Marie al-Khazen was a Lebanese photographer who lived between 1899 and 1983. Her photographs were mostly taken between the 1920s and 1930s in the North of Lebanon. They were compiled by Mohsen Yammine, a Lebanese collector who later donated the photographs to the Arab Image Foundation. Her work includes a collection of intriguing photographs portraying her family and friends living their everyday life in Zgharta. Al-Khazen seized every opportunity to use her camera to capture stories of her surroundings. She not only documented her travels around tourist sites in Lebanon but also sought creative experimentation with her device by staging scenes, manipulating shadows and superimposing negatives to produce different effects in her prints. Within the borders of her photographs, bedouins and European friends, peasants and landlords, men and women, comfortably share the same space. Most of Marie al-Khazen's photographs, which are circulated online through the Arab Image Foundation's website, suggest a narrative of independent and determined Lebanese women. These photographs are charged with symbols that can be understood, today, as representative of women's emancipation through their presence as individuals, separate from family restrictions of that time. Images in which women are depicted smoking a cigarette, driving a car, riding horses and accompanying men on their hunting trips counter the usual way in which women were portrayed in 1920s Lebanon. The photographs can be read as a space for al-Khazen to articulate her vision of the New Woman or the Modern Girl as described by Tani Barlow in The Modern Girl Around the World. In this anthology, authors like Barlow point to the ways in which the modern girl "disregards the roles of dutiful daughter, wife and mother," in seeking sexual, economic and political emancipation. Al-Khazen's photographs lead me to pose a series of questions pertaining to the representation of femininity and masculinity through the poses, reasoning, and activities adopted by women and men in the photographs. The questions which frame this study have to do with the ways in which notions of gender, class and race are inscribed within Marie al-Khazen's photographs. / Marie al-Khazen est une photographe libanaise qui vécut entre 1899 et 1983. La plupart de ses photos furent prises dans les années vingt et trente dans la région de Zgharta au Nord du Liban. Ces photos font partie de la collection de Mohsen Yammine, un collectionneur libanais. Elles sont actuellement conservées dans les archives de la Fondation de l'image Arabe à Beyrouth et sont disponibles en ligne sur le site internet de la Fondation. Le corpus d'al-Khazen est constitué d'un ensemble de photographies captivantes qui représentent le quotidien de sa famille et de ses amis à Zgharta. Al-Khazen saisissait son milieu social grâce à son appareil photo. Néanmoins, elle ne se contentait pas de documenter ses excursions touristiques au Liban; elle explorait également les capacités techniques de son appareil photo en inventant des scènes photographiques et en manipulant les ombres dans l'espace photographique. Au travers de ses photos on retrouve les effets surréalistes qu'elle créait – peut-être intentionnellement – en faisant des tirages de deux négatifs superposés. Dans le cadre de ces images, on retrouve des bédouins et des Européens, des paysans et des bourgeois, des femmes et des hommes se partageant le même espace. La plupart des photos de Marie al-Khazen évoquent les destins de femmes indépendantes et engagées. Ces photos sont chargées de symboles qui suggèrent une représentation de la femme émancipée. A travers le corpus d'al-Khazen, des femmes apparaissent en train de fumer des cigarettes et de conduire des automobiles. On retrouve également des femmes qui accompagnaient les hommes dans leurs excursions de chasse. Ces photos semblent incompatibles avec la façon dont les femmes étaient représentées dans la presse des années vingt au Moyen Orient où les femmes, en général, évitaient de se montrer dans des endroits publiques. Je propose une lecture qui articule la façon dont al-Khazen a utilisé l'espace photographique pour manifester sa vision de la nouvelle femme: la femme moderne comme celle décrite par Tani Barlow et ses collègues dans The Modern Girl Around the World. Cette anthologie représente la "modern girl" qui, selon Barlow et ses collègues, "disregards the roles of dutiful daughter, wife and mother," en recherchant une émancipation sexuelle, économique et politique.Les photos d'al-Khazen m'incitent à interroger de façons multiples la représentation de la femininité et la masculinité à travers le comportement, le raisonnement, et les activités des femmes et des hommes dans ces photographies. Ces questions s'adressent à la sociologie de l'identité sexuelle et se proposent d'analyser la façon dont cette identité est évoquée dans les photos de Marie al-Khazen.

Ben Shahn's 1940 solo exhibition of his so-called "Sunday Paintings" at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York manifested a transformation that had occurred in his art during the 1930s. Both the formal language and the subject matter of his art had changed. I explore in depth the wide variety of contextual influences (political, professional, and personal) that informed this metamorphosis. Specifically addressed is the federal government's political realignment at the end of the New Deal, a paradigm shift in the emphasis of art criticism and artistic practice, and the influence of a "photographic-aesthetic" on Shahn's paintings. In spite of the easy answers offered by critics, historians, and the artist himself, the actual reason for Shahn's new visual language was a complex set of internal and exterior factors, not always directly related, but, nevertheless, all contributors to a condition in which Shahn felt compelled to change his course.

<p> The Late Neolithic (defined here as the LN I of Sampson1993 and Coleman 1992) is both the culmination and the turning point of Greek Neolithic culture from the preceding phases. It lasts some 1,000 years, from approximately 5,300 to 4,300 B.C. The ceramic repertoire of the Late Neolithic period in Greece is a tremendously diverse body of material. Alongside this diversity, other aspects of the ceramic assemblage, such as Matt-painted and Black-burnished pottery, share broad similarities throughout regions, constituting a "<i> koine.</i>" The commanlities, however, are most apparent during the earlier part of the Late Neolithic (LN Ia); in the later phase (LN Ib) phase, more regional variations proliferate than before. </p><p> In the Late Neolithic, all categories of pottery&mdash;monochrome, decorated, and undecorated&mdash;are at their technological and stylistic acme in comparison with earlier periods. While some of the pottery types demonstrate unbroken continuity and development from the preceding Early and Middle Neolithic phases, new specialized shapes and painting techniques are embraced. </p><p> For the first time in the Neolithic, shapes appear that are typically thought of by archaeologists as being for food processing (strainers and "cheese-pots"), cooking (tripod cooking pots and baking pans), and storing (<i>pithoi </i>). More recent research, however, has demonstrated that these "utilitarian" vessels were more often than not used for purposes other than their hypothesized function. These new "utilitarian" vessels were to dominate the next and last phase of the Neolithic, the Final Neolithic (also called the Chalcolithic, Eneolithic, or LN II) when painted pottery disappears from most Greek assemblages just before the beginning of the Bronze Age. </p><p> During the past two decades, there has been much research into Late Neolithic Greece, particularly in Northern Greece (Macedonia). This dissertation incorporates the most up-to-date information from these recent excavations with the older material from sites in Thessaly, Central Greece, and Southern Greece. Since this study draws solely upon published material, both old and new, there are certain limitations to the type of analysis that can be performed. The approach, then, is more of an art-historical and historiographical overview than a rigorous archaeological analysis. It provides an overview of the major classes of pottery (decorated, monochrome, and undecorated) and their primary shapes, motifs, and technological aspects. While it emphasizes commonalities, regional and chronological variations are also highlighted. The technological means of production of vessels, their use, circulation, and deposition are also considered. </p><p> The structure of this paper is that each pottery chapter is devoted to a broad class (such as Matt-painted), which is broadly defined and then more closely examined at the regional level for chronological and stylistic variations. Likewise, a sub-section then discusses the technology of a particular class and its regional and or chronological similarities and differences. When necessary, outdated scholarship is addressed and rectified.</p>

<p> This thesis provides a revisionist history of Dutch artist Jan Dibbets's early practice. Jan Dibbets has not yet, been credited in art historical scholarship for his contributions in foregrounding visual experience within Conceptual practice. This thesis offers an additional narrative by suggesting a comparison between his early practice and the work being produced by European artists working in a tradition of visual perception. By studying the contemporary reception of Dibbets's work and Perceptual Abstraction, I argue how traditional art historical boundaries have obstructed a possible reading of this artist's practice.</p>

<p> During the last half of the nineteenth century, American sportsmen-artists painted hunting-related images that were designed to promote the ideals of sporting behavior, conservationist thought, and the interests of elite sportsmen against non-elite hunters. Upper-class American attitudes regarding common hunters and trappers, the politics of land use, and the role of conservation in recreational hunting played a significant part in the construction of visual art forms during this period, art which, in turn, helped shape national dialogue on the protection and acceptable uses of wildlife. </p><p> This dissertation takes issues critical to mid-century American conservation thought and agendas, and investigates how they were embodied in American hunting art of the time. Beginning with depictions of recreational sportsmen during the era of conservationist club formation (mid-1840s), the discussion moves to representations of the lone trapper at mid-century. These figures were initially represented as a beneficial force in the conquest of the American frontier, but trappers and backwoodsmen became increasingly problematic due to an apparent disregard for game law and order. I explore the ways in which market hunting was depicted, and how it was contrasted with acceptable "sportsmanlike" hunting methods. Subsequent chapters consider the portrayal of the boy hunter, an essential feature to the sportsman's culture and its continuance, and the tumultuous relationship between elite sportsmen and their guides, who were known to illegally hunt off-season. The last chapters address the subject of the wild animal as heroic protagonist and dead game still life paintings, a pictorial type that represented the lifestyle of sportsmen and their concern for conservative catches and adherence to game law. Developments in conservation during the period were significantly tied to class and elitist aspirations, and artist-sportsmen merged these social prejudices with their agenda for game conservation. Their representations of hunting art both responded to and promoted the conservationist cause.</p>

An architecture thesis in two parts: Part I examines the social and technical forces which shaped theater buildings in Europe and the United States. Physical relationships between audience and performer are shown to be central in understanding the changing form of theater buildings. Part II proposes a new model for flexible theater structures. It is a design to house the Dallas Theater Center's alternative performances. The design is informed by historical models and rooted in the imperatives of the audience-performer relationship. This combination historical analysis and design project seeks to critique the methodology of the avant-garde and reconsider the built elements that vanguard theater movements use and discard. The goal is to create a renewable theater building that can workably accommodate urges toward change.

As an artist, physician and social activist, Robert Campbell combined artistic, spiritual, medical and humanitarian work. Through art Campbell engaged his audiences in issues of poverty and injustice, and stimulated social activism in others. This thesis articulates the connections between Campbell's differing media and identifies his strategies for fusing art with social activism. The thesis documents paintings through which Campbell attempted to link personal reflection and meditation to an awareness of others; sculptures that incorporate the viewer's symbolic actions with an expanded consciousness; and installations that explicitly associate compassionate identification with others to social activism. Campbell's artistic and social practice, influenced by Liberation theology of Latin America, sought to reconcile the personal with the social through a process of consciousness-raising. This process included meditations, educational actions and community involvement, and is identified as a key component to the activism and spirituality in the art of Robert Campbell.

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the Menil Collection, a formerly private art collection in Houston, Texas opened to the public in 1987 as a museum designed by Renzo Piano. It addresses the collection as an object, and as a technology of self-fashioning, but also, in the context of modern museums, as an instrument in the formation of a public. I show how the Menil Collection participates in these processes, while pursuing a distinctive project of critique. The 10,000 piece collection has significant holdings of surrealist work; New York School painting; Byzantine icons; African and Oceanic objects; and antiquities. In 1995 it opened a freestanding gallery solely for the permanent exhibition of the work of Cy Twombly, and this year, construction was completed on a chapel built and consecrated to house 13th century Cypriot frescoes that were bought and restored by the collection. Each of these initiatives furthers an intricate moral, political, religious and aesthetic agenda that Dominique and the late John de Menil had given early expression to in their commissioning of the Rothko Chapel in 1964. Their projects are underpinned by a critique of the pervasive disenchantments of modernity, read particularly through the French Sacred Art Movement of the 1930s and 40s and Catholic Ecumenicism. The de Menils embraced a radical religious aesthetic--a sacred modern--by which they sought to rehabilitate an engagement with the material world that at once would allow for an immediacy of experience while fostering the possibility of spiritual transcendence. Hence, I argue, the organization and the exhibitionary practices of the Menil Collection are committed to a poetic rather than a didactic experience of art and they self-consciously seek to foster uncanny traces of the unseen, offering up these realms in the form of incantations.

This thesis concerns the artworks of Donald Judd, particularly those created between 1979-1994 and installed at Fort D. A. Russell in Marfa, Texas and conserved by the Chinati Foundation. A brief examination of Judd's early sculpture and experimentation with serial imagery, as they relate to the Marfa works, is provided as are some of Judd's writings which assisted the development of permanent installation sites. A discussion of Judd's move from a traditional gallery/museum environment to an outdoor site in Texas during the 1970's is provided as well as a history of the Dia Art Foundation which developed partially in response to artists' needs. Two series in particular installed at Fort Russell--one hundred milled aluminum boxes and fifteen concrete groups--are given thorough examination. The ensuing litigation between Judd and the Dia, the creation of the Chinati Foundation, and later permanent and temporary installations in Marfa are also considered.

Odilon Redon looked to Flaubert's novel, La Tentation de Saint Antoine, as inspiration for much of his oeuvre during the 1880's and 1890's. Redon and Flaubert shared a stylistic taste noted for destabilized meaning and deliberate ambiguity. To understand how Redon accomplished the disruption of a single meaning in his artistic productions, I will use a semiotic analysis of several of the lithographs from his Temptation albums to examine the verbal and visual sign systems, as well as the semiotic potential of the medium of lithography. The third part of the paper will focus on issues not previously addressed in art historical literature: the thesis that Redon empathized with St. Anthony to such an extent that he was continually drawn back to Flaubert's novel for inspiration for both his works in charcoal and lithography that he called his "noirs" and, later his works in color.