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Ostensibly a monograph on the drawings of Josef Albers, the reader will find under the heading "excursus": a series of investigations into the concept of constellation in the writings of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno, the semiotics of star maps, the rhetorics of geometry and the structure of representation in which Josef Albers's Structural Constellations are not discussed directly for almost 200 pages. Although it departs from its subject matter, this group of essays may be regarded as tending towards an interpretation of Structural Constellations, as Benjamin would say, returning in a roundabout way to its original object. The main themes of the dissertation are addressed to specific objects: texts by Benjamin and Adorno, star maps in the tradition which stretches between Ptolemy's Almagest and Argelander's Bonner Durchmustering, geometry lessons, the gossip about Cubism, works and manifestos by Alberti, Durer, van Doesburg, Lissitsky and Albers. The aim is to broaden the terms of reference and develop more precise interpretative tools for an assessment of Albers's Structural Constellations, to place these works in a more accurate historical context and provide the basis for a reassessment of some of the products and rhetorics of twentieth century modernism. The reader should not expect the dissertation to reach a climax with Albers's Structural Constellations. Albers emerges, even as he dissppears in the elucidation of his works, as a late modernist and practitioner of negative dialectics. His works emerge as a configuration of these dialectics and offer a reflection on the topics and ideas explored in the dissertation. The historical and theoretical discussion of the metaphorical and graphic praxis of constellation and what I have called the "epistemological wish-images" mediated by geometry is counterbalanced by a companion volume cataloguing some 1,500 drawings by Josef Albers.

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In this thesis, I look at the reception of the Baroque in U.S. art of the late 20th Century, with a particular focus on the expanded sculptural situations of Postminimal art in the mid-late Sixties and Seventies. The Baroque is a surprising, though productive, theme in this area, for how it reveals the transformations in attitudes to style in art, art history and art criticism during this time. I first of all look at what is at stake in differentiating between Mannerism and the Baroque in the late 60s, through a close reading of the art historical sources in the work and writing of the artist Robert Smiths on. I follow this changed attitude to the Baroque through the development of Smithson's sculptural work, which I will argue is a response to the problems generated by Heinrich Wolfflin's Principles of Art History, an early and influential study of the Baroque. Secondly, I discuss" the role of anachronism in understanding the shared" concerns between the Baroque and the present, through a close reading of Robert Morris's exploratory art criticism. Last of all, I provide an original reading of a single work; Office Baroque (1977) by the architect turned sculptor Gordon Matta-Clark. In doing so, I show the ways in which the image of the Baroque is re-figured in Postminimal art and how this impacts upon two theoretical terms elicited by such work; the semiotic concept of the index, and Gilles Deleuze's study of the Fold. Rather than commenting upon or appropriating some aspect of Baroque art or culture, I argue that the work of these three Postminimalists actively shapes and redefines its meaning. In this sense, I propose to study the Postminimal contribution to the Baroque. This, in turn holds potential for an alternative reading of Postminimalism, one which negotiates between its rejection of modernist criticism and anticipation of a Postmodern sensibility"

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The aim of the thesis is to explore the distinct identities of places with complex biographies. In particular, it investigates the processes through which sound can enact dialogues between places and people, thus exposing these identities. Place, and more specifically the history of place, is understood as a field that is involved in a process of continuous negotiation and performance. Throughout the thesis, it is contended that the identities of "charged places" can be experienced similarly to how we experience ambience or background noise. Through the ostensible silence that characterises the places under study – a silence not necessarily acoustic, but rather one that relates to the absence of what was or what should have been there – a noisy narrative may develop in our mental realm. Imagination and daydream is the ultimate condition for creating what Gaston Bachelard (1958) terms the "poetic image", which will enable us to "listen" to the place through its histories and to delve into its "aural aura". The specific topic of investigation is how a sound artist, following a place-specific trajectory, may foster a meaningful conversation between the audience and the place, thus exposing the place's biographical essences, and furthermore how they may "orchestrate" an aural aura in order to establish this communication. The four works presented in the portfolio constitute a practical approach through which a response is given to the above inquiries. Each of the four works addresses fields that involve socio-political, philosophical, cultural and aesthetic concerns relevant to the island of Cyprus, as well as more practical artistic matters, such as interactivity, collaboration and ephemerality. The thesis concludes that place-specific sound art with a guerrilla-art style, can be an effective way of expressing and communicating nuances and concepts that relate to the biography of places.

The English art critic and curator David Sylvester (1924-2001) played a significant role in the formation of taste in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century. Through his writing, curating and other work Sylvester did much to shape the reputations of, and discourse around, important twentieth century artists including Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore and René Magritte. At the same time his career is of significant sociohistorical interest. On a personal level it shows how a schoolboy expelled at the age of fifteen with no qualifications went on to become a CBE, a Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the first critic to receive a Leone d'Oro at the Venice Biennale, assembling a personal collection of artworks worth millions of pounds in the process. In terms of the history of post-war art more broadly, meanwhile, Sylvester's criticism provides a way of understanding developments in British art and its relation to those in Paris and New York during the 1950s and 1960s. This thesis provides the first survey of Sylvester's entire output as an art critic across different media and genres, and makes a case for him as a commentator of comparable significance to Roger Fry, Herbert Read, and other British critics who have already received significant scholarly attention. I take a twofold approach, analysing both the quality of Sylvester's writing and criticism, and its function as a catalyst for furthering the careers of artists and instigating significant exhibitions. Common to all of these strands is Sylvester's distinctive critical sensibility, which placed an emphasis on his own aesthetic experiences and how they could be articulated through criticism.

This thesis examines Marcel Duchamp’s "The Large Glass" in relation to Homer’s "Odyssey" and by extension to James Joyce’s "Ulysses." It focuses on the idea that Duchamp may have had in mind Penelope and her Suitors when he was creating the Bride and her Bachelors. The aim of the thesis is threefold – to clarify a problematic area in avant-garde art by restoring the important role the "Odyssey" played in the modern culture as evidenced by preceding and contemporary artists; to detect possible Homeric traces on the "Glass" as such, but also by exploring references to Homer in related works by Duchamp; and finally to compare the "Glass" with "Ulysses," which seems to be as convoluted in its relation to the "Odyssey." The thesis is correspondingly divided into three parts. The first places Duchamp in a broader culture that is directly influenced by the Classics and Homer’s "Odyssey." The second sets out to explore possible references to Homer in seminal works of Duchamp, which reveal that he discreetly based his working method and conceptual rationale on the appropriation of tradition. The final part deals with the ways in which specific aspects of the "Glass" may be critically interpreted as Homeric in origin. Throughout the thesis runs a comparison of the "Glass" with "Ulysses," which exemplifies how safe Homeric attributions may be bent by appropriation to serve their authors’ ends. This study is primarily theoretical and thematic, attempting to piece together perhaps a better understanding than before of one of 20th century’s most seminal artistic figures and elusive bodies of work. Thus, the "Glass" may turn out to be read as a morality story about archetypal issues with which human nature grapples eternally – violence, intoxication and lust. As such, the "Glass" may enigmatically emerge as a Homeric paradigm of man’s initiation to inner freedom, which Duchamp called the “beauty of indifference.”