Animal imagery has been part of the human effort to understand our place in the world since the beginning of recorded history. Through examining the role and use of animal imagery in the creation of cultural signals, I have developed a framework for my practice. Edgelands employs representations of feral animals as symbols for the “misfit” to emphasize the value of those who do not fit in. My experience as a woman in the field of metal work informs my material choice and process, subverting ironwork motifs and the purpose of gates and boundaries. Edgelands overlaps a series of material contradictions to begin the process of questioning the validity of commonly held delineations. The intersection of environmentalism, craft, and feminism is the space in which I interject the feral animal in an effort to reconcile aspects of my own experience as a misfit and learn about the world through making.

Rosa Bonheur, artiste animalière du 19e siècle se révèle, par ses représentations humaines/ équines, être pionnière dans l’avènement d’une éthique animale. Bien qu’ayant joui d’une popularité enviable de son vivant, les études posthumes faites à son sujet sont majoritairement biographiques et principalement intéressées à examiner son célèbre Marché aux chevaux (1853-1855), sous la loupe de sa sexualité. Cette approche limitée, en plus de ne pas rendre justice à la position artistique adoptée par Bonheur, asservit les sujets équins de ses œuvres. Ce mémoire propose un angle alternatif de lecture de ses tableaux, qui se veut plus en adéquation avec son éthique animale. Inspiré par les recherches récentes des animal studies, particulièrement celles influencées par la déconstruction, il sera démontré que les représentations des relations inter-espèces de Bonheur soulèvent d’importants questionnements éthiques. Dans ce contexte, Rocky Bear and Chief Red Shirt (1889), une œuvre indûment négligée par les études en histoire de l’art, s’avère essentielle, lorsque considérée aux côtés du Marché aux chevaux, comme moyen de saisir l’éthique équine de l’artiste. Par l’analyse de ses oeuvres, ce mémoire invite à une réévaluation de l’art de Bonheur comme étant l’expression de son engagement pour l’avènement d’une manière plus éthique d’être avec le cheval. De plus, il cherche à contribuer, de façon significative, à la compréhension des rôles que les pratiques de représentation, en général et spécifiquement dans l’art, peuvent jouer dans la transformation de nos perceptions de l’animal non-humain. / Through her depictions of the human/horse relationship, the animal painter Rosa Bonheur has shown herself to be a pioneer in the advent of animal ethics. In life she enjoyed an enviable popularity and posthumously her work has continued to attract attention with most studies focussing on her biography, reading her famous The Horse Fair (1853-1855) through the prism of her sexuality. Such approaches are too limited and fail to do justice to Bonheur’s artistic philosophy, overwriting the importance of the horse, a key subject in many of her works. This dissertation takes an alternative approach, one more in keeping with the artist’s animal ethics. Inspired by recent research in animal studies, particularly research informed by deconstruction, the thesis demonstrates how Bonheur’s representation of interspecies relations raises key ethical questions. In this context, Rocky Bear and Chief Red Shirt (1889), a painting which has been unduly neglected in existing art historical scholarship, forms a vital work, one which is considered alongside the celebrated The Horse Fair as a means to understand Bonheur’s equine ethics. Through an analysis of these paintings in particular, the thesis invites a reassessment of Bonheur’s art as an expression of her commitment to the ethical treatment of horses and also seeks to make a significant contribution to understanding the role practices of representation more generally, including art, can play in the transformation of our perception of non-human animals.

This document investigates the concept of why man creates animal images and introduces the influences and focus of the artwork contained in the public exhibition. These original images focus on the similarities between animal and human personalities. Also included is a brief history of each "ink on paper" printmaking process used and a comparison of the results. All of the techniques discussed generally have a photographic process as their basis and use personal photographs and drawings for the foundation of each original print. In conclusion, areas for growth, enhancement, and future work are discussed, including a summary of the personal insights gained through the body of work. This thesis also supports the visual exhibition in the B. Carroll Reece Museum, East Tennessee State University, in fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree.

När vikingatiden kommer på tal, leds tankarna ofta osökt till Birka. För även om Birka låg på en ö i Mälaren, så var det allt annat än isolerat. Istället ingick Birka i ett komplext nätverk som täckte såväl nära bygder som fjärran stränder. Därav följer att nyckeln till vår förståelse av Mälardalens vikingatid ofta finns i Birka. Men även det motsatta gäller, och ibland behöver arkeologer titta åt andra håll för att uppnå en bättre förståelse av Birka. Detta ömsesidiga förhållande ska illustreras med hjälp av ett båtgravsfynd från Turinge i Södermanland. / <p>Övriga forskningsfinansiärer:</p><p>Berit Wallenbergs stiftelse ("Transformationer inom vikingatidens djurornamentik"), Helge Ax:son Jonsons stiftelse ("3D-laserskanning som verktyg vid vikingatidsstudier")</p> / En förlorad värld? - Turinge re-visited / 3D-laserskanning som verktyg vid vikingatidsstudier / Transformationer inom vikingatidens djurornamentik

Ma thèse porte sur l’évolution de la réception des chevaux dans l’art européen du XVIIIe siècle à aujourd’hui. En examinant minutieusement des œuvres d’artistes tels que Rosa Bonheur, George Stubbs, Sawrey Gilpin, Pablo Picasso, Art Orienté Objet et plusieurs autres, dans des contextes artistiques variés – peinture, dessin, sculpture, bioart ou encore danse –, j’entends démontrer que les façons de voir (ou de ne pas voir) les chevaux dans toute leur complexité sont historiquement limitatives et changeantes. Selon une approche transdisciplinaire, ma recherche combine l’histoire de l’art animalier, les études animales, ma formation en beaux-arts, et une vaste expérience sur le terrain auprès des chevaux. Elle cherche également à modifier et à nuancer les lectures contemporaines de l’art mettant en scène des chevaux, en plus de proposer des façons alternatives, plus accueillantes, d’écrire au sujet de cet Autre. La première moitié de la thèse se concentre sur la façon dont le cheval a été représenté dans l’art aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, tandis que la seconde moitié, qui couvre les XXe et XXIe siècles, poursuit ce thème en mettant en exergue les pratiques d’écriture au sujet des œuvres d’art représentant les chevaux et la façon dont elles ont souvent été inhospitalières. Cherchant à dépasser le dualisme linguistique actuel au sein de la discipline pour décrire les dynamiques interespèces, cette thèse propose des avenues de réflexion innovantes sur le binaire cheval/humain, qui ont puisé dans des ressources inusitées en histoire de l’art, soit les idées de la déconstruction en lien avec les animaux, où la notion d’hospitalité est particulièrement importante. Puisque l’historienne de l’art dispose d’une certaine latitude quant à la structuration de « l’histoire qu’elle raconte », les récits de la thèse sont transmis de manière à être plus empathiques aux réalités équines. Dans cette veine, l’ambition globale de ma thèse est de mettre l’accent sur l’importance de conscientiser le regard posé sur l’œuvre d’art équine ou équestre et sur les responsabilités de l’auteur, de manière à sensibiliser le regardeur à des responsabilités relevant de l’éthique interespèces. Chaque cheval est unique, physiquement et psychologiquement. À l’intérieur d’une pratique qui souhaite étudier l’art qui le représente, (re)connaître la valeur singulière de cet Autre impose des défis particuliers. Aujourd’hui, les contacts avec les chevaux sont pour la majorité des historiens de l’art inexistants, ce qui engendre généralement une vision et une compréhension plus superficielle de l’Autre. Ma thèse apporte de nouvelles perspectives aux débats contemporains sur les possibilités de voir les chevaux dans l’art et sur les paramètres à prendre en compte pour le faire, et elle fournit des modèles potentiels quant à la manière d’écrire sur cet Autre en tant qu’être familier. Bien que mon sujet soit les chevaux dans l’art et dans les écrits sur l’art, les interprétations que je développe ici ont une résonance et une pertinence plus larges, notamment pour les études animales. / My thesis considers the shifting reception of equine themed European art from the 18th Century to today. Through a series of close readings of works encompassing diverse media such as painting, drawing, sculpture, bio art and dance, by artists including Rosa Bonheur, George Stubbs, Sawrey Gilpin, Pablo Picasso and Art Orienté Objet, I demonstrate that the ways horses have been seen (or not seen) in all their complexity are historically contingent and changeable. My transdisciplinary approach combines insights from the history of animal art, animal studies, my training in fine art and my substantial practical knowledge of actual horses gleaned from my time teaching bareback riding and rehabilitating horses suffering from physical and psychological trauma. As well as seeking to shift and nuance contemporary readings of art featuring horses, I also strive to develop a mode of writing about horses that is more welcoming to this Other, the horse, than many previous art historical analyses. The first half of the thesis focusses on how horses were represented in 18th and 19th century European art. The second half considers 20th century and 21st century art and also examines how ways of writing about horses in art history have been restrictive and unwelcoming. I seek to move beyond the dualistic language conventionally employed by art history to refer to equine subject matter because it constrains efforts to rethink interspecies dynamics and impedes attempts to reconceptualise the horse/human binary. My attempts to transcend dualism have required me to engage with deconstruction, a way of thinking rarely embraced by art history. In this context, the notion of hospitality has been particularly important. As art historians possess a measure of agency regarding the structuring of the stories they tell, my own endeavours are organized around the need to show empathy towards horses in their lived reality. In this vein, the overarching concern of my thesis is to emphasize the need for a critically reflexive way of looking at art with equine subject matter, one that foregrounds the viewer’s and the writer’s responsibilities in relation to interspecies ethics. Every horse is physically and psychologically unique and acknowledging this singularity, the singularity of an Other, as it manifests in and through representation, poses specific challenges. Today most art historians have no day-to-day knowledge of horses, a reality that leads to a superficial and unempathic perception of this Other. My thesis, grounded in an intimate familiarity with equines, in lived experience, in fieldwork of a kind, contributes new insights to contemporary debates about the parameters and possibilities for seeing horses in art and provides potential models for how to write of this Other as a familiar. Although my subject is horses in art and in writings about art, the understandings I develop here have a broader resonance and relevance for animal studies.

Three-dimensional (3D) laser scanners are becoming increasingly more affordable and user-friendly, making 3D-modeling tools more widely available to researchers in various countries and disciplines. In archaeology, 3D-modeling has the particular advantages of facilitating the documentation and analysis of objects that are fragile, rare, and often difficult to access. We have previously shown that 3D-modeling is a highly useful tool for shape analysis of archaeological bone material, due to the high measurement accuracy inherent in the latest generation of 3D laser scanners (Sholts et al. 2010; 2011). In this work, we explore the utility of 3D-modeling as a tool for Viking Age artefact analysis. To test the usefulness of 3D-modeling when analyzing artefacts with a very complex morphology, we chose highly ornate Viking Age baroque shaped brooches as study objects. These baroque shaped brooches constitute a group of dress ornaments mainly encountered in eastern Viking Age Scandinavia. Due to their large cast and/or attached bosses they obtain an almost baroque appearance, hence their name (cf. Jansson 1984: p. 81). They appear in two major versions, i.e. circular or equal armed, and in two kinds of material, i.e. silver- and copper-based alloys. Because of the position of bronze brooches in burial contexts, it appears they were used to fasten the cape or shawl in the female dress (cf. Jansson 1984: p. 75ff., Aagård 1984: p. 96ff.; Neiß 2006, figs. 3, 4; Capelle 1962: p. 106). For the present work a recently excavated brooch from Denmark was analyzed, together with three Russian brooches with nearly iconic status in the field of Viking Age studies. In the three case studies, we investigated possible uses of 3D-modeling for artefact analysis, artefact reconstruction, and tool mark and motif analysis. Exploring the usefulness of 3D-modeling for these purposes allowed us to draw conclusions regarding how 3D-analysis can be best incorporated into future artefact analysis. In addition, the case studies allowed us to gain new insights about the baroque shaped brooches and their uses. / <p>Forskningsfinansiärer: Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse, Svenska institutet (Visby-programmet), Kungliga vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademin (Montelius minnesfond); Svenska fornminnesforeningen</p> / 3D-laserskanning som verktyg vid vikingatidsstudier

Animal art is one of the more mystical aspects of Scandinavian Iron Age culture. It has foremost been regarded in the light of art and style history. Interpretation has also – mainly from the 1990s and onwards – been made through iconographic analysis. But the problem here is that iconography requires textual analogy, something that the Scandinavian Iron Age lacks. The purpose of this paper is to lift some of the ”mystical fog” that engulfs the scandinavian animal art, by developing a method for interpretation of pre-historic images that evades the flaws in the iconographic method. This by doing an interpretation of the gripping beast motif on Gotlandic Viking Age animal-head brooches. The study is divided into three parts. Part one focuses on reception within research history and how the use of language and methodological approaches shapes the perception of animal art within it's own time, it also discusses animal art in the light of style, motif and communication. Part two aims to outline a method for pre-historic image interpretation, a structuralistic iconology with addition of contextualization and anthropological theories of agency. The chapter also discusses the cosmological order through means of ”structuralistic iconology”. Finally part three contextualizes the gripping beast to the object – the animal head-brooch – through notions of use, combination and age. Concluding that the gripping beast should be understood as a hybrid creature closely linked to ancestry, odal and the fatalistic worldview of Iron Age Scandinavia.