This thesis is concerned with the ways in which whiteness and authenticity are manifested within contemporary visual culture in South Africa. The project begins as an artistic inquiry grounded in autobiography, which becomes an elaborate self-portrait narrated from the distance of the third person. My practice aims to address the trajectories that I am unable to articulate through my theoretical analysis. Through a process of solvent release printing, I explore the dualities of my own identity as African and white in an attempt to counteract the view that one negates the other. Part I attempts to provide an archive-able record of this practice. Part II shows that a long history of dichotomous art-historical practice has resulted in differentiated artistic pressures for black and white South African artists. I discuss the development of platforms that have contributed to the shifting of such classificatory trends without dissolving them completely, namely the first and second Johannesburg Biennales, Africus (1995) and Trade Routes (1997). In doing so, I trace how these events have troubled such stereotypes. Whiteness is identified as the overriding factor which allows the dominant discourse of Western- and Euro-centric ideals to remain prioritised. Brett Murray and Minnette Vári are discussed as examples of white South African artists who problematise whiteness by addressing racial fluidity, belonging, authenticity and identity. The theme of autobiography is reintroduced in the conclusion, where I argue that my own practice could be seen to mirror the strategies that each artist has employed to subvert their whiteness, and to build a case for accessing a multiple identity that is African in its ability to be diverse. I conclude that it is ultimately the artists’ performative use of their own bodies which allows them to discuss issues of representation without falling into the ideological position of the coloniser.

This thesis presents a conceptual knot, namely of how to sustain the intentionally temporary. Part of the original contribution of this thesis lies in exploring what it means for an artwork to be temporary, tracing the historical context from the twentieth century onwards, thereby establishing the category of temporary artworks, and providing thoughts on how to care for temporary artworks so that they might be known and experienced by future audiences. On the basis of this research, a practical proposal is developed for what a retrospective of temporary artworks might look like. Temporary artworks should be considered as a category unto their own because of the specific set of constraints which set them apart: they are physical works of art which exist for an intentionally limited amount of time, and are created only once. These specific constraints problematize the engagement of future audiences due to the works’ very limited and singular existence as a physical work. In order to address the issue of how to (re)visit impermanence, I develop the claim that what is passed on from a temporary artwork is contingent on the stakeholders, including the primary audience, who are posited as a group of unintentional archivists holding stock in a type of living archive. After their material unmaking, temporary artworks can be experienced through the notion that ‘the artwork is not present’, a riff on artist Marina Abramović’s retrospective work The Artist is Present (2010). A retrospective of temporary artworks would consist of memories and documents contextualizing their fragmentary nature, highlighting what Severin Fowles discusses as ‘the carnality of absence’. A clarification of what is missing assists in sustaining what I develop and describe as ‘the performance of loss’, a critical part of temporary artworks. Stewarding a temporary artwork into the future thus depends on letting the material object go, and contextualizing its presence, loss, and absence for future audiences.

Kurt Schwitters decisively established that Dada was indeed more a state of mind than a collection of creeds. Spurned by Berlin Dada, he was compelled to construct for himself an alternative Dada existence, and this he accomplished in the one-man movement he christened "Merz". Hundreds of Merz artworks were produced by the tireless Schwitters, but the summa summarum of his oeuvre was the Hanover Merzbau (circa 1923-1943). As it transcends architecture, sculpture, and assemblage, I have taken the distinctive approach of analyzing it first and foremost in terms of a theory of self-reflexivity. The first and second chapters of this thesis are dedicated to the writings of Georg Simmel and Henri Bergson. The former contributes an understanding of the psyche of the modernist metropolitan and how it is that the subjective spirit that resides in this enlightened individual substantiates its existence by producing forms and objects with which it continuously comes into conflict. As witnessed in Schwitters' Merzbau, the self-conscious "I" constitutes a centripetal force that organizes and directs the objects it encounters and thus exerts a unifying influence over its environment. In the Bergson chapter, I pursue an in-depth investigation into how self-reflexivity is predicated upon the search for true duration and the manifestation of the elan vital. I also include an in-depth analysis of Bergson's treatise on laughter, for the theories contained within go a long way towards explicating Schwitters' brand of humour and how the comic artist is a self-reflexive figure non-pareil. The third chapter, devoted to Schwitters and his place in Dada, takes into account the vitalist philosophical underpinnings of the Merzbau and asserts that self-reflexive art operates under an enantiodromic law; the presence of the artist must be effaced as thoroughly as possible before the creative self achieves materialization in the artwork it has engendered.

This thesis in intellectual history examines the work of art historian Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001), one-time Director of London's Warburg Institute, on that institute's founder, Aby Warburg (1866-1929). The memory of War burg, as evoked in Gombrich's scholarship, is investigated as a focal point for contemporary concerns on the part of Gombrich and his peers, and as an influence on Warburg's reception in 20th century scholarship. The thesis gives a close account of Gombrich's particular intellectual achievements, in order better to understand his status as a figure of great popular and academic significance in mid-to-Iate 20th century art history and art theory. Gombrich was an emigre who left his native Austria for the United Kingdom in the 1930s and this thesis also considers the impact on intellectual history of the mid-20th century emigration from Central Europe, which was driven by ethnonationalist and above all Nazi persecution. Specifically, the thesis examines the significance for Gombrich's work of his Austrian background, in terms of both the German-language humanist culture of Bi/dung and Gombrich's sense, as a person of Jewish background, of Jewish identity. Using a methodology informed by the anthropology of emotions and the discipline of memory studies, Warburg is approached specifically as a lieu de memoire on Pierre Nora's model. The argument is that Gombrich invested his own concerns in his scholarly representations of the older art historian. The means by which this investment was made, and the negotiation of this investment amongst Gombrich's colleagues at the Warburg Institute, are traced through archival research. The impact of Gombrich's investment in Warburg on the older art historian's subsequent, posthumous reception in academia is examined, and the potential for alternative visions of Warburg marginalised by Gombrich's representation is also considered.

The work of Ian Hamilton Finlay spans a fifty-year career, numerous media (many invented by Finlay himself) and thousands of years of Western history. Yet despite its range, it is the product of a singular artistic vision. The object of this thesis is to provide a philosophical and aesthetic framework through which Finlay’s work can be read comprehensively. Centred on the notion of the ‘non-secular’ – a term coined by Finlay in response to bureaucratic, social and artistic antagonisms – it proposes that Finlay’s entire body of work can be read as a project towards realisation of ‘non-secular’ awareness. This comprises, firstly, a longing for an ‘essential’ language and absolute truths, and a respect and reverence for those aspects of culture which strove to, if not discover, then construct and have faith in those truths. It also comprises, secondly and as a consequence, reconciliation with the fact that these absolutes can never be fully realised in the practice of everyday living. This prompts further reconciliation with the limits of our comprehension of the universe and, in the last analysis, our own mortality. This reconciliation is ‘non-secular’ insofar as it does not dispel, but rather emphasises, the notion of a ‘beyond’ inherent to these limits, without defining that ‘beyond’. Using the metaphor of a navigator’s compass, the thesis defines the borders of the ‘non-secular’ through study of Finlay’s work, his correspondence, and his relationship with his contemporaries and critics. It gathers together, develops and responds to previous criticism on Finlay in order to present a unified reading of the poet’s oeuvre which, though it cannot hope to cover every aspect, suggests how his work might best be approached, navigated and read. To this end, the thesis also draws from a number of philosophers working in the continental, hermeneutic tradition, who present ways of thinking the ‘non-secular’ which complement Finlay’s project and, in some cases, directly influence it. As the title would suggest, though the thesis explores Finlay’s work in all media, its locus is Stonypath/Little Sparta, the poet’s family home and magnum opus. Here, the tensions between life and art which give rise to the ‘non-secular’ are at their most palpable. Despite Finlay’s reputation as a visual and plastic artist, this thesis opens with the premise that his work is best approached as poetry, beginning with an extended Introduction which shows how Stonypath/Little Sparta develops from modernist poetry. Coining and defining the term ‘topographical poetics’ to describe Finlay’s site-specific works, it then constructs a formal and methodological approach for reading these ‘poems’. Preliminary discussion of the ‘non-secular’ follows, leading into a four-chapter structure concerned with sketching out the limits of the ‘non-secular compass’. The compass consists of four poles – the Poetic, the Homely, the Modern and the Classical – corresponding to Chapters One through Four respectively. Each pole serves as an absolute point by which to consider the idea of the ‘non-secular’. The exception is the Homely, a pragmatic anchor from which develops the ‘non-secular’ in its reconciliatory aspect and, ultimately, provides the unique foundation for Finlay’s work. This ‘non-secular compass’ is presented as a critical paradigm for reading Finlay. With the work itself, it may also be used as an interpretative tool which opens up to fresh and vital reflections on our comparatively ‘secularised’ existences.

Rosemarie Trockel: The Problem of Becoming is a theoretical investigation of the artwork of contemporary German artist Rosemarie Trockel (b. 1952). Although Trockel is best known for her knit canvas works made throughout the 1980s, she has a remarkably large oeuvre which utilizes almost every artistic medium possible – from video and film work, to public monuments, painting, earthworks, sculpture, drawing, installation art, book-making, photography, and even robotics. Trockel’s artwork is constantly changing stylistically and thematically, which makes her work difficult to write about but is also what makes her work unique. By opening up a multiplicity of readings that refuse a fixed symbolic order, her art represents a continuous state of becoming other. Ultimately this project claims that Rosemarie Trockel’s artwork exemplifies a ‘virgulian’ subjectivity and an aesthetics of becoming. This project reads Trockel’s art through the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well important feminist and queer theorists such as Griselda Pollock, Teresa de Lauretis, Marguerite Duras, Simone de Beauvoir, and Monique Wittig. It also uses the theoretical construct of the virgule as an alternative to common art historical methods such as gender, culture, biography, historicity, or intentionality. The virgule is a theoretical construct (representing both an aesthetic mode or style and a form of subjectivity), which is, ultimately, a new way of reading works of art and literature. Each chapter of this thesis demonstrates different ways in which the virgule operates within Rosemarie Trockel’s artwork. Chapter one, ‘BB/BB’, centres on Trockel’s vitrine work ‘The Bardot Box’ (1993), in which Trockel combines Brigitte Bardot and Bertolt Brecht. These two figures are used to explore concepts of myth, fandom, the rhizome, and adolescence. Chapter two, ‘Mermaid/Angel’, looks at Trockel’s sculpture Pennsylvania Station (1987), which is usually read as relating to the Holocaust. Here, instead, the work will be looked at in relation to fairy tales and mythological creatures. It will also demonstrate Trockel’s fascination with the history of art and how women’s bodies are constructed throughout that history. Chapter three, ‘Domestic/Violence’, discusses how Trockel’s work can relate to historical German events (namely, the activities of terrorist Group the Red Army Faction). It also demonstrates her interest in uncovering forgotten histories and people. Chapter four, ‘Body/Machine’, explains how Trockel’s sculptural machine Painting Machine and 56 Brushstrokes bridges the divide between mechanical production and the handmade. This chapter also discusses the very different ways in which Trockel’s work portrays bodies (visceral versus clinical). The concluding chapter of Rosemarie Trockel: The Problem of Becoming, ‘Across the/Continental Divide’ places Trockel’s video work ‘Continental Divide’ (1994) in dialogue with Monique Wittig’s novel Across the Acheron, to show how the virgule operates as a subject position, and to demonstrate the limits of a virgulian subjectivity.

Peintre oublié des études sur les anciens Pays-Bas, Otto van Veen (également appelé Otto Vaenius) est essentiellement connu pour avoir été le dernier maître de Rubens et pour être l'auteur de plusieurs livres d'emblèmes. En son temps, il était pourtant l'un des artistes les plus renommés des Flandres. La reconsidération de ce peintre, les influences qui furent les siennes et l'impact qu'il put avoir sur toute une génération d'artistes constituent l'objet de cette thèse. Centrée sur sa production peinte et dessinée, elle ne met toutefois pas de côté ses emblèmes, qui servent de points de comparaison pour certains sujets allégoriques. La production de Vaenius étant largement tributaire de la période dans laquelle il était en activité, cette étude est également centrée sur l'histoire culturelle et intellectuelle des Pays-Bas. Ainsi, les divers réseaux (artistique, humaniste, princier) qu'il fréquenta ont été étudiés en détail. Il s'agissait d'évaluer l'apport pictural de Vaenius en regard de sa démarche intellectuelle. Outre les portraits de diverses personnalités (princes, hommes d'Église, humanistes) et les cycles glorifiant l'image du prince tels que des Joyeuses Entrées, les peintures religieuses, respectant les préceptes du Concile de Trente, comme les peintures mythologiques et allégoriques, ont fait l'objet d'analyses qui prennent en compte le contexte de production ainsi que les diverses iconographies (tirées de sources variées, issues de I' Antiquité au XVIIe siècle). Alliant une peinture claire et lisible à des détails érudits et raffinés, l'œuvre de Vaenius donna lieu à de nombreuses innovations, tant plastiques qu'iconographiques, qu'il était nécessaire d'étudier. / Otto van Veen (also called Otto Vaenius), an artist forgotten by studies on Northern painting, is mainly known for being the last master of Rubens and the author of several emblem books. In his time however, he was one of the most renowned artists of the Flemish school. The reconsideration of this painter, his influences and the impact he had on a whole generation of artists are the main topics of this dissertation. Centered on his paintings and drawings, it does not put aside its emblems, which provide invaluable keys to understand some of his allegories. Since Vaenius' production largely reflects his time, this study also focuses on the cultural and intellectual history of the Netherlands. Thus, the various networks (artistic, humanistic, princely) he was a part of have been studied in depth. The aim of this dissertation was to evaluate his pictorial contribution with regard to his intellectual background. Besides the portraits of various personalities (princes, churchmen, humanists) and the cycles glorifying the image of the prince such as Joyous Entries, the religious paintings, observing the precepts of the Council of Trent, as the mythological and allegorical paintings, have been the subject of analysis that take into account the context of production as well as the various iconographies (from diverse sources, from Antiquity to the 17th century). Combining a clear and legible painting with erudite and refined details, Vaenius' artworks have led to numerous innovations, both plastic and iconographic, that deserved to be studied.

Text in English / The rise of the biotechnical and genomic revolution has motivated contemporary artists to explore the use of scientific methods as a medium for art-making. The application of these ground-breaking methods within the realm of contemporary art allows for the distortion that exists between life sciences and the imagination to become a reality. This practice is known as transgenic art. With biotechnology as the new playing-field for art comes a myriad of dangerous implications, ethical issues, questions of authorship and responsibilities. The transgenic artworks of Eduardo Kac entitled GFP Bunny (2000) and Genesis (1999) form the basis of the research. The main question posed in this research explores the purpose of transgenic art and the unavoidable impact thereof on society. Social awareness of ethical issues surrounding this type of art-making is addressed. The poignancy of the study lies in debates deliberately introduced by the artist, but also unintended controversial issues that surface from the creation of living artworks. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

Text in English / The rise of the biotechnical and genomic revolution has motivated contemporary artists to explore the use of scientific methods as a medium for art-making. The application of these ground-breaking methods within the realm of contemporary art allows for the distortion that exists between life sciences and the imagination to become a reality. This practice is known as transgenic art. With biotechnology as the new playing-field for art comes a myriad of dangerous implications, ethical issues, questions of authorship and responsibilities. The transgenic artworks of Eduardo Kac entitled GFP Bunny (2000) and Genesis (1999) form the basis of the research. The main question posed in this research explores the purpose of transgenic art and the unavoidable impact thereof on society. Social awareness of ethical issues surrounding this type of art-making is addressed. The poignancy of the study lies in debates deliberately introduced by the artist, but also unintended controversial issues that surface from the creation of living artworks. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)