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This thesis considers the role of smell in art and aesthetics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores the growing interest of a number of artists and literary figures, c.1860 - 1910, in cultivating an olfactory aesthetic. Through examination of artistic engagements with the sense of smell, it reveals how and why artists became occupied with olfactory perception and its representations, arguing that scents were increasingly perceived as an important means of communication in art, being influential in the life of the imagination owing to their emotional reverberation and associational nature. The thesis also examines popular ideas about the aesthetic status of perfume and argues that it was the perceived contradictory nature of smell as both sensuous and spiritual that rendered it so problematic and ripe for discussion in late-nineteenthcentury writings about the nature of art, beauty and aesthetics. This project carves out new territories within the history of visual culture through exploration of the areas of overlap and interplay between the visual and the olfactory, from the visualisation of invisible odour to the influence of scent upon mental imagery. Artistic sites of interaction between smell and the visual, such as perfume concerts that triggered visions of place, paintings of women smelling roses or bodily representations of incense in dance, provide new and fertile grounds for exploring the social and cultural fabric of the period. By drawing upon culturally specific ideas about smell, with reference to such themes as female sexuality and the erotic imagination as well as the Orient, health and disease, spirituality and the soul, this thesis offers fresh interpretative insights, being the first art historical project to bring into play the growing body of cultural and historical research on the sense of smell.

Humorous language play is integral to the building of many relationships. Research into its role in social interactions has tended to focus on native speakers in a shared cultural context, while the humorous language play of second language learners, especially in the classroom setting, has only recently attracted attention. The limited research to date has tended to focus on discrete episodes of humorous language play, neglecting its contribution to the building of rapport and the development of an in-group culture. This thesis focuses on lower-level learners from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and investigates the ways in which they play with English for their own social ends, despite a lack of language proficiency and common socio-cultural reference points. The setting for this investigation was an intensive English course for business people, run by a private training organisation. The participants were low-proficiency learners from various professional fields and nationalities. The classroom interactions of particular groups were audio or video recorded, with two learners being recorded over two continuous days of their three-day course. This enclosed setting allowed the opportunity to trace the role of humorous language play in the establishment and development of the learners' relationships with each other and with their teacher. Goffman's concept of frame and Bakhtin's ideas about the heteroglossic and dialogical nature of language inform the analysis of the data. Findings show that the impulse to play can overcome the linguistic and cultural challenges the learners face. In order to have fun, they exploit the ‘play’ between the interpretative frameworks that a language classroom provides. They build a common pool of prior talk and reference points, alluding to them humorously to create rapport, to shape their learning environment, and to take ownership of the target language.

Depuis la fin des années 1960 se sont développées différentes pratiques artistiques délibérément bêtes, assumant et parfois même revendiquant leur bêtise. Dans une approche ancrée à la fois dans l'histoire culturelle et la théorie esthétique, prenant en compte les paramètres que sont les modalités d'exposition, l'industrie du divertissement et le rôle des collectionneurs, il s'agit de comprendre comment un phénomène à l'origine excentré, marginal et parfois contestataire, est devenu une donnée centrale de la production artistique contemporaine. Le premier mouvement revient sur la tradition de la bêtise en histoire de l'art. Partant de l'expression « bête comme un peintre », y est proposé une relecture du « retour à la peinture» du début 1980 (Figuration Libre, Mülheimer Freiheit à Cologne, bad painting américaine). Le deuxième moment porte sur les mécanismes de diffusion, d'expansion, de légitimation et d'institutionnalisation de l'art bête dans les années 1990 et 2000, abordant notamment les pratiques Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Richard Jackson, Gelitin, Wim Delvoye ou encore Damien Hirst. Le troisième et dernier temps consiste en une généalogie alternative de cette histoire de la bêtise en prenant la Californie comme paradigme. On y développe l'hypothèse qu'à Los Angeles sont en germe, depuis le milieu des années 1960, les formes de bêtise artistique qui s'imposent à l'échelle internationale depuis les années 1990 : l'industrie du divertissement et le culte du succès, de la célébrité et de la richesse, et son contre-point dynamique, son envers dévoyé, le modèle du bad boy made in L.A. / Stupidity (bêtise) can be apprehended as bodily, vulgar, even regressive. Or it can simply be understood as foolish, silly or childish. I investigate all of these strains of "bêtise" in order to demonstrate the key role it has played in shaping aesthetic styles and debates about contemporary art from the late 1960s to the present day. The dissertation thus traces these fluctuations by looking at the shift from the 1960-l 970s, when dumbness, used as a critical tool, occupied a position at the margins of the art world, to the l 980-1990s when "bêtise" began to constitute an autonomous aesthetics mobilized by the art world's biggest stars. What used to be marginal then became preeminent, what used to be popular culture became high art, while lowbrow turned into highbrow. The first part takes a look back at the tradition of stupidity in art history. Viewed from the popular phrase "stupid as a painter", I propose a reevaluation of the so-called "return to painting" in the early 80s (Figuration libre, Bad Painting, Mülheimer Freiheit Grup in Koln) as an initial step. The second section analyses the mechanisms of diffusion, expansion, legitimation and institutionalization of "dumb art" in the 90s and 2000s, focusing on practices of artists like Martin Kippenberger, JeffKoons, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Gelitin, Wim Delvoye or Damien Hirst. The third and last part is an attempt to write an alternative narrative to this history of stupidity, in which I propose California as a paradigmatic model. The entertainment industry and the cult of success, fame and wealth, and its dynamic counterpoint, its dark side, the made-in-L.A.-bad-boy model played major roles in that process.