<p> This dissertation sets forth a typology of contemporary collectors of objects of material culture. This study characterizes four types of collectors, identified by separate and unique abilities of inner and outward perception, which resonates in their collections as praxis. </p><p> This typology also analyses the degree of both conscious and unconscious meaning in the collection, which, over time and place, becomes a self-referential composition. The meaning of objects as perceived and handled relates to the collector's level of consciousness of this epistemological function. The form or kind of the object, although significant, is not the basis for this ontological study as much as the method of each type of collector in the handling of their collections. </p><p> The latent or manifest drive towards degrees of coherence or completion lies in the collection, a visual, relational structure created by the collector. This structure may result in conscious enquiry, realization, and individuation, or may build a material bastion of self-protection, due to unconscious compensation or denial. </p><p> The handling of objects is the handling of a personal relationship, as collectors do not simply perceive objects, they perceive with objects, over time, in praxis. This dissertation allows for the great significance of home, within which a collector curates objects. </p><p> This dissertation employs a multi-disciplinary and hermeneutical approach as befits each type of collector's idiosyncratic and heterogeneous relationship to lucid materiality. Four types of collectors, the <b>acquirer,</b> the <b>connoisseur,</b> the <b>fetishizer</b> and the <b>hoarder </b> exhibit a neoteric aesthetic of material culture, analyzed individually as types through selected methodologies: the depth psychological perspective, process theory, the mythological approach, and through semiotic structuralism. </p><p> This typographical analysis results in the discovery of four unique ways in which collectors create meaning from our material world with approaches to the nature and concept of a "thing." </p><p> How a thing becomes visual image, which becomes the structure of a psychic reality fortuitously grasped by a mind and the hand, is a reflection of the importance of objects and of a collector's personal epistemology. </p><p> A Production Component, a book called <i>Generosity of Eye: A Seasoned Appraiser Answers Clients' Questions,</i> discusses the evaluation of objects from the perspective of a professional appraiser.</p>

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<p> Seeing Eye to Eye is a case study connecting relationships between aesthetics, aesthetic development, and gender. This study identifies major trends of aesthetic experience unique to sexual difference and gender. Viewers develop frameworks for making meaning from artworks that consist of epistemologies accumulated through education, socialization and individual experience. The dominant pedagogy is a logical tradition that teaches universal meaning. Emergent themes in student responses showed that ways of viewing and speaking about artworks are usually extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic approaches privilege individual artistic agency, action, contrast and shadows, message delivery, and technical fabrication of an image. Intrinsic frameworks for viewing favor creative narration and characterization, details and textures, and personal emotional metaphor. The model created from the research equalizes a variety of aesthetic strengths, while recognizing when an individual is in possession of many strengths in looking at and talking about works of art. I created a model that catalogues extrinsic and intrinsic approaches to making meaning from artworks. Under this model, the art viewer may have varying degrees of expertise with major categories such as visual analysis or creative narrative and also use extrinsic or intrinsic frameworks for image deconstruction. The search for meaning is ever universal for humankind. This model is for teaching a pluralistic approach to education and promotes an ideal of encouraging a culture of dialoguing in civic education. Art educators should use this model for identifying and teaching to a variety of aesthetics strengths. Drawing from extrinsic and intrinsic frameworks for making meaning, art experiences in the classroom can be tailored to develop a curriculum that promotes and teaches diverse aesthetic meaning.</p>

This experimental study tested the effects of an extended art experience on selected personality and cognitive style factors. The treatment was a class in art appreciation on the college level and extending for one semester, and its purpose was to enable students to experience an approach to the organization of art phenomena which was directly related to the cognitive style and personality factors described by Irvin L. Child in his research in aesthetic sensitivity. The pre- and post test was a randomized compilation of the items from the seven measures used by Child, namely, (1) tolerance of ambiguity, ambivalence, and unrealistic experience, (2) scanning, (3) regression in the service of the ego, (4) independence of judgment, (5) anxiety, (6) tolerance of complexity and (7) extroversion v. introversion; and five measures from the California Psychological Inventory, (1) To, tolerance, (2) Ai, achievement via independence, (3) Sa, self-acceptance, (4) Fx, flexibility, and (5) Ps, psychological-mindedness. Four intact groups were used, two treatment groups, one with 14 students and the second with 24 students, and two control groups, an art class with 15 students and a mathematics class with 21 students.Analysis of covariance was used to test a null hypothesis for each of the 12 variables contained in the data gathering instrument. The F ratio for four of the measures reached the .05 level of significance. They were Scanning and Regression in the Service of the Ego for Treatment Group 2 and To and Fx for Treatment Group 1. No measure reached significance for both treatment-groups.Correlation coefficients were obtained to establish the presence of relationships between the two sets of measures. Regression in the Service of the Ego correlated negatively with To and Ai at the .05 level of significance. The correlation of Independence of Judgment with Fx was significant at the .001 level and with Ps at the .05 level. Anxiety correlated negatively with To, Ai and Ps and all were significant at the .001 level. Tolerance of Complexity correlated with Fx and Ps, both significant at the .05 level. Extroversion v. Introversion correlated with Sa at the .001 level of significance.Correlations were obtained for the post test variables for both the control groups and the treatment groups to determine if the magnitude of the correlations were greater for the treatment group than for the control group. The t test for difference between independent correlations was used to test for significance. The correlation between Tolerance of Complexity and Sa was the only one in which a significant difference was found in favor of the treatment group. The other post test correlation that was significant was that of Scanning with To, which favored the control group.The data was subjected to factor analysis and seven factors emerged, (1) resourcefulness and self assurance, (2) inhibition and compliance, (3) social extroversion and self-confidence, (4) narrow focusing of attention, (5) explicitness and single-mindedness, (6) intolerance and submission, and (7) independence and tolerance. It was concluded that the teaching method for art appreciation used in this study does not substantially increase the general capacity for responding aesthetically as measured by the selected personality factors.

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In this thesis, we will be concerned with Kant's philosophy of beauty and with a particular area of interest which is of great importance to any practical theory of aesthetics: dispute. If one judges something to be beautiful - if one makes a judgment of taste, and we seek to persuade others to our conviction, then how can we go about doing this? We shall discover that Kant's theory provides an interesting account of how disputes over taste can take place: an account which is informative for the way in which we conduct aesthetics today.

Twentieth century art in Viêt-Nam underwent immense changes due to the nation�s encounters with the West, through colonialism and two great wars. This thesis examines the significant impact of architecture, clothing painting and sculpture on the development of Vietnamese aesthetics. The very public nature of architecture and clothing will be used as a cultural backdrop for the changing aesthetic ideals in painting and sculpture. The thesis examines the aesthetic merits of Socialist Realism, introduced after reunification in 1975, in particular, its relationship to the art of the Republic of Vie�t- Nam (South Viêt-Nam) from 1954 to 1975. Vietnamese post-war art historians have consistently omitted the significant cultural developments of this period in their writings. A study of this distinctive era will clarify aesthetic changes in the last decades of the twentieth century. After a long period of isolation and ideological constraint, remarkable cultural changes occurred when Viêt-Nam re-established contact with the outside world. This thesis will present the subsequent changes in aesthetics, as an attempt to balance tradition and modernity, within the context of market reforms and the internationalisation of Vietnamese art. These events had a significant impact on the contemporary art market in Viêt-Nam. Through the changes that art history has noted, this thesis argues that the interactions with outsiders were either an impetus or a pressure for changes in Vie�t-Nam�s drive for modernity.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-109).

Thesis (M.A.(St.Art.Hist.)) -- University of Adelaide, Master of Arts (Studies in Art History), School of History and Politics, Discipline of History, 2005. / Coursework. "November 2004" Bibliography: leaves 118-128.