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Full-Text Articles in Modern Art and Architecture

Minoru’S Mecca: The World Trade Center, 9/11, And The End Of Architectural Modernism, Henry D. Senters Jan 2025

Minoru’S Mecca: The World Trade Center, 9/11, And The End Of Architectural Modernism, Henry D. Senters

Anthós

From 1966 until 2001, the World Trade Center complex and its skyscraper Twin Towers were a defining architectural feature of New York City and a landmark in architectural modernism. Minoru Yamasaki, the project’s architect, intended the massive complex to be a “mecca” that drew in and inspired urban workers, exemplifying the Islamic architectural language that he incorporated into his architecture. In this article, Senters examines how architectural criticism evolved while the towers stood and after they were destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attack. Tracking early reviews, hopeful about the complex’s trade-promoting purpose, and the perennial—though limited—negative reception of the complex’s …


Creative Figures: Portraiture And The Making Of The Modern American Artist, 1918-1930, Sasha Nicholas Jun 2023

Creative Figures: Portraiture And The Making Of The Modern American Artist, 1918-1930, Sasha Nicholas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1918 and 1930, American artists began depicting themselves and their intertwined circles of creative collaborators with unprecedented intensity. Creative Figures: Portraiture and the Making of the Modern American Artist argues that American artists turned to their own images during this formative period of American modernity to vie for cultural authority and to navigate pressing questions of creative, social, and national identity. The dissertation studies a kaleidoscope of portraits that exemplify this phenomenon, focusing on paintings and photographs by Berenice Abbott, James Latimer Allen, Thomas Hart Benton, Florestine Perrault Bertrand Collins, Imogen Cunningham, John Stuart Curry, Aaron Douglas, Yun Gee, …


Memorial Craze: How War Memorials Have Been Changed By War, Jillian Bass May 2022

Memorial Craze: How War Memorials Have Been Changed By War, Jillian Bass

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis project argues that memorials constructed after 9/11 were designed specifically in a way that privileged and focused on the dead individually. By taking a look at memorials throughout American history, the study of memorialization sets up the stage for the way the lives of ordinary people have been memorialized throughout history. 9/11 is one of the most memorable days in the history of the world in the 21st century. However, the academic world has generally ignored the study of war memorials throughout American history as a subset of memorials. Chronicling memorials from the Civil War period to present …


Norman Lewis: Linearity, Politics, And Pedagogy In His Abstract Expressionism, 1946–1964, Andrianna T. Campbell-Lafleur Sep 2020

Norman Lewis: Linearity, Politics, And Pedagogy In His Abstract Expressionism, 1946–1964, Andrianna T. Campbell-Lafleur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on Norman Lewis’s studio practice between the years 1946-1964 in particular his associations with the painters Romare Bearden, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and David Smith. Lewis’s influence extended far into the twenty-first century. As told by numerous contemporary art practitioners—Firelei Baez, Mark Bradford, David Kennedy Cutler, Charles Gaines, Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, RJ Messineo, and Jack Whitten—Lewis was the mentor, friend, father and grandfather figure of an innovative black artist working with abstraction. In Chapter 1: An Integrative Line of Becoming, I trace Lewis’s change from Social Realism in the 1930s to semi-abstract portraits and genre paintings …


Expanding Experimentalism: Art And Popular Music At The Kitchen In New York City, 1971-1985, Sarah A. Cooper Feb 2019

Expanding Experimentalism: Art And Popular Music At The Kitchen In New York City, 1971-1985, Sarah A. Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This paper explores artists' engagement with popular music at the interdisciplinary alternative space, the Kitchen, from 1971 to 1985. It seeks a critical language to challenge institutional frameworks to account for the creative output of artists' bands and the relationship between parallel and hybrid popular music and avant-garde performance practices.


Losing Its Way: The Landmarks Preservation Commission In Eclipse, Jeffrey A. Kroessler Aug 2018

Losing Its Way: The Landmarks Preservation Commission In Eclipse, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission has an admirable history of protecting the city's historic character. Increasingly in recent years, the commission has backed away from proactively designated sites of historical, architectural, or cultural significance as city landmarks. At the same time, the commission has shown greater deference to the owner of a property when deciding whether to designate, and to the wishes of the owners of designated properties in matters of regulation, notwithstanding that owner consent is nowhere in the landmarks law. At the same time, the commission has introduced new definitions, such as “period of significance,” contributing/non-contributing, and …


Magie, Terre Et Cri. Les Resémantisations Politiques De L’Œuvre D’Antoni Tàpies Sous Le Franquisme., Claudia Grego Jun 2017

Magie, Terre Et Cri. Les Resémantisations Politiques De L’Œuvre D’Antoni Tàpies Sous Le Franquisme., Claudia Grego

Artl@s Bulletin

Tout au long de sa carrière, Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012) fut partisan d’un modèle interprétatif qui permit l’appropriation individuelle de ses œuvres. Le peintre fut le défenseur et le bénéficiaire d’un mode de signification du tableau qui n’était ni univoque, ni prédéterminé. Dans cet article, on analysera comment cette ductilité interprétative a permis la resémantisation politique des œuvres de Tàpies pendant l’époque du franquisme (1939-1975). Guidés par une de ses premières créations, Croix de journal (1946 – 1947), nous tracerons les déplacements de ses toiles pour classifier les déclinaisons sémantiques de l’œuvre en trois grandes étapes : d’abord, l’émergence de Tàpies …


Export / Import: The Promotion Of Contemporary Italian Art In The United States, 1935–1969, Raffaele Bedarida Feb 2016

Export / Import: The Promotion Of Contemporary Italian Art In The United States, 1935–1969, Raffaele Bedarida

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Export / Import examines the exportation of contemporary Italian art to the United States from 1935 to 1969 and how it refashioned Italian national identity in the process. I do not concentrate on the Italian art scene per se, or on the American reception of Italian shows. Through a transnational perspective, instead, I examine the role of art exhibitions, publications, and critical discourse aimed at American audiences. Inaugurated by the Fascist regime as a form of political propaganda, this form of cultural outreach to the United States continued after WWII as Italian museums, dealers, and critics aimed to vaunt the …