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My thesis is centered on poetics of the body in contemporary feminist art. Poetics, understood as the languages, materials and forms of composition, underscores the symbolically and socially mediated body so rendered, rather than its biological, anatomical, or otherwise 'natural' definition. A feminist poetics is at once a politics, and a creation, of language. I proceed through a close reading of a number of artworks by Canadian artists. These works 'resist' representation, foregoing a biologically grounded figuration to propose in more allusive terms the psychic and conceptual impulses through which the body is apprehended or might be imagined. / Influenced by the writings of Luce Irigaray on the structural isomorphism between logos, the phallus, and a privileged masculine model of subjectivity, the thesis investigates the construction within feminist art of alternative and contestatory poetics of the body potentially productive of other knowledge-effects. / Situating my investigation within the context of numerous 'figurations' of the subject that have emerged in recent feminist theory, I propose that feminist art practices provide a corollary contribution, in material form, to the theoretical project of thinking 'difference' beyond dualism. / I identify three modalities of practice that 're-make' the body/embodiment vis a vis a 'phallomorphic' model of identity, unity, self-sameness: (a) the body in/of language, as the imbrication of the two identified by Julia Kristeva through the category of the semiotic; (b) morphologies of the body as the imaginary body produced through an interweaving of the body's form, psychic dispensations and social/symbolic inscriptions; (c) constructed spatialities in which the material spaces of exhibition sites become enacted metaphoric spaces, and foreground the potential and import of spatial representations in the production of personal and social experience. / I argue that the forms, materialities and spatialities specific to visual art can serve to constitute analogues for the materiality of the body. The thesis considers the artworks as embodiments: at once material, textural and spatial 'bodies' of art. / Interdisciplinary in scope, this thesis brings together visual and textual sources drawn from contemporary art and the literatures of feminist (and) poststructuralist theory, cultural studies, postcolonial theory and the field of art history and criticism.

This paper will look back on the work of Equipo Cronica, who worked between 1964--1980, to reveal a production of art that centered on issues of originality and value that were grounded in attempts at social activism and a redefinition of the role of art vis-a-vis society. To achieve their goals, I will argue and describe how the two man team of artists used serialism, objectivity, hybridity, appropriation of mass media iconography and techniques, and parody to produce something that was neither an art object nor an ordinary object, but an object of criticism. The historical relevancy of such an art lies in its claims of participating in a political critique of the culture industry controlled by the oppressive Franco regime, and its wary outlook on the rapid modernization of Spain into the neo-capitalist state it is today within the multinational world order. / The relevance of such an examination lies in how their intentions to create a new relationship between art and society is still pertinent today in modern Spain. Since the death of Franco in 1975 there has been a feeling in Spain that the eyes of the world have been on its new democracy, leading to a campaign, led until recently by the Socialist government, to prove Spain is a modern state that has recuperated from 40 years of isolation. It has tried to demonstrate that it is progressive, not only economically and technologically, but culturally. Over the last twenty years a veritable culture industry has boomed in Spain which has been generously backed by its federal and regional governments. As Spain zealously and rapidly finds its place in the globalized multinational world order, I will demonstrate that the issues of identity pertinent to Equipo Cronica, and the tactics they used to address it, can still contribute a critical position to present-day discussions.

This thesis is a study of important trends in Natal art of the period 1910-1940, with a section on related architectural developments. In Chapter One Natal's colonial background and continued dependence on Britain for cultural guidance is discussed. The foundation of art galleries and the Natal Society of Artists is followed by an examination of artworks produced until 1917. These were found to be mainly Victorian in character. Reliance on British art and an admiration for and emulation of the Royal Academy of Arts strongly influenced the organisation and development of the Natal Society of Artists. Chapter Two examines the desire, during the 1920s and 1930s, to break away from foreign influence and the conscious attempts to establish a "national" style. This phenomenon is traced through the development of landscape painting in Natal. Chapter Three, Survival versus progress, explores the relationship between the artist and the Natal public, in particular those artists who experimented with what were then held to be avant-garde styles. An uninformed public and, consequently, a pronounced hostility towards modernism bad a profound effect on the careers of many artists. Chapter Four concerns the status of the practising artist in Natal. Amateurs outnumbered professionals at all major exhibitions, and the majority of these amateurs were women. Professionalism and amateurism are defined in the text.) The history of the Durban School of Art and its role in the promotion of professionalism ends this survey on art trends. Architectural development during this period is summarised in Chapter Five with reference to the correspondences between art and architecture. Examples are architectural decoration (especially sculpture and faience), stylistic trends, the response to modernism, and the professional status of the architect. Artists and architects active in Natal during the period are identified and listed. This section includes lists of representative works and detailed references. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1986.

This dissertation traces the presence of installation-based practices among artists of Aboriginal ancestry via selected exhibitions across Canada. It begins with a methodological perspective on Canadian art history, federal law, and human science, as a means of establishing a contextual backdrop for the art under consideration. The rise of an Indian empowerment movement during the twentieth century is then shown to take on an international voice which had cultural ramifications at the 1967 Canadian International and Universal Exhibition. Nascent signs of a multi-mediatic aesthetic are distinguished in selected works in Canadian Indian Art '74, as well as through Native-run visual arts programs. First Nations art history is charted via new Canadian art narratives starting in the early 1970s, followed by the development of spatial productions and hybrid discourses in New Work By a New Generation in 1982, and Stardusters in 1986. The final chapter opens with a history of installation art since the Second World War, as related to the pronounced presence of multi-mediactic works in Beyond History in 1989. Post-colonial and postmodern theories are deployed to conclusively situate both the artistic and political concerns featured throughout this study, and lead into the analysis of selected installations at Indigena: Contemporary Native Perspectives and Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. These 1992 shows in the national capital region ultimately confirm the maturation of a particular socio-political aesthetic that tested issues of Canadian identity, while signifying Aboriginal sites of difference.

This thesis discusses how museum structures were redefined over a twenty-two year period in specific relation to the impetus of Video Art. It contends that Video Art would be instrumental in the evolution of the contemporary art museum. The thesis will analyse, discuss and evaluate the problematic nature and form of Video Art within four major contemporary art museums - the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Georges Pompidou National Centre of Art and Culture in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London and the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) in Sydney. By addressing some of the problems that Video Art would present to those museums under discussion, the thesis will reveal how Video Art would challenge institutional structures and demand more flexible viewing environments. As a result, the modern museum would need to constantly modify their policies and internal spaces in order to cope with the dynamism of Video Art. This thesis first defines the classical museum structure established by the Louvre during the 19th century. It examines the transformation from the classical to the modern model through the initiatives of the New York Metropolitan Museum to MoMA in New York. MoMA would be the first major museum to exhibit Video Art in a concerted fashion and this would establish a pattern of acquisition and exhibition that became influential for other global institutions to replicate. MoMA's exhibition and acquisition activities are analysed and contrasted with the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Gallery and the AGNSW in order to define a lineage of development in relation to Video Art. This thesis provides an historical explanation for the museum/gallery's relationship to Video Art from its emergence in the gallery to the beginnings of its acceptance as a global art phenomenon. Curatorial strategies, the influx of corporate patronage and the reconstruction of spectatorship within the gallery are analysed in relation to the unique problematic of Video Art. Several prominent video artists are examined in relation to the challenges they would present to the institutionalised framework of the modern art museum and the discursive field surrounding their practice. In addition, the thesis contains a theoretical discussion of the problems related to Video Art imagery with the period of High Modernism; examines the patterns of acquisition and exhibition, and presents an analysis of global exchange between four distinct contemporary art institutions.

Jenny Holzer's text-based projects have attracted the attention of critics, historians, and curators from Des Moines to Dresden. An understanding of the complex interplay between language, gender, power, and site within Holzer's work demonstrates how a singular interpretive approach is insufficient for discussing the multitude of meanings her projects produce. Perhaps most significantly, a fresh analysis of Holzer's work and critical reactions to it challenges the story of modernism and postmodernism and the relationship between these two terms.