This Creative Project documents and explains the significance of the exhibition space known as the Sandbox and its members. The goal was to bring together a cohesive body of work that commemorated the people and events related to the Sandbox gallery. This was accomplished by using a variety of materials and tools including video tape, slides, bronze, paint, silk-screens, and super 8 film, to name a few. / Department of Art

Surrealism is examined through its history and phenomenology. The frame of reference is shifted from the history of art to the history of religions; the premises of modern art historiography examined; and Surrealism placed within an interdisciplinary context. The conjunction between the Surreal and the sacred is developed through the phenomenological clues of the uncanny, the weird, and the irrational--popular perceptions of the Surreal. The Surreal is seen as the transition between the ordinary and the extra-ordinary: as the threshold of the sacred. The origins of the Surrealist impulse to "transform life" are traced to occultism, alchemy, and hermetic philosophy, that attempt to create "the union of opposites". Historically, Surrealism stems from this heterodox tradition of archaic, occult, and daemonic elements in European cultures, yet it radically opposes them to the accepted religion and conventional mentality. In so doing, Surrealism creates a new orientation based upon the power of contradiction and ambivalence.

The aim of this thesis is to identify in contemporary art practices the inflections that have either direct, or indirect origins in Taoism, the conceptual source of China’s principle indigenous, cultural practices. The thesis argues that the increasingly cross cultural qualities of contemporary art practice owe much to the West’s exposure to Taoism’s non-absolutist, non-humanist tropes, a cultural borrowing that has received slight attention despite its increasingly pervasive presence. This critical analysis is structured by Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the rhizome as a metaphor for cultural influences that are pluralist permeations, rather than a linear hierachy. The thesis tracks discourse between the West and China from early contact to the present, tracing manifold aspects of Taoism’s modes of visual representation in Western art. Chinese gardens, Chinoiserie, calligraphy, and their coalescence in Chinese painting, are analysed to locate Taoist precepts familiar to the West, principally citing the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Taoism’s founder. Here Taoist philosophy, as synthesised in Western thought, is proven to be a source of identifiable innovations in contemporary art practice. For example, spatial articulation as a dominant element of expression in installation art is traced to Western artists’ exposure to the conceptualised spatiality of Sinocised artefacts. Taoist precepts are analysed in the Chinese tradition of improvising upon calligraphic characters as a key factor.This model is deployed using the skills set of studio-based research, to identify the experimental nature and degree of improvisation in Western artists’ adaptations of Taoist methods in innovative painting, then sculpture. Investigations of artworks are structured upon correlations between Deleuze’s theories of representation and Taoist theories of creativity. A thematic connection with Taoism located in contemporary art, namely, notions of continuity and change, assists this detailed unravelling of creative processes, aesthetics, metonymy and meaning derived from Taoism in global, contemporary art. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 43 p. : ill. (some col.) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Melbourne, School of Fine Arts, Classics & Archaeology, and Cinema Studies, 1998. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 389-436).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-169).

Thesis (M.V.A.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed 26 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Visual Arts to the Sydney College of the Arts. Includes a list of illustrations: leaves 5-6. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 1976. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 476-497).

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Leiden, 1996. / "Stellingen" ([2] p.) inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-250).

Thesis (Ed.D)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1990. / Includes appendices. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Justin Schorr. Dissertation Committee: David S. Nateman. Bibliography: leaves 162-186.