This thesis redresses the lack of scholarly attention paid to painted circus banners produced in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century by exploring the extent to which American folk art painting scholarship, methodologies, and objects can be used to articulate the meaning and significance of banner painting. This study expands the disciplinary treatment of banner painting by introducing domesticated art as a means of representing non-academic art produced in the U.S. The thesis also presents a model for exploring banner painting after identifying traditional American folk art painting methodologies, which fail to investigate banner painting style, format, and artistic training associated with banner work.

Contents: Body dissatisfaction; Discharge of emotion through art; Stigmas' consequences as captured through photography; Lauren Greenfield; The perceptions of others; This is beautiful; Psychological consequences; Thesis project: "Being There"; Artistic influences; "Being There" revisited; Past endeavors in mixed media; Artistic influences: everyday materials and structural art; Conclusion; Honors in Studio Art thesis extension; Works cited. Includes 21 images.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Not available

My investigation of women artists and their status in society today as a result of the feminist movement, revealed issues which, I felt, were multifaceted. This necessitated an exploration of many aspects in order to arrive at a fairly satisfactory conclusion as to whether the revolt and the aggression on the part of the feminists had borne any fruit, either generally in everyday life, or artistically. It has proved most stimulating and informative. I think that the need to assess oneself as a woman, working within a male-dominated creative environment is a very necessary process and one which has been most beneficial to me. The subsequent research revealed that a radical, thematic change had occured within the feminist movement at the start of the Eighties; a fact of which, till recently, I was largely unaware. What I discovered was that the militant, feminist approach of the Sixties and Seventies had given way to a more realistic involvement brought on partly by the economic recession and the effects as well of earlier feminist movements, leading to a relaxation on the part of the younger generation. The Violence had faded. Hard times curbed the excesses of the movement and took it along the road to practicality. Dovetailed to this and seeming to run concurrently was the phenomenon of the demise of the Modern Art Movement. These changes described were not only artistic and feminist, but cut right across the board. involving all facets of life. To take one as an example. the political with conservatism reinstating itself in America not merely as an alternative but as a worthwhile direction in itself. Other issues included the sociological, historical, biological, and cultural; all closely interwoven and therefore requiring some generalisations at times. Previous to becoming involved with my topic, I had been reacting to pre-conceived ideas laid on me as a student in the Sixties and Seventies - a militant, aggressive approach acquired as a protective shield, to deal with the masculine environment which denigrated in varying degrees mine and fellow female artists work, sometimes overtly, sometimes subconsciously. This discrimination, is usually denied as ever having existed by the men involved. It shows a lack of awareness of what, we, as female art students, were subjected to. This is one of the main reasons why I undertook this subject; partly out of interest and perhaps partly as some sort of catharsis.

I have organized this paper into four chapters: "The Environmental Situation," "Space and Place," "Art and the Natural Environment," and "Creating Work of My Own." Chapter 1 explains human beings' intrinsic interconnection to the natural environment, outlining why humans should be concerned about the current degraded state of the natural world. Chapter 2 discusses the concepts of space and place. It analyzes how human beings interact with and experience spaces, developing their sense of place - within physical, theoretical, and spiritual realms. It finally illustrates the importance that spaces and places have in humans' lives. Chapter 3 describes the Land Art phenomenon: its development, the different forms within it, and artists producing Land Artworks. The forms and artists included are those that have been inspirational for the development of my own work. It also emphasizes Land Art as a fundamental form for improving humans' relationship with the natural environment and the new realm of eco-feminism that resonates with Land Art ideals. Chapter 4 recounts the development of my art throughout my college career. It describes my work as site-specific, sculptural installations that use natural materials. It also states why this format is the most effective for my senior art thesis project. Focusing mainly on "Ecological Reawakening: organic DNA," it explains the mentality in designing, creating, installing, and completing the work. Overall, Chapter 4 emphasizes the work's two main goals: to demonstrate a new avenue for comprehending humankind's place within earth's environmental spaces, and to advocate for an environmental paradigm shift during the twenty-first century. Finally, Chapter 5 describes the transformation of "Ecological Reawakening: organic DNA" as it developed over time during the spring honors senior thesis course. It details my mentalities in adding living plant matter to the structure, incorporating a stool into the piece, and creating "Evolution," the digital photography composition that documents "Ecological Reawakening" and was included in the Scripps Senior Art Exhibition in the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery from May 1 – May 17, 2009.

This thesis will examine the practice of relational aesthetics as it involves the viewer, as well as the way in which it plays out within and outside of the institutional setting of the museum. I will focus primarily on two unique projects: that of The Machine Project Field Guide at Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 15, 2008, produced by Machine Project, a social project operated out of a storefront gallery in Echo Park; and David Michalek's Slow Dancing at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City, July 12-29 2007.

In 1964 Clement Greenberg suffered his greatest setback as the critical arbiter of modern painting. The "Post Painterly Abstraction" exhibition he had helped to organize at the Los Angeles Museum of Art was critically demolished, definitively shattering the myth of invincibility surrounding Greenberg's modernism, an aesthetic which had been a powerful influence in the United States and Canada in the post-war period. For many contemporary critics, the early to mid-1960's is the period in which a stultified and institutionalized modernism was finally usurped by an approach to culture that was less elitist and more socially engaged. The new cultural model that was taking shape within the Kennedy Administration's vision of the New Frontier sought to remotivate a sense of "national purpose" within the United States to counter the nation's preoccupation with consumerism and affluence. The pragmatic liberal concept of culture sought to rework the relationship between work and play in order to promote a new relationship between individualism and civic virtue. The impetus to re-shape the boundaries between art and society under the New Frontier was a direct response to the political and military challenge posed by the Soviet Union in the late-1950s, especially after the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and the inability of the Eisenhower Administration to respond to the anxieties generated by the intense superpower rivalry. This international environment also exacerbated the ongoing tensions between Canada and the United States, culminating in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis . Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker delayed in responding to the U.S. alarm over the presence of Soviet medium range nuclear weapons in Cuba, and the political firestorm that followed this delay highlighted the frictions that had developed in the unequal bilateral relationship between the United States and Canada after World War Two. While the Cold War was approaching its ultimate showdown, Greenberg was proceeding to a geographical margin of North America — Saskatchewan — to participate in the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. Ironically, while Greenberg was extolling the virtues of Canadian abstract painters such as Art McKay and Kenneth Lochhead, going so far as to argue that the Saskatchewan abstract painters were New York's only competition, Los Angeles was asserting itself as New York's cultural rival . As a consequence of the phenomenal post-war growth of the military - industrial complex in the American Southwest, a fierce rivalry was developing with the traditional bases of power in the Northeast. The Southwest, and Los Angeles in particular, was the major beneficiary of the accelerated defense spending resulting from the heightened tensions of the Cold War in the 1950s. Partially in response to a regional dispute over military appropriations, the economic and cultural elites of Southern California sought to counter the pragmatic liberal agenda of the Kennedy Administration by promoting Los Angeles as the Second City of American Art. Greenberg's "Post Painterly Abstraction" exhibition was intended to draw attention to the Los Angeles cultural renaissance and the maturing of the city's independent cultural identity. Thus, Greenberg's sojourn to Saskatchewan at the height of the Cold War and during a crucial period of his formulation of his theory of modernist painting after abstract expressionism provides the focus for an examination of the status of modernism in the early 1960s, especially in the context of U.S.-Canadian relations and interregional rivalry between the Northeast and the Southwest. This thesis seeks to explain the complex cultural and political dynamic of modernist painting in the United States in the Cold War years of 1957 to 1965 and the effect of this dynamic on the development of Canadian modernist painting.

En 1966, le Black Power Movement, qui influence de nombreux mouvements sociaux de libération, signale un changement de paradigme dans l’activisme aux États-Unis désigné par la terminologie de « politiques de l’identité ». Si, en affirmant la nécessité d’une analyse politique des discriminations, celles-ci en appellent à de profonds changements dans la société, elles imprègnent aussi les arts visuels et génèrent des mutations importantes quant à la définition de l’art et au rôle de l’artiste aux États-Unis. En s’emparant des politiques de l’identité, les artistes incorporent leurs engagements dans leurs pratiques, créent des formes d’expression originales et remettent en cause la validité du canon. Par une étude de cas sur la Californie entre 1966 et 1990, combinée à une approche chronologique et comparative, ce travail de recherche explore les rencontres entre les arts visuels et les politiques de l’identité, et plus largement la relation entre art et politique dans un contexte culturel moins exploré que la scène artistique de New York, afin d’analyser en quoi elles s’avèrent essentielles pour saisir les pratiques artistiques postérieures et les discours sur les identités. Cette thèse en histoire de l’art, pour laquelle les études culturelles et les théories féministes ont constitué des apports fondamentaux, propose ainsi d’établir des convergences artistiques autour de thématiques liées à des problématiques centrales des politiques de l’identité et, dans le même temps, à souligner de nouvelles approches dans le domaine de l’art, de la politique et de la théorie / In 1966, the Black Power Movement, which influenced numerous other social liberation movements, signaled a paradigm shift in American activism designated by the term “identity politics.” By affirming the necessity for a political analysis of discrimination, identity politics called for profound changes in society, which also influenced the visual arts, resulting in important changes regarding the definition of art and the role of the artist in American society. By drawing on this new politics of identity, these artists incorporated activism into practice, creating original forms of expression and challenging the validity of the canon. This research project explores the encounters between visual arts and identity politics, as well as the broader relationship between art and politics, through a chronological and comparative case study of California from 1966 to 1990—a cultural context much less studied than the New York scene—in order to determine its importance for later artistic practices and discourses on identity. This thesis in Art History, to which cultural studies and feminism have made fundamental contributions, therefore proposes to establish artistic convergences around themes linked to the central premises of identity politics while at the same time highlighting new approaches in the fields of art, politics and theory

In 1964 Clement Greenberg suffered his greatest setback as the critical arbiter of modern painting. The "Post Painterly Abstraction" exhibition he had helped to organize at the Los Angeles Museum of Art was critically demolished, definitively shattering the myth of invincibility surrounding Greenberg's modernism, an aesthetic which had been a powerful influence in the United States and Canada in the post-war period. For many contemporary critics, the early to mid-1960's is the period in which a stultified and institutionalized modernism was finally usurped by an approach to culture that was less elitist and more socially engaged. The new cultural model that was taking shape within the Kennedy Administration's vision of the New Frontier sought to remotivate a sense of "national purpose" within the United States to counter the nation's preoccupation with consumerism and affluence. The pragmatic liberal concept of culture sought to rework the relationship between work and play in order to promote a new relationship between individualism and civic virtue. The impetus to re-shape the boundaries between art and society under the New Frontier was a direct response to the political and military challenge posed by the Soviet Union in the late-1950s, especially after the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and the inability of the Eisenhower Administration to respond to the anxieties generated by the intense superpower rivalry. This international environment also exacerbated the ongoing tensions between Canada and the United States, culminating in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis . Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker delayed in responding to the U.S. alarm over the presence of Soviet medium range nuclear weapons in Cuba, and the political firestorm that followed this delay highlighted the frictions that had developed in the unequal bilateral relationship between the United States and Canada after World War Two. While the Cold War was approaching its ultimate showdown, Greenberg was proceeding to a geographical margin of North America — Saskatchewan — to participate in the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. Ironically, while Greenberg was extolling the virtues of Canadian abstract painters such as Art McKay and Kenneth Lochhead, going so far as to argue that the Saskatchewan abstract painters were New York's only competition, Los Angeles was asserting itself as New York's cultural rival . As a consequence of the phenomenal post-war growth of the military - industrial complex in the American Southwest, a fierce rivalry was developing with the traditional bases of power in the Northeast. The Southwest, and Los Angeles in particular, was the major beneficiary of the accelerated defense spending resulting from the heightened tensions of the Cold War in the 1950s. Partially in response to a regional dispute over military appropriations, the economic and cultural elites of Southern California sought to counter the pragmatic liberal agenda of the Kennedy Administration by promoting Los Angeles as the Second City of American Art. Greenberg's "Post Painterly Abstraction" exhibition was intended to draw attention to the Los Angeles cultural renaissance and the maturing of the city's independent cultural identity. Thus, Greenberg's sojourn to Saskatchewan at the height of the Cold War and during a crucial period of his formulation of his theory of modernist painting after abstract expressionism provides the focus for an examination of the status of modernism in the early 1960s, especially in the context of U.S.-Canadian relations and interregional rivalry between the Northeast and the Southwest. This thesis seeks to explain the complex cultural and political dynamic of modernist painting in the United States in the Cold War years of 1957 to 1965 and the effect of this dynamic on the development of Canadian modernist painting. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate