This dissertation chronicles how medieval, and particularly Romanesque art, came to be understood as “primitive” and “originary” throughout the nineteenth century. I argue that because Romanesque sculpture was perceived to be both an anterior and foreign style, its alterity disturbed the linear nationalistic narratives being developed throughout the nineteenth century. The rediscovery of Romanesque monuments, following a fraught and violent period of destruction, confused the entire notion of “origins,” because even though they were ancient, they lacked purity and innovation. Romanesque art was non-naturalistic, de-centralized and did not conform to the established aesthetic canons of the time in which it re-entered the European imagination. Theoreticians’ engagements with Romanesque furnished them with language and a model of comparison for the great variety of nonwestern, and mostly non-naturalistic, styles that were brought back to Europe during the same period. I propose that Primitivism developed as a strategy of identity formation arising out of an unprecedented and radical disavowal of the past during the French Revolution, in which medieval art played a generative role. Each chapter traces the interdependence of margins and metropoles in the concomitant fashioning of national and colonial identities, as France gradually intensified its expansion into Africa. Through synchronous analysis of new technologies of reproductive media, particularly lithographs and photographs, I argue that neither African nor Medieval art entered the nascent discourse of art history in isolation, as the respective historiographies of those fields would have us believe. Most importantly, my research reveals the intellectual and pictorial dialogue between anthropology and art that lead to the foundation of two seminal museums, The Museum of Ethnography and The Museum of Comparative Sculpture at the Trocadéro, by the eminent architect and theoretician, E.E. Viollet-le-Duc. I also argue for the anthropological origins of Art History in the late nineteenth century and the effect that the former’s methods had on the categorization of certain arts as “primitive.” More specifically, I show that perceptions of African art were not conceived in a vacuum, nor did they arise distinct from European material culture and aesthetics. Indeed, both Romanesque and African art were first treated as ethnographic evidence of “primitive” societies steeped in collective ritual, entirely at odds with the individual secularism at the core of Modernity. Since anthropology and ethnography treated visual material as reflections of the stages of civilization rather than as forms with their own self-regulated logic, the theorization of Romanesque and African art was colored by the biases of a different discipline. This pre-history shows that the circulation of African art in the early Colonial period did not engender Primitivism but rather that pre-existent notions of “primitivity” attached to Romanesque sculpture were extended to this newly discovered material culture.

This dissertation examines the unique aesthetic and material culture produced in and around the historically misunderstood island of Bermuda from the beginning of its European discovery through the height of its economic prosperity in the mid-eighteenth-century. As a naturally uninhabited island located in the northern Atlantic Ocean, I argue that the first cartographic images of Bermuda alternately pictured it as a virgin utopia and foreboding “Isle of Devils” for captivated European audiences. Following the settlement in 1609, however, I demonstrate how Bermuda’s own visual culture illustrates islanders’ efforts to challenge these mythologies and develop a local culture predicated on colonial disobedience, economic opportunism, and Atlantic cosmopolitanism. Each chapter of my dissertation thereby examines a separate category of aesthetic objects related to Bermuda’s cultural development, beginning with cartographic maps and continuing to natural history illustrations, portraiture, and woven straw bonnets made as part of a profitable cottage industry. Given my alternating my focus on locally and externally produced Bermudian objects, this dissertation participates in post-colonial studies that challenge the privileging of the metropole over colony. Indeed, as participants in a predominately maritime economy, I argue that eighteenth-century Bermudians were deeply connected to communities throughout the British Atlantic and used the objects circulating in this space to craft multiple, locally resonant identities. The broad range of object categories considered in this work also creates new space for examining the lived experiences of Bermudian slaves, who are traditionally under-represented in the historical record. As these Creole- and Anglo-Bermudians also went on to live and work in other Caribbean and North American colonies throughout the British Atlantic, I argue that they also disseminate Bermudian experiences abroad and helped integrated islanders’ unique interpretations of British colonial identity into the transatlantic cultural webs linking these communities throughout the long eighteenth-century.

This study looks at a group of art collectors whose interests in the graphic arts contributed to the status of drawings in Paris in the first half of the eighteenth century. The collection of 19,000 drawings formed by Pierre Crozat (1665 – 1740) provided the locus for a discourse on the graphic arts that developed outside of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The print-making initiatives of the members of this circle and their writings helped to elevate the status of drawings from a secondary art form in service to the noble arts of painting or sculpture to one wherein drawings were appreciated in their own right. Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694 – 1775) and Anne-Claude-Philippe de Tubières, le comte de Caylus (1692 – 1765) and Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680 – 1765) among others brought a focus and attention to the graphic arts which had a profound effect on the developing connoisseurship and critical discourse on prints and drawings in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Among the treasures of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture is a lovely and elaborate work of art entitled Wars of the Romani, a Flemish tapestry woven in the last third of the 16th century. It is a large weaving, 10 x 15, portraying two armies intertwined in merciless combat. The specific subject matter of Wars of the Romani is unknown, but a standard displaying the Roman eagle held aloft in the background indicates the presence of the Roman legions. The tapestry displays rushing horsemen mounted on vigorous horses, marching spearmen, and supine warriors, imagery common to Flemish battle tapestries from the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Framing the battle scene is a grotesque style border composed of gods placed within whimsical filigree architectural pavilions interwoven with fanciful decoration and mythical beasts. Wars of the Romanis Mannerist battle scene offers a view into the pictorial trends of the late Renaissance and displays the energy of the tumultuous era in which it was woven.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 295-317). Also available in electronic format on the World Wide Web. Access restricted to users affiliated with the licensed institutions.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (February 26, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Using the Cottage Plantation ruins as a vehicle for investigation, this thesis demonstrates how fragments of information can be layered on each other to draw relationships between the past and present, self and space, memory and experience, architecture and nature. And, in turn, how an understanding of these relationships presents a greater perception of the self.

The American artist Matthew Barney considers himself a sculptor, but an acceptance of the methods and mediums that Barney employs in his art as "sculpture" requires a rethinking of the term. The historical concept of sculpture as an ideological monument embodying a religious or political allegory, or its Modernist revision as an autonomous, three-dimensional object is radically redefined in Barney's use of film, video, sculpture, photography, and drawing to convey a contemporary allegory on the creation of form. Barney's work explodes the structural boundaries that Rosalind Krauss defined in her 1978 essay "Sculpture in the Expanded Field," in which she examined the contemporary condition of sculpture in the practices of artists working in the late 1960s and 1970s. In a later essay of 1990, "The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum," Krauss proposed that the "aesthetic experience" of viewing art has been replaced by a "simulacral experience," as a consequence of works of art being assigned an "asset" value rather than a cultural value. Barney's primary use of film and sculpture to create one work of art commands simultaneously "simulacral" and aesthetic experiences of the viewer. The artist's epic CREMASTER project (1994-2002) exemplifies the conceptual leap the viewer must make in accepting the work as sculpture. Barney reassigns the formal properties of the mediums of film and sculpture in reverse, so that his films are treated with a physical presence in three-dimensional space as bodies or sites, while his sculptures, in their materials and allusions to the preceding films, are characterized by ephemerality. In the context of a cinema or museum, the work maintains an aesthetic experience, but a whole experience of the work as sculpture can only be "simulacral" and exist in the viewer's imagination.

In this body of work, Wash, I translate the negative aspects of life in a positive, vibrant way. The physical and psychological sensations of life supply me with an intuitive frame of reference providing a point of departure for visual expression. Digital scanning and imaging techniques allow me to develop an immediate intimacy with the organic and inorganic objects, while I methodically examine, alter and reconfigure their forms. Graphic elements suggest symbolic interpretation from eastern studies and are sometimes enhanced with letterforms and photographic images representing the difficult articulation of thoughts. I synchronize this re-orchestration with the deciphering and close examination of my relationships and myself. Both focus on my quest for balance and harmony, critical to success in art as well as life.

Photography can be a way of exploring abstract ideas visually. When I make a photograph, I feel as though I am giving the world a glimpse into my thoughts. I want to share the mystery of photography with others. The Buddhas Shell series is part of my journey in discovering who I am as a photographer. This is my first departure away from documentary photography. Instead of using photography as a tool to record specific events and images of time, these images have enabled me to free myself and use the medium to facilitate my imagination.