-produced artwork of the nineteenth century, attaching passive and stereotypically feminine attributes like 'delicate,' 'light,' and 'tender' to the style, composition, and subjects of her works. These characteristics were among the accepted nineteenth-century descriptions of artworks, with inherent femininity translating to inherent domesticity.

Rather than further reducing …

Female Photographers’ Practices And Markets: A Three-Part Case Study, Emma Howard

MA Theses

This thesis explores the intertwined histories of artistic legacy, cultural impact, and market reception of female photographers, who have often been decentered in art history and overshadowed by male contemporaries. While photography has historically been more inclusive to women than other art forms, women photographers have nonetheless faced marginalization in the canon of photography history and the art market. Building on efforts to reclaim and elevate the contributions of women photographers, this research integrates art historical and market analyses to provide a holistic understanding of their careers and legacies. Through detailed case studies, this thesis examines the artistic practices, biographical …

Essential Caretaking For Artists With Disabilities: Exploring The Overlooked Histories Of Hazel Knapp And Grandma Moses, Bryan P. Martin

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the intersection of disability studies and art history, addressing the underrepresentation of disability in scholarship, especially concerning medical sociology and caretaking. Focusing on two early-twentieth-century self-taught American artists, Hazel Knapp (1908–95), who fell into obscurity, and Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961), best known as Grandma Moses, this is a comparative analysis of how disability influenced their artistic practices and shaped their divergent career outcomes. Knapp was born with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neurodegenerative disorder, and fell into obscurity due to a lack of support for her condition, but experienced a promising start to her career that included patronage …

Remedios Varo: Peregrinaciones, Julia Condes

Honors Undergraduate Theses

At the time of her death, the artist Remedios Varo (1908–1963) left behind over 500 works of art, the majority of which were created in her adopted country of Mexico. Known for her meticulously crafted fantastical paintings, Varo underwent exile and displacement due to first the Spanish Civil War, and later World War II, which led her to relocate to Mexico, where she would create prolifically for the remainder of her life. This paper will examine the effect of those experiences on the artist and the work she produced, attesting to Varo’s ability to translate complex emotions regarding the human …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

Suzanne Valadon And The Active Nude, Sophia Foster

Honors Program Theses

This thesis explores how French Modernist artist and prior model Suzanne Valadon disrupted the traditional, phallocentric expectations surrounding the nude genre during the twentieth century. Theorizing on the relationship between the erotic, female nude, and the gaze, it can be concluded that the historic, repetitive visual correlation between women’s nude bodies and eroticism entangles the two concepts so tightly that women’s nude bodies became inherently erotic. The male gaze upon women’s bodies has restricted and policed their identity, since male artists inscribed their bodies as erotic symbols existing for male pleasure and conquest, particularly through the nude genre.This visual media …

The Spirit Of Female Modernity, Yuan Yuan

MA Projects

"The Spirit of Female Modernity" rejoices in the empowering synergy of women and art modernist aesthetics. It focuses mainly on the work of female artists, designers, musicians, and fashion brands that break several epochs and media. The goal is to motivate by illustrating how women in diverse artistic and design fields embraced and, in some cases, reinterpreted the language of modernist art to reflect their period's concept of modernity. This carefully curated exhibition highlights the new and thought-through role that women artists embarked on in helping to shape the history of art through the modernism lens of feminist practice. It …

Decapitated Dancers: An Investigation Of Nineteenth-Century Social Status And Class Representations In Degas’S L’Orchestre De L’Opéra, Jon E. Mcgee

Kentucky Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Edgar Degas is famous for depictions of ballet dancers. However, his earliest rendition of the subject in L’Orchestre de l’Opéra (Figure 1) is ignored for its ballerinas, who are beheaded by the pictorial frame. Despite the prevalence of dancers in his catalogue afterwards, scholarly discussion mostly focuses on L’Orchestre’s primary subject, bassoonist Désiré Dihau, and his peers, making it an innovative portrait which conveys modern life with formalist techniques. Most prior discussion contends these dancers were not beheaded for content, but for a formalist exercise in dramatic cropping. Recent discourse relegates the ballerinas to the background as erotic objects. …

Manifesting Magic: Occultism And Feminism In The Art Of Leonora Carrington And Remedios Varo, Margaret Dirschl

MA Theses

The artworks of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo are replete with
/="/">symbolism and evocations of the occult, formulating bodies of work that are charged with magic and mysticism. When studied within the context of their male contemporaries of the Surrealist group, it becomes apparent that this use of the occult operates as a compelling and historically based feminist strategy. Immediately stemming from the occult revival of the previous century and the issues for females presented by Surrealism, the foundations of this idea originate much earlier in the pagan traditions of antiquity and the witch hunts of the 15th through …

The Feminization Of Mexico City In The Late Twentieth Century: Polvo De Gallina Negra, Pola Weiss, And Lourdes Grobet, Alexis N. Corral

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis centers on select artworks in public intervention, photography and video as an exploration of female's relationship to Mexico City's social landscape and urban space during the late 1970s into the early 1990s. In three case studies, I explore historical urban planning, gender relations, and the effects of modernization.

The Sensible Body Of The Female Reader, Anoosheh Ghaderi

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

No abstract provided.

Women Of The Dalit Unrest: Rewriting Bodies, Reinforcing Resistance, Suddhadeep Mukherjee

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

The paper aims to take the scholarship on corporeal feminism and Dalit Studies forward by focusing on the Dalit woman’s body. The body is not treated as an inert surface in this paper but is considered as a transformative medium that can alter its embedded codifications and significations through transgressive performances in the face of systemic and systematized caste violence. In doing so the gendered body not only challenges to rewrite the Dalit epistemology from the vantage of resistance but also initiates a rethinking of Indian feminism. The paper begins with a discursive discussion on the importance of the gender …

Kinstitution: A Topia Between Archive And Proposal, Christopher Lineberry

Theses and Dissertations

Situating Topher Lineberry's work, this paper offers a primer on institutional critique, preliminary developments of "kinstitutional critique," and the cultivation of family-derived art history through the work of the artist's grandmother, Helen Lineberry. Feeding into a working understanding of family-and-kin-as-institution, the paper ultimately locates Topher Lineberry's work between relations to place, historical archives, and speculative proposals.

Talent Against Tradition: The Art And Life Of Kate Freeman Clark, Grace Moorman

Honors Theses

This paper explores the art of Holly Springs, Mississippi, painter Kate Freeman Clark, especially in association with the work of her teacher William Merritt Chase. Much of this paper is based on two extensive biographies: Cynthia Grant Tucker’s Kate Freeman Clark: A Painter Rediscovered, and Carolyn J. Brown’s The Artist’s Sketch: A Biography of Painter Kate Freeman Clark. Using a number of object studies, this paper explores the development of Clark’s work under the tutelage of Chase, highlighting similarities and differences that lead to the conclusion that Clark had a very real talent that she seemed reluctant to …

Beyond Nationalism? Blank Spaces At The Documenta 1955 – The Legacy Of An Exhibition Between Old Europe And New World Order, Mirl Redmann

Artl@s Bulletin

Was the first documenta really beyond nationalism? documenta 1955 has been widely regarded as conciliation for the fascist legacy of the exhibition “Degenerate Art” (1937), and as an attempt to reintegrate Germany into the international arts community. This article employs published and archival sources in order to understand if and how documenta was impacted by the legacy of nationalism in post-fascist Germany. A biographic sketch of Antonio Corpora (1909-2004) shows how the purportedly “universalist” selection criteria employed by documenta erased cultural specificity and solidified nationalist conceptions of center and periphery.

Women Artists Shows·Salons·Societies: Towards A Global History Of All-Women Exhibitions, Catherine Dossin, Hanna Alkema

Artl@s Bulletin

The Women Artists Shows·Salons·Societies project was launched in 2017 as a collaboration between Artl@s and AWARE. Combining AWARE’s ambitions to restore the presence of 20th-century women artists in the history of art, and Artl@s’s desire to provide scholars with the data and tools necessary to question the canonical art historical narratives through quantitative and cartographic analyses, we decided to work on group exhibitions of women artists.
Our first ambition is to build a community of scholars and work together to develop a common terminology and even possibly a common and consistent methodology to study these events, because the ones used …

Se Rendre Visible Dans L’Espagne De Franco: Le Salón Femenino De Arte Actual (1962-1971), Maria Lluïsa Faxedas, Isabel Fontbona, Patricia Mayayo

Artl@s Bulletin

The paper examines the history and the critical reception of the Salón femenino del arte actual, an annual all-female exhibition organized by a group of women artists in Barcelona between 1962 and 1971. Unique at the time, the Salón challenged the traditional role attributed to women under Franco's dictatorship, managing at the same time to obtain support from local authorities. The paper argues that it was the ability of the organisers to take advantage of political ambivalence, to find a delicate balance between complicity and resistance, which allowed the exhibition to survive for a decade.

Women's Art Club And Women’S Group Exhibitions In Zagreb From 1928 Until 1940, Darija Alujević, Dunja Nekić

Artl@s Bulletin

In 1927 painters Nasta Rojc and Lina Crnčić Virant, inspired by their British colleagues founded the Women's Art Club in Zagreb. From 1928 until 1940 the Club organized group exhibitions of its members. The main idea of the Club was to improve arts and crafts, to organize female exhibitions and to collaborate with other international women associations. The Club took part in the organisation of the exhibition of Bulgarian women artists and the exhibition of the Little Entente of Women held in 1938 in Zagreb. Women`s Art Club was an important factor of the female artists' emancipation – organizing the …

The Exhibitions Of The Femmes Artistes Modernes (Fam), Paris, 1931-38, Paula J. Birnbaum

Artl@s Bulletin

The Société des Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM) opened up a productive space for women artists who were active in Paris during the 1930s through annual multigenerational exhibitions and international collaborations. I argue that FAM embodied a paradox: on the one hand, it supported artists wishing to question stereotypes of gender, race, class, and nation; on the other, its institutional structure and leadership did not challenge patriarchal assumptions about women’s subordinate role in society. The paper explores this tension by comparing the work and critical reception of several artists in the group who represented the theme of motherhood.

L'Esposizione Internazionale Femminile Di Belle Arti (Torino, 1910-1911; 1913). Note Su Genere, Arte E Professione In Italia All'inizio Del Xx Secolo, Francesca Lombardi

Artl@s Bulletin

Il contributo intende ricostruire la vicenda delle Esposizioni Internazionali Femminili di Belle Arti (1910-11; 1913), prima manifestazione artistica di taglio internazionale riservata esclusivamente alle donne organizzata in Italia. Promosse a Torino dalla rivista La Donna, le due rassegne si svolsero in un momento storicamente determinante per l'affermazione di un nuovo status delle artiste, contribuendo a dare visibilità e legittimità al fenomeno della produzione artistica femminile. La ricerca ripercorre, sulla scorta soprattutto di documenti d'epoca e fonti d'archivio, la storia e gli esiti di questa innovativa esperienza, evidenziando la complessità delle reti istituzionali, sociali, di patronage e matronage che concorsero …

Constraint And Control, Patricia Ayres

Theses and Dissertations

I have long considered themes of the body. Drawing on my knowledge as a fashion designer, I bring materials and hardware from the fashion industry into my artwork transforming and rendering them non-functional. My sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. The following pages will analyze how the United States penal system controls, constrains and restricts the body through physical and psychological wounds. Furthermore, they will examine how the Catholic Church controls people’s minds and behavior through a ritualistic belief system.

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own …

Lauretta Vinciarelli In Context: Transatlantic Dialogues In Architecture, Art, Pedagogy, And Theory, 1968-2007, Rebecca Siefert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation centers on the interdisciplinary work of Italian-born artist, architect, teacher, and theorist Lauretta Vinciarelli (1943-2011), a key yet relatively unknown figure who occupies a historic place in the 1970s revival of architectural drawings, Columbia University’s housing studio, Peter Eisenman’s influential Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS) in New York, and architectonic trends in contemporary painting. She was the first woman to have drawings acquired by the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, in 1974), she was among the first women to teach architecture studio courses at Columbia University (hired in 1978), …

Women’S Suffrage In American Art: Recovering Forgotten Contexts, 1900-1920, Elsie Y. Heung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1920, women in the United States finally won the right to vote. The campaign for suffrage, which began in the 1848, with the first women’s rights convention held at Seneca Falls, NY, involved the efforts and enthusiasm of countless women who believed that they both deserved and needed the right to vote. This dissertation investigates the ways in which women artists both responded to and contributed to this divisive movement through painting and sculpture during the final decades of the campaign, when visual culture and propaganda played a crucial role in advancing the suffrage and anti-suffrage agendas. The literature …

Listening To An/Other Voice: Gender, Creativity, And The Divine In The Works Of Female Christian Mystics And Women Surrealists, Stephanie Garboski

Honors Theses

This thesis will compare two groups, Christian women mystics and women surrealists, by analyzing select works by Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning. This analysis will involve a comparative, theoretical approach that draws connections between the way in which both groups utilize varying literary and artistic forms, symbols, and polyglottery. I will utilize Bourdieu’s terms of cultural production as a framework in which to better understand how women of both fields are used for their creativity and supposed connection to an/other, which is the source of inspiration native to each field, God and the unconscious. …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …