The main objective of the inquiry is to deduce the methods and techniques that were employed in the manufacture of the historically unique Shroud of Turin. By taking a more or less phenomenologically based stance, it is argued that this image could only have been produced by employing a photographically related technique. To this end, an examination is made of both the nature of the image, as well as all relevant documented evidence which supports the above stated hypothesis. In addition, practical experiments are conducted which employ the kinds of technology and apparatus known to have existed c 1250-1357 AD. The results of this investigation strongly support the notion that persons living c 1250- 1357 AD did in fact have the necessary technology to manufacture what could be termed a negative solargraphic image of a human subject. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1993.

This dissertation is a study in representation. More specifically, it is a study in the representation of art and of art history as melancholy representation. The latter is produced or opens up, because objects of art â pictures, images, or Bilder (read âlikenessesâ) â have a tendency to withdraw or turn away from view. Objects of art, which may be thought of as âthinking objectsâ or âliving imagesâ, that is, as quasisubjects, negate complete ownership. Like living things, objects of art are infinitely incomplete; they arise out of an ongoing process of becoming and disappearance. As such, our relationship with them may be said to be one of âmutual desireâ, want and lack. Moreover, as Michael Ann Holly (2002) has argued, the study of art history is bedevilled by lost, obscure, or obsolete objects; cloudy, shadowy, ghostly, even corpse-like objects that deny total acquisition or last words. It is in this sense that one can say art history â perhaps like any history â is a melancholic science. It is also from this melancholy perspective that this dissertation reflects, in various ways, on the imaging of history as catatastrophe or as catastrophic loss â as this is figured in the work of Walter Benjamin, Anselm Kiefer, and William Kentridge. How then do we write about art and the history of art, when the objects of our study are both too close and too far away, mutually absent and present â fleeting, yet seemingly permanent? How can one âimageâ the catastrophic debilitation of melancholic disavowal or death of self, without succumbing to its debilitating attractions? Following on from Max Penskyâs (2001) tracing of the historical image of melancholia as dialectical, the aim of this dissertation is to delineate a discursive space for perception and reflection; a critical space within which to think of the melancholic im-possibility of representation qua possession, as essentially negatively dialectical: futile and heroic, pointless and necessary. Finally, this dissertation asks: how can one write about the imaging of history as castastrophe, as this is figured from within different historical frameworks: that of an early twentieth century German-Jewish philosopher, a late twentieth/early twenty-first century German artist, and a late twentieth/early twenty-first South African-Jewish artist? How can one hope to relate their essentially melancholy work without becoming culpable of ahistoricity or even pastiche? No easy answers have been forthcoming during the writing of this dissertation. However, it is my delicate contention that reading and picturing their work in and as a melancholy constellation whose parameters shift depending on oneâs point of view, as opposed to submitting their similarities and differences to rigorous systematic analysis, has revealed surprising and enlightening elective affinities. In the final analysis, visual and philosophical analogy has the last say. And this seems fitting, especially where one encounters a writer and two artists whose thinking in images tirelessly challenge our thinking âlogicallyâ in words alone.

<p> In this thesis, I explore two works from Mail Order Brides/M.O.B., <i> A Public Message for Your Private Life </i>(1998) and <i>Mail Order Bride of Frankenstein</i> (2003), that take into account the histories and identities produced within Filipino/a American Communities. I use Sarita Echavez See and Emily Noelle Ignacio's theories on parody to analyze the performative aspects of M.O.B's artworks. According to See and Ignacio, parody can be utilized as a tool to simultaneously form solidarity within Filipino American communities. By examining these ideas, I argue that M.O.B. performs appropriated representations of their ethnic and assimilated cultures by using parody to critique and problematize often-misrepresented individual and cultural identities.</p>

<p>This dissertation, Loïs Mailou Jones, Diasporic Art Practice, and Africa in the 20th Century, investigates the evolving dialogue between twentieth-century African-American artists and Africa--its objects, peoples, diasporas, and topography. The four chapters follow the career of artist Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998) and focus on periods when ideas about blackness in an African-American context and its connection to Africa were at the forefront of artistic and cultural discourses. Chapter 1 traces African-American artists contact with African art during the first decades of the twentieth century. Chapter 2 examines Jones's use of Africa in her art produced at the start of her career (1920s -1940s) and repositions her in relation to the Harlem Renaissance and Négritude movements. Chapter 3 considers Jones's engagements with the African Diaspora via travels to France, the Caribbean, and Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, voyages that I argue result in the creation of a Black Diasporic art practice predicated upon the act of viewing. Chapter 4 critiques the signifying grasp of Africa in African American art. By looking at Jones's turn to pastiche as an aesthetic choice and cultural commentary, the chapter argues that that the possibility of a seamless reconciliation of Africa in African American art is impossible. Where the limited scholarly discourse on the subject has emphasized a heritage-based relationship between Black artists and Africa, this project's cross-cultural approach is one of the first to consider the relationship between Africa and Black artists that goes beyond looking for African retentions in African American culture. In doing so the project also suggests an alternative to the internationalization of American artists in African, rather than European terms. Moreover, though Jones is broadly cited within African American art history beyond monographic considerations her work has yet to be critically examined particularly in regards to larger debates concerning blackness and the African Diaspora.</p> / Dissertation

No description available.

<p> n/a</p>

<p> There is little doubt that emerging technologies are changing the way we act, interact, create, and consume. Yet despite increased access to these technologies, consumers of technology too seldom interrogate the politics, subjectivities, and limitations of these technologies and their interfaces. Instead, many consumers approach emerging technologies as objective tools to be consumed, and engage in creative processes uncritically. This disquisition, following the work of Hawisher, Selfe, and Selfe, seeks ways to approach the problem of a "rhetoric of technology" that uncritically praises new technologies by drawing on avant-garde art traditions and object-oriented ontology. I argue that, by following the philosophies and practices of glitch, dirty new media, zaum, dada, circuit-bending, and others, we might approach writing technologies with the intention of critically misusing, manipulating, and revealing to ourselves and audiences the materiality of the media and technologies in use.</p><p> In combination with these avant-garde practices and philosophies, I draw from object-oriented ontology to argue that we, as new media composers, never simply write <i>on</i> or <i>through</i> our technologies, but that we write in collaboration <i>with</i> them, for they are active and agential coauthors even (and especially) despite their status as nonhuman. I argue for an model that not only levels the ontological playing field between humans and nonhumans, but also one that embraces irregularities and "glitches" as essential features of systems and the actors within those systems. Finally, I provide examples of how to perform these models and philosophies, which I call <i>object-oriented art.</i></p>

<p> The cultural sensation known as the movida madrile&ntilde;a has been a subject of fascination since its origins in Madrid throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. This dissertation examines one of its most famous products, the journal <i>La Luna de Madrid</i> (1983-1988). This dissertation explores examples of illustration and photography throughout the journal's first seven issues, from November 1983-May 1984. Concentrating on the use of strategies from tourism promotion, this framework reveals how visual elements work with text to encourage readers to become tourists of modern Madrid. </p><p> Chapter One provides a background of how tourism images and messages have shaped perceptions of Spanish cultural identity from dictatorship to democracy, from the 1950s to the 1980s. Within this context, it is possible to understand the efficacy of tourism promotional tropes in portraying an attractive vision of Madrid in the journal's pages. </p><p> Chapter Two emphasizes how the movida represented the positive changes developing in Post-Franco Madrid, leading local and regional political leaders to employ this phenomenon in programs focused upon cultural revitalization and civic participation. This chapter argues that the movida not only appears as the main cultural tendency of interest within <i>La Luna de Madrid </i>, but that its treatment within the journal allows it to be viewed as an attractive tourism destination. </p><p> Chapter Three and Chapter Four provide close readings and in-depth visual analysis of certain repeated illustrated and photographic segments within <i> La Luna de Madrid</i> from November 1983-May 1984. By narrowing the research scope to these first seven months of publication, we can examine how patterns of viewing are established that encourage readers to contemplate selective historical and contemporary cultural trends in Madrid from the perspective of a tourist. </p><p> The combination of text and imagery at work in <i>La Luna de Madrid </i> reinforces the efforts of the various creative practices of the movida while giving readers opportunities to participate in this cultural scene. This dissertation argues that experiments with the visual and rhetorical tropes of tourism in <i>La Luna de Madrid</i> attempt to foster favorable impressions of the Spanish capital's past and present.</p>

<p> This thesis argues that Mexican painter Enrique Guzm&aacute;n is a central figure in the transition between the Ruptura movement and postmodernism. Construed by many as a surrealist artist, Guzm&aacute;n employs idiosyncratic imagery not to probe inner realities, but to explore themes such as abjection and the fragmentation of self into commodity images. Inhabiting the chasm between an oppressive ultra-conservative provincial culture and the turbulent revolutionary ideology of Mexico City of the sixties and seventies, Guzm&aacute;n articulates, by fusing aesthetic categories such as, among others, the grotesque, the campy and the advertising clich&eacute; and exploring language, paradox and gaze, a deconstruction of cultural and political codes by satirizing their interlocking systems of signs and simulacra, initiating a critique of national and personal identity that will later be developed by the Neo-Mexicanists (Neomexicanistas) into a bold denouncement of sexual, socioeconomic and national marginalization.</p>

No description available.