In 2005, Polish-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, known for using video projections to animate existing public monuments and architecture in more than a dozen countries, exhibited his first large-scale indoor video projection titled "If You See Something…" at Galerie Lelong in New York City. This series of video projections responded to changes in public policy regarding immigration after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The title, inspired by an ongoing homeland security campaign in New York City, referred to posters that encouraged suspicion of immigrants by vaguely demanding, "If you see something, say something." The Lelong exhibition, because of its site-specificity and controlled voyeuristic environment, allowed the artist to manipulate the dynamic of communication in the public sphere. Wodiczko inserted the voices of immigrants, the implicit targets of the campaign, while silencing those conditioned to fear these "strangers." The figures, all presumed to be immigrants, acted out private dramas of pain through audible conversations that center on themes such as deportation, political harassment, racial humiliation, detainment, and exclusion. What is significant about "If You See Something…" is that it is Wodiczko's first projected video environment in a gallery space. The Lelong exhibition functioned similarly to his previous projections in process (the obtaining of private testimony for public display) and motive (the encouragement of democratic exchange). Yet, the gallery's smaller scale and controlled interior environment drastically changed the effect of the projection on the viewers who were transformed into individual voyeurs rather than collective spectators. My overall approach to the installation seeks to establish an understanding of "If You See Something..." by addressing its complicated relationship to issues of the public and private consumption of art, memory and traumatic testimony, and postmodern monumentality. By looking critically at the effects of the installation's content, style, and motive for both the viewer and participating subject (including the artist himself), I encourage an understanding of how the projection functioned as a challenge and alternative to the concept of conventional monuments. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2010. / March 26, 2010. / Holzer, Fearless Speech, Testimony, Art, Projection, Democracy, Video, Krzysztof, Wodiczko, Monument, James E. Young, If You See Something, September 11, Galerie Lelong, Immigration, Polish Art, Counter-monument, Monument, Nancy Fraser, Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Thesis; Adam Jolles, Committee Member; Roald Nasgaard, Committee Member.

Cloud Gate, a monumental, sculptural-structure by artist Anish Kapoor, provides the focal point of this paper. I demonstrate through an exposition of specific art critical, art historical, and phenomenological reasoning why Cloud Gate functions as an agent of embodied awareness. Despite Cloud Gate's high-profile status within a burgeoning family of abstract public art, scholarship does not adequately address its appropriation of features from the 1960s minimalist idiom; its indebtedness to theoretical concerns explored by New Generation or abstract modern sculptors; or its tacit condition as an object representative of concerns within phenomenological discourse. I utilize a three-pronged methodology to address these gaps in the knowledge base related to Cloud Gate. First, I analyze a facet of mid-twentieth-century art-critical discourse pertaining to formal shifts in sculptural media. I examine the polemical interaction between Michael Fried and Rosalind Krauss to discern how their thinking hastened the propagation of monumental, abstract art within the public sphere. Next, I perform a stylistic analysis of selected objects from Kapoor's oeuvre. In part, this analysis is positioned within the framework of Krauss's Klein group schema, which provides a scholarly basis for introducing the idea of sculptural interiority and exteriority. I juxtapose specific sculptures and sculptural-structures by Kapoor with works of similar scale by New Generation sculptor Phillip King and modern abstract sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Alexander Calder. Finally, with an art historical framework in place supporting notions of how Kapoor's Cloud Gate alters ambient space and implies abstract ideas of bodyhood, I investigate two other installations by the artist. Memory and Whiteout demonstrate how he has become increasingly concerned with specific facets of phenomenological theory. I expose how Kapoor's exploration of these themes manifests in Cloud Gate, producing a monumental, public sculpture capable of making one aware of embodied human nature, as well as the concerns of being an individual with stakes in the public sphere. The paper concludes with a synopsis of how this analysis intersects existing scholarship on Kapoor. Further, I outline a few of the many directions in which this research could be expanded at a later date. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2010. / March 30, 2010. / Klein Group, Rosalind Krauss, Michael Fried, Phenomenology, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Phillip King, Minimalism, New Generation, Public Sculpture, Monumental Sculpture, Abstract Sculpture, Millennium Park, Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Thesis; Michael D. Carrasco, Committee Member; Stephanie Leitch, Committee Member.

The chief objective of this study is to examine the post-1948 life of forty-six paintings, originally a part of the United States Department of State's Advancing American Art collection. When given a second life after the collection's aborted international tour and subsequent auction, these paintings helped shape the university/museum collections and identities of four regional academic institutions: Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama; the University of Georgia, Athens; the University of Oklahoma, Norman; and the University of Washington, Seattle. No one has yet treated the domestic aftermath of the Advancing American Art exhibition and the fate of the State Department's collection. Yet the acquisition of paintings from Advancing American Art by colleges and universities formed the nuclei of their collections of American art. In the process, the acquired works vivified the study of American contemporary art in the 1940s and 1950s, helped develop the modernist canon in the United States, advanced the careers of American artists associated with the exhibition, and contributed to the development of prominent regional cultural facilities, and by extension the universities' respective identities. In addition, an analysis of the post-exhibition lives of these paintings amplifies the socio-political context of the exhibition beyond what has been written. Traditional study of American art has focused on the artists and stylistic movements emerging from major metropolitan areas, particularly in the northeastern U.S., thus marginalizing other sections of the country. Little has been written about the role played by regional fine art collections and the museums that house them in defining the nation's art history. The Advancing American Art exhibition offers an important opportunity to study that role. Instead of making the controversial paintings disappear into the depths of storage vaults, universities displayed them as important examples of avant-garde American art. Furthermore, the dissemination of the paintings to the South, Midwest, and Northwest broadened the audience for vanguard art domestically. Thus, this study of regional collections, using the wealth of virtually untapped archival resources available, aids understanding of the reception of contemporary art outside larger metropolitan areas. A rigorous reconsideration of the subject demonstrates that the dispersal of paintings to four forward-thinking regional public academic institutions contributes to our more nuanced understanding of the regional reception of modernist art. More important, a study of the unanticipated consequences of the cancellation of the touring exhibition also provides insight into the institutional histories of regional American museums. Regional universities had a critical need for original paintings, as they developed new curricula in contemporary visual arts to accommodate increased student enrollment due to returning military personnel from World War II. Thus, the dispersal of the collection contributed to the growth of academic programs, the stimulation of interest in current American art, and the development of the prominent fine art museums now located on these campuses. Based in part upon previously untapped archival resources, this study considers for the first time these four institutional recipients of paintings from the Advancing American Art collection and paves the way for future scholarship on the exhibition's regional impact. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2010. / October 15, 2010. / modern art, university museums, twentieth century, controversy, censorship / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Dissertation; R. Bruce Bickley, Jr., University Representative; Jack Freiberg, Committee Member; Adam Jolles, Committee Member.

In May of 1928, the Premier salon indépendant de la photographie opened to the public. This exhibition, better known as the Salon de l'Escalier, was the first occasion at which modern photography was critically recognized in France. French art critic and publisher Florent Fels (1893-1977) organized the show because of his dissatisfaction with the annual salon of photography, the Salon International d'art photographique de Paris, and its support of pictorialism. In this thesis, I expand upon current scholarship on these exhibitions by comparing the 1927 and 1928 writings of Fels and Pierre Mac Orlan with those of Luc Benoist and René Chavance. The former writers are both generally associated with modern photography while the latter authors introduced the annual salon catalogues of 1927 and 1928, respectively, and are thus connected with pictorialism. Through this comparison I discovered that, though traditionally set at odds with one another because of the exhibitions with which they are associated, these critics were nevertheless uniformly interested in steering photography away from pictorialism and advocating a new conception of the medium. To illustrate this, I consider those aspects of the style with which each critic took issue and what they offered as alternatives. I have organized this thesis into three chapters. Chapter one addresses the terms by which these authors rejected pictorialism. In chapter two, I introduce what these critics suggested as alternatives to pictorialism—the photograph as document and snapshot—to delineate their conceptions of what modern photography should become. In chapter three, I discuss Fels' and Mac Orlan's conception of photography as poetry, which provided a way to distinguish the medium not only from the photography that came before but also from all other media. Pictorialists strove to distance photography from its mechanical or scientific nature to show that the medium was an art. In contrast, the critics Fels, Mac Orlan, Benoist, and Chavance argued that photography could and should be both a mechanical medium and a conduit of subjective expression. My analysis of their primary documents illustrates that two groups of critics that have been assumed were opposed, in fact, had much in common. This not only shows that this period, considered crucial in the history of French photography, cannot be reduced to a simple series of events but that other transitional moments in the history of photography deserve closer scrutiny. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2011. / March 31, 2011. / Photography, Pierre Mac Orlan, Florent Fels, Salon International d'art photographique de Paris Premier salon indépendant de la photographie, Pictorialism, Modern photography, French art criticism, Luc Benoist, René Chavance / Includes bibliographical references. / Adam Jolles, Professor Directing Thesis; Karen Bearor, Committee Member; Lauren Weingarden, Committee Member.

In August 1912, American photographer Alfred Stieglitz published Gertrude Stein's word portraits of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse in a special issue of Camera Work. Most scholars agree that these word portraits inspired the invention of the object portrait in the American visual arts. Marius de Zayas, Francis Picabia, Marsden Hartley, Man Ray, Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O'Keeffe explored the genre as members of American artistic circles from 1912 through the 1930s. As the genre developed, these artists drew simultaneously upon the semantic and syntactic play of cubist collage, photomontage, Dada language experiments, assemblage, and traditional fine art practices. The identification of Stein's word portraits of Picasso and Matisse as the source of inspiration for object portraiture is secure in scholarly literature. Yet, the theoretical relationship between the two over time remains unexplored. Moreover, scholars have failed to consider other literary experiments by Stein, such as Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms (1914) and the word portraits produced after 1911, as contributing factors in the genre's development. Steinian scholarship primarily attributes her portrait theory to the application of the American psychologist William James' system of characterology, which addresses the mental phenomena of simultaneity, stream of consciousness, and a continuous present. As Stein created a linguistic correspondence to Jamesian perception, she employed an alternative language system that made use of repetition, fragmentation, metaphor and metonymy, word play, punning, word heap (or a conscious, volitional emptying of words), nonsense, and sound associations. In so doing, Stein questioned and attacked traditional modes of identity construction in her experimental writing. Her primary objective was to capture modern character and personality as revealed through modern experiences. I argue that the development of the object portrait genre as practiced by the artists listed above must be considered in light of the profound impact of Gertrude Stein's portrait theory, embedded in the cultural interest in personality and psychology, as demonstrated progressively over the course of her literary career. Like Stein, the artists believed that traditional visual language systems based on mimesis were incapable of describing modern personality and alternative lifestyles. Instead, they employed an alternative visual language of objects associated with their subjects to replace portraiture's traditional reliance on physical resemblance as an indicator of character. Thus, they invented a new means of conveying essential personality traits. I argue further that Stein's development of an alternative language system based on Jamesian psychology, to question traditional modes of identity construction in her experimental writing, contributed to the overall structure and meaning of object portraiture. Art historians have addressed aspects of this argument but they have not attributed this to the artists' interests in Stein's writing specifically. Therefore, the primary objective of this dissertation is to bring together the literary scholarship on Stein's word portraiture and the related art historical scholarship on object portraiture to reconsider the claims made in each in an attempt to discern parallel themes and stylistic choices evident in the genre's development as a visual form of expression within the American avant-garde. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2011. / June 20, 2011. / Alfred Stieglitz, Gertrude Stein, American art, modern art, object portrait / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Dissertation; John J. Fenstermaker, University Representative; Adam D. Jolles, Committee Member; Roald Nasgaard, Committee Member.

"The Politics of Devotion: Patronage and the Sumptuous Arts at the French Court (1374-1472)" argues for the significance of devotional art in the construction of legitimate political identity in late-fourteenth and fifteenth century French courts, establishing a model for patronage that highlights the role of the nobility in art produced in France during the Hundred Years War and its aftermath. This study focuses on two patrons: first, Jean de Valois, the duke of Berry; and second, the Jouvenel des Ursins, a recently ennobled family who owed their rise to power to their appointment to prestigious political positions. Jean de Berry's Petites Heures and Grandes Heures serve as examples of ducal patronage that combine elements of manuscripts associated with the late Capetian dynasty. Among these are the Belleville Breviary and the lost Hours of Jean le Bon, as well as didactic mirrors for princes, L'Estimeur du Monde and the Enseignements of Saint Louis, all intended to link the nascent Valois dynasty, whose legitimacy was contested during the Hundred Years' War, to the previous Capetian dynasty. The manipulation of devotional objects to create a context for the presentation of political propaganda is adopted subsequently by the Jouvenel des Ursins family to promote legitimate noble identity in both text and image. Surviving books of hours belonging to Michel, Jean II, and Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins provide evidence of the family's desires to promote their claims to nobility by emulating princely models of patronage. The chancellor of France under Charles VII and Louis XI, Guillaume was also the patron the Mare historiarum, a universal history that includes visual references to the family's connection to the ancient noble Orsini family of Rome, as well as represents Guillaume as following the model of royal patronage. Evidence of the Jouvenel des Ursins family's awareness of the material requirements of noble patronage is also represented in two fragments of a heraldic tapestry, and marshaled the developing medium of panel painting to recreate sumptuous objects. Both sets of patrons took advantage of markers of legitimate political identity to adapt sumptuous devotional objects to function not for prayer alone, but also for personal and family promotion. Through the patterns of patronage employed by Jean de Berry and the Jouvenel des Ursins, it is possible to explore the role of the visual arts in constructing nobility in France during the tumultuous period of the Hundred Years' War and beyond. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2011. / March 17, 2011. / noblesse, Grandes Heures, Petites Heures, Jouvenel des Ursins, Jean de Berry, patronage, vivre noblement / Includes bibliographical references. / Stephanie Leitch, Professor Directing Dissertation; Lori J. Walters, University Representative; Paula Gerson, Committee Member; Robert Neuman, Committee Member.

This study examines the formal and ideological origins of the earliest Renaissance cast portrait medals, created by the artist Pisanello (Antonio di Puccio, c. 1394-1455). It focuses on three courts and objects produced at each that are central to understanding the emergent sculptural form. Chapters are devoted to the Constantine and Heraclius medallions created for the Valois prince Jean, Duc de Berry (r. 1360-1416); Pisanello's first medal, dedicated to the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus, produced c. 1438 at the Este court in Ferrara; and the series of four medals that Pisanello produced for Ludovico Gonzaga of Mantua (r. 1444-1478). Frequently marginalized in art-historical analyses, studies of the earliest cast medals traditionally approach the objects individually, celebrating their form and iconography as manifesting humanist interest in the individual and the revival of ancient modes of personal commemoration. Through references to the wider historical context and the contemporary visual culture of the courts, this analysis demonstrates that the origins of the new sculptural form lay in synthesizing a series of visual models previously overlooked. These included a class of Byzantine sacred objects, enkolpia, identifiable with successful military endeavors in the East; prophetic literature; French chivalric romances; and genealogical imagery. An equally important contribution of this analysis resides in demonstrating that, from its inception, the cast portrait medal was aligned with one of the most pressing political and religious concerns of the period, the protection of Eastern Christendom from Ottoman incursion. The small, portable, and reproducible objects studied responded to the shared religious and political aspirations of their French and Italian court patrons, each of whom was, to a greater or lesser extent, identified with the call for crusade. Each patron utilized the emergent form of the medal to promote his personal or dynastic rule, employing a form identified with a distinguished tradition of Christian military triumph, traced to ancient Rome, but including as well Byzantine imperial and French royal models. The combination was especially appealing to Pisanello's signorial patrons, professional military leaders eager to legitimize their authority. This study redefines understanding of the form and hence the political and religious function of the objects considered and offers a model for expanded analysis of Pisanello's wider medallic oeuvre. It also demonstrates that the ideological origins of Pisanello's medals and their antecedents resided in the same concerns that motivated production of monumental works of art commissioned by the same patrons, including altarpieces, frescoes, and architecture, thereby situating analysis of the earliest medals centrally within the study of visual culture in the early modern courts. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2011. / March 24, 2011. / Pisanello, Renaissance medals, portrait medals, Ludovico Gonzaga John VIII Palaeologus, Jean de Berry, enkolpia, Queste del Saint Graal, Precious Blood / Includes bibliographical references. / Jack Freiberg, Professor Directing Dissertation; David Stone, University Representative; Paula Gerson, Committee Member; Robert Neuman, Committee Member.

This thesis examines the stained glass windows in the ambulatory of Trinity Chapel at Canterbury Cathedral, known as the Miracle Windows, and presents the argument that they function as a type of visual miracle collection, one that parallels the textual accounts of the miracles posthumously performed by St. Thomas Becket. Case studies of these visualized miracle stories will show that the narrative structure deemphasizes the figure of the saint, relying instead on the individual who is the recipient of cure. This new narratological approach differentiates the visual miracle collection from the textual Miracula, effectively eliminating the notion that the stained glass served as an illustration to the text and, instead, suggesting that it served as an additional "text." The narrative structure also distinguishes the Becket series from the other stained glass adorning Canterbury, both biblical and hagiographical. Finally, because the narratives in the Miracle Windows privilege the individual, I suggest that these windows should be considered in the context of the cultural development termed the "Discovery of the Self," and will relate the imagery to twelfth- and thirteenth-century texts associated with this genre. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Art History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2007. / July 11, 2007. / Canterbury Cathedral, Stained Glass, St. Thomas Becket, Miracle Windows, Trinity Chapel, Medieval / Includes bibliographical references. / Paula Gerson, Professor Directing Thesis; Robert Neuman, Committee Member; Richard Emmerson, Committee Member.

When French avant-garde artist Orlan elected to surgically alter her face during a series of performances in the 1990s, she provoked extreme reactions both within art criticism and the popular press. Rather than focus on the artist's mental health or intentions, I hope to connect her corpus of performances since the 1960s to taboos imposed upon the body. By blurring the boundaries between sexualized and sacred bodies and evoking the horror of death through self-mutilation, Orlan defiantly breaks these taboos. My thesis relates Orlan's deconstruction of religious, art-historical, and social constructs to Georges Bataille's writings on taboo and transgression. My connection between his vast body of literature and Orlan's performances centers on his formulations of eroticism and sacrifice, and his description of transgression as the blurring of binary forces. I argue that Bataille's writings that describe transgression as a gateway to inner experience resonate with Orlan's outrageous performances. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Art History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Art. / Fall Semester, 2007. / October 22, 2007. / Performance Art, Transgression, Taboo, Georges Bataille, Orlan, Contemporary Art / Includes bibliographical references. / Adam Jolles, Professor Directing Thesis; Roald Nasgaard, Committee Member; Tatiana Flores, Committee Member.

In this thesis I explore the concept of materiality in Gustave Moreau's oeuvre. For Moreau, this was an important concept, which influenced his art in a variety of different ways. Looking at three interpretations of the concept, I show how Moreau reconsidered this concept in many practical and theoretical ways throughout his career. I look at Moreau's repeated depictions of the same subjects, showing how he saw the subject as a suggestion with many possible material interpretations. In addition to considering Moreau's widely-varied conceptions of the subject of Salome, I also show how the writers who described his paintings saw the works themselves as similarly suggestive, elaborating on what they saw in the paintings. Next, I look at how Moreau responded to contemporary theories of degeneration, showing women and animals as physical and sexual threats to man's transcendence. I consider three themes he explored in this process: flesh-eating animals, combined human and animal body parts, and bestiality. Finally, I look at Moreau's focus on the physical surfaces of his paintings. Moreau struggled with the problem of how to depict immaterial ideas using the material medium of paint, and as a result, he used four different techniques to emphasize the surface of his canvases. I consider his use of smooth, realistic surfaces combined with elaborate details, as well as his technique of layering designs over his canvases. I also look at his use of a stained-glass-inspired technique, and his looser, more expressionistic sketches. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Art History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2009. / March 30, 2009. / Moreau, Gustave Moreau, Materiality, Material, Spirit, Matter, Degeneration, Symbolism, Symbolist, Salome, Bestiality / Includes bibliographical references. / Lauren Weingarden, Professor Directing Thesis; Richard Emmerson, Committee Member; Adam Jolles, Committee Member.