Esta dissertação tem como objetivo aprofundar o conhecimento sobre o uso da tipografia como elemento arquitetônico na cidade de São Paulo, particularmente em edificações de estilo Art Déco, de 1928 a 1954, demonstrando como a tipografia arquitetônica estabeleceu uma nova relação, não apenas limitada ao edifício em si, mas também com a paisagem urbana e seus habitantes, acompanhando os avanços das relações comerciais, da indústria da informação e do entretenimento durante esse período. A partir da seleção de uma amostra significativa de exemplares de tipografias arquitetônicas nominativas, foi desenvolvida uma série de análises, através de um embasamento teórico, fornecido por uma ampla revisão bibliográfica. Como resultado, foi possível verificar que o estilo Art Déco, de grande penetração na arquitetura da cidade de São Paulo no período estudado, se valeu da tipografia de uma maneira particular, conseguindo com isso promover em várias ocasiões uma relação integral dela com a arquitetura. Também foram encontrados indícios de que a reprodução de um determinado desenho de letra, presente em várias edificações no centro da cidade, pode ter se originado a partir de sua utilização no edifício do antigo Banco de São Paulo. Outros indícios apontam ainda para o possível surgimento desse desenho de letra, a partir da instrumentalização do alfabeto escrito manualmente, utilizado nas pranchas dos projetos desenvolvidos pelo escritório do arquiteto Álvaro Botelho, autor do Edifício Banco de São Paulo. / The aim of this Master Thesis is to increase the knowledge about the use of typography as an architectural element in the city of São Paulo, specially in Art Déco style buildings, built between 1928 and 1954, demonstrating how architectural typography established a new relation, not only restricted to the building itself, but also with the urban landscape and its inhabitants, keeping up with the developments in commercial trade and in the communications and entertainment industry. A series of analysis was developed, on a significative sample of nominative architectural letterings, through a theoretical basis provided by a comprehensive literature review. As a result, it was possible to ascertain that the Art Déco style, which was higly pervasive in São Paulo city architecture during the time considered, made use of lettering in a very particular way, enabling it, in many occasions, to set an integral relationship with architecture. Also, traces were found indicating that the reproduction of a certain lettering style, present in several buildings in downtown São Paulo, may have been inspired by its use in the Banco de São Paulo building. Other indication, also points to a possible origin of this lettering style as derived from the handscript forms, used in the architectural plans drawn in the office headed by Álvaro Botelho, the architect responsible for the design of the Banco de São Paulo building.

This project looks at two members of Florence’s Medici family, Cosimo il Vecchio (1389-1464) and Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574), in an attempt to assess how they used the patronage of art to facilitate their rule. By looking at their individual political representations through art, the specifics of their propagandist works and what form these pieces of art came, it is possible to analyze their respective rules. This analysis allows for a clearer understanding of how these two men, each in very different positions, found art as an ally for their political endeavors. While they were in power only one hundred years apart, they present uniquely different strategies for the purpose of creating and maintaining their power through the patronage of art.

In the decades following 1945, Americans moved increasingly out of cities into suburbs. The migration illustrated the emergence of a new, broader middle class as a result of growing postwar affluence. In the previous half-century, families living in a suburb could claim middle-class status. The emerging class built its identity on the forms and values adopted from this earlier, more affluent Victorian middle class. These adopted values were played out in a home designed around Progressive era ideals of the family. Through this Progressive filter, the new concept of the home was scaled down, without servants, and ceased existing wholly as the wife's sphere of influence--as in the Victorian version. The Progressive impulse also reduced the size of the house to make it more efficient, and through government subsidies shaped the home into a smaller, economically sized package. The financial framework that determined the shape of the postwar home also influenced the technology placed within its walls. This financially influenced technology particularly affected the shape and content of the kitchen. The new, efficient kitchen did not release women from their duty to provide daily family meals, but it did create a culturally safe space for men to cook as a hobby. In the postwar, suburban kitchen women and men contended with economic pressures and changing social realities which complicated the Victorian values and Progressive ideals. Middle-class women needed to leave the home for work, and--now separated from traditional urban social outlets--middle-class men sought refuge in the suburban home. By examining Sunset magazine's "Chefs of the West" column, traditional women's cookbooks and service magazines, men's magazines, building industry trade journals, and census reports, the kitchen demonstrates that women and men reshaped the home in response to changing middle-class values. While financing regulations at first shaped how the emerging middle class lived within the postwar, suburban home, residents reinterpreted the space as a reaction to the economic changes around them. This cycle continued with each new interpretation of the postwar single-family home.

During the Modernist period, generally defined between the years 1890 and 1945, artists were attempting to break away from previous forms and styles. For example, writers like Henry James and Virginia Woolf sought to change the novel by exploring the consciousness of characters, while playing with the ideas of time and space to create the present moment. The thesis explores the modernist techniques used by James and Woolf, but also connects the work of the writers with the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Using Joseph Frank's theory of spatial form, my work explores the similarities between Wright's designs of private residences with the design of space in the novel. All three artists, I argue, are working with spatial form, blending interior with exterior, to provide the reader and the dweller with the opportunity to experience an organic unity, which ultimately results in a freezing of the moment. In addition to Frank's theory, I also incorporate Stanley Fish and Reader Response theory and William James's Principles of Psychology. The reader and the dweller must actively engage with the structure, whether a text or the home, to develop and realize the possibilities of spatial form. Also, William James's ideas about the mind and consciousness influenced Henry James and Virginia Woolf, especially in their focus on character, rather than description. I have chosen James's The Turn of the Screw and The Wings of the Dove along with Woolf's To the Lighthouse and The Waves to study with Wright's Prairie and Usonian residences. Each chapter looks at one novel and Wright's corresponding work during approximately the same time period. By connecting literature and architecture, the thesis provides new ways of thinking about the two disciplines, especially concerning interiority and consciousness. James, Woolf, and Wright are all experimenting with time and space to create a unified experience, and the striking parallels between their work deserves more attention.

My paper investigates Peter Paul Rubens’ female portraits in terms of the male and female gaze, psychoanalytic analysis, and historical context. My research will support the idea that Rubens painted women in a sexualized manner based on what Foucault coins the male gaze.[1] The paintings evaluated in this project include portraits of Rubens’ wives, Isabella Brandt and Helene Fourment, and portraits of wealthy patrons such as Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria, Anne of Austria, and Marie de’ Medici. It is incorrect to view these paintings as pure, complete depictions of identity because women in this time were always defined and observed by men.[2]However by deconstructing the male gaze and also acknowledging the role of the active female gaze of the subjects of these works, a more complex construction of female identity is uncovered. Throughout history the feminine has been generalized to be passive and silent. My project aims to build on recent feminist scholarship that works to uncover more responsible and representative descriptions of the images of women in history. [1]Michel Foucault, “Discipline and Punish” from Literary Theory: An Anthology, ed. by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004), 549-565. [2]Patricia Simons, “Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture,” edited by Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History (New York: Harper Collins, 1992): 44.

Caravaggio was a complicated man, working in a complicated day, in a complicated city. As he ushered in the Baroque movement, playing with contrast, bending light with darkness, the Church was preoccupied with the game of highlighting or suppressing voices to maximize their power and minimize dissent. A well-known product of this is the struggle Galileo had in confirming that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. Giordano Bruno was publicly burned at the stake for similar reasons. Often excluded from historical narratives of this time is the public execution of Beatrice Cenci and her family for reasons that leaned more towards political power and less towards moral judgement. Many Caravaggio historians point to Cenci’s death as the inspiration behind the common motif of beheadings in his paintings. Able to navigate between both the high and low cultures of Rome, Caravaggio provides a window into the way these societies interacted, one of many things that drew me to him and his story. He was also a person in his own right, with thoughts and feelings that we may never have the complete picture of, though he’s left us clues in his works and actions. Far less has been preserved of Prospero, Anna, Fillide, and Mario. This is my attempt to fill in the blanks.

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Every four years, in the middle of a cold winter night, devotees bearing images of 126 Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and other important deities assemble in the Nepalese city of Patan for an elaborate gift giving festival known as Samyak Mahādāna (“The Perfect Great Gift”). Celebrated by Nepal’s Newar Buddhist community, Samyak honors one of the Buddhas of the historical past called Dīpaṅkara. Dīpaṅkara’s importance in Buddhism is rooted in ancient textual and visual narratives that promote the cultivation of generosity through religious acts of giving (Skt. dāna). During Samyak, large images of Dīpaṅkara Buddha ceremoniously walk in procession to the event site, aided by a man who climbs inside the wooden body to assume the legs of the Buddha. Once arranged at the event, Dīpaṅkara is honored with an array of offerings until dusk the following day. This dissertation investigates how Newar Buddhists utilize art and ritual at Samyak to reenact and reinforce ancient Buddhist narratives in their contemporary lives. The study combines art historical methods of iconographic analysis with a contextual study of the ritual components of the Samyak Mahādāna to analyze the ways religious spectacle embeds core Buddhist values within in the multilayered components of art, ritual, and communal performance. Principally, Samyak reaffirms the foundational Buddhist belief in the cultivation of generosity (Skt. dāna pāramitā) through meritorious acts of giving (Skt. dāna). However, the synergy of image and ritual performance at Samyak provides a critical framework to examine the artistic, religious, and ritual continuities of past and present in the Newar Buddhist community of the Kathmandu Valley. An analysis of the underlying meta-narrative and conceptualization of Samyak suggests the construction of a dynamic visual narrative associated with sacred space, ritual cosmology, and religious authority. Moreover, this dissertation demonstrates the role of Samyak Mahādāna in constructing Buddhist identity in Nepal, as the festival provides an opportunity to examine how Newar Buddhists utilize art, ritual, and performance to reaffirm their ancient Buddhist heritage.

ABSTRACT THE ARCHITECTURE OF KNOWLEDGE: THE JESUIT COLLEGE OF OAXACA (XVI-XIX CENTURIES). By Marina Mellado Corriente, MA. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art Historical and Curatorial Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2015 Major Director: Michael Schreffler, Associate Professor, Department of Art History The educational endeavor that the Jesuits – members of the religious order known as the Society of Jesus – carried out in Mexico in the course of the colonial period, when this territory belonged to the Viceroyalty of New Spain (sixteenth to nineteenth centuries), was exceptional. Even though this endeavor has been extensively studied, not much has been written about the edifices, and their significant artistic contents, that not only facilitated the endeavor, but also allowed it to thrive. With the aim of contributing to fill that gap in the scholarly literature, this study engages in an artistic and architectural examination of one among the dozens of school complexes that the Jesuits built and decorated in New Spanish territory: the College of Oaxaca. This establishment was the primary educational institution in one of the most prosperous cities of the viceroyalty, and it ranked third in importance among the colleges that the Jesuits founded in New Spain, representing a clear example of the process of spiritual, intellectual and material expansion that the Society of Jesus carried out in Spanish America. By locating, transcribing and interpreting primary sources (primarily inventories and commissions for works of art) that have not been noticed before or have remained unpublished, and by analyzing the material remains that have survived to this day, it has been possible to reveal that the former Jesuit complex – which today serves, simultaneously, as an apartment building, an indoor parking, a series of storefronts, and a church served by a community of Jesuits – once featured a significantly rich artistic and architectural program, the result of assimilating, but also of rejecting, local and Jesuit traditions. This program, unfortunately, has been progressively disappearing since the expulsion of the Jesuits from Oaxaca in 1767.

In 2010, Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds made its debut in Tate Modern, which promoted Ai to be one of the most famous and respected contemporary Chinese artists. This Conceptual art work has multiple layers of meanings, which all corresponds to the Western expectations for a successful contemporary Chinese artist. In fact, the Western art world has long held bias and stereotypes towards international artists. Ai chose to perform his personality to conform to the expectations and Western ideologies, which brought him international fame. On the other hand, other Chinese artists, including Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhou Chunya, don't totally agree with these Western ideologies, and therefore their fame in the society are less distinguished than Ai.