Recently in analytic philosophy, interest in the issue of the epistemic value of art has been revived. Philosophers have sought to establish whether and in what ways art is a source of knowledge, understanding or a means of inquiry. In philosophy this is a longstanding question, addressed both in the Greek and German traditions, but it seems pertinent to ask the question again today in light of significant changes that have taken place in contemporary art practice. In my thesis, I investigate this question from two perspectives: in terms of analytic philosophy of art, and in terms of developments in contemporary art since the 1960s. In Part I, I offer a defence of a philosophical theory of artistic value, critically overview the extant philosophical literature on the question of epistemic value of art, and explain why the inherently experimental character of contemporary art makes it difficult simply to apply the available theories. I argue that a philosophical engagement with contemporary art requires a different, more inductive method. In Part II, I closely consider three recent developments in which the relationship between art and knowledge has been rendered more complex. The Conceptual Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s privileged concerns with concepts, thought processes and truth over expression, materiality and fidelity to genre. The social turn of the 1990s cast the artist in a position that is almost indistinguishable from that of a teacher, social activist or even of a technology developer. And the artists working within the bio art movement of the 1990s and 2000s have assimilated the activity of the artist to that of the scientist, sometimes blurring the two roles. The goal of the thesis is twofold. On the one hand, I show how cases from recent art history put pressure on some key commitments in recent analytic philosophy. Revisions and challenges are suggested in particular for extant theories of artistic value, conceptions of artistic autonomy and heteronomy, and some popular accounts of the epistemic value of art. On the other hand, concepts from analytic philosophy are used to shed light on some of the more radical developments in recent art practice, and to rethink the ways in which art participates in the broader culture.

This thesis gives, for the first time, a clear exposition of the activities of the Arundel Society (1848-1897). Founded to 'collect diligently and with discrimination the highest and best examples of Art and to bring them before hundreds of English minds' the presence of Aubrey Bezzi, Lord Lindsay, Edmund Oldfield, Samuel Rogers and John Ruskin on the Society's first council meant that the initial publication of engravings after two early Italian artists, Fra Angelico and Giotto, was unsurprising. After 1856, under the guidance of Henry Layard, the archaeologist and politician, the Society became even more firmly committed to copying and publishing frescoes of the early Renaissance. The council's aim in recording and publishing these endangered works of art was to educate the taste of the public and inspire artists to embark on programmes of mural decoration. The water-colours executed for the Society are discussed with particular reference to the reactions of the council, and of members and the press to the problem of their verisimilitude. About two-thirds of these copies were published as chromolithographs and the gains and liabilities of this initially very popular method of reproduction are examined. Other methods employed by the Society to publish fac-similies of classical and medieval ivories and reduced copies of the Elgin marbles are also discussed with general reference to Victorian attitudes towards reproductions. The penultimate chapter attempts to relate the prints and monographs published by the Society to the art historical scholarship of the period. It is shown that the council's publication of decorative quattrocento, provincial cinquecento and early Flemish and German artists was influenced by Henry Layard's preferences. His monographs for the Society are discussed and compared with the more scholarly, if diverse, contributions made by, among others, G. W. Kitchin, John Ruskin, George Scharf and Ralph Wornum. In the final chapter it is argued that the Society's loyalty to the tastes of the mid-century and to the process of chromolithography led to its dissolution.

Between the fourth and the seventh centuries CE, Christian patrons erected thousands of churches, chapels, and monasteries in cities and villages across the Mediterranean, decorating the apses, walls and floors of many of these structures with figural and geometric mosaics. These late antique Christian mosaics have been studied for their iconography, their Graeco-Roman components, and as evidence for the religious beliefs of newly-Christian patrons. However, art historians largely have ignored the ways that texts, inscribed within the visual field and composed of the same mosaic material, functioned as images in Christian spaces. For the first time, this thesis assembles the foundations of a comprehensive catalogue of early Christian mosaic inscriptions, places them back into the physical spaces in which they were meant to be read, and analyzes how these texts functioned both verbally and visually for the late antique reader/viewer, against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman traditions. I first examine the ekphrastic components of Christian inscriptions and look more closely at the different ways in which texts work with and against images and spaces, encouraging the viewer to react physically and mentally. Second, I study the language of light used by the inscriptions, and argue that this language linked text to the material of mosaic and enabled patrons to make complex statements about their cultural erudition and religious affiliation. Third, I investigate the functions and visual forms of short tituli which label scenes or name figures to simplify, authenticate or transform static images into narratives in motion. Finally, I turn to the frames of the inscriptions and contend that different forms conveyed powerful visual arguments. By writing these texts back into their mosaics, this thesis argues that texts and images were inseparable in the period, and that text written into images performed and played in more complex ways than has been previously thought.

This study explores the interrelationship between spatiality and subjecthood in the work of Stéphane Mallarmé, Guillaume Apollinaire, Maurice Maeterlinck, and Alfred Jarry. Concerned with various modes of poetry and drama, it also examines the cross-pollination that can occur between these modes, focusing on a relatively narrow corpus of core texts: Mallarmé’s Igitur (c. 1867-70) and Un Coup de dés (1897); Apollinaire’s “Zone” (1912) and various of his calligrammes; Maeterlinck’s early one-act plays—L’Intruse (1890), Les Aveugles (1890), and Intérieur (1894); and Jarry’s Ubu roi (1896) and César-Antechrist (1895). The poetic and dramatic practices of these four authors are assessed against the broader cultural and philosophical contexts of the fin de siècle. The fin de siècle witnessed a profound epistemological shift: the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm, increasingly challenged throughout the nineteenth century, was largely dismantled, with ramifications beyond physics, philosophy and psychology. Chapter 1 introduces three foundational notions—Newtonian absolute space, the unitary Cartesian subject, and subject-object dualism—that were challenged and ultimately overthrown in turn-of-the-century science and art. Developments in theatre architecture and typographic design are examined against this philosophical backdrop with a view to establishing a diachronic and interdisciplinary framework of the authors in question. Chapter 2 focuses on the spatial dimension of Mallarmé’s Un Coup de dés and Apollinaire’s calligrammes—works which defamiliarise page-space by undermining various (naturalised) conventions of paginal configuration. In Chapter 3, the notion of liminality (the experience or condition of the betwixt and between) is implemented in an analysis of character and diegetic space as constructed in Jarry’s Ubu roi and Maeterlinck’s one-acts. Chapters 4 and Chapter 5 undertake a more abstract investigation of parallel inverse processes—the subjectivisation of space and the spatialisation of the subject —manifest not only in the works of Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, Apollinaire and Jarry, but in the period’s poetry and drama more generally.

Erik Satie (1866-1925) lived, worked, walked, and died in Paris. The key locations of his career – all within a single urban region – are well known and well researched. Yet he has often been presented as an eccentric individualist far removed from any social or geographical context. This thesis seeks to address – and redress – the decontextualisation of Satie’s career by re-imagining his music and biography in terms of the places and mobilities of turn-of-the-century Paris. To that end, it draws on a range of documentary and fictional material, including journalistic and scholarly reception texts, illustrated musical scores, chanson collections, contemporary visual culture, and cinematic representations of the people, place(s), and period(s) in question. These diverse primary and secondary sources are discussed and interpreted via a set of on-going debates at the intersection of historical musicology, cultural history, and urban geography. Some of these debates can be traced through existing research on the geography of music. Others are more local to this project and derive their value from suggesting alternative approaches to familiar problems in the study of French musical modernism. The main aim throughout is to develop a better understanding of the relations existing between Satie’s musical life, his compositional strategies, and the changing urban environment in which he plied his trade. Chapters One and Two focus on the working-class suburb of Arcueil and the ‘bohemian’ enclave of Montmartre. Chapters Three and Four are organised thematically around issues of musical humour and everyday life. By using the particular example of Satie’s Paris, the thesis proposes that more general avenues of enquiry are opened up into music and the city, thus demonstrating the potential benefits of incorporating the urban-geographic imagination into historical musicology more broadly, and bringing musicological thinking to bear on inter-disciplinary discussions about space, place, and mobility.

This thesis explores the development of naturalistic rendering of emotion in the art of Greece through facial expression and body posture from 525 to 400. Why does emotional naturalism arise in the art of Greece, and in which particular regions? Why at this period? In which contexts and media? What restrictions on situation and type of figure can be interpolated or reconstructed? The upper chronological limit is based on simple observation. It is about this time, in many media, that naturalistic emotional expression is employed, although there are exceptions that blur this line slightly. The lower limit marks a major historical turning point, a culmination in Beazley's chronology of Attic vase painting and a common dating threshold for small finds. Emotional expression accelerates from the fourth century, and requires a different set of questions. 400 is for this reason held as a strict end-point. Many categories of physical object were considered; gems and coins did not offer substantial results, but are used for comparison. The rest have formed the armature of the thesis. Only original objects are included, as emotionality undergoes marked changes in Hellenistic and Roman copies. The first section treats publically-commissioned sculpture – sculpture integrated into architecture. The second section treats privately-commissioned sculpture, stone and terracotta; the third pottery: black-figure, red-figure and whiteground. Within these sections, material is arranged broadly chronologically. Human figures are the focus, and semi-humans such as Centaurs and satyrs are included; figures with essentially non-human faces such as the Gorgon are not. Human anatomy is constant, so the method of analysis is physiological. Rather than putting facial expressions in folk terms – a frown, a smile – they are described anatomically for precision: by muscular contractions and extensions and their correspondent manifestations on the surface of the body. Moving beyond description to explanation, neurochemistry and psychology are the preferred tools, although neither discipline has a consensus on the nature of emotion or its expression. History, religion, location, maker, commissioner, viewer, medium and technique are brought to bear in order put expressivity in context. An important methodological tool has been the separation of emotional 'input' and ‘output’. Output is the evocation or intended evocation of an emotional state in the viewer, and the thesis is constantly aware of the disconnect between the 'intended audience' and a modern one. It focuses instead on input – the methods used to render the inner state of the figures shown. This has twofold benefit: it avoids insurmountable subjectivity – one might laugh at the expression of fear on a maenad being raped by a satyr, while another might not – and allows for comparison across genre and medium.

This thesis studies Han Dynasty stone carved tombs in Central and Eastern China. These multi-chambered tombs were constructed from carved stone slabs, and were very popular among the Han people. However, such horizontal stone structures were entirely new, and were a result of outside stimuli rather than an independent development within China. The stone carved tombs were a result of imitating royal rock-cut tombs, while the rock-cut tombs were stimulated by foreign examples. Moreover, many details of stone carved tombs also had Western features. These exotic elements were incorporated to satisfy specific requirements of the Han people, and reflected the desire to assimilate exotica within Chinese traditions. Some details within stone carved tombs showed high level of stone working technologies with Western influences. But in general the level of stone construction of the Han period was relatively low. The methods of construction showed how unfamiliar the Western system was to the Han artisans. Han Dynasty stone carved tombs were hybrids of different techniques, including timber, brick and stone works. From these variations, Han people could choose certain types of tombs to satisfy their specific ritual and economic needs. Not only structures, but also pictorial decorations of stone carved tombs were innovations. The range of image motifs is quite limited. Similar motifs can be found in almost every tomb. Such similarities were partly due to the artisans, who worked in workshops and used repertoires for the carving of images. But these also suggest that the tombs were decorated for certain purposes with a given functional template. Together with different patterns of burial objects and their settings, such images formed a way through which the Han people gave meaning to the afterworld. After their heyday, stone carved tombs ceased being constructed in the Central Plains as the Han Empire collapsed. However, they set a model for later tombs. The idea of building horizontal stone chamber tombs spread to Han borderlands, and gradually went further east to the Korean Peninsula. The legacy and spread of the Chinese masonry tradition was closely related to the political circumstances of late Han and post-Han period. The spread of stone chamber tombs in Northeast Asia is presented as a part of a long history of interactions between different parts of Eurasia.

This thesis explores the ways in which discourses of citizenship are circulated and incorporated into the practice of non-formal educational filmmaking initiatives for young people in London. I utilise an ethnographic approach focusing on young participants, adult facilitators and funders to demonstrate how youth filmmaking facilitates an exploration of abstract conceptions of citizenship with the on-the-ground reality of young peoples’ “practice” as citizens. To provide context for this material, I present both a theoretical overview of the heady yet labile term “citizenship” and a historical narrative of youth filmmaking, particularly in its relationship to wider political economies of funding and youth policy. Although discourses of citizenship in youth filmmaking have changed subtly over time, the youth filmmaking programmes considered here marshal three central conceptions of citizenship; “engagement,” “empowerment” and “belonging.” To explore each of these notions, I draw on case studies to show how these citizenship discourses become operationalised. First, I consider the Reelhood project for young Muslims, which aimed at encouraging “political engagement.” I demonstrate how young people challenge notions of “disengagement” and operate as “justice-oriented” citizens, in contradistinction to the premise of the funding source itself. Second, I use the example of the This is My Story project, amongst other films that dealt with youth violence, to explore discourses of “empowerment.” Using the metaphor of the “shot/reverse shot” sequence, I demonstrate how youth filmmaking projects situate themselves as an alternative to the representation of young people in mainstream press. Finally, I describe the River Lea project in which the sensory and technological processes of filmmaking became a means for young people to “focus in” and attune their sensory and perceptive faculties to the experience of “place-making.” Each of these case studies exhibits how the creative, social and technical processes of filmmaking provide a challenge to or re-interpretation of citizenship discourse.

This study catalogues and analyses 329 statuettes and amulets from Thonis-Heracleion, a sunken city off the coast of Egypt that flourished between the 7th and 2nd centuries BC. This is the first study of votive statuettes and amulets from the Late and Ptolemaic Periods that presents a comprehensive corpus from a single site, complete with detailed catalogue entries and photographs. Although some of the most exceptional pieces were previously published in an exhibition catalogue, the majority are unpublished and it is the first time they have been studied and viewed as a whole. The material includes not only Egyptian-style bronzes, which are typical dedications of this period, but also a range of other materials including lead, terracotta, faience, and limestone. Some figures are represented in foreign style and attest to a small hellenized community at the site. By viewing multiple categories of votive material laterally and in context, important conclusions about cultural interactions and cult practice at Thonis-Heracleion come to light. Chapter One details the find context of the statuettes and amulets, followed by a discussion of their types and the cults to which they attest in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 outlines the objects’ primary functions and demonstrates the ways that lead and bronze were utilised differently. Chapter 4 focuses on bronze and lead production methods, particularly methods of replicable production that are indicative of technological exchange with other Mediterranean cultures. Finally, in Chapter 5, I look at how the votives reflect the cultural community at Thonis-Heracleion, and how they compare to others at sites throughout Egypt. Each chapter highlights how the archaeological context informs us about cultural interactions between Egyptians and Greeks and about the dynamics of cult practice at a Delta site in the Late and Ptolemaic Periods.

Le web et les images qui y foisonnent font désormais partie de notre quotidien et ils façonnent notre manière de penser le monde. Certaines œuvres d’art permettent, semble-t-il, de réfléchir à la fois sur l’image, les technologies web, les relations qu’elles entretiennent et les enjeux sociopolitiques qui les sous-tendent. C’est dans cette perspective que ce mémoire s’intéresse aux travaux de la série des Googlegrams (2004-2006) de Joan Fontcuberta, particulièrement à deux œuvres qui reprennent les photographies de torture de la prison d’Abu Ghraib devenues iconiques. Ce sont des photomosaïques utilisant ces images comme matrices dans lesquelles viennent s’insérer des milliers de petites images qui ont été trouvées dans le web grâce au moteur de recherche d’images de Google, selon certains mots-clés choisis par l’artiste de façon à faire écho à ces photographies-matrices. Ces œuvres sont ici considérées en tant qu’outils d’études actifs nous permettant de déployer les assemblages d’images et de technologies qu’elles font interagir. Il s’agit de suivre les acteurs et les réseaux qui se superposent et s’entremêlent dans les Googlegrams : d’abord les photographies d’Abu Ghraib et leur iconisation ; ensuite le moteur de recherche et sa relation aux images ; finalement les effets de la photomosaïque. Cette étude s’effectue donc à partir des interactions entre ces différents éléments qui constituent les œuvres afin de réfléchir sur leurs rôles dans le façonnement de la représentation de l’information. / The Web and its proliferating images have become part of our daily lives, thereby shaping the way we think about the world. It seems that some artworks allow us to ponder on the role of the image, Web technologies and their intricate relationship, as well as underlying socio-political issues. In this regard, this thesis examines the works of Joan Fontcuberta’s Googlegrams series (2004-2006), more specifically two artworks that are reworking iconic torture photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison. Thousands of smaller images are inserted into the photographs to refashion them into photomosaics. The images are found on the Web using Google Images search function with key words chosen by the artist in order to echo the source photographs. Considered here as tools of active study, these artworks allow us to unfold the assemblage of images and technologies that they are making interact. The aim is to follow the actors and the networks that are superimposed and interwoven within the Googlegrams: the Abu Ghraib photographs and their iconization; the search engine and its relationship with images; as well as the effects of the photomosaic. This study is driven by the interactions between these various elements that form the artworks as a means of reflecting upon their shaping roles in the representation of information.