Taking as a guiding thread the idea of absence or emptiness as a constitutive trait of all images, this dissertation reviews how this idea has been defended or ignored throughout diverse iconoclast moments in Western Christian civilization, focusing on the possible consequences that the basculating movement of acceptance-rejection of the image's emptiness might have for contemporary approaches to the image. The iconoclast debate from the eighth century, and the works of Freud and Lacan will be used as paradigmatic moments to penetrate into the difficult relationship man has had with images and the imaginary throughout an extended period of Western Christian history.

In the northeastern United States--as elsewhere--an overemphasis on cultural-historical ceramic typologies and ceramic decoration by archaeologists has stymied research along other axes of ceramic variation. For example, little attention has been paid to the sequence of choices made by potters during the production process. The goal of this study is to examine the complex relationships among technical choices, historical context, and society during the Late Woodland period (1000-1600 A.D.) in the middle or Massachusetts portion of the Connecticut Valley. Ceramic assemblages from two New England Algonquian sites and one Mohawk Iroquois site are examined using an attribute analysis of technical choice. The attributes selected for analysis reflect choices made by potters along the production sequence: paste characteristics, vessel morphology, construction techniques, surface treatments, and firing conditions. Differences between Algonquian and Iroquoian ceramic attributes are interpreted as embodiments of profound differences in technical systems, which include intended function, the context and scale of production, and stylistic signaling. Since the two groups were interacting and sharing information during the Late Woodland period, Connecticut Valley Algonquians had access to similar kinds of cultural knowledge and technologies. Nevertheless, rather than becoming sedentary farmers, forming extensive and rigid social structures, and producing large, thin-walled, cooking pots like the Iroquois, Connecticut Valley peoples maintained fluid and mutable subsistence, settlement, and social relationships that are reflected in the their diverse and flexible ceramic traditions. Instead of assuming that New England Algonquians were not as culturally or technologically advanced as the Iroquois, I suggest that they can be understood as active agents of their own social change. As such, they made decisions concerning subsistence, settlement, and social structure. As potters, they made choices in ceramic production that both reflected and affected these decisions.

Scholars have hailed David Cox (1783-1859) as one of the pillars of English landscape painting of the early nineteenth century, together with John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. Working primarily in watercolor, Cox celebrated the English landscape in naturalistic pictures that exhibited both a reliance on and a radical departure from the earlier topographical tradition. This dissertation contextualizes and brings into sharper focus the means by which Cox’s naturalism was primarily achieved, through a roughness of brushwork and a mastery of color. He perfected a style that was based on both the topographical and the picturesque traditions while going beyond their theoretical strictures to incorporate the effects of atmosphere, wind, and light. The resulting body of work privileges both an accurate depiction of actual places and of these transient “effects,” as Cox described them. This study argues that Cox’s naturalism was informed by two aspects of his life that have largely been overlooked in the literature: his experience as a theatrical scene painter and his deep and reverent religious faith. The dissertation engages in an analysis of historical, cultural, and biographical circumstances that explains how Cox negotiated a hybrid place between the theoretical debates over ideal landscape versus picturesque landscape painting. Drawing from primary sources, it posits Cox’s compositions as derivative of elements of both schools, refined by copying Old and Contemporary Masters, yet pursuing independent choices in depicting nature truthfully and without the manipulations of antecedent schools and models. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 13, 2018. / Book of Nature, David Cox, English landscape, naturalism in landscape, theatrical scene painting, watercolour / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert Neuman, Professor Directing Dissertation; Eric Walker, University Representative; Jack Freiberg, Committee Member; Adam Jolles, Committee Member.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's a series of art censorship cases occurred in the United States. Seemingly out-of-keeping with American culture and policy, these episodes beg much explanation. Censors generally cite obscenity or blasphemy as reasons for the silencing of artists and their work. Beneath these publicly noted justifications exists an alternative explanation; as marginalized populations within American culture gained some degree of power over the last 40 years, the traditionally powerful fought back to maintain their own positions and privileges. I argue that art censorship is a symbolic battle in which the center identifies artists and their work as enemies of the culture, and social problems from which American society needs protection. The data for these assertions is based on case studies and content analysis of recent cases of art censorship. The fields of sociology and cultural studies provide the necessary theoretical framework.

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With reference to her poetry, prose, and visual arts from the 1910s to the 1950s, this dissertation considers Mina Loy’s representation of grotesque bodies within the context of the theory and artistic practice of early twentieth century avant-garde movements, particularly those most influential to her—Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism. With a focus on Loy’s representation of bodily processes, functions, or excretions and the unstable boundaries of aberrant bodies (e.g., women’s bodies, deformed or disabled bodies, dead bodies), the present work argues that Loy’s deployment of the grotesque constitutes a strategy in negotiating a place between traditional and avant-garde cultures, or what Susan Suleiman calls the “double margin.” On the one hand, Loy’s grotesque bodies challenge the Victorian sanitized bodily ideal opposed to the unrestrained female or savage body. Yet they also parody the tendency of Futurist, Dadaist, and Surrealist art to reinforce the perception of woman as Other to a stable, male norm by gendering female the uncanny, abject, irrational, primitive, and deviant. Unlike a majority of her male counterparts, Loy intimates identification with the grotesque body. In addition to articulating her sense of difference, the grotesque body, with its precarious borders and mutability, often serves in Loy’s work as concrete manifestation of a confusion and interpenetration of categories presumed distinct. Since they undermine the symbolic scaffolding of Western patriarchal culture, these “conceptual” grotesques, or slippages between categories (e.g., self and other, domestic and public, the cerebral and carnal), have a powerful subversive potential. / A Dissertation submitted to the Program of Interdisciplinary Humanities in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2017. / November 8, 2017. / Avant-garde, Dada, Futurism, Grotesque, Mina Loy, Surrealism / Includes bibliographical references. / Joann Gardner, Professor Directing Dissertation; Lisa Wakamiya, University Representative; Andrew Epstein, Committee Member; Martin Kavka, Committee Member.

Uppsatsen är historiografisk och undersöker hur konststilen Den nya sakligheten beskrivits och värderats i Sverige vid skilda tidpunkter från dess uppkomst 1919 och framåt. Här beskrivs också den svenska stilen jämfört med dess internationella motsvarigheter. Vidare analysas hur såväl kontextuella som andra orsaker påverkat de skiftande omdömen som lämnats. Resonemang förs även om stilens placering i svensk konstkanon samt dess förhållande till modernismen i stort. Till grund för undersökningen ligger ett stort antal tidningsrecensioner från utställningar samt studier av olika tiders konsthistorieverk. Även orsaker till varför stilen under vissa tider mer eller mindre ignorerats analyseras.

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The thesis advances the name of Raphael Santi, the High Renaissance artist, to be included among the famous and highly esteemed Humanists of the Renaissance period. While the artistic creativity of the Renaissance is widely recognized, the creators have traditionally been viewed as mere craftsmen. In the case of Raphael Santi, his skills as a painter have proven to be a timeless medium for the immortalizing of the elevated thinking and turbulent challenges of the time period. His interests outside of painting, including archaeology and architecture, also offer strong testimony of his Humanist background and pursuits.