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[Truncated abstract] This thesis represents an historical account of the reception and criticism of computer art from its emergence in 1963 to its crisis in 1989, when aesthetic and ideological differences polarise and eventually fragment the art form. Throughout its history, static-pictorial computer art has been extensively maligned. In fact, no other twentieth-century art form has elicited such a negative and often hostile response. In locating the destabilising forces that affect and shape computer art, this thesis identifies a complex interplay of ideological and discursive forces that influence the way computer art has been and is received by the mainstream artworld and the cultural community at large. One of the central factors that contributed to computer art’s marginality was its emergence in that precarious zone between science and art, at a time when the perceived division between the humanistic and scientific cultures was reaching its apogee. The polarising force inherent in the “two cultures” debate framed much of the prejudice towards early computer art. For many of its critics, computer art was the product of the same discursive assumptions, methodologies and vocabulary as science. Moreover, it invested heavily in the metaphors and mythologies of science, especially logic and mathematics. This close relationship with science continued as computer art looked to scientific disciplines and emergent techno-science paradigms for inspiration and insight. While recourse to science was a major impediment to computer art’s acceptance by the artworld orthodoxy, it was the sustained hostility towards the computer that persistently wore away at the computer art enterprise. The anticomputer response came from several sources, both humanist and anti-humanist. The first originated with mainstream critics whose strong humanist tendencies led them to reproach computerised art for its mechanical sterility. A comparison with aesthetically and theoretically similar art forms of the era reveals that the criticism of computer art is motivated by the romantic fear that a computerised surrogate had replaced the artist. Such usurpation undermined some of the keystones of modern Western art, such as notions of artistic “genius” and “creativity”. Any attempt to rationalise the human creative faculty, as many of the scientists and technologists were claiming to do, would for the humanist critics have transgressed what they considered the primordial mystique of art. Criticism of computer art also came from other quarters. Dystopianism gained popularity in the 1970s within the reactive counter-culture and avant-garde movements. Influenced by the pessimistic and cynical sentiment of anti-humanist writings, many within the arts viewed the computer as an emblem of rationalisation, a powerful instrument in the overall subordination of the individual to the emerging technocracy

The thesis mainly deals with the specifics of Czech art at the time of communist totality. The main objective was to focus on the artists who due to circumstances found themselves at the edge of a cultural society. They were reconciled with this situation as they refused to betray the beliefs and denominations they confessed. The fundamental common point of their artistic freedom is the choice of themes. In this case it is the biblical theme that was first associated in the fifties with coping with existentialist feelings. And later on with finding artistic expression, which would contain spiritual overlap. In the first part we follow up iconographic parallels. In the second part we deal with individual authors and contexts that determined their artistic creation. In the group of authors are those who are engaged systematically in themes. Among others A. Divis, B. Reynek, I. Sobotka, V. Novakova, M. Medek, J. Koblasa and R. Piesen. In conclusion there is a treatise on contemporary philosophical trends that are connected with creation of our authors.

Despite having produced an impressive body of work and having been well-received in his lifetime, the career of nineteenth-century American expatriate artist Walter MacEwen has received virtually no scholarly attention. Assimilating primary-source materials, this thesis provides the first serious examination of MacEwen's life and career, thereby providing insight into a forgotten episode in American art.

(in English) The master's thesis The Chinese Collection of Ludvík Kuba in Historical Context and the Context of his Oeuvre is focused on works, ethnographic interests and contacts of Czech painter Ludvík Kuba in connection with his collection of Chinese art and the context of the popularity of Chinese culture amongst Czech modern painters. The author will also pay attention to the history of collecting Chinese art in former Czechoslovakia and to some objects collected by Kuba in particular. The thesis aims to reconstruct the collection of Chinese art amassed by Ludvík Kuba, using period photographs and information from institutions that house the artist's estate (Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures, National Gallery in Prague, Polabské muzeum v Poděbradech, and others.) The artist's book Moje Čína (My China), as well as other sources (period articles, correspondence), will be used as source material, too. The information gathered about Kuba's former collection of Chinese art will serve the purpose of deeper reflection of the extent of Chinese influences in Kuba's art, as well as his role in the process of establishing of Asian art collecting by modern Czech artists of his day.

Thesis (PhD (Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / In this thesis I deconstruct key concepts, terminologies, and rhetorical conventions employed in white South African writing on modern black art. I trace the genealogy of the dominant discursive practices of the apartheid era to the cultural discourses of the colonial era, which in turn had their origins in the Enlightenment. This genealogical tracing aims to demonstrate that South African art writing of the 20th century partook of a tradition of Western writing that was primarily intent upon producing the Western subject as a rational Enlightenment agent via the debased objectification of the colonial Other. In the process of the deconstruction, I identify the most significant discursive shifts that occurred from the 1930’s, when the first publications emerged, to the 1990’s, when South Africa’s new political dispensation opened up a different cultural landscape.

This thesis is an enquiry into the conditions in which various understandings of the newly introduced but vaguely grasped Western notion of ‘art’ emerged and sustained themselves in the name of cultural reproduction in early twentieth-century China. This Western concept of art was translated into Chinese as ‘meishu’, a neologism originally coined in Japanese kanji, and regarded as the embodiment of the ‘national essence’. Through a close examination of five art-related publishing events—the publication of the nationalistic journal Guocui xuebao; the launch of the art periodical Shenzhou guoguangji; the endeavours to compile a book collection on art, Meishu congshu; the making of the text Zhonguo yishujia zhenglüe which claimed to be a history book of Chinese ‘meishu’; and an example of image appropriation from Stephen Bushell’s Chinese Art—this thesis explores the ways in which different ‘neologistic imaginations’ of the term ‘meishu’ were constructed through publishing practices attempting to preserve and reproduce the ‘national essence’, by creating from the existent tradition a category of ‘art’ equivalent to that in the European West. Unlike previous scholarship, which deems any understanding of ‘meishu’ that deviated from the ‘authentic’ European model a ‘misconception’, this thesis sees these disparate understandings of ‘meishu’ as equally valid statements competing for dominance in the discursive field of art. This thesis thus argues that there existed at least three modes of utterances regarding the notion of ‘meishu’ in early twentieth-century China, and that the success of any such given utterance depended upon the acceptance of the authentic quality argued in its strategy of cultural reproduction. This thesis hence not only offers a detailed analysis of each publishing event, but also provides an interpretative framework within which the recognition of these utterances can be analysed by their strategic approaches to claiming cultural authenticity.

This dissertation analyzes the production of the Concrete and Madí artists, who were active in Argentina in the 1940s and 50s. Concrete and Madí artists proposed, for the first time in this country, the need for an art that was completely different from representational and expressionist art, and they believed that their "inventions," both visual and linguistic, could foster social change. Many aspects of the journal Arturo, published in 1944, and of Concrete and Madí art continue to be a puzzle, such as their relation with past and contemporary artistic and intellectual productions, their relation with the volatile Argentine political climate of the 1940s and 50s, and their ultimate artistic significance. This study interprets the propositions of these artists as responsive to phenomena they experienced in an immediate manner in the time and place in which they lived. The dissertation thus contextualizes Concrete and Madí art in five scenarios: publications by Spanish emigres and Argentine writers which explored the concepts of "automatism" and "invention;" discourses about "Nazism" and "democracy," and about "civilization" and "barbarism" that emerged through literary periodicals of the mid-1940s; political propaganda displayed under the rule of Juan Domingo Perón (1946-1955); the development of modern-looking and functional architecture fostered by Peronist architectural policies; and the artists' dialogues with the ideas of musicians then living in Argentina and Brazil. Ultimately, the dissertation constructs dialogues between specific instances of Argentine cultural and political history of the 1940s and 50s, and a selection of Concrete and Madí works and writings.

In this study I propose that transgressive interpretations of Christian iconography provide a valuable strategy for contemporary artists to engage with perceived social inequalities in postapartheid South Africa. Working in light of Michel Foucault’s idea of an “ontology of the present”, I investigate the ways in which religious iconography has been implicated in the regulation of society. Parodic reworking of Christian imagery in the selected examples is investigated as a strategy to expose these controls and offer a critique of mechanisms which produce normative ‘truths’. I also consider how such imagery has been received and the factors accounting for that reception. The study is contextualized by a brief, literary based, historical overview of Christian religious imagery to explain the strength of feeling evinced by religious images. This includes a review of the conflation of religion and state control of the masses, an analysis of the sovereign controls and disciplinary powers that they wield, and an explication of their illustration in religious iconography. I also identify reasons why such imagery may have seemed compelling to artists working in a post-apartheid context. By locating recent works in terms of those made elsewhere or South African examples prior to the period that is my focus, the works discussed are explored in terms of broader orientations in post-apartheid South African art. Artworks that respond to specific Christian iconography are discussed, including Adam and Eve, The Virgin Mary, Christ, and various saints and sinners. The selected artists whose works form the focus of this study are Diane Victor, Christine Dixie, Majak Bredell, Tracey Rose, Wim Botha, Conrad Botes, Johannes Phokela and Lawrence Lemaoana. Through transgressive depictions of Christian icons these artists address current inequalities in society. The content of their works analysed here includes (among others): the construction of both female and male identities; sexual roles, social roles, and racial identity; the social expectations of contemporary motherhood; repressive role models; Afrikaner heritage; political and social change and its effects; colonial power; sacrifice; murder, rape, and violence in South Africa; abuses of power by role models and politicians; rugby; heroism; and patricide. Christian iconography is a useful communicative tool because it has permeated many cultures over centuries, and the meanings it carries are thus accessible to large numbers of people. Religious imagery is often held sacred or is regarded with a degree of reverence, thus ensuring an emotive response when iconoclasm or transgression of any sort is identified. This study argues that by parodying sacred imagery these artists are able to disturb complacent viewing and encourage viewers to engage critically with some of its underlying implications.

In the interwar period, Prague became one of the important centers of immigration from the former Russian empire, mostly thanks to the receptive stance of the fledgling republic and its political representation. This dissertation, dedicated to the visual art scene of "Russian Prague", does not confine itself to only consider artists who found themselves in exile in Czechoslovakia. Rather, it focuses on the position of Prague within the larger network of contacts of the Russian diaspora as such, and surveys relations of the local exile community with other émigré centers, especially Paris. By engaging perspectives of institutional frameworks, acquisition practices and strategies, as well as their political motivations, this study takes the Russian art collection of the Karásek Gallery, state purchases of Russian art, the Archive and Collection of Slavonic Art at the Slavonic Institute, the Scythian group and the permanent art exhibition of the Russian Cultural-Historical Museum as symptomatic examples that reveal the shifting boundaries of the notion of "Russian art outside Russia." It also brings the artistic production of the interwar period into conversation with that of the art traditions of pre-revolutionary Russia. All the described phenomena are characterized by rich international contacts and a...