Theory and Criticism Commons^™

A Poetic Poioumenon: Coterie And Ekphrasis In David Lehman's "The Breeders' Cup", Anna Beth Rowe

Master's Theses

David Lehman’s poem “The Breeders’ Cup” uses cross-generational coterie and ekphrasis to create a poetic poioumenon. When read in terms of art criticism, Lehman’s “The Breeders’ Cup” models creative processes from the past and calls for a rehabilitative ethic in postmodern poetics. Lehman follows the ekphrastic form, which associates a poem with a work of visual art, from his New York School predecessor Frank O’Hara. “The Breeders’ Cup” addresses Édouard Manet’s 1865 painting Olympia through ekphrasis, and the painting of a prostitute becomes a patron saint of parody for postmodern poetics. The poem introduces lust as a metaphor for creative …

Professionalism And The Market In 19th-Century Europe, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

This paper explores the changing identity of artistic professionalism, especially in late 19th-century France. It ties artistic self-fashioning to the collapse of the Salon system and casts professionalism as a marketing strategy.

The Misconception Of Knowing, The Invention Of Time; Curiosities & Introspections Of Vernacular Photography, Patricia D. Drummond

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The Misconception of Knowing, the Invention of Time; Curiosities & Introspections of Vernacular Photography is a body of work that combines photography, artist books, and alternative processes in a series of pieces that explore the synergy between the act of creating vernacular or common photography, the photograph in its many forms, and the interaction with the photographic image at all the stages of its existence. It also exists in conjunction with this written monograph, which supports and gives insight into the work. Through the use of poems, sketchbook musings, the history of photography, critical theory and social norms within photography, …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …

Between Historical Truth And Story-Telling: The Twentieth-Century Fabrication Of “Artemisia”, Britiany Daugherty

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

This research focuses on the twentieth century rediscovery of the seventeenth-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi by scholars, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, and artists. I argue that the various authors who told her story constructed two distinct “Artemisias,” what I identify as the “Academic Artemisia” and the “Celebrity Artemisia.” The “Academic Artemisia” results from writings by scholars focused on her 1610 Susanna and the Elders, who used approaches from formalism and connoisseurship, to feminism and iconography. The “Celebrity Artemisia” stems from popular fictions that refashioned the life and art of Artemisia according to pop culture tastes. Studying what has been said about …

Place Reimagined, Michelle Unger

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This book shows the creative process and final product of my Independent Study Project, conducted in Prague as part of a semester study abroad program. The project started with interviewing four Czech graphic designers who described places in Prague that are especially meaningful to them. After collecting and transcribing their stories related to their places of inspiration, I visited the locations myself and photographed the locations with sensitivity to the details the artists had emphasized as unique to their experience of the place. While at each site, I also photographed elements of the locations that I personally found interesting and …

Considering Triple Self-Portraiture In The Work Of María Izquierdo, Brooke Lashley

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

This paper looks to María Izquierdo’s paintings, Prisioneras (Prisoners) of 1936 and Sueño y presentimiento (Dream and Premonition) of 1947, as case studies for activating a theory of triple self-portraiture. The theory reflects how plurality arises in the singular or in single significations of the self and disrupts homogeneity in thinking about identities for the self and others within the genre of self-portraiture. In activating a theory of triple self-portraiture, I found three forms of the self in Izquierdo's works: the self as oppressed (the past); the self as oppressing (the current); and the self as an emancipator (future). Although …

Images Of Suffering: An Investigation Of Francisco Goya's 'Disasters Of War' And William Blake's 'Illustrations For The Book Of Job', Chris Christenson

Library Research Prize Student Works

Francisco de Goya and William Blake, who we regard today as two of the greatest artists of the Romantic era, each produced a provocative set of engravings towards the end of his life. Goya's Los Desastres de la Guerra [The Disasters of War] and Blake's Illustrations for the Book of Job are both contemplations on human suffering, specifically unjust suffering, and our response to it. When placed in dialogue with one another, these sets of engravings unearth new dimensions in their interpretation and consequently in our own thinking about suffering. This paper will explore suffering and response through four themes …

Statecraft: Vandalism And Iconoclasm In The Digital Age, Connell Vaughan

Conference papers

Not only is vandalism increasingly subject to digital documentation, but the aesthetic nature of vandalism itself is different as a result of the digital. No longer is vandalism a local destructive act, it has become an act performed primarily for broadcast to global markets. This paper uses the example of Islamic State (IS) iconoclasm to explore the way in which digital media is strategically used by vandals and considers the responses of the heritage industry to respond to such destruction. It illustrates how the deliberate digital documentation and subsequent global broadcasting of the destruction of cultural heritage by Islamic State …

‘Fuchsia Lipstick’: The Domestication Of Lee Krasner In Post-War Criticism, Aleisha E. Barton

Richard A. Harrison Symposium

After the Second World War, the art world shifted from Europe to New York and a new form of painting that defined itself as distinctly American demanded attention from the public. This style, abstract expressionism, created an inability to survey clear subject matter allowed critics to imply gendered metaphorical resonances within works, as meanings were fluid and inconclusive to the viewer. Coupled with instability in the social sphere, artistic abstraction served as motivation for critics to seek out gendered aspects within an artwork, identifying and constructing difference to preserve order and control in a society that had dramatically changed from …

Historicity, Achronicity, And The Materiality Of Cultures In Colonial Brazil, Amy J. Buono

Art Faculty Articles and Research

"In this essay, I use three nontraditional forms from the visual culture of colonial Brazil—Tupinambá featherwork, Portuguese Atlantic mandinga pouches, and azulejos (tilework)— in order to meditate upon materiality and temporality as methodological problems with which our discipline should engage. Each of these art forms has historical trajectories that span cultures, continents, and centuries, a circumstance that raises questions as to how such diverse and stubbornly nonhistoricizable genres can be melded into a coherent historical narrative of the visual and material cultures specific to 'Brazil,' especially when two of them — the mandinga bags and azulejos — are not intrinsically …

Scribblescholar Was Here: Confessional Notes Of A Vandal Academic, Clay Shields

Theses and Dissertations--English

As a (former) vandal-punk in the academy, I often fear succumbing to Ivory Tower Stockholm syndrome. The identities I perform, vandal-punk and scholar, ideologically clash to the point that they often feel irreconcilable. By codemeshing the high-low discourses associated with these adopted cultures, I attempt to disrupt any hierarchal privileging of either, instead searching for a way to live with and harness both.

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

Interpretative Ingredients: Formulating Art And Natural History In Early Modern Brazil, Amy Buono

Art Faculty Articles and Research

"In this article I look at two early modern texts that pertain to the natural history of Brazil and its usage for medicinal purposes. These texts present an informative contrast in terms of information density and organization, raising important methodological considerations about the ways that inventories and catalogues become sources for colonial scholarship in general and art history in particular."

Jack Kerouac's Artistic Apprenticeship And The Discovery Of His Authentic Voice, Nathaniel Botsis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Few novels so clearly dramatize an artist's discovery of his authentic voice as does Kerouac's On the Road. The publication of the writing that Kerouac did before On the Road, and particularly the writing he did before The Town and the City, offers almost unprecedented opportunity to study his artistic apprenticeship and trace his development as an artist. To study Kerouac's apprenticeship is to witness him learning how to liberate himself in order to be that which he would become. In addition to shedding light on this unexamined aspect of Kerouac's career, I hope this study might inspire similar breakthroughs …

Wish You Were Here, Hiroshige (2014), Theory & History Of Art & Design Department, Elena Varshavskaya (H791 Instructor)

Ukiyo-e Prints Course | Exhibition Catalogs

"As if responding to the call of the exhibition title ...(someone in the class sensed the artist’s personal invitation), a group of RISD students undertook a virtual journey through space and time to Edo period Japan. For a duration of a semester the entire class plunged directly into the midst of the Tokaido world, mixing with all kinds of travelers and local residents, learning their customs and manners, trying out various travel modes and road-side services, exploring every bend of the road, in winter and summer, at dawn and dusk, in sunshine and violent storm. ...

“Wish you were here,” …

Paiting, Lucas Page

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

My work is motivated by the painting “as such” – as an inquiry into and intervention upon what constitutes a painting, how they are constructed, how they function, etc. Through an investigation of painting as a genre, both in its historical canon and contemporary forms, I deconstruct the formal and cultural elements surrounding the field. Four major axes serve as the basis for my inquiry and intervention of painting: Painting, Abstraction, Representation, Control. Taking as a point of departure the comment, “Your work is a representation of abstraction,” I aim to figure out how “the painting” (in all of its …

Man’S Best Friend? Dogs And Pigs In Early Modern Germany, Alison Stewart

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

When Jacob Seisenegger and Titian painted individual portraits of Emperor Charles V around 1532, a dog replaced such traditional accouterments of imperial power as crown, scepter, and orb.3 Charles placed one hand on the dog’s collar, a gesture indicating his companion’s noble qualities including faithfulness.4 At the same time, another more down-to-earth meaning for the dog had become prominent in the decades before the imperial portraits: the interest in and ability to eat anything in sight. This pig-like ability resulted in dogs, alongside pigs, becoming emblems of indiscriminate and gluttonous eating and drinking during the early sixteenth century when humanists, …

The Living Torrents: Hokusai's "Journey Around The Waterfalls Of Various Provinces" (2014), Theory & History Of Art & Design Department, Elena Varshavskaya (H791 Instructor)

Ukiyo-e Prints Course | Exhibition Catalogs

"This book invites its readers to join RISD WS 2014 Japanese Prints class for an edifying expedition to Japan’s eight waterfalls portrayed by Katsushika Hokusai, an ukiyo-e preeminent artist, in his masterpiece print series “A Journey to the Waterfalls of Various Provinces.” In fact, this expedition is an academic endeavor undertaken by a collective of students who tried their hand at curating a museum exhibition as their art history course project. ..." -- Foreword, The Living Torrents: Hokusai's " Journey Around the Waterfalls of Various Provinces"

Contributing Authors

Jane Bak, Graham Bessellieu, Amy Chen, Julie Chon, Sofia Diaz de la …

Ritual Process, Kevin A. Baer

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

My art is a means for investigating the passage of time, the decay of physical things, and the truth of mortality. I explore these concepts through process-oriented sculptures that emphasize ritual and material. The process is communicated with the creation of relics, often existing as drawings or the remains of degenerated sculptures. These relics bear witness to the process. I focus on themes of temporal change and death because they remain central to our metaphysical and physical existence. I see a diminished reverence for the power of death in our culture, and through my work I aim to pay homage …

Along The Tokaido With Two Brushes (2013), Theory & History Of Art & Design Department, Elena Varshavskaya (H791 Instructor)

Ukiyo-e Prints Course | Exhibition Catalogs

"This book is a student version of a scholarly catalog – it was written by RISD students to accompany the Japanese prints’ exhibition they have curated at the RISD Museum as the final project for 2013 spring semester course in art history. The idea of the course was to put emphasis on active learning from objects – not only through looking at the originals and analyzing them during visits to the museum but by trying a hand at various responsibilities of a museum curator. The Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs of the RISD Museum welcomed this experimental course and …

Review Of Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges In The Early Modern Atlantic World, Amy Buono

Art Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World, edited by Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C. Mancall.

Classic French Modern, Robert Jensen

Art and Visual Studies Presentations

This conference paper presented at Art Without History symposium sponsored by the Oskar Reinhart Collection, September 2012, explores the development of modern house museums devoted to collections of 'classic French modern,' works primarily by the Post-Impressionist artists Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, and van Gogh. These museums largely reflect the collecting activities of an international group of collectors that includes the Clark brothers, Duncan Phillips, Chester Dale, and Albert Barnes among the Americans, Samuel Courtauld in Britain, and the Swiss collectors Emil Bührle and Oscar Reinhart. The collections offer an alternative view of Post-Impressionism, one leading not toward the 20th-century avant-gardes, …

Declan Clarke’S Fantasies, Tim Stott

Articles

No abstract provided.

Typothesis: A Study Of Warde's Crystal Goblet, Leeuwen's Typographic Meaning And How It Relates To The Bible, Ryan Mercer

Senior Honors Theses

The way readers interpret the written word is changing. We look for information almost as much in between the lines as we do in the words themselves. The internet and its tools offer ways for readers to engage the text like never before — can the printed word keep up? This thesis will look at the history of print through the eyes of typography and decide if multimodal methods of arranging type are appropriate or even possible in the modern book. Specifically, it will look at the Christian Bible and it’s already present use of multimodalism. This study will bring …

Painting Parisian Identity: Place And Subjectivity In Fin-De-Siecle Art, Chelsea Anne Watts

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I provide analysis of several nineteenth-century artworks in order to elucidate the connections between place and identity as expressed in visual representations of Paris. I utilize Bakhtin's idea of the dialogical as a means of identifying multiple subject positions that might be accessed by particular individuals who live in socially constructed spaces specific to fin-de-siècle Paris. I discuss the construction of three performed identities unique to nineteenth-century Paris: the Flâneur, the bohemian, and the primitivist. In each chapter I will parse out the social construction of the spaces where these identities existed and were performed, and link …

Odd Man Out: Two Self-Portraits Of Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Ava Pandiani

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Henri Mattise's "The Red Studio": Art As Real/The World As Illusion, Alyssa Johnson

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Cypress Trees In "The Starry Night": A Symbolic Self-Portrait Of Vincent Van Gogh, Jessica Caldarone

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”: Freud And The Unconscious Of Paul Gauguin, Lauren Cavalli

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.