Emerging from an early association with street art during the 1980s, the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was largely regarded within the New York avant-garde, as ‘an exotic other,’ a token Black artist in the world of American modern art; a perception which forced him to examine and seek to define his sense of identity within art and within society. Drawing upon what he described as his ‘cultural memory,’ Basquiat deftly mixed together fragments of past and present, creating a unique style of painting, based upon his own experiences of contemporary American life blended with a remembering of an African past. This study will examine the work of Basquiat during the period 1978 – 1988, tracing his progression from obscure graffiti writer SAMO© to successful gallery artist. Situating my study of Basquiat’s oeuvre in relationship to Paul Gilroy’s concept of the Black Atlantic, I will analyse Basquiat’s exploration of his cultural heritage and depiction of a narrative of Black history, which confronts issues of racism and social inequality, and challenges the constraints of traditional binary oppositions. I will examine Basquiat’s representation of the icon of the griot; narrator of African history and mythical talisman, shedding new light on the artist’s reclamation of this powerful totem. Traversing the perimeters of the Black Atlantic I show how Basquiat’s work has influenced both fine art and urban cultural practice in Britain. Through analysis of Basquiat’s self-portraits I will examine his repositioning the black subject, literally and historically, within the tradition of painting, and argue that through this relocation, Basquiat’s work contributes to models of reparative histories. I will consider Basquiat’s processes of identification and his refusal to be labelled ‘a black artist,’ situating his visual construction of self identity in relation to a post-black aesthetic. Analysis of Basquiat’s paintings lies at the heart of my research, and I conclude my study with an in-depth consideration of three paintings created by the artist during the final year of his life which characterise the enduring themes within his expansive body of work. My research contributes to existing scholarship into the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, providing original insight into the work of this important artist.

<p> My dissertation studies the uses of the notion of archive in post-war contemporary art practices around the Lebanese Civil Wars (1975-1990). After the wars, a group of artists from Lebanon began to collect data and produce documents that referenced the traces and memories of the conflict. These compilations metamorphosed into aesthetic projects that took archival-like forms. In this dissertation, I discuss the archival works of Walid Raad, Paola Yacoub/Michel Lasserre, Gilbert Hage, Jalal Toufic, Joanna Hadjithomas/Khalil Joreige, Lamia Joreige, Akram Zaatari, Rasha Salti/Ziad Antar and Marwan Rechmaoui. </p><p> This boom of art practices around memory and archives in Lebanon has opposed the politics of amnesia sponsored by the Lebanese state through the Amnesty Law of 1991. Post-war artists, however, have addressed this official amnesia not by seeking to reconstruct the historical facts and recover the real documentation of the wars; instead, they have activated the memories of the wars by exploring the very destruction of these memories. These artists have produced and at the same time deconstructed archives by assembling fragmented, fabricated, para-fictional, and decontextualized collections of photographs, videos, and everyday materials. I describe these practices as <i>ar(t)chive production</i> (or <i>archives-in-the-making</i>). </p><p> While the notion of archive is common in modern and contemporary art regarding trauma and memory, my hypothesis is that the archival works of these Lebanese artists are shaped by the new structural context of global war. Most European models of archive pursue a recovery of memory against the destruction in the total wars of the twentieth century, particularly exemplified by the artworks about the Holocaust. By contrast, the practices on the Lebanese Civil Wars engage in the logic of constructive destruction of what Carlo Galli has theorized as global war. Within this logic, violence is both destructive and productive. In this respect, instead of opposing the official amnesia by reviving the memories of the wars, the post-war Lebanese artists reflect on amnesia by showing the construction of the past by means of its own destruction.</p><p>

<p> Shigeru Mizuki (1922-2015) is one of the most sophisticated and accomplished of modern manga artists. His work synthesizes ancient and modern Japanese visual artistic methods with contemporary tropes from Western graphic art to tell profound and complex stories that reflect major themes of war and the supernatural world. This thesis argues that Mizuki&rsquo;s work should be reevaluated as a valuable contribution to modern art based on the following three qualities: technical mastery and innovation in visual art; socio-political and philosophical depth of content; and his impact on other contemporary Japanese artists. Such study is significant because of the popularity of manga and other graphic art in shaping both popular culture and the view of art adopted by younger generations. Thus, studying Mizuki has implications for our understanding of art and its intersection with popular culture, and raises questions regarding whether popular media like manga should be considered seriously by art historians. </p><p>

<p> The Rue R&eacute;aumur, cleared and constructed between 1896 and 1900, was the first major urbanism project initiated in central Paris after the dismissal of Haussmann. Realized under the Third Republic and under the guidance of a democratically elected Paris Municipal Council, the street provoked an unprecedented public debate about urbanist priorities, the management of municipal debt, and architectural aesthetics. Disappointed with the visual homogeneity of the Haussmannian boulevard, Councilors liberalized building code and declared a Concours des Fa&ccedil;ades in the Rue R&eacute;aumur in order to visually revitalize their city.</p><p> That variation of the streetscape would turn on a monumentalization of the urban party-wall building through enlarged <i>saillies</i> and <i> avant-propos</i>, corbelled fa&ccedil;ade elements hitherto banned in the streets of Paris. Conceived as a central business district, the Rue R&eacute;aumur was also a unique concentration of commercial architecture, which encouraged an expanded use of iron structure to open building interiors and fa&ccedil;ades into naturally illuminated, floor-through spaces of manufacture. Construction in the Rue R&eacute;aumur was, then, guided by contradictory impulses. Charged with psychically countering the uniformity of the rationalized city, the exuberant elevations of the new street simultaneously masked a reordering of the architectural object by similar pressures towards economic and technological efficiency. </p><p> This dissertation treats the architecture of the Rue R&eacute;aumur and the public debate that shaped it as mutually determining engagements of architectural modernity. It situates the street's evolution as a response to the political, economic, spatial, and psychic challenges posed by the emerging capitalist metropolis. Reconstruction of the architectural and social discourses that informed design practice in the Rue R&eacute;aumur positions late-century eclecticism as an indispensable step in the development of interwar Parisian modernism. That architecture served as the primary object of rejection within modernist historiography and avant-garde theory due to its reliance on historical vocabularies. This study demonstrates that the perceptual immediacy desired of the late-century Parisian fa&ccedil;ade was of equal importance to the development of architectural modernism as theories of structural rationalism. It considers eclecticist architecture like that of the Rue R&eacute;aumur as a moment of dynamic invention within nineteenth-century theory and design practice, the terms of which would integrally condition Le Corbusier's reconception of architecture and architectural aesthetics a generation later.</p><p>

abstract: The German Dada artist Hannah Höch is considered one of the most significant artists of photomontage. What is less discussed is Höch’s continued use of other mediums, particularly watercolor, and how the two mediums of watercolor and photomontage are combined in many of her artworks. Berlin Dada criticized bourgeois artistic groups and mediums. The Berlin Dadaists Richard Huelsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann called for new ways of engaging with the medium of painting, which resulted in the group’s development of photomontage. However, other Dada artists such as George Grosz, Kurt Schwitters, Francis Picabia, and Hausmann, continued to engage with the traditional medium of painting. Höch was integral to the development of photomontage. Like her Dada contemporaries, she also experimented with painting. She developed the new hybrid medium of photomontage-painting. I argue that Höch’s photomontages are better understood as photomontage-paintings. Höch’s photomontage- paintings combine the mediums of (watercolor) painting and photomontage into a singular medium. My reexamination of these works as photomontage-paintings presents a more accurate view of Höch as a multidimensional artist. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Art History 2015

abstract: This thesis discusses the significance of the casta naming process depicted in pinturas de casta or casta paintings created in eighteenth-century colonial New Spain. These paintings depicted family units, each member named by a racial label designated by the sistema de castas, the Imperial Spanish code of law associated with these paintings. In the genre, the labeled subjects were hierarchically ordered by racial lineage with pure Spanish genealogies ranked highest and all other racial categories following on a sliding scale of racial subjectivity. This study focuses on casta paintings' label coyote, which referred to colonial subjects of mestizo and indigenous heritage. Policies of the casta system, when matched with casta paintings' animal label created a framing of indigenous colonial subjectivity; those labeled coyote were visually positioned as one of the lowest members of the casta and of questionable quality as humans, given their comparison to wild canines. Beyond the general discussion of racial hegemony at work in these paintings this thesis exploration individually questions the meaning of the casta label coyote by analyzing how the colonial namer and the named colonial subject related to this word and title. Deep-seated beliefs about the undomesticated canine were at work in the imaginations of both the Imperial Spanish namer and the named colonial subject, evidenced in European/Spanish renderings of wolves and indigenous art depicting coyotes in Mesoamerica. To uncover the imaginations that informed the creation and reception of the coyote label this study examines the visual development of wolf as a symbol of wildness, evil, and racial impurity used to hail the human Other in both peninsular and New Spanish colonial arts. Additionally, images of coyotes will be considered from the position of the colonial named, vis à vis indigenous arts and beliefs that coyote acted as a sacred symbol of power through centuries of human development in the Mesoamerican world. Varied understandings of coyote were at work in the New Spanish colony, evidenced in eighteenth-century paintings of mestizo artist Miguel Cabrera. Analysis of his paintings of the La Divina Pastora and of his casta painting De mestizo y india nace coyote reveal the instability of coyote as symbol and human label amid the mestizaje mechanisms of New Spain. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Art History 2014

<p> This research examines the role of the Moroccan rulers, the political administration, and the Moroccan people in shaping Moroccan cities, mainly Fez, during the nineteenth century. It studies the role of trade and the interaction of Moroccan merchants with France and England between 1830 and 1912. In this study, I offer an analysis of a group of factors that influenced the development of Fez. More specifically, I analyze the impacts of war, drought, famine, epidemics, and unrest, which culminated in a massive migration from rural regions to urban cities, Fez in particular. The death and hardship of the era resulted in social and urban changes that made Fez the center of thriving trade and building projects.</p><p> These dynamics of change and socioeconomic factors reshaped the built environment of Fez. Accordingly, this dissertation examines several social and economic layers of urban change in Fez. This study challenges the notion that cities in Morocco represented a backward culture and stagnant past. It also articulates that the importance of Morocco comes not only from its relations with Europe, but also from its own political, social, and economic ideals. </p><p> As trade flourished during this period, Fez rose to be an important stage for wealth and urban change. It played an essential role in the economy and political balance of Europe. As a result, a new class of powerful and wealthy merchants, Muslims and Jews, formed the new political elites of Fez. These merchants influenced the socio-economic and built environments of Fez and Morocco at large. In addition, the interaction of the wealthy merchants with Europe increased their wealth and political presence, which impacted Morocco and facilitated the presence of European powers in the country. As a result of this transformation, a struggle for power heightened and the gap between the wealthy and the poor widened. These consequences transformed the built environment of Fez; the wealthy built palatial residences and the poor struggled to survive in cramped spaces. </p><p> This study posits that the slow and cautious progress of Morocco suggests the good intentions of the rulers to promote progress and development in a variety of domestic sectors. In addition, the increased wealth from trade and investment in properties and the continuous building and renovation activities reveals that Morocco was a land of change, and Fez was a vibrant, productive urban center during the nineteenth century. Fez&rsquo;s production at the time is characterized by increased wealth from trade, land development, investment, and renovation.</p><p>

<p> American composer Jake Heggie wrote <i>Camille Claudel: Into the Fire</i> in 2012 for the Alexander String Quartet and mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. As Heggie is known for his operas <i>Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick,</i> and most recently, <i>Great Scott,</i> it is not surprising that his seven-song cycle about this passionate female French sculptor is of operatic dramaturgical and musical quality. Due to the complexities and bias that surround Claudel&rsquo;s life story, and the relative novelty of Heggie&rsquo;s music within the art song genre, there is a lack of literature regarding the presentation of an authentic performance of this cycle. This project report concentrates on providing the singer with an interpretive framework based on how Heggie&rsquo;s musical influences and tendencies, along with Gene Scheer&rsquo;s historical, first person narrative, reflect Claudel&rsquo;s life, work, and fiery personality. Through a deeper understanding of Heggie&rsquo;s music in correspondence with Scheer&rsquo;s poetry, a singer can effectively embody the unparalleled passion, artistry, and voice of Camille Claudel.</p>

This dissertation examines the intersection of art, dance, and queer sociality though Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, and their lesser-known contemporary, Fred Herko, a dancer and choreographer. Traversing art history, dance studies, and queer theory, this study uses analyses of movement, gestures, and embodiment as a bridge between the artistic and the social. In film, photography, and dance, these artists not only made art as queer artists, but their work stemmed from the form of sociality of their communities—the social and creative labor spent on seemingly unproductive ends, such as lounging together on a sofa, posing in performative-social studio sessions, or dancing in an improvised performance-party. Gestures and embodied experience became both the site of the art, and the site of the production of queer subjectivity in this watershed decade for art and queer histories. To unpack their cultural significance, I draw on the work of anthropologist Marcel Mauss on “techniques of the body,” and recent scholarship on embodiment and subjectivity. I propose queer gestures as dances of “inefficiency” in the Maussian sense, that is, as techniques of the body that do not confirm or sustain the social scripts of somatic norms. Given the contemporaneous debates about work, leisure, and alienation in the 1960s, inefficient techniques—as represented in the recurrent motif of the recumbent, languorous male body, for example—can also be read as a critique of industrial efficiency and heteronormative definitions of (re)productivity. Through this focus on bodily techniques, I open up a dialogue between this “underground” body of work with contemporaneous artistic milieus in which the body played an important role, including in 1960s sculpture, proto-feminist practices, postmodern dance, photography, and experimental theater. Throughout I also foreground the intertwinement of dance culture and queer culture. Drawing on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s reading of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, this study interprets artistic practices through a reparative lens, drawing together a queer repertoire made up of inefficient moves—just as the artists’ engagements with, and making of, dance culture and queer culture were reparative: an accretive practice of assemblage for imaginative and embodied sustenance. / History of Art and Architecture

Abstract not available.