This is an art historical study informed by post-colonial perspectives which critically examines the discourse concerning the role and the work of the artist Walter Spies in relation to Bali, Balinese art and the Balinese in the inter-war Dutch Colonial period. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, the thesis examines the development and characteristics of a new artistic form in the area of painting, variously described as 'Balinese Modernism', 'New Balinese painting' or 'Tourist art'. I also investigate the origins and the perpetuation of the popular myth regarding the perceived role of Walter Spies as the instigator of this art. Through examining his cultural position in relation to the Balinese, I examine Spies' role as a colonial figure and as a 'servant' of colonial cultural policy. This post-colonial examination takes into account the broader historical, political, cultural and economic realities of colonial Bali at that time. I deal with theoretical and methodological issues some of which make such a study problematic. In particular, how to deal with the 'subaltern' in historical discourse and the dangers of either essentialising the 'Other' or diminishing hegemonic imperial processes through a cultural relativism which seeks to value the importance of the 'subaltern' voice. In addition to this, the problematic and sometimes misleading use of biography is also investigated. I have synthesised a number of concepts to develop my post-colonial approach, based around the ideas of contact, contact languages and influence. These are used to explain the development of new artistic forms, as well as the discourse and processes which both moulded and reflected them. The study contributes to knowledge through the fresh analysis of the discourse of 'texts' and parts of 'texts' not previously used or explored in a postcolonial theoretical framework. Interviews with Balinese artists and the correspondence of Spies are deconstructed, as well as the films and paintings of Spies which are analysed as colonial discourse rather than as isolated aesthetic products. This project provides a new critique of the creation and perpetuation of colonial discourse through biography and imagery which I propose has much broader implications in the 'post-colonial' world.

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Derived from the Latin corrodere, meaning to ‘gnaw to pieces’, corrosion as a transformative physical process is nature at its most sublime, engendering fear and power, producing the obscure and reducing form to the darkness ‘beneath all beauty as promise of its ultimate annihilation’ (Beckley, 2001: p. 72). The thesis considers corrosion as subtraction, erasure and negation in relation to the painting process. Through experimentation with the ruination of both content and painting’s plastic, material properties the thesis reflects upon how the disruption or destruction of image and surface might relate to the un- representable. Within the history of twentieth century art negation has been cited as the defining spirit of the Modernism (TJ Clark: 1986). Jean François Lyotard suggests that it is the sublime that has provoked this destructive, nihilistic tendency and given Modern and postmodern art its ‘impetus and axioms’ (Lyotard: 1979). As the 2010 Tate research project, The Sublime Object attests, the sublime is once again ‘now’. Painting was conspicuous in its absence from the project, perhaps because as Simon Morley states ‘most sublime artworks these days tend to be installations. It is certainly getting harder for painting, the traditional vessel for evoking visual sublimity, to elicit such effects’ (2010, p. 74). This thesis will examine Morley’s position by considering how the composition of the un-presentable may be alluded to through de-composition and corrosion in painting. An expressionist enquiry into the tension between figure and ground the thesis investigates a relationship between mark, surface and the sublime.(1) Notoriously difficult to capture, the sublime is intrinsically contradictory, making an effective, overarching theory on the subject all but impossible to sustain (Forsey: 2007). Highlighting some of the problems surrounding the theory of the sublime James Elkins, in his essay ‘Against the Sublime’ (2009), suggests that the term has been mistaken for a trans-historical category and that it has been used and abused to smuggle religious content into contemporary critical writing. Further more, he describes the post-Kantian postmodern sublime as so intricate and linguistically complex as to render it effectively redundant without substantial qualification. Elkins has called for a moratorium on the term sublime and a redress of language in favor of new, direct terms (2009). This project asks if painting can facilitate this redress and provide these terms. Note (1): An enquiry that applies a necessarily heuristic approach to a project engaged with subjective, felt experience in painting characterized by and articulated through the primacy of gestural abstraction.

La thèse propose de renouveler la connaissance de la vie et de l'oeuvre du peintre flamand Ambroise Dubois, et de s'interroger sur les modalités de son insertion à la Cour de France sous Henri IV. Il y fut remarquablement intégré. On lui confia la plupart des chantiers les plus importants du règne, il fut rapidement naturalisé et il bénéficia de la double faveur du roi et de la reine. Son nom a jusqu'ici été considéré comme la traduction française de Ambrosius Bosschaert, et il était considéré comme étant né à Anvers en 1543 et mort à Fontainebleau en 1614. Il nous semble que son véritable patronyme ait été en réalité van den Bossche. Il naquit effectivement à Anvers et mourut à Fontainebleau, mais ses dates ont plus probablement été : vers 1570 - 1619. Nous avons découvert d'autres documents d'archive importants comme son contrat de mariage, un acte de donation d'Antoine Oultrebon, chantre d'Henri IV, à ses filles, et ses armes lorsqu'il fut anobli.La thèse procède ensuite à un essai de catalogue raisonné pour dégager la véritable importance du peintre au sein de la seconde école de Fontainebleau et dans un contexte international. Nous y proposons, entre autres, la première reconstitution jamais entreprise de son décor majeur, la galerie de la reine au château de Fontainebleau. Par ailleurs, nous y rebattons les cartes de quelques attributions, et soutenons, en particulier, qu'un des tableaux les plus importants de l'époque, le portrait mythologique d'Henri IV en Hercule du Louvre (inv. RF 1997-13), a été peint par Ambroise Dubois. La thèse présente aussi une analyse stylistique approfondie de l’art du peintre / This thesis reassesses the knowledge of the life and work of the flemish painter Ambroise Dubois and focuses on how well integrated he was in the French Court on the Henri IV. He was granted with the most important commissions of the reign. His name was until then thought to be the French translation of Ambrosius Bosschaert and he was believed to be born in Antwerp in 1543 and dead at Fontainebleau in 1614. His real name seems to have in fact been van den Bossche. He was indeed born in Antwerp and died in Fontainebleau. But his dates are more likely to have been c 1570 - 1619. We have discovered other important archive documents like his marriage contract, a donation from the Court singer Antoine Oultrebon, to his daughters, and his coat of arms when he was ennobled.The thesis then presents a catalogue raisonné in order to review the real important of the painter within the second school of Fontainebleau and in an international context. We offer, among other proposals, the first ever reconstitution of his most important decoration, the Queen’s gallery in the Fontainebleau castle. Furthermore, we proceed to a few attributions adjustments, and suggest in particular that one of the most important pictures of the time, the mythological portrait of Henri IV en Hercule kept in the Louvre (inv. RF 1997-13), was actually painted by Ambroise Dubois. The thesis also offers a thorough stylistical analysis of his art

The essay accompanied the submission of 5 books and seven articles for the degree of PhD by publication. It explains that the common thread that links the various publications is research into prints and drawings.

An important body of literature has accumulated (both primary and secondary sources) which necessitates that Rothko, Newman and Still be placed in the tradition of the sublime. In attempting this task, a background is established by a detailed summary of classical theory of the sublime in Longinus, Burke, Kant, and Nietzsche, followed by detailed summaries of major recent sublimist theory by Weiskel, Crowther, Lyotard, and Ferguson. Also, key ideas of Sartre and Jung are treated in order to round out the proper ideational context for a sublimicist analysis of these three painters. From this foundation, a working theory of the sublime is developed. Next, the painters' crucial theoretic statement are analysed for their relevance to the sublime, and their programs and specific works are characterized in relation to theory of the sublime, and in relation to their treatments in criticism. The last two chapters treat two crucial contexts in which Rothko, Newman and Still are situated: The historically accumulated American tradition of the sublime in art and literature; and the general European context of modernism and postmodernism. Throughout the study, it is argued that various kinds of transcendence validate a set of various major modes of the sublime: The ideational, religious, moral, Burkean-Gothic, Kantian, Nietzschean, romantic, existential, Jungian-mythic, ontological, noble, and the sublime of light/color, along with negatives modes such as the comic, the ironic, the counter, the mock, and the merely rhetorical. It is argued, finally, that sublimicism will continue to be attractive for conservative, moderate, and radical points of view, that theory of the sublime has on-going power and validity into the future, and that between positive and negative modes, the positive will probably continue to dominate.

Includes index / Bibliography: p. 77-79 / i, 145 p. : / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.

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