The Jesuit Mission to the Chiquitos was founded in 1691 in what is now eastern Bolivia in order to save Indians from both Spanish and Portuguese slavers, and the devil. Belief in powerful spirit beings suffused the indigenous Oriente of the 17th and 18th centuries but it also suffused the missionary mind, in which the devil presented a very real threat. From 1745 on the church built shortly after the foundation of each pueblo was replaced by a larger, adobe-built edifice. Colonial opinion in the Americas considered earth churches second-best, in need of disguise as stone ones, so architectural features and mural decoration were painted on. At the same time the Indians believed malignant supernatural intentions could be thwarted by modifying the appearance of the human body. This thesis suggests that the churches, painted to protect them from bureaucratic criticism, were perceived by the Indians as protected from supernatural harm. The expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 led to the identity of the Chiquito becoming synonymous with the churches over the next 200 years. However, after restoration of the churches began in 1972 and six mission complexes were awarded UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status in 1990 the churches were co-opted by the ruling class of Santa Cruz into a sentimental story of benign paternalism and 'artistic' Indians. 'Mission-myth' became a new colonialism. By comparing 18th-century accounts of Jesuit methodology with 20th and 21st-century accounts of indigenous practice and belief in the Oriente, and by considering both of these fields in the light of authoritative recent interpretations of the historic coexistence of native and European agendas in the Americas, this thesis attempts to decipher a Chiquito narrative in the metaphorical text of the church walls.

During the Middle Horizon (c. AD 600-1000), a new iconography spread throughout the South Central Andes known as the Southern Andean Iconographic Series (SAIS). One of its most persistent motifs is the Staff God, a human-like personage facing forward and holding a vertical staff in each hand. Most interpretations of Staff Gods describe them as representations of Andean deities. The present contribution discusses anthropomorphism in Andean antiquity (here understood as the objectification of unseen agents (like spirits or gods) using human-like models) by focusing on Staff God imagery found at the archaeological site ofTiahuanaco in the Bolivian flat highlands. Contrary to the mainstream interpretation model, the project shows that Staff God anthropomorphs are representations of ritual practitioners engaged in scenes of ritual action. The thesis identifies a set of (Western) biases toward Staff God imagery that may have contributed to the erroneous interpretation of Staff Gods as cases of Andean divine anthropomorphism. The research focuses on the ritual action of which the personages are parts. Emphasized is a possible kind of Andean anthropomorphism associated with the notion of bodily practices, where it seems that the body of the ritual practitioner provided, for the devotees, the objectification (and personification) of supernatural agency. The study concludes by arguing that divine anthropomorphism, as the objectification of a supernatural agent into its human-like 'art' form, may not necessarily be part of the Andean thought and cognitive process. In other words, many Andean peoples did not appear to feel the need to 'invent' human-like forms to embody supernatural agents and agency. Instead, supernatural agency was embodied by models drawn from the natural environment, including mountains, but also the ritual practitioners themselves.

The key problematic of this study is located in the notions of le paysan, le pays and le paysage, and their representation in visual and textual modes. By linking one visual artist, Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), with one textual artist, the novelist and polemicist Richard Millet (1953- ), an ethos of symbolic and thematic fraternal consanguinity is established. In order to situate and contextualize these notions of rural space and to locate them in the wider implications of La France profonde, this thesis adopts a basic comparative approach in order to ground the analyses in an inter-medial, trans-epochal approach. The principal argument posits the iconography of rural space as a universal and atemporal constant and as a metaphor for the cyclical nature of existence, as an exploration of notions of the past, the nature of belonging, loss and exile. Each of the seven chapters in this thesis may be read to a certain extent as a selfcontained essay, as a meditation on the nature of seeing and decoding of the visual and textual space: the interpretation of art and text in the form of a discourse, a semiotic ‘map’. However, throughout the thesis there runs a linear argument and analysis which thematically and organically links all seven, seeking to widen notions of la terre in order to encompass an eco-awareness, a cosmic unicity of the human with the natural in terms of ‘poetic dwelling’. An opening examination of the theory and practice of iconographic recognition leads to a questioning of the narratives informing the reconstitution of the past and the essence of la terre as possession and belonging. It is then posited that the notional metaphysics of landscape imply a dualistic, semiotic reading of landscape as ‘inscape’ or ‘otherness’. The notion of the Other is then introduced as the female Other, which leads to an examination of the feminization of rural space. Finally, the life story of both Millets is posited as a via crucis (patterned by melancholia and a form of ‘perpetual mourning’) and the last chapter concludes with a metaphysical examination of the rural space as a locus of poetic dwelling. To dwell poetically implies a deep understanding and empathy with the natural: this study argues that the representation of the rural space, through the individual art of each Millet, is metaphysically and existentially consistent with the imperatives of a meaningful and purposeful existence.

Malcolm X’s life, like his death in 1965, was much documented and observed. Having left an abundance of photographic and filmic images, the material that would become the posthumous The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and a number of interviews and recorded speeches, Malcolm X ensured his own cultural afterlife. He also inadvertently guaranteed that ‘we will never have access to an unmediated Malcolm.’ John Edgar Wideman has described the subsequent contestation of his meaning and legacy as ‘the bickering over the corpse of a dead man – who gets the head, the heart, the eyes, the penis, the gold teeth’. Other critics have lamented the cost in historical accuracy of the objectification of Malcolm X, invoking ‘the Malcolm that has often been lost in hero worship’ and the images of Malcolm X ‘all smoothed flat and stylized, like the holy men burning coolly in a Byzantine icon’. This thesis proposes to be the first systematic examination of the iconography of Malcolm X and its attendant narratives. Visual artists have explored Malcolm’s significations within folk and popular contexts. In journalism, critical studies, biographies, plays, screenplays, novels, memoirs, poems, and songs, Malcolm’s interpreters have demonstrated his perpetual incompleteness. This thesis considers the proliferation of images and narratives that constitute the many different Malcolms available for consumption. It is not only African American culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that has been refracted through Malcolm X. His representation also speaks to the evolving relationship of written to visual culture since the mid-twentieth century and, indeed, of the interactions of religious, radical, and literary discourses with popular culture. As such, a consideration of the shifting iconography of Malcolm X opens a door on to many of the most contested issues of our times.

This thesis explores still life across different media in the early-to mid-twentieth century. Still life has long been characterised as a 'minor' genre due to its supposedly humble subject matter. However, the genre conjures up double, often paradoxical meanings, which unsettle these assumptions. I therefore propose a more elastic interpretation, to invoke still life as a genre of visual art but also as a condition in which all arts are implicated, a form of artistic practice, and a mode of being. I argue that modern still life represents a site of visceral encounter and an artistic practice with the potential to uncover the extraordinary within the ordinary. My inquiry takes its departure from still lifes by Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), and responses to them by modem writers. I examine these works as paradigmatic of a reanimation of the genre in twentieth-century art. Over the ensuing four chapters, I explore diverse permutations of still life in painting, prose, dance, sculpture, and poetry. My first chapter focuses on Virginia Woolf and Roger Fry; the second on Margaret Morris, J.D. Fergusson, and Rudolf Steiner; the third on Winifred Nicholson, Ben Nicholson, and Ivon Hitchens; and the fourth on Wallace Stevens and Charles Mauron. I consider works by these artists and the networks within which they operated to examine different ways in which they cultivated an aesthetic of vibratory attentiveness that can be illuminated in conjunction with still life. From this study emerges a broader sense of the significance of 'stillness' in cultural practices and aesthetic discourses of the period. I show that at the heart of modern artistic activity were forms of 'stillness' that were intimately bound up with movement. The still life emerges charged with animation, vibration and rhythm.

The twin aspects of Jerusalem, the backdrop to the life of Christ and the setting for the end of time, co-existed in western Christian art from the earliest days. For much of the time one image captured both concepts and contained them in a tension that emphasised the decisive position of the city in Christian thought. Jerusalem, in all its possible meanings literal and metaphorical, was deeply embedded in the culture of the Medieval and early Renaissance West. Representations in the visual arts, including sculpture and architecture, drew inspiration from religious texts, meditations, liturgy, performance and pilgrimage; but iconographical and pictorial themes also provided continuous feedback. The interaction, or inter-animation, between different media was mutually reinforcinq. Collectively these different elements formed part of a memory world in which mnemonic coding was explicitly designed to consolidate this inter-action. A person kneeling at prayer before a painting with a meditational text drew information from both. The complexity ofthe relationship between depictions of Jerusalem in the visual arts and other manifestations of the city's importance in the wider religious and social context can be examined through individual paintings, the work of particular artists, and the connections to textual and liturgical sources in particular. In their depictions of Jerusalem, artists gradually complemented the metaphorical with recognisable topographical details. This development can be traced into the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when gradually metaphor began to re-assert itself- proving to be surprisingly resilient, surviving into the modern era in some unexpected ways.

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Women have always played a large part in the visual arts throughout Africa. In Botswana at the present time this is illustrated most immediately by the woven baskets, seen everywhere, in galleries, shops and at roadside stalls, that have come to represent the country and its arts and crafts; and with the odd exception they are all made by women in the most rural areas. However, women in Botswana currently practice other arts, including house decoration and pottery, although, for a variety of reasons, these are less immediately obvious. In contrast to these practices, representing traditions inherited from the past, there are others of relatively recent inception. Since the 1980s Botswana has seen the emergence of a small number of women ‘Fine’ artists, some of whom are Botswana nationals while others are expatriates settled in the country. In contrast to arts made for immediate local use, or sold in roadside stalls, the work of these artists is exhibited in the few art galleries that now exist. During the same period, art education has also been gradually introduced into the school and university system in Botswana. Art galleries both private and public are another recent development, beginning with the National Museums and Monuments Art Gallery, which opened in 1978, and which began to facilitate local exhibitions of Botswana art, while also encouraging exhibitions of this material in other countries. In addition to local tradition and an emerging Fine Art practice, art education, museums and galleries, a series of workshops has also been developed. Some of these were set up by expatriates on a more-or-less permanent basis with the aim of training women in various art forms, while others are temporary and artist-led, giving selected groups of artists the chance to meet, work and exchange ideas. I begin this thesis, therefore, with a survey of all the arts inherited from the past, and currently practised by women in Botswana, and then, in a series of chapters I look at each of the developments, including art education, museums and galleries, and workshops; and their histories, their aims, and their achievements with particular regard to the overall development of the arts in Botswana. This thesis thereby provides a comprehensive study of all the arts practised by women in Botswana through the last thirty years.

This thesis considers common approaches to eco-art practice and its established discourses. Through a critical review of the field it identifies problems in practice and theory that are potentially counterproductive. It outlines methods used in eco-art that, whilst seeking to address environmental concerns, may unintentionally perpetuate the approaches and attitudes of the prevailing view. The thesis argues that as these approaches and attitudes are widely understood to lie at the cause of current problems its continued use is inappropriate for engaging with ecological issues. In response to this problem the thesis draws together insights from arts practice and theory, Systems Thinking, Cybernetics, Artificial Life research, Deep Ecology and Process Thinking. It develops an experimental framework to guide the initiation, production, dissemination and evaluation of arts practice, which can critically engage with the approaches and attitudes of the prevailing view, but do so without perpetuating these. For the purposes of this thesis the framework is called a process aesthetic. The thesis describes how the process aesthetic is developed and tested through the undertaking of new creative practice, and the critical reflection upon this. The written component of the thesis concludes with an evaluation of the relevance and potential of a process aesthetic, and a consideration of what it might offer to our understanding of ecological art. The thesis contributes to the field of eco-art by drawing upon thinking and practices normally considered peripheral to its discourses. This identifies problems, which contradict its aim of challenging the approaches and attitudes of the prevailing view - problems which to date have been under-acknowledged and not adequately theorised. It establishes that arts practice guided by the process aesthetic demonstrates an approach that can overcome problems recognised within existing eco-art and can act as a critical tool for disturbing the approaches and attitudes of the prevailing view. The thesis establishes that the process aesthetic can be used as a guide for future eco-arts practice and can be a means of regrouping existing artworks, which would normally be overlooked by eco-art discussions. This extends the diversity of eco-art discussions to positively broaden its critical discourses. It thus offers a new and appropriate methodology for arts practice that seeks to engage with environmental issues and ecological thinking.

No description available.