abstract: Peacocks are ubiquitous in art. Artists from societies across the globe, undoubtedly attracted to the male peafowl’s colorful plumage and unique characteristics, used images of the bird to form visual semantics intended to aid in the understanding of a work of art. This was particularly the case in Europe, where depictions of peacocks appeared in Christian art from the onset of the continent’s dominant religion. Beginning in Early Christianity, peacocks symbolized the opportunity for an eternal life in heaven enabled by Christ’s sacrificial death. Illustrations of peacocks were so frequent and widespread that they became the standard symbol for eternal life in Christian art consistently centered on recounting the stories of Christ’s birth and death. Overtime, peacock iconography evolved to include thematic diversity, as artists used the peacock’s recognizable physical attributes for the representation of new themes based on traditional ideas. Numerous paintings contain angels wings covered in the iridescent eyespots located on the male peafowl’s tail feathers. Scientifically known as ocelli, eyespots painted on the wings of angels became a widespread motif during the Renaissance. Artists also recurrently depicted the peacock’s crest on figures of Satan or Lucifer in both paintings and prints. Indicative of excessive pride, a believed characteristic of peacocks, the crest is used as an identifying characteristic of the fallen angel, who was cast from heaven because of his pride. Although the peacock is a known iconographic motif in medieval and Renaissance art history, no specific monographic study on peacock iconography exists. Likewise, representations of separate and distinctive peacock characteristics in Christian art have been considerably ignored. Yet, the numerous artworks depicting the peacock and its attributes speak to the need to gain a better understanding of the different strategies for peacock allegory in Christian art. This thesis provides a comprehensive understanding of peacock iconography, minimizing the mystery behind the artistic intentions for depicting peacocks, and allowing for more thorough readings of medieval and Renaissance works that utilize peafowl imagery. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Art History 2016

abstract: The display methods of the gallery, "Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision," makes the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, unique among modern art institutions in the United States. It is also an anomaly within the Menil Collection itself. The "Witnesses" room is located near the back of the wing that houses the museum's large Surrealism collection. Both objects that the Surrealists owned and objects similar to those they collected are showcased in the gallery by means of an array of eclectically displayed ethnographic objects and other curiosities. Curated by anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, this single-room exhibition seems to recreate a surrealist collection. "Witnesses" is a permanent exhibition within the Menil's Surrealism collection and not an independent wing or gallery. All of the objects contained in "Witnesses" belonged either to the curator Edmund Carpenter or to the de Menils, whose larger collection of ethnographic objects are displayed in separate African, Oceanic, and Pacific Northwest Coast galleries within the museum. The Surrealists often utilized a heterogeneous style of both collecting and display, which the de Menils also took up. They mixed surrealist art freely with ethnographic and other types of found objects. This style of collecting and display contrasts sharply with the modern display methods that are standard to American art museums, and which are dictated by a hierarchy based on the cultural provenance of each object as high art. This thesis examines Carpenter's "Witnesses" exhibition in the Menil Collection to establish its display as a legacy of surrealist collecting--a close connection which is not seen in the permanent collections of any other art museum in the United States. Thus, by noting and annotating the Surrealists' collecting and display methods that can be located in Carpenter's installation of "Witnesses," I argue that Carpenter challenges many of the formal qualities typical of museum institutional practices and radically expands its very definition of what constitutes art, even in our own time. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2014

abstract: The history of jade in many ways reflects the evolution of Chinese civilization, encompassing its entire history and geographical extent and the many cultural traditions associated with the various regions that have finally been brought together in the unity of present-day China. The archaic jade collections investigated in this thesis, from an archaeological point of view, primarily consist of pieces from the late Neolithic through early historic era, named the "Jade Age" by academics. Although well-researched museum catalogues of archaic Chinese jades have been widely published by major museums in the United States, they are mostly single collection oriented. It is, then, necessary to conduct research examining the overall picture of collecting practices in the U.S. Given the proliferation of fake early jades, this study will provide an essential academic reference for researchers, students, and the present art market. This thesis seeks to explore how shifting tastes, political climates, and personal ambitions, as well as various opportunities and personalities, were instrumental factors in shaping these important collections of archaic Chinese jades in the U.S. today. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2014

<p> Space exploration has always fascinated me, and so has the idea ( so far fictional) that humankind may someday encounter extraterrestrial life. My series of paintings and prints are a visual expression of the awe and wonder I feel as I follow our species&rsquo;s unending drive to expand the boundaries of its known world. </p><p> But the unknown is not just out there in interstellar space. And there are other lifeforms to encounter right here on our own planet. Another series of my paintings documents Earth&rsquo;s flora. Our ties to the microorganisms, animals, and plants on our planet, and the life which may exist on far away stars, are facets of the same question: how are we interrelated? And how do we manage the dwindling resources of our planet? (I speculate that a mining colony to extract resources from Mars is in our near future.) </p><p> The challenge of space is equal to, not greater, than the challenge of our shared life on Earth. The octopus and the whale are intelligent lifeforms, alien to us, that must be recognized and preserved. As an artist I am interested in ways to connect the cosmic scale of the stars with the microscopically tiny organisms crucial to life on our planet: in both cases, embracing co-existence and diversity is my unifying artistic principal. My artistic predecessors include other painters but also science fiction writers, and film producers who have imagined possible future worlds and speculated about the characteristics which other races may embody</p>

<p> The thesis examines the connection between Jan van Eyck&rsquo;s (c. 1390-1441) <i>Portrait of a Man</i> (<i>&ldquo;L&eacute;al Souvenir&rdquo;</i>) (1432) and William Holman Hunt&rsquo;s portrait of <i>Henry Wentworth Monk</i> (1858). Holman Hunt and Henry Monk shared a period of personal transformation upon their first meeting in Syria in 1854 and again in London in 1858. The execution of Monk&rsquo;s portrait coincided with National Gallery&rsquo;s acquisition of <i>L&eacute;al Souvenir</i> in 1857. Hunt&rsquo;s appropriation of stylistic elements and themes drawn from van Eyck&rsquo;s pictures is a subject that has been addressed by scholars in Hunt&rsquo;s major works throughout his artistic career. The little known portrait of Monk has, heretofore, been excluded from the current scholarship on this topic. A careful reading of Hunt&rsquo;s signs and symbols argues for its inclusion.</p>

Although widely respected as an abstract painter, the Russian Jewish artist and architect El Lissitzky produced more works on paper than in any other medium during his twenty year career. Both a highly competent lithographer and a pioneer in the application of modernist principles to letterpress typography, Lissitzky advocated for works of art issued in “thousands of identical originals” even before the avant-garde embraced photography and film. Lissitzky also devoted more effort to theorizing what he called “the architecture of the book” than to any other single issue, publishing statements in 1919, 1923, 1927 and 1931 that demonstrate a consistency otherwise lacking from his incredibly varied career. This phrase encapsulates Lissitzky’s view of the book as a global structure uniting all the formal and technical capabilities of a culture: initially derived from Victor Hugo’s claim that Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type had replaced architecture as the universal form of popular expression, Lissitzky’s term emblematizes the expanded field of architecture in which he operated. This dissertation approaches Lissitzky as a theorist and practitioner of this expanded architectural field. Chapters one and two outline Lissitzky’s general project, treating the lithographic portfolios in which he circulated his abstract paintings and the journals and books he designed as model structures of print’s “architecture.” Its third chapter examines the changes that Lissitzky’s experiments with photography, both in cameraless abstract compositions and multi-negative montages, wrought on his conception of print. Rather than conceiving photography and film as exemplars of reproducibility as such, Lissitzky saw them as heralding a reorganization of existing systems of reproducible media linked by a broad cultural practice of reading. Chapter four shows how artists and printers in the USSR continued to debate these evolving practices of cultural literacy under Stalin, negotiating new technological possibilities and new political demands. As a leading figure in this debate, Lissitzky’s works exemplified the contradiction between advancing technical possibilities and diminishing popular participation in public life while remaining entirely affirmative toward the regime. The dissertation’s final chapter places the photographic albums Lissitzky produced in collaboration with his partner, Sophie Küppers, in relation to an emergent Stalinist patron class. / History of Art and Architecture

This dissertation examines gemstones carved in relief from the middle and late Byzantine periods. Byzantine gems share a similar aesthetic with relief carvings in ivory and steatite, but they have not been as thoroughly studied. This dissertation seeks to address the lacuna in scholarship by assembling, dating, and analyzing two hundred Byzantine gems. Carved gemstones average less than four centimeters in height. Bloodstone, a variety of jasper, was carved the most frequently. Almost all are enkolpia, or pectoral pendants. The earliest pieces can be dated to the tenth through the early eleventh centuries. They are skillfully carved, and some display imperial themes such as the standing Christ and a symbol that is reminiscent of the globus cruciger. Some display iconographic and stylistic similarities with icons in ivory, which are also associated with emperors. The greatest number of pieces date to the twelfth century, and their quality varies considerably. This seems to suggest that initially gemstone enkolpia were owned by emperors and other elites, but that by the twelfth century they had become more accessible and their use increased. This finding is consistent with our knowledge of the cultural climate and religious practices of the twelfth century, which is characterized by a taste for luxury objects and a form of piety that was focused upon attaining individual salvation. The function of gemstone enkolpia was explored through iconographic and textual analysis, as well as a through the study of their materiality. It was found that all of the gems are carved with religious subject matter and that most display portrait images of holy figures who were known as intercessors and protectors. This suggests that gemstone enkolpia were primarily used to mediate a devotional relationship with a patron saint. Textual sources indicate that wearing an enkolpion “over the heart” was an act of devotion that ensured that the saint’s presence was carried at all times. An examination of the materiality of gems revealed that their meanings and associations were brought to bear upon the devotional function of gemstone enkolpia in a variety of complex ways. It was also found that gemstone enkolpia had an amuletic nature and could be used for healing, protection, and divination. / History of Art and Architecture

This dissertation considers Ed Ruscha’s work through the theoretical lens of tacit knowledge, thereby making the argument that the commercial artist’s drawing board, and the world that it embodies, constitutes the material and conceptual framework of his 1960s art. Educated at Los Angeles’s Chouinard Art Institute, where he studied advertising design from 1956–60, Ruscha received extensive instruction in all aspects of two-dimensional design, from layout to typography. As he began to pursue a fine art career, the mechanics and methods of drawing board production became a model for art making as reflective upon and transformative of the designed world. It was through his drawing board methods that Ruscha addressed foundational concerns of post World War II art, such as the nature of the picture plane, art’s relationship to consumer culture, the workings of vision and perception, and the mechanics of printed matter. Alongside histories of the avant-garde and mass culture, the dissertation proposes a new narrative of Ruscha’s art, from the point of view of practice and in regard to the technical skills and conceptual operations of mid-century design. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on the history lessons and contemporary relevance of Ruscha’s work. / History of Art and Architecture

In the abundant literature on the afterlife of classical forms in the Middle Ages, medieval “classicism” has generally been understood as a series of stylistic borrowings and iconographic quotations, occurring as either isolated instances of individual genius or as the result of a momentary cultural flourishing—a “renascence” to use Erwin Panofsky’s term. This dissertation reconfigures this discourse on antiquity and the Middle Ages. It frames medieval classicism as a set of expressive possibilities that encode and transmit culturally contingent meaning, arguing that classical models were invoked selectively by artists, in concert with a range of other representational modes, in order to communicate complex messages to an audience sensitive to differences in style. Presented as a series of case studies, it examines three sculptural representations of Adam and the Creation narrative from the Romanesque and Gothic periods in Italy and France, considering them as key sites for medieval engagement with the art of antiquity. The evocation of antiquity, effected through material and formal assimilations of sculpted objects to ancient artifacts, functioned as a rhetorical device in Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, constructing frameworks of meaning around a given object. This dissertation examines the particular character and purpose of such evocations in images of Adam from the cathedral churches of Modena, Paris and Auxerre, offering new interpretations of three important monuments in the history of medieval sculpture, engaging with landmark studies in medieval classicism, and reconsidering attitudes towards the public display of nudity in the centuries preceding the Renaissance, the period when, it is generally accepted, it became a part of common artistic parlance. / History of Art and Architecture

This dissertation examines the intersection of sacred and profane imagery in Spanish territories, including Spain, New Spain, and Naples, between 1520 and 1700. In particular, it focuses on so-called sanctified portraits, which explicitly cast their sitters as holy figures; paintings of saints, which drew on the conventions of court portraiture; and portraits that were repainted with halos and other attributes that transformed them into objects of devotion. It brings together official and non-official (or “popular”) examples of making and using such images, and examines cases from Europe and colonial Latin America in tandem. By doing so, it demonstrates that the overlapping of portraiture and religious imagery was not a marginal phenomenon in early modern art, but one that raised some of the period’s most pressing issues, including the mutability of status and identity, the surveillance of religious experience, and the vernacular imitation of official images and image practices. / History of Art and Architecture