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The Seasons in the City. Artists and Rural Worlds in the Era of Calvino and Pasolini explores rurality in postwar Italy. Between 1958 and 1963, the country underwent an unprecedented yet uneven industrialisation, a period known as the Economic Miracle. Drawing on a relational and dynamic understanding of rural space provided by human geography, this thesis investigates the impact of these economic and socio-cultural transformations on the countryside, and on the ways in which the rural world was perceived and conceptualised in the following decades, especially by contemporary artists and intellectuals. Works of Gianfranco Baruchello, Claudio Costa, Piero Gilardi, Maria Lai, Ugo La Pietra, Antonio Paradiso, Pino Pascali, Giuseppe Penone, and Superstudio have been selected and analysed for the complex views on the topography of the country they convey, whilst challenging more conventional forms of art. Organised in themed chapters that find resonance in the contemporary works of two iconic Italian intellectuals, Italo Calvino and Pier Paolo Pasolini, these artistic practices manifest the ways in which Marxist theory and anthropology contributed to artists' identification of rural landscapes and communities at the time. More importantly, this thesis offers an alternative geographical perspective on 1970s Italian art, one that challenges the pastoral myths that were constructed in the country's metropolitan centres.

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My dissertation analyzes the work of the artist group 3Nós3 (the name is a pun in Portuguese meaning "three knots/ we three"), who performed artistic actions in public space that they referred to as "urban interventions" on the streets of São Paulo from 1979 to 1982. These ranged from placing garbage bags over the heads of monumental sculptures to taping Xs across the doorways of art galleries along with signs reading "What is inside remains the same; what is outside expands." Within the context of the military regime that had ruled Brazil since 1964, the urban interventions targeted symbols of authority ranging from public sculpture to the art world establishment. My research focuses on one of the most noteworthy traits of the group's activities: their almost complete absence from the history of Brazilian art. In spite of the recent popularity on the international artistic circuit of contemporary Brazilian art with a performative edge (the artists Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark being the best examples of this type of work) the work of 3Nós3 has remained obscure, even within Brazil. The explanations for this lack of attention to 3Nós3 include the transitional political nature of the abertura period during which the interventions took place, the artists' own denial of traditional artistic circuits and involvement in youth subcultures, the ephemeral nature of the interventions themselves, and a lack of understanding of the reasons why the artists chose to work in public space, particularly in regard to the interventions' relationship with their audience. The goal of my dissertation is to argue for the inclusion of the interventions into the history of art without relying on arguments related to their quality, i.e. whether or not they constitute "good art." Rather, it is only through a detailed consideration of the specific cultural and political contexts in which the works occurred that they start to make sense. I conclude by examining the present-day conditions that could make the inclusion of 3Nós3 into larger international artistic movements such as street art and "the interventionists" (including Eduardo Srur and the Grupo Contra Filé, among others) possible. / text

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1979. / Videocassette is in 1/2 in. VHS format; copied from the original 3/4 in.U-Matic format. / by Ellen Kozak. / M.S.V.S.

Today, a growing number of Pakistani artists have embraced the nation’s perceived visual languages and political, social, and cultural history to interrogate and unpack Pakistan’s contemporary society and identity. The fruits of this shifting and mixing are works of art that turn artistic and societal traditions, from miniature painting to matrimonial rites, on their sides even as they uphold their significance. In these works, artists present their views on life in the country and their experiences as Pakistanis. Their paintings, videos, sculptures, installations, mixed media works, prints, and drawings are not soapboxes from which they shout out their messages. Instead they present issues and concerns in a manner that means to define them uniquely as Pakistani. Unpredictable social developments and current events that require in-depth investigation appear in imagery without any direct answers to these debates. Rather, Pakistani artists offer them to incite further investigation. Through their works, artists express and examine the complicated nature of Pakistani national and cultural identities by looking at the society’s most volatile concerns. Yet they address these issues in an unexpected fashion. They examine serious concerns like the India/Pakistan divide in a humorous fashion; they explore bloody, murderous acts like “honor killings” in pristine paintings. In this multifaceted treatment, the intense issues affecting Pakistan are interrogated with ambiguity. These artists do not simply present critical issues related to society in Pakistan; they play with them. And in this way raise questions about their meanings. And they do not only look to Pakistani society for subject matter. They also turn to it for methods of approaching art by exhibiting sensitivity to traditional materials, techniques, and styles. I analyze this artwork within a context of art practices in Pakistan, pedagogical methods at art schools in the nation, and the impact of larger historical events and social processes: colonialism, the partition of India and Pakistan, and globalization. / text

published_or_final_version / Humanities / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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The renewed interest in representational figure painting that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s caused artists, art historians, and critics to consider whether or not this contemporary work belonged to the abstract, modernist direction painting had taken in the 20th century. This paper considered the problem as it was reflected in the careers of contemporary figure painters Philip Pearlstein, Jack Beal, and Alfred Leslie. The opinions of critics and historians and the views of the artists themselves were researched. The critics reached the consensus that all three artists' works were a logical extension of the modernist tradition in painting. Pearlstein concurred. He felt strongly that subject matter was irrelevant if the artist's attitude toward it was modernist in sensibility. Beal and Leslie found that abstract modern art was of little interest to them and concerned themselves with figure painting as a narrative genre allowing personal expression.The author also used this issue as a framework for the evaluation of her own series of three representational oil paintings of human figures wrapped in fabric. After describing the paintings, she concluded that they did reveal aspects of the artists' and critics' criteria of modernism (i.e. evenness of detail, large scale, and aggressive imagery) that should be pushed further in future work.

The primary objective of this creative project was to make my artwork more appealing to a mature audience. I would use familiar imagery that I had created from characters that were initially developed for children. These characters are now not only entertaining, but also have been enhanced through the use of engaging symbolic narrative.The secondary objective was to combine my knowledge of drawing, painting and sculpture based on changes in my recent artwork. These changes were brought about through investigating contemporary artist while studying at Ball State University. The body of work includes an underlying theme: "A Journey Though life," which features Quest the foolish dog, derived from the fool card in a tarot card deck. / Department of Art