Interference is a fundamental physical phenomenon proving the wave nature of energy. It is based on wave superposition forming natural waveeffects expressed both in nature under random selective conditions as well as in laboratory scientific experiments by carefully controlled selection of parameters. Science generates a number of technology applications using the inherited properties of waves after their superposition in space termed interference. These interfering waves have extremely rare properties compared to their initial physical systems and become entities with measurable quantities which can be used to quantify qualities in other phenomena, mechanisms, and physical objects with variety of physical properties. These waves are currently fully explored in theoretical and experimental physics finding many modern applications and enlightening the way to longstanding questions. Remote non contact study of surfaces and their reactions visually witnessing internal subsurface and unknown bulk information without need to implement destructing forces or penetrating irradiation to trace them and without interacting with it or interfering with the results is one of the most challenging modern applications of interference physics. Apart from everyday life applications artworks’ conservation is a field that interference properties are uniquely suited. It is the quality of light wave interference that is being utilised in this body of research and summarised in the present thesis. The context of the presented thesis unfolded in next chapters is constructed in one book on a contextual rather than chronological order. The contextual base presentation is achieved through clustering same context published articles that have resulted over the course of years of research which have been published in review journals, conference proceedings or governmental publications. The formation of laser interference fringe patterns and their exceptional qualitites in application for structural diagnosis with defect detection and definition, their unique properties utilised in studies of environmental and climate effects, the prototype optical geometries and novel experimental methodologies envisaged to solve specific application problems are presented along with examination on theoretical matters of exploring interference properties, qualities, geometries and their outmost final product the interference fringe pattern. Thus in this thesis the aim is to prove the contribution of the experimental research publications to the study of interference patterns as a highly sophisticated structural diagnostic tool in the complicated problems of Cultural Heritage applications. The implementation of interference phenomena and the development in experimental investigations applied in inhomogeneous, anisotropic, shape variant, multilayered, multicomposition cultural heritage objects, paves the way to implement “fringe patterns” as a scaleless (scale independent) diagnostic detector allowing generation of novel tools and practices on problem solving projects. The developments are beyond the specific application and are extended to other fields of science and technology. The articles and bibliography cited within the text including author's publications utilised as sources in the writing of this thesis are referenced in square brackets and are explicitly listed in ANNEX I The list of publications of the author is shown in ANNEX II. The originals of author's publications supporting the thesis are provided after the Annex II as have been published. Due to limitation in number of pages there is not included a section to present the fundamental principles of the phenomena presented here instead a list of books commonly found in most University libraries is provided for interested readers as BIBLIOGRAPHY at the last paragraphs of ANNEX I.

This dissertation analyzes the social function of native art in colonial New Spain through the examination of a genre of maps painted by Indian artists known as Land Grants or Mapas de Mercedes. Land Grant maps constitute the response of the native population to a Spanish land distribution practice implemented in the sixteenth century to allocate the territory among its dwellers in an orderly fashion and prevent the illegal occupation of the land. One remarkable feature this program adopted in New Spain was its strong visual component; the viceroy requested a painted map as part of each lawsuit's evidence. This is unique to the viceroyalty of New Spain and did not happen anywhere else in the Americas. It is reflective of the Indigenous deep-rooted tradition of thinking visually and dealing with everyday matters through the use of painted manuscripts. It was also stimulated by the Spaniard's belief in the truth-value of native pictorials. The result was a vast production of maps of which approximately 700 have survived. Since they were produced for the specific context of land grants and have their own distinctive characteristics, it is possible to say that this was also the birth of a new artistic genre. The present work examines how Indians in the colonial period created these artworks that enabled them to negotiate with the colonizers, defend their rights, and ultimately attain a more favorable position in society. This project demonstrates that the Indians took up this opportunity to design maps that were an essential component of their defense strategy. My research is based on a thorough examination of the originals at the National Archives in Mexico. I combined visual analysis with the transcription and paleography of the case’s files, and a review of primary and secondary historical sources. This interdisciplinary approach enabled me to demonstrate that native artists not only described the contested site in their maps but also translated their own ideas about this space into visual form. My research underscores Indian agency and illustrates how they used Spanish laws to their advantage in preserving their possessions, sometimes to the twenty-first century. / History of Art and Architecture

The unity of the arts has been acknowledged for centuries. It was during the 18th and 19th centuries in England that a new attitude toward nature and the development of the "picturesque" landscape aesthetic brought the two arts of landscape painting and design closer together. 17th century Italian landscape painting became associated with the informality and irregularity of nature, and became a source of inspiration for many landscape gardeners. The extent to which the landscape designers, William Kent, Capability Brown, and Humphrey Repton, were influenced by painting varied greatly. In turn the developing landscape design theory and aesthetic influenced many English landscape painters searching for a native style of their own, both in terms of subject matter and technique. The creation of the English landscape aesthetic was an extremely complicated one with ongoing influences resulting in constant changes and effects.

The vast contributions made by Louis XV at Versailles are some of the finest examples of painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts produced during the 18th century. Oddly, the Appartement Prive, the Petit Appartements, and the Opera, among other examples, have been the most overlooked, criticized, and for a time denigrated and condemned achievements made at Versailles. This state of affairs prompted a historiographical examination of 18th-century Versailles to understand, odd and erroneous interpretations. In the process of analyzing and categorizing the literature and scholarship on 18th-century Versailles, certain patterns of interpretation, many of them contradictory and inconsistent, appeared. The thrust of this thesis is to map-out these patterns--particularly from the period of 1870-1930 when a remarkable scholarly and physical renewal was taking place at Versailles--and to discover and understand the underlying ideological motivations for these shifting patterns of interpretation.

<p> This dissertation contributes to an understanding of contemporary art practices from Mexico City, as they are received in Mexico and abroad, by interpreting the meaning of local and global sources in recent work shown in Mexico, the U.S., and Europe by three internationally established, contemporary artists from Mexico City: Gabriel Orozco, Carlos Amorales, and Pedro Reyes. These three artists established their careers in the 1990s, when, for the first time, Mexican artists shifted from a national plane to a global realm of operation. Through three case studies of recent bodies of work produced by these artists, I show how each of them engages with both Mexico's artistic lineages and global art currents in ways that bring to light the problem of identity for Mexican artists working internationally. This study explores the specific ways in which each artist deals with Mexican content, in order to discuss how contemporary notions of `Mexican' are framed, misconstrued, and contested in the artworks themselves, and in the critical discourse on these artists, in Mexico and internationally.</p>

The American Panorama Company's cyclorama, The Battle of Atlanta, portrays an important battle during the Civil War. Representations of this engagement in photographs, illustrations, and history paintings presented isolated episodes, while cycloramas exhibited a sweeping narrative of the actual combat. These popular art attractions had a circular design that enabled artists to render a comprehensive view and exhibit characteristics of traditional history paintings. To ensure profits from its exhibition, the painters contemplated their potential spectators, avoiding antagonistic symbols. They considered contemporary attitudes concerning the war and created a composition that would foster the country's desire for reconciliation. The result was a portrayal of the battle that instructed its audiences on the heroic actions of both Union and Confederate soldiers amid the terrible circumstances of battle. Therefore, The Battle of Atlanta manifests a didactic narrative of the crucial engagement indicative of burgeoning public sentiment toward the Civil War during the 1880s.

Our conception of Paradise is derived from the Old Persian word pairidaeza, referring directly to a hidden, walled garden. Such a mythical garden protects its occupant from the extrinsic gaze of those less fortunate. Taqiyah involves the precautionary dissimulation of faith in a hostile environment. For persecuted developing sects in medieval Persian Islam, taqiyah became an important cultural practice. Such persecution gave rise to a production of artifacts whose significant meanings were disguised within complex compositions. Understanding the nature of these compositions provides insight into the nature of perception and its role in architectural experience. These artifacts contain projective anamorphic devices that distort vision and obscure interpretation. They demonstrate taqiyah through visual estrangement and temporal defamiliarization. The isolation and architectural deployment of these dissimulative devices can create a dynamic interactive environment that initiates the occupant with a continually changing understanding of the architecture through time.

As one travels about the Houston landscape, one is often bewildered by the rampant growth of spaces and their casual uses. Houston's growth over 100 years has produced a suburban metropolis that searches for its identity between temporary crowded spaces and empty lots. The traditional city remains in our minds as we experience a shriveled form of interior urbanism, primarily private and mostly exclusive. Rather than perceiving place as a physical environment, one encounters momentary conditions of place, the gathering of people. Stimulated by vacancies and remnants, Locus Moment acts as a perceptual device. Vital for a moment, this event attempts to shape our understanding of these vacancies. As Locus Moment remains in the mind as an afterimage, one is encouraged to search for the latent potential that exists within the Houston landscape.

Recent painting exhibits reveal an expanded definition of painting. Though it does not appear to fit within the category of painting, Mel Bochner's 48&inches; Standards is included in this expanded definition. Clement Greenberg's modernist criticism attempted to limit painting to its formal elements, which led to the rejection of painting in minimalist and conceptual art movements. Mel Bochner integrates methodologies used by conceptual art to oppose modernist painting in order to open painting to theoretical discourse. In works such as 48&inches; Standards, Theory of Painting, and Theory of Boundaries, he brackets out the material signifiers that allow us to recognize painting in order to investigate its structure. In this way, painting acts as 'the missing signifier' in these works and place them firmly within the category of painting.

By focusing on how bourgeois and feminist discourses intersect in the moralistic paintings of Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725--1805), I argue that Greuze's images manifest a thrust toward liberation from the ideological constraints of Father's Law and toward the advent of feminized ontology. Through the analysis of L'Accordee de village and La Malediction paternelle, I claim that the deconstruction of patriarchy and the return of the feminine are catalyzed in bourgeois economy by the monetary system. To support the significance of Greuze in the development of Realism, not only in art but also in literature, I posit Greuze as the precursor of Balzac. Informing my discussion by Jean-Joseph Goux's theory of the homology between the referential status of the sign, the Father, and the fiduciary system, I argue that Balzac's Realism, illustrating the milieu of commercial capitalism of the nineteenth century, exacerbate the loss of moral superiority of the paterfamilias. Although Greuze's work is profoundly embedded in the patriarchal ethic, the analysis of La Paresseuse italienne and La Mere bien-aimee provides evidence of the painters (not intended) feminist vision.