This dissertation offers a reconsideration of the uses of photography under the aegis of Conceptual Art between 1966 and 1973 by analyzing the ways photography challenged epistemological limits, and, despite the claims regarding the medium’s inherent indexicality, emphasized experience over exactitude, and doubt in place of certainty. By focusing on four American practitioners, I argue for the “benefit of the doubt;” in other words, for the value of disbelief and hesitation, marking the reorientation of art at this time towards critical methods which oppose all orthodoxies, including but not limited to formalist dogmas, and instead are committed to the denial of autonomy in favor of understanding meaning as infinitely contingent. The dissertation is divided among four key case studies, including Mel Bochner (n. 1940), Bruce Nauman (n. 1941), Douglas Huebler (1924-1997), and John Baldessari (n. 1931). Each chapter argues for the unique contribution of photography in relation to conceptual art practices, while also situating the projects of these individual practitioners within the broader history of the medium of photography. I explore specifically the concepts of seriality, transparency and theory in Bochner; performance, “worklessness,” and failure in Nauman; portraiture, mapping and impossibility in Huebler; humor, didacticism, choice and chance in Baldessari. This project looks back continuously to significant precursors, in particular the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), as a means of engaging the status and function of art after the Readymade, particularly as concerns de-skilling, disinterest, affirmative irony, and nominalism, as well as the dialectic between inclusivity and inconclusivity.

This dissertation offers a reconsideration of the uses of photography under the aegis of Conceptual Art between 1966 and 1973 by analyzing the ways photography challenged epistemological limits, and, despite the claims regarding the medium’s inherent indexicality, emphasized experience over exactitude, and doubt in place of certainty. By focusing on four American practitioners, I argue for the “benefit of the doubt;” in other words, for the value of disbelief and hesitation, marking the reorientation of art at this time towards critical methods which oppose all orthodoxies, including but not limited to formalist dogmas, and instead are committed to the denial of autonomy in favor of understanding meaning as infinitely contingent. The dissertation is divided among four key case studies, including Mel Bochner (n. 1940), Bruce Nauman (n. 1941), Douglas Huebler (1924-1997), and John Baldessari (n. 1931). Each chapter argues for the unique contribution of photography in relation to conceptual art practices, while also situating the projects of these individual practitioners within the broader history of the medium of photography. I explore specifically the concepts of seriality, transparency and theory in Bochner; performance, “worklessness,” and failure in Nauman; portraiture, mapping and impossibility in Huebler; humor, didacticism, choice and chance in Baldessari. This project looks back continuously to significant precursors, in particular the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), as a means of engaging the status and function of art after the Readymade, particularly as concerns de-skilling, disinterest, affirmative irony, and nominalism, as well as the dialectic between inclusivity and inconclusivity.

White Painted Ware, the most identifiable of pottery types of the Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus, has been studied by scholars either with the view to creating chronological typologies or to tracing trade routes. Little attention has been paid to the technology and social organization of production of this pottery. This thesis is concerned with the potters as much as with the pottery. The production sequence is examined from clay selection through to decoration of the vessels. An attempt is made to isolate production centres with unique methods of vessel construction as well as preferences for certain shapes and decorative schemes. Using petrographic analysis, different fabrics are isolated within the ware, and these are in turn related to the groups of vessels created based on style. Similar fabrics are used in multiple sites and most sites were found to have used multiple fabrics to create pottery that is considered to be part of the White Painted ware group. Beneath the major differences in styles between sites are several minor variations in construction method and decoration that are more likely to represent choices made by individual potters or small groups of potters working together. Based on vessel shape and decoration, seven distinct production centres appear to have been manufacturing White Painted ware on Cyprus over the course of the Middle Bronze Age. These were not operating simultaneously, but appear to have been active at the time that their regions were most prosperous, linking the production and use of White Painted ware with political and economic power.

White Painted Ware, the most identifiable of pottery types of the Middle Bronze Age on Cyprus, has been studied by scholars either with the view to creating chronological typologies or to tracing trade routes. Little attention has been paid to the technology and social organization of production of this pottery. This thesis is concerned with the potters as much as with the pottery. The production sequence is examined from clay selection through to decoration of the vessels. An attempt is made to isolate production centres with unique methods of vessel construction as well as preferences for certain shapes and decorative schemes. Using petrographic analysis, different fabrics are isolated within the ware, and these are in turn related to the groups of vessels created based on style. Similar fabrics are used in multiple sites and most sites were found to have used multiple fabrics to create pottery that is considered to be part of the White Painted ware group. Beneath the major differences in styles between sites are several minor variations in construction method and decoration that are more likely to represent choices made by individual potters or small groups of potters working together. Based on vessel shape and decoration, seven distinct production centres appear to have been manufacturing White Painted ware on Cyprus over the course of the Middle Bronze Age. These were not operating simultaneously, but appear to have been active at the time that their regions were most prosperous, linking the production and use of White Painted ware with political and economic power.

Texte remanié de : Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. / Bibliogr. p. [159]-165. Index.

While Pablo Picasso internationally exhibited his paintings, he chose to expose his sculptures only through photographs. Picasso’s commitment to the photographic display of his sculpture comes to light through his fifteen year collaboration with Brassaï, the first photographer to collaborate regularly with the artist and the only one to engage thoroughly with Picasso’s sculptural oeuvre. This collaboration culminated in hundreds of images published largely on two occasions – a photo essay published in the avant-garde Journal Minotaure in 1933 and a catalogue covering almost fifty years of Picasso’s sculptural production published in French in 1948 and in English in 1949. These photographs, as well as unpublished prints, uncropped versions of the published photographs, and the contact sheets Brassaï assembled as he was photographing Picasso’s oeuvre are contextualized in light of contemporary theories regarding the presentation, representation, and dissemination of art. This case study sheds light on the way in which strategies of display shape art’s meaning, as well as the artist’s public image, reputation, and legacy.

While Pablo Picasso internationally exhibited his paintings, he chose to expose his sculptures only through photographs. Picasso’s commitment to the photographic display of his sculpture comes to light through his fifteen year collaboration with Brassaï, the first photographer to collaborate regularly with the artist and the only one to engage thoroughly with Picasso’s sculptural oeuvre. This collaboration culminated in hundreds of images published largely on two occasions – a photo essay published in the avant-garde Journal Minotaure in 1933 and a catalogue covering almost fifty years of Picasso’s sculptural production published in French in 1948 and in English in 1949. These photographs, as well as unpublished prints, uncropped versions of the published photographs, and the contact sheets Brassaï assembled as he was photographing Picasso’s oeuvre are contextualized in light of contemporary theories regarding the presentation, representation, and dissemination of art. This case study sheds light on the way in which strategies of display shape art’s meaning, as well as the artist’s public image, reputation, and legacy.

This project examines developments in the field of visual art in the post-Korean War period of national reconstruction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (1953-1960). In particular, I focus on the debates that arise within the emergent genre of Chosŏnhwa, a modernized mode of traditional painting in ink, that address the question of a North Korean mode of socialist realism. Based on editorial articles and round table discussion published in the art journal Chosŏn misul (1957–?) my project traces the dynamic positions held by artists, critics and historians on the relationship between the discourse of (socialist) realism and the role of Korea’s own aesthetic tradition within the development of a new mode of North Korean art in the socialist context. What transpires is a dynamic discourse on what constitutes or should constitute North Korean art in the contemporary era of socialism.

This project examines developments in the field of visual art in the post-Korean War period of national reconstruction in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (1953-1960). In particular, I focus on the debates that arise within the emergent genre of Chosŏnhwa, a modernized mode of traditional painting in ink, that address the question of a North Korean mode of socialist realism. Based on editorial articles and round table discussion published in the art journal Chosŏn misul (1957–?) my project traces the dynamic positions held by artists, critics and historians on the relationship between the discourse of (socialist) realism and the role of Korea’s own aesthetic tradition within the development of a new mode of North Korean art in the socialist context. What transpires is a dynamic discourse on what constitutes or should constitute North Korean art in the contemporary era of socialism.

An important masterpiece by the Paduan sculptor Andrea Riccio, the Della Torre tomb monument broke with contemporary funerary monuments in both its form and content. Understanding what enabled this break with tradition is the central issue in the study of this monument—one that has not been sufficiently addressed in previous scholarship. Despite the lack of overt references to the Christian faith on the Della Torre monument, the narrative programme is concerned with two very important Christian concerns—the necessity of a life of virtue and the health and afterlife of the soul. I argue that the narrative on the tomb, influenced by contemporary funerary oratory and poetry, presents a model of virtue for the viewer. Moreover, I argue that Riccio has illustrated the presence of this exemplar by the very structure of the monument itself. This dissertation focuses on the artistic and intellectual community surrounding the creation of this monument and, in particular, on the reconciliation of this strictly all’antica monument with Christian thought in this period. Upon a thorough contextual examination, this unprecedented monument becomes less of an anomaly. It reflects the ideas of an important circle of humanists from both Padua and Verona, thus illustrating the breadth of their interests and their involvement in contemporary debates over religion, the nature and potential immortality of the soul, and the necessity of virtue. Analysing this monument within the context of humanist ideas prevalent among the individuals within the Della Torre circle, those who had, or likely had, a great influence on the significance of the monument’s narrative, gives this monument what has been long denied to it—a proper understanding of its Christian programme and didactic function. The fulfillment of this task, which promises to shed additional light on the adaptation of pagan elements to Christian purposes, is the overall aim of this work.