A discussion of possible means by which the varnish of Master John's portrait of Katherine Parr (c.1545) might be conserved, providing historical context and a description of new conservation methods.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city of Berlin was faced with the challenge to reunify in both political and cultural realms. Berlin is noted throughout history as a metropolis that is characterized by flux; the Post-Wende [Post-Wall] era is another remarkable transitional phase in Berlin’s history. During this era, the city was extremely porous and susceptible to cultural forces that could easily define the city’s malleable future. This essay discusses such forces and events that were planned by the city government, as well as an organic grassroots force that was especially significant in the cultural reunification. This force is the squatting culture that was spurred by the excess of unused and unclaimed buildings in the center of Berlin. Many of the squatters are coalitions of artists who embody the renitente Kultur [unruly culture] that characterizes Berlin. Analyzed in this essay is a group of squatting artists, known as “Gruppe Tacheles das Kunsthaus” who inhabited the ruins of a historical building in the Mitte neighborhood located in the center of Berlin. The creators of Tacheles breathed life back into the ruins by establishing ateliers, a restaurant, a club, a movie theatre, a sculpture garden, and a bar in the building that became an artists’ haven with international fame. Artists, both residential and visiting, have treated the crumbling building like a makeshift giant canvas and it is now covered in layers of graffiti and stands as the Gesamtkunstwerk [total and universal ideal work of art] of the reunifying Berlin that has become an international hub for artists. Due to escalation in property value, an effective owner of the property on which Tacheles stands has stepped forward and taken actions to evict the artists and demolish the building in order to build luxury offices. Most of the artists have left the site, leaving it as a ghostly shell of the bustling community it once was. Near twenty artists remain and protest the actions to destroy their work of art that had come to live symbiotically with the city. At this point, there is one appropriate event to occur next in the lifeline of the site: the building must be demolished in a ceremonious explosion to mark the passing of its vitality, so that its legacy can live on untainted in the future phases of Berlin’s culture.

This thesis, which studies the effect Loïe Fuller had on artists at the turn of the 20th century, redefines her role in art and society. An American dancer born in 1862, Fuller is often hailed as one of the forefathers of modern dance and a technological engineer, but she is too rarely shown in control of how the audience perceived her. This work gives an overview of Art Nouveau and the Universal Exposition of 1900 in Paris in which she performed. It closely examines her impact on painters, illustrators, and lithographers: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Will Bradley, and Jules Cheret. It also studies her influence on sculptors: Raoul Larche, Agathon Léonard, and Pierre Roche; architect Henri Sauvage, and writer Stéphane Mallarmé. In this work, Fuller is not solely presented as the physical embodiment of Art Nouveau but as an active shaper of artistic movements of her time. It portrays her as active rather than passive.

Anselm Kiefer was born in Germany, 1945—the year of Adolf Hitler’s suicide, and subsequently, the end of World War II. His own beginnings were shrouded by a national “repression” of history. This repression was at odds with Kiefer’s needs to establish his own origin. For this reason, the spirituality in his earlier work is often overshadowed by its subject—Nazi Germany. This thesis will look back on Kiefer’s work through the lens of mythology in an effort to re-evaluate his earlier art within the context of his works since 1990. From the 1970s to the present, Kiefer has drawn from mythology to find links between personal and universal human experience. We begin by examining Kiefer’s controversial Attic Paintings of 1973. In the Attic Paintings, German and Christian mythology helped Kiefer understand his origin as a post-war German artist. Kiefer then turned his attention to myths from outside cultures throughout the 1980s. We will look closely at three paintings from the 1980s that incorporate Greek, Judaic, and Egyptian mythology in an effort to understand Kiefer’s larger goals in broadening his mythological base. Following this discussion, we will examine two paintings from the 1990s and his 2007 permanent installation at the Louvre Museum. These selected works serve to illustrate how Kiefer presented his own cultivated, personal mythology under the stars in his still ongoing cosmic series. The 1990s mark Kiefer’s broadest expansion yet; in a sense, he went from “the attic to the universe” over the course of three decades.

This paper examines Djuna Barnes's Modernist masterpiece, Nightwood, by exploring the author's particular styles of writing. As an ironist, a master of spectacle, and a visual artist, Barnes's distinct stylistic roles allow the writer to construct a strange fictional world that transcends simple categorization and demands close reading. Through textual analysis, consideration of how Barnes's characterization, and engagement with key critical interpretations lead to the conclusion that Nightwood's primary aim is to present the reader with an image of his or her own individual estrangement.

"The essence of architecture is the power of adaptation to fresh facts.” Berthold LubetkinThis creative project was my way of exploring if a convergence of art and technology in architecture can exist today.This exploration involved two focus points: one was movement and the other was glass technology.Movement was used for the exploration of the spatial relationships within an interpretation of our society today: the movement on the site as well as the inner motion of the single building elements.Glass was my modern technology tool for translating artistic ideas within architecture. It acts as a mediator between inside and outside space, between art and technology and creates a connection to the ‘understanding’ of our society.This paper is presented in five parts. The first part is the introduction to my thesis and the theoretical research about art and technology. Second is the process which I used for this project. The project is the third part. The fourth part is about glass, which represents my way of exploring the convergence of art and technology within architecture today. The last part of this paper is the overall conclusion. / Department of Architecture

This thesis examines a selection of American newspaper comic strips from approximately 1930 to 1960. At the height of their runs, many strips appeared in upwards of a thousand newspapers in the United States alone, and syndicates crafted and adjusted the content of these strips according to their image of the average American. This work discusses the pop cultural significance of these strips as well as the traditional American values revealed through each of them. Three strips in particular are the focal point for this thesis: Blondie, created by Chic Young in 1930, Little Orphan Annie created by Harold Gray in 1924, and Li’l Abner created by Al Capp in 1934. The first chapter, focusing on the relationship between Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead, will discuss how power within the family hierarchy is predicated on moral character, as well as how the recurring theme of punishment develops through Dagwood’s personal failures. The second chapter will look at the idea of cultural regularity in Little Orphan Annie through an examination of Daddy Warbucks. It will also deal with themes of leadership and legacy as communicated by the relationship between Annie and Warbucks. The third and final chapter will discuss how the satirical strip Li’l Abner responded to Blondie and Little Orphan Annie in terms of its rejection of traditional family hierarchy, specifically relating to male-female relationships. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to illustrate how a selection of comic strips expressed certain moral values, and the way in which they placed the characters at the mercy of following those values.

This paper examines the connection between art and nationalism in Chinese culture and asserts that the recent market boom and price jump in Chinese fine art reflects a concerted yet conflicted effort by the Chinese government and Chinese society as a whole to reconcile with a problematic twentieth-century past. The paper first delves into the historical practice of utilizing art to construct political narratives though Ming-Qing dynasties before examining how antiquarianism was utilized by Mao Zedong himself and by the modern day Chines Communist Party.

This paper explores the art of Olga Costa and María Izquierdo. The history of the Mexican revolution is outlined and then presented again with a focus on women’s issues and involvement. Next is a discussion of national identity construction after the revolution, with attention paid to the role of the “Big Three,” muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Siqueiros. While scholars often credit male artists for their involvement in this process, the contributions of female artists tend to be overlooked. Although the work of female artists is often portrayed as limited to their personal experiences, this thesis argues that women’s work subverted hegemonic narratives and images that homogenized Mexican national identity building, and thus reveal valuable perspectives on post-revolutionary Mexican society. Specific topics explored include subversions of representations of female beauty, challenging of the role of women in Mexican society and patriarchies in general, and the creative use of symbols in order to avoid objectifying women while representing themes pertaining to Mexico. This thesis engages with scholarly works that perpetuate traditional readings of Costa and Izquierdo’s work as primarily autobiographical and limited in scope as well as more progressive critiques that recognize the social significance of these artists. A variety of paintings are analyzed in detail, including Costa and Izquierdo’s portraits of nude and clothed women, Izquierdo’s series of allegorical pieces and still lifes, and Costa’s masterpiece “La Vendedora.” This thesis is written in Spanish.

This thesis seeks to examine the nineteenth-century art collections and architectural style of the original buildings at the University of Sydney in order to demonstrate ways in which visual material may be employed to shape public perception of an institution. I shall argue that the architectural style of the original university buildings was specifically chosen with particular aims which extended beyond the mere establishment of a tertiary institution for the colony. I will also argue that the style shaped the character of the institution, contributed to the maintenance of law and order in the colony, linked the colony more firmly than hitherto to the mother country and provided social benefits for the founders of the institution. The instant history and character thus imposed upon the institution was reinforced by the assembly of a portrait collection in emulation of other collections of portraits at leading institutions of the colony and the mother country, including the Oxbridge universities. Once the building proclaimed that the institution was comparable with the great universities of the world, the subjects of the portraits at the university could be placed in the class of founders of a great historical institution, thus at the same time enhancing the reputation of the institution and the individuals. The construction of an indentity through visual images was extended by the benefactions of Sir Charles Nicholson, the principal donor of works of art to the university in the nineteenth century. I argue that his intentions in relation to his collections were didactic but were also concerned with the entrenchment of the imperial hegemony over the colony, and again with the enhancement of his personal repuatation. This analysis shows how, by a complex of personal ambition and aspiration for the colony, the style of the buildings and the art collections formed were used to establish the colony as civilized and the new university as a bastion of English tradition.