Theory and Criticism Commons^™

The Course Of Empire: An Analysis, Devyn Woodard

Emerging Writers

This essay delves into the themes of and motivations for Thomas Cole’s series of paintings, The Course of Empire. Through an analysis of the different rhetorical appeals and fallacies employed by Cole in the series of paintings, the deeper meaning behind the works comes to light. This analysis serves as a bridge between the environment the paintings were created in almost two hundred years ago, and the contemporary global landscape, which is still in need of its lessons, even so many years later.

Whose Art Museum? Immersive Gaming As Irruption, Jason M. Cox, Lillian Lewis

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

This paper introduces Mantles in the Museum, an immersive game that helps ameliorate student discomfort in art museums and to support discourse in, through, and around art museums. Within the game the students take on the roles of critics who use one of five interpretive frameworks, often differing from the student’s own, to select works from a real museum to go to an international exhibition. Assuming these roles empowers students to be in the museum and to assess the works, students are given leave to engage in a vigorous critique process and to examine the art-world from a new perspective.

The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience Of Vulnerable Immigrants, Eric Andre

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

"The Systemic Punches: Displacement Experience of Vulnerable Immigrants" focuses on the impact of systems of state control such as immigration laws, policies, and practices that have been institutionalized and that have marginalized immigrants. In my thesis, I pay specific attention to inhuman acts of exclusion and discrimination resulting from the systemic barriers perpetuated by xenophobic and nationalist ideologies.

From this standpoint, my thesis exhibition employs interactive space, which includes visual art (drawing, sculpture ceramics), projection, video, and sound, as a means to explore the effects of the exclusive and discriminatory immigration policies and practices. Furthermore, it is designed to explore …

Buffering..., Nicholas B. Vialpando

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Buffering… focuses on scenes from everyday life such as cooking breakfast or a day at the office which are presented in a half-rendered frozen form. The works are partially pixilated in certain areas to create a sense of perpetual buffering illustrating a never-ending frustration between advancement and expectation. This body of work is meant to create an opportunity for viewer to experience a sensation of tension while information perpetually buffers. This sensation reflects how society has been conditioned by its technological devices and their implied promises of instant gratification. This body of work aims to shed light on the frustration …

The Narcissistic Gaze In Pipilotti Rist’S Video Work Mutaflor (1996), Yanlin Li

Art and Art History Summer Fellows

The project focuses on the research of the visual culture in the context of western societies from the 1970s to the 1990s and the art criticism on video art during that time. The final product of this project is an art criticism on the video artwork Mutaflor, made by Pipilotti Rist, an internationally renowned contemporary video and installation artist.

Kandinsky's Nonrepresentational Art: Finding Meaning Through Aesthetic Experience, Kandice Nikkole Diaz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The art world is not one in which much scholarship has been conducted from a communication perspective. As such, this study attempts to add to the very little body of work that exists in the realms of both art and visual rhetoric. Abstract art, such as that of Wassily Kandinsky, is full of meaning despite the fact that it is nonobjective, and therefore considered meaningless. Using a rhetorical method, I argue that by examining the artwork of Wassily Kandinsky in certain contexts, it is possible to discover the meaning embedded in his abstract paintings, in particular his Compositions and Improvisations.

The Relation Of French Poetry And Painting To The Development Of French Impressionistic Music, Phyllis Elaine Threlfall

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

As far as the writer could find in her reading no one has ever written a finished study of this phase of Music, Art, and Literature. Of course, there are hints of it here and there in many books, but in no one in particular was a detailed study given. Paul Landormy’s book, A History of Music, seemed to carry the heart of the subject, however, in an extremely miniature style.

When we think of French music, our minds are generally centered in Paris, for it is here that the greatest organizations have been sponsored, and the important musical ideas …