This dissertation is largely an analysis of Hans Bellmer's work and an investigation of aspects of violence. Violence in Bellmer's work opens up a space for some comparison with other forms of violence expressed through theory, literature, art. My dissertation is made up of two parts. Part One: Hans Bellmer consists of two chapters. The first chapter contains a discussion of nineteenth-century ijerman works centred on the figure of the automaton. Nineteenth-century automata influenced Bellmer and constitute one form of violence, Bellmer's dolls constitute another, as I show. In chapter two I concentrate on Bellmer's perverse images of his dolls. I base my analysis of Bellmer's perverse doll-images mainly on Gilles Deleuze's definition of sadism and masochism, on Bellmer's writings, on Jacques Lacan's concept of le corps morcele, including images of Bellmer's last partner Unica Zurn. Part Two: The Experience of Violence is made up of one chapter. There I discuss Bellmer's dolls as a particular figuration of the feminine analysed through Walter Benjamin's ideas of le corps-femme de la modernite. I then link Bellmer's corps-femme with those in Jacques Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann and Otto Dix's paintings via Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. From there I go onto a discussion of the concepts that visually and literally constitute violence in Bellmer such as fragmentation, traces, time, memory through the work of Claudio Parmiggiani, and other Benjaminian ideas. Parmiggiani explores the effects of these concepts in his work exposing them as part of the artwork as its objects. I conclude that the violence in Bellmer's work is about pain and takes the form of masochism. I also conclude that violence takes on different forms, one form of which is thinking and memory, another is the analysis and interpretation of artworks.

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The thesis develops a methodological poetics of silence in order to explore the historical and aesthetic resonances of key works by the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz (1953-2001). It represents the first detailed interpretive study of silence in Munoz's work. Focusing on the period of transition from 1986 to 1992, from the implied sounds and silences of Muñoz's sculptural installations to the literal use of sound and silence in Muñoz's first radio piece, it also has a wider relevance to Muñoz’s work as a whole. The thesis locates Muñoz's work at the intersection of multiple historical silencings, showing how the work draws on these to evoke contemporary silences and absences. The three main chapters focus on the strategies deployed by Muñoz in the construction of silence. Chapter 1 applies Walter Benjamin's theory of allegory to demonstrate the operation of allegory and its relation to the silencing and disavowal of memory. In Chapters 2 and 3 the analysis of medium and ekphrasis, as generative and cognitive mechanisms and sites of silence, is framed, respectively, by the phenomenologically- informed writings of Rosalind Krauss, and by Michel Foucault’s analysis of Velázquez’s Las Meninas. The thesis examines an array of texts including interviews, notebook entries, and essays by Muñoz that have previously escaped critical scrutiny, and presents the first detailed exploration of the relations between images and words in Muñoz's work. The thesis proposes a paradoxical tension in Muñoz's work between a desublimation of silence and its reencoding in new aesthetic forms. Silence revolves around questions concerning the self and its others, and is articulated in the work through the construction of point of view and the gaze, inscribed through human and inhuman geometries, for example through anamorphosis, or the displaced figuring of the human. The latter is epitomised by the image of the ventriloquist's dummy.

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This thesis examines, from an affective and art historical perspective, the sculptural practice of Berlinde De Bruyckere, positioning her fragmented figures in the context of contemporary art debates and exploring the role of the artist in changing the visual representation of the body fragment. De Bruyckere’s fragmented figures, often inspired by actual events and problems, reflect on art, as well as on what transcends it, in order to highlight deeper issues within humanity. Therefore, I argue that through the capacity of the body fragment, as a way of magnifying and drawing attention to the edge of the human condition, Berlinde De Bruyckere’s sculptures convey both the fluidity between the psychological inner life and the physical exteriority, as well as other existential concerns. By looking closely at De Bruyckere’s artwork from 2004-2013, this research shows how the viewers’ reception of the body fragments presented in De Bruyckere’s sculptures, is particularly related to an embodied form of perception, evoking a multitude of physical and emotional reactions. De Bruyckere’s representations of the body as vulnerable and fragmented, engage the spectator through abjection as well as through compassionate empathy, which in turn heightens intra-subjective awareness through affective knowledge. The investigation highlights the profound influence that feminist scholars and artists had in opening up the opportunities available to artists today. I will particularly focus upon feminism’s impact in shaping the representation and perception of the body, as well as the important, yet often forgotten, contribution of female artists in shaping contemporary art discourses through materiality.

This work is premised on the assumption that the excuses for not engaging properly with Carl Andre's corpus will not stand forever, and that his art is capable of sustaining considerably more attention than it has been afforded to date. Focusing predominantly on a select number of works from 1959 (when Andre moved to New York City) to 1976 (the year of the media orchestrated uproar over the Tate Gallery's purchase of Equivalent VIII) this dissertation assessesth e singular nature of his brand of late modernism. Much to the chagrin of many, few US artists of the 1960s aligned themselves so intimately with a Marxist cause or thought so carefully about art's commodity status. This project takes these facts seriously and attempts to approach the art accordingly. The works discussed include America Drill (1963), the Equivalents (1966), Lever (1966), Gold Field (1966), 5x 20 Altstadt Rectangle (1967), Joint (1968), Quincy Book (1973), Twelfth Copper Corner (1975) and Manet (1980).

The question this thesis asks is: What does it mean to make the statement 'Sarah Bernhardt, sculptor' based on a massive archive of text and image on one of the nineteenth and early twentieth century's most famous actresses whose sculpture practice has often been dismissed as the work of a part-time amateur? In undertaking to answer this question, I have focussed entirely on what was required for Bernhardt to become a sculptor, to be a sculptor, and to remain a sculptor from c. 1869 until her death in 1923. I examine all these forms of evidence, together with the works Bernhardt produced, under the terms of sculpture history, and not those of biography or visual culture analysis, the usual rubric under which Bernhardt is considered. As such, the thesis aims to distil a substantive analysis and history of one practice of sculpture in nineteenth-century France. The thesis is constructed by asking a series of seemingly simple questions: Did Bernhardt make work? Did she have a dedicated place in which to make work? How was she trained to make work? Did she exhibit and sell or otherwise distribute her work? These questions are answered by paying close attention, in turn, to: one work, the Bust if Louise Abbema (1878, musee d'Orsay, Paris); Bernhardt's studios and homes and the particular function these had as spaces of work and shared, creative and intimate same-sex SOciality; and Bernhardt's training and daily practice as a sculptor, her oeuvre, and exhibiting and sales strategies. Fundamental to Bernhardt's artistic practice was her relationship with the painter Louise Abbema. I consider how the making of Abbema's bust and the reciprocal character of these artists' relationship can be read for, and with, difference in a tripartite configuration of 'living, loving, and working'. The method I use, scholarly lesbian desire, is informed by feminist art history and theory, the social history of art, and queer studies. This method seeks to explore the archive with, and for, desire in an effort to find new ways to research and write that are at once historically and theoretically rigorous and acknowledge the important cultural contribution that 'lesbian' makes to the histories of art.

George Frampton (1860-1928) was arguably one of the most important sculptors of the movement that became known as 'The New Sculpture' in Britain from the 1880s to around 1920. Frampton's generation became known for its employment of detailed surface modelling, attention to anatomical detail and a predominance of bronze as a medium through which to express these matters. Frampton finished his schooling at the Royal Academy, after winning the Gold Medal and Travelling Studentship (which took him to Paris), in 1899. He went on to regularly exhibit at the RA and was elected an Associate in 1894 and full RA in 1902. His range of work was widespread in the fields of architectural decoration (internal and external), jewellery and silversmithery, commemorative medals, portraiture, all types of commemorative monumental sculpture, and ideal work. By 1908 when he received his knighthood, Frampton was a respected, efficient and dextrous maker of commissioned work and numerous prestigious schemes were afforded him. This range of work will be examined in depth and my research has uncovered many new works in these genres. It is the purpose of this thesis to resurrect Frampton's name ftom. the neglect it has suffered in art historical writings since the sculptor's death some 69 years ago.