This thesis analyzes the work of Hamed Owais, Tahia Halim, and Inji Efflatoun, three artists who were active in Egypt during its era of decolonization following the 1952 Revolution. Using the large-scale public works project of the Aswan High Dam as a lens, this study focuses on the ways in which the construction of the dam and the social, political, and technological changes that it caused were linked to the ways in which Egyptian artists envisioned and employed concepts of time in new ways in their work. Additionally, artists in Egypt, existing outside of the binary of American abstract expressionism and Soviet socialist realism, employed and synthesized new aesthetic ideas in order to achieve their social and political goals. Fundamentally, this thesis argues that the blurred lines of these aesthetics, like the Aswan High Dam itself, reflect the geopolitical tensions that pressurized Egypt in the global Cold War era as it sought independence from imperial influence, and that they capture the ways in which artists in Egypt incorporated particular understandings of temporality into their work during a time of modernization. A close consideration of the work of these artists provides a window into a nuanced understanding of the intersections between aesthetics, politics, and technology in postcolonial Egypt. / Art History

In the late Middle Ages, nuns in southern Germany and the Rhineland were strictly enclosed behind their convent’s walls, and they had been stripped of their clerical powers as a result of papal reforms. However, life in such cloistered environments allowed nuns’ affective piety to evolve and flourish in new ways, for example, via the use of devotional images. This paper examines the devotional imagery created and used by nuns in these regions, and how such imagery aided them in developing spiritual authority, as a way of overcoming not only their loss of clerical authority, but also perceived weaknesses and inferiority ascribed to female bodies, minds, and morals by contemporary male theorists and theologians. This study concentrates on a small subset of images – those of the suffering and wounded body of Christ. These include the profusely bleeding and suffering Christ on the Cross, and images that are related to his side wound and the pierced Sacred Heart. Of particular interest is how these nuns used images to stimulate their meditation and imaginative visions, for which women had a propensity in their piety. It was this personal engagement with the images that invoked an intensely gendered and inherently sympathetic relationship with Christ, and also provoked their bodily senses, which thus allowed for a deeper and more salvific experience that put them on a direct path to uniting with God. The results of this study indicate that, due to a confluence of these and other factors, nuns were able to acquire an authority of their own via their ability to establish a close connection with the divine through their gendered alignment with the humanity, flesh and blood of Christ, and through the unique and personal piety they developed. These instances of intimate union with the divine did not go unnoticed by members of the male clergy, who by their gendered nature, were more resistant to imaginative and visionary experiences. Some even saw the heightened and emotional experiences of the nuns as superior to, and more immersive than, their own devotion, thus giving these women a degree of spiritual authority over their male colleagues. Moreover, some religious men were not only aware of this, but also encouraged women in their imaginary and spiritual visions, and sought to learn from them. / Art History

The Venetian painter Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488-1576), called Titian, spent eight months in Rome from 1545 to 1546 at the court of Pope Paul III Farnese. His time there was marked by the creation of a suite of highly praised portraits of the male members of the Farnese family, as well as with the Danaë for the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and a lost Ecce Homo for Paul III himself. His time at the papal court brought Titian into contact with the glories of ancient Rome as well as contemporaries like Michelangelo, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Giorgio Vasari, who would later write critically of the Venetian painter’s encounter with the Central Italian artistic tradition in the 1568 edition of the Lives of the Artists. Scholarship on Titian has generally assigned limited importance to the artist’s Roman sojourn based on the understanding that this experience had relatively little impact on his stylistic development. This approach, however, obscures significant shifts in the artist’s artistic and business practice that took place in the first half of the 1540s, catalyzed by his “Farnese turn” on the one hand, and his Roman experience on the other. This dissertation uses Titian’s time in Rome as a lens onto the larger frame of his activity in the early part of the decade in order to reveal the fresh artistic and entrepreneurial strategies with which he responded to the pressures of a changing patronage base, a growing family, and financial concerns. During this period, Titian recruited his portraits—the type of work for which he received the most contemporary praise—as mobile social agents that could perform work on his behalf among a network that included Pietro Aretino, Pietro Bembo, Giovanni della Casa, and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, among others. The artist’s experience of Rome itself reveals further areas of resistance and experimentation which have been undervalued in previous research, including his first effort at painting on slate, his engagement with a developing canon of self-representation, and his rhetorical employment of style as calling-card in his competition with Michelangelo and other Central Italian artists. Titian’s response to the uncertainty and transition he faced in the first half of the 1540s reveals itself in this investigation as far more creatively charged than has previously been recognized. / Art History

The genesis of the early Roman Christian basilica occurred at a moment of historical transition as the emperor and the empire began the process of converting to the Christian religion. Typically, this era has received scholarly treatment either as the end of a time in which the emperor held supremacy or the beginning of one dominated by bishops. The exact moment of `redefinition,' however, has rarely attracted attention because of the assertive oligarchies that bookended this transitional period, the Roman emperor and the Christian pontificate. Richard Krautheimer, who focused much of his attention on the historical figure of Constantine, promoted the idea that the basilica was Constantine's way of imbuing the Christian church with imperial authority and connotations; effectively, Constantine forever changed the shape of Christian churches. This explanation of the pivotal moment of genesis has been generally accepted and the moment of transition has not received much attention from scholars since. In my thesis I will focus primarily on this moment of transition. I will explore the political climate of the government, the authoritative hierarchy of the church, and the precedents of the very first early Roman Christian basilica, at the Lateran. The method that I will employ is the theory of etiquette, operating under the assumption that in every historical period, there is a general understanding of what is `fitting' and `appropriate.' Because of the paucity of material evidence and the unreliability of surviving primary sources, it is generally impossible to make incontestable statements about who was responsible for the early Roman Christian basilica, what they intended to convey to the Roman population, and how appropriate it would have been given the social decorum of the time. Thus, conclusions of this nature are not the primary focus of this thesis. Instead I will concentrate on reconstructing who the most appropriate agent of authority is, and how suitable the early Roman Christian basilica might have seemed. / Art History

My thesis seeks to broaden the framework of conversation surrounding Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York. Much scholarship regarding Changing New York has focused on the individual photographs, examined and analyzed as independent of the meticulously arranged whole. My thesis considers the complete photo book, and how the curated pages work together to create a sort of guide of the city. Also, it has been continually noted that Abbott was a member of many artistic circles in New York City in the early 1930s, but little has been written analyzing how these relationships affected her artistic eye. Building on the scholarship of art historian Terri Weissman, my thesis contextualizes Abbott’s working environment to demonstrate how Abbott’s particular adherence to documentary photography allowed her to transcribe the urban metamorphosis. Turning to the scholarship of Peter Barr, I expand on his ideas regarding Abbott’s artistic relationship to the architectural and urban planning theories of Lewis Mumford and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. Abbott appropriated both Mumford and Hitchcock’s theories on the linear trajectory of architecture, selecting and composing her imagery to fashion for the viewer a decipherable sense of the built city. Within my thesis I sought to link contemporary ideas of the after-image proposed by Juan Ramon Resina to Abbott’s chronicling project. By using this framework I hope to show how Abbott’s photographs are still relevant to understanding the ever-changing New York City. / Art History

A glistening armada advances--airborne atomic assailants, the Christian soldiers of the nuclear age. Barrels fixed, scopes centered, abstracted pilots attentive and alert, James Hampton's colossal assemblage The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly (c. 1950-1964), an anticipatory altar of Christ's Second Coming, threatens viewer annihilation. Radiating foils besiege spectators in total illumination. Hampton's friend Otelia Whitehead, who viewed the work in its creator's company, recalled, "it was like the wings of Gabriel were beating in...extremely bright light." The Throne's lustrous reflection evokes its historical moment, an era entrenched in glaring fears of nuclear holocaust. Despite pervasive mid-century malaise and Hampton's direct participation in World War II, previous studies largely neglect his Cold War consciousness, focusing instead on the altar's Christian character. Radiating foil, evocations of WWII aircraft, and apocalyptic allusions to President Harry Truman, I contend, conspire to lend this evangelical altar secular urgency at the advent of the "atomic age. / Art History

This paper explores the relationships between medieval religious buildings across the Mediterranean, where Muslim, Byzantine, and Western courts created a repertoire of churches and mosques whose patrons, architects, architectural iconographies, cultural contexts, and performative dimensions overlapped to a high degree. Tracing the analogies between the Cappella Palatina in Palermo and St. Sophia Cathedral in Nicosia testifies eloquently to these transmissions of adoption and integration because Sicily and Cyprus both passed between Byzantine, Islamic, and Latin Christian rule and, in the process, fused architectural and decorative elements of disparate traditions for their religious monuments. I have approached the Cappella Palatina and Nicosia Cathedral by extending the idea that portable art objects were active agents in constructing the cultural contours of medieval courts in order to address how the Hauteville and Lusignan rulers visualized and performed the authority of their kingships. This method of analysis shows that each dynasty articulated their bonds with Western Europe and the Latin Church while also assuring legibility within the courtly mise-en-scène that enveloped and reached beyond the Mediterranean. Accordingly, I have sought to expand the cultural frame of reference for the Cappella Palatina and Nicosia Cathedral by emphasizing the impact of the respective Fatimid and Byzantine contributions, as well as by exploring the conceptual affinities between the distinct visual and ceremonial traditions manifest in each building. Above all, this exchange tells a story more nuanced than triumphant appropriation. / Art History

My thesis establishes an alternative history of the development of Conceptual art in both the United States and Brazil. The work of U.S. artist Vija Celmins (b. 1938) and Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino (b. 1942) serve as case studies to support my argument that post-war realism was an influential precedent for Conceptual art. Within the historiography of Conceptual art, scholars have maintained that nonrepresentational modes of expression serve as the movement's foundation and little consideration has been given to the influence of Pop-oriented strategies that employed recognizable, representational subject matter. As I demonstrate in the work of Celmins and Maiolino, post-war realism underpinned the political nature of Conceptual art. My goal of expanding the art historical canon is approached through three models that propose non-evolutionary historical accounts which, when applied to art history, emphasize previously disregarded formal relationships between artists and shared social concerns. This methodology weaves a complex, expanded and interdependent history of art that proves Celmins and Maiolino were not outliers within the art historical moment of the 1960s and 70s, as some have argued. Separated geographically and working in two different social and political contexts, both artists partook in the radical reconfiguring of the art object, the artist and the art institution that defined this period. / Art History

This thesis explores the dynamic relationship between artists Georgia O’Keeffe, Florine Stettheimer, and Berenice Abbott in relation to the growing urban landscape of New York City in the 1920s and 1930s. Previous scholarship has drawn parallels between these three artists’ careers solely in terms related to their biography and gender identity rather than their work. In contrast, my project identifies a common formal subject that links an experimental phase in all three women’s work, and explores the reasons these three individual creators found portraying the city to be an effective strategy for developing her own take on modernist style. Inspired by rapid development, each artist made work that shared her inventive vision of the city. Using visual analysis and historical context associated with the second wave of skyscraper construction as well as the second generation “New Woman” movement, I argue that each artist produced idiosyncratic art that makes sense of the rapidly morphing city surrounding them. Eschewing conventional gender expectations and traditional art historical narratives, the three artists tell visual stories that illustrate life in a modern urban city. Each woman’s goals and artistic expectations differ, but they all share the struggle to achieve professionally despite systemic roadblocks placed before them by the male-dominated art world. With the city as their muse, they utilize the metaphor of organic growth to encapsulate the city in flux. / Art History

In my master's thesis, I examine Baumgartner's work in regards to her treatment of technique, movement, and self-reflection. This research demonstrates how she has mastered early, traditional German woodcuts and introduced them into a new, contemporary context by combining them with video and photography. I begin with a discussion of Baumgartner's use of materials and techniques. I focus especially on her emulation of Albrecht Dürer and adherence to many early fifteenth-century rules and standards for creating prints, while also exploring the print history of Leipzig where Baumgartner received her foundational training. Through a study of works such as Dürer's large-scale woodcut titled Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I (1515) and Baumgartner's Transall (2002-04), I examine how her methods also differ from traditional approaches and the ways in which she places particular value on how the labor of producing the print fits into its creation. I then focus on how Baumgartner unites the slow process of woodcut with the fast paced mediums of video and photography in order to produce distinctive physical and visual encapsulations of movement. This includes an exploration of French author Paul Virilio's influence and the ways in which she captures motion through images of transportation, cutting techniques, and optical illusions. I also consider the role that her personal history plays in her works, as well as her Russian influences such as the writings of the Russian-American poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky. This is displayed by an examination of how Baumgartner's prints illustrate the significance of introspection by demonstrating its relation to one's background, physical surroundings, and connection to the past and memory, as well as the significance of reassessing one's perspective of the modern experience. / Art History