This thesis provides a detailed analysis of an Isolario, or a printed book of maps of the Aegean Islands, created in 1485 by an anonymous author called Bartolommeo da li Sonetti. Through a thorough analysis of the material properties and content of the book, this thesis seeks to revise previous scholarly interpretations of this long under-studied work of cartography. Examination of five extant copies of the 1485 Isolario and the alterations made to the pages by their owners reveals much about how the volume was consumed, read and utilized in fifteenth and sixteenth century. In opposition to previous conceptions of this work as a functional travel guide used by mariners to navigate the Aegean, this thesis argues that instead, the information contained in the book only provides superficial resemblances to functionally useful content and was instead consumed by an elite audience of ‘arm chair travellers.’

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This dissertation analyzes American World War II propaganda generated by the Office of War Information (OWI), the nation's primary propaganda agency from 1942 to 1945. The visual rhetoric of printed OWI propaganda, including posters, brochures, newspaper graphics, and magazine illustrations, demonstrated affinities with advertising and modern art and exhibited an increasingly conservative tone as the war progressed. While politically progressive bureaucrats initially molded the OWI's graphic agenda, research reveals how politicians suppressed graphics that displayed the war's violence, racial integration, and progressive gender roles in favor of images resembling commercial advertisements. To articulate the manner in which issues of American self-representation evolved during the war, this study examines the graphic work of artists and designers such as Charles Alston, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Coiner, Ben Shahn, and Norman Rockwell. The investigation unfolds across four chapters. The first chapter examines the institutional origins of American World War II propaganda by exploring the shifting content of New Deal promotional efforts during the 1930s and early 1940s. This analysis is critical, as government agencies used propaganda not only to support economic recovery during the Great Depression, but also to prepare Americans for war before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The second chapter analyzes the ways OWI increasingly suppressed depictions of violence as the war progressed. While the agency distributed traumatic images of Axis hostility early in the war, such work was later deemed "too aggressive" by former advertising executives turned federal bureaucrats who preferred more friendly, appealing graphics. The third chapter focuses on propaganda intended for African Americans, whose support for the war was divided due to racist Jim Crow legislation. This section analyzes OWI efforts to address the nation's largest racial minority through posters, brochures, and newspaper graphics. The fourth chapter examines the OWI's efforts to influence middle-class white women, a demographic of consumers whose influence grew as the war progressed. This includes an examination of the OWI's role in modifying the "Rosie the Riveter" mythology in contemporary advertising to encourage women to pursue jobs outside of factory work.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University. / The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship between art and religion as found int he thought of Jacques Maritain and Paul Tillich in order to throw light upon the problems of the emergence of tensions and conflicts when art and religion confront each other. Tillich and Maritain are considered separately in the first two parts; in the last part they are brought together for comparison and evaluation. Tillich's position is considered in relation to his notion of the symbol since it is this notion which permeates the whole of his thought and provides the key to his entire system. Religion provides the most significant meaning of, and types of, symbolism; art is one of the most illuminating of all cultural creations in providing insights into ultimate reality. Maritain's concept of art is related especially to his consideration of infused contemplation although other facets of religion are included. Infused contemplation and art are alike in their mode of knowledge (connaturality), superiority, self-sufficiency, and operation by love [TRUNCATED]

This dissertation restores the validity of an interdisciplinary use of the term "Mannerism" to the student of the Humanities interested in Italian sixteenth-century visual arts, music, and literature. The concept is not advocated as a movement (an -ism), but as a necessary critical category, a definable style, and a rich cultural period. Mannerism as a period style is most polemical, and more recent critical approaches have discredited the study of "style" in general. Still, the awareness of--and desire for--radical departure from the the High Renaissance ideals among mid-to-later Cinquecento painters, writers, and musicians testifies to the existence of Mannerism. Powerful evidence to this effect is located in specific shared attributes of many paintings, poems, and madrigals--as well as theoretical writings--of the second half of the sixteenth century. A correct understanding of these art works is tied to establishing the historical and stylistic context, which is best described by the concept of Mannerism. / Specific and contrasting definitions of Mannerism are documented in the first part of the study, which also discusses the etymology of the concept, the language of interart studies, and the fall from grace of Zeitgeist within cultural history. A survey of modern criticism of the term/category reveals multiple problems of definition and approach, but none powerful enough to warrant a call to abandon the term. The analysis of criticism offered spotlights concepts which are intended to free art works from the traditional strictures of "Renaissance" and "Baroque." / These broad concepts are then tested for their usefulness in three chapters, and each art form addressed speaks in differing but clear ways of Mannerism. A focus on the fresco painting in Florence and Bologna in the 1580s by Bernardino Poccetti and Annibale Carracci serves to approach Mannerism through the "back door." The lesser-known Poccetti represents the fading stages of Mannerism in the visual arts, while Annibale is one of the first spokesmen for anti-Mannerism. Correspondences between the Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso and the Maniera then provide the avenue for a discussion of shared Mannerist aesthetics in painting and literature. Finally, significant similarities in the theory, language, and function of Cinquecento art and music point to the limited role, yet very real presence, of Mannerism in music. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-10, Section: A, page: 3621. / Major Professor: David Darst. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

The Harlem Renaissance was an important cultural event in African-American history. A great amount of work exists that showcases the talents of both visual and literary artists. Yet, unlike the literary artists, the Harlem visual artists have not been validated by modern art critics. Therefore, this study raises pertinent questions about the omission of these artists: (1) What are the reasons for exclusion of Harlem artists from major American modern art texts? (2) What criteria or standards contributes to modernism's absolutism? (3) Are the tools and assumptions of the modernist critique sufficient to define and evaluate Harlem Renaissance art? (4) If not, what critical, interpretative and theoretical approaches provide the most useful ways of defining that movement's art and its artists? / With reference to the first and second questions, this study will argue that the exclusion and depreciation of Harlem Renaissance art results from an unwillingness in art historical discourse to come to terms with "otherness." Also, certain aspects of primitivism, which received cult status in the 1920s, will be examined. / In addressing the third question, I will acknowledge the debt of African-American artists to European and American models. However, the choice of subjects and themes, iconography, and stylistic development were dictated by modes and ideologies specific to the black experience. / My methodology for exploring the fourth question will be based on apost-modernist critique. This post-modernist perspective will encompass post-structuralism, pluralism and multiculturalism. At the center of post-modernist methodology is protest. My argument will be aimed specifically at the absolutism of modernism. This argument for a pluralistic approach to art historical discourse will rest on "co-equality." Only through the existence of "co-equality" will these artists be properly validated in the history of art. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-09, Section: A, page: 3245. / Major Professor: Lauren Weingarden. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

This dissertation examines nine representative unfinished works of art. It begins with the Van Eycks's Ghent Altar (1432), an example of the practice, common in the medieval era of having a work of art left unfinished by one artist completed by another. Leonardo da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi (1481-82) and Michelangelo's Boboli Captives (c. 1519) raise the issue of determining the reasons why works have been left unfinished. Mozart's Requiem (1791) and Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) represent works left unfinished because of the artists' deaths. / Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony (1822), Rodin's Gates of Hell (1880-1900), and Duchamp's Large Glass (1912-23) were all intended to be completed but left unfinished during the artists' lifetimes for artistic reasons. Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (1797) represents works not actually unfinished but deliberately presented as fragments by the artist. / Critical issues raised by unfinished works are considered. Unfinishedness means different things in the context of different works, and it is not possible to have one definition that can be applied to all unfinished works. Unfinished works can provide insight that might otherwise be unavailable about the artist and the artist's ideas about art and aesthetics. The reason why a work of art was left unfinished has considerable significance. Nevertheless, the aesthetic character of the work itself still determines the nature of the interaction of the audience with the work and the role of the critic. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-02, Section: A, page: 0324. / Major Professor: Douglass Seaton. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

No description available.

<p> There is a peculiar method in the area of procedural narrative called <i> emergent narrative:</i> instead of automatically inventing stories or deploying authored narrative content, a system simulates a storyworld out of which narrative may emerge from the happenstance of character activity in that world. It is the approach taken by some of the most successful works in the history of computational media (<i>The Sims, Dwarf Fortress</i>), but curiously also some of its most famous failures (Sheldon Klein's automatic novel writer, <i>Tale-Spin</i>). How has this been the case? To understand the successes, we might ask this essential question: what is the pleasure of emergent narrative? I contend that the form works more like nonfiction than fiction&mdash;emergent stories actually happen&mdash;and this produces a peculiar aesthetics that undergirds the appeal of its successful works. What then is the pain of emergent narrative? There is a ubiquitous tendency to misconstrue the raw transpiring of a simulation (or a trace of that unfolding) as being a narrative artifact, but such material will almost always lack story structure. </p><p> So, how can the pain of emergent narrative be alleviated while simultaneously maintaining the pleasure? This dissertation introduces a refined approach to the form, called <i>curationist emergent narrative</i> (or just <i> curationism</i>), that aims to provide an answer to this question. Instead of treating the raw material of simulation as a story, in curationism that material is <i>curated</i> to construct an actual narrative artifact that is then mounted in a full-fledged media experience (to enable human encounter with the artifact). This recasts story generation as an act of recounting, rather than invention. I believe that curationism can also explain how both wild successes and phenomenal failures have entered the oeuvre of emergent narrative: in successful works, humans have taken on the burden of curating an ongoing simulation to construct a storied understanding of what has happened, while in the failures humans have not been willing to do the necessary curation. Without curation, actual stories cannot obtain in emergent narrative. </p><p> But what if a storyworld could curate itself? That is, can we build systems that <i>automatically</i> recount what has happened in simulated worlds? In the second half of this dissertation, I provide an autoethnography and a collection of case studies that recount my own personal (and collaborative) exploration of automatic curation over the course of the last six years. Here, I report the technical, intellectual, and media-centric contributions made by three simulation engines (<i>World, Talk of the Town, Hennepin</i>) and three second-order media experiences that are respectively driven by those engines (<i>Diol/Diel/Dial, Bad News, Sheldon County</i>). In total, this dissertation provides a loose history of emergent narrative, an apologetics of the form, a polemic against it, a holistic refinement (maintaining the pleasure while killing the pain), and reports on a series of artifacts that represent a gradual instantiation of that refinement. To my knowledge, this is the most extensive treatment of emergent narrative to yet appear. </p><p>

<p> David Lamelas&rsquo;s life-long research projects have included examinations of social phenomena. The artist takes interest in the dynamics of mass communication and media, urban mundane activities, and documentary films. He employs the element of time often in the structure of his art as an innovative approach by which to study his subjects. </p><p> I argue that in pairing the element of time with social phenomena, Lamelas exposes how people&rsquo;s perceptions, both the visual experience and the thought processes impacted by these experiences, tend to work, therefore leading viewers to consider systems of knowledge and their own accumulation of knowledge. His artwork provokes viewers to open their minds to new ways of seeing and thinking, stimulates self-awareness, and challenges their concepts of knowledge.</p><p>

<p> Early European travel literature was a prominent source from which information about the New World was presented to a general audience. Geographic regions situated within what is now referred to as Latin America were particularly visible in these accounts. Information regarding the religious customs and styles of dress associated with the indigenous peoples who inhabited these lands were especially curious points of interest to the European readers who were attempting to understand the lifestyles of these so-called &ldquo;savages.&rdquo; These reports, no matter their sources, always claimed to be true and accurate descriptions of what they were documenting. Despite these claims, it is clear that the dominant Western/Christian perspective from which these sources were derived established an extremely visible veil of bias. As a result, the texts and images documenting these accounts display highly flawed and misinformed representations of indigenous Latin American culture. Although it is now understood that these sources were often greatly exaggerated, the texts and images within them are still widely circulated in present-day museum exhibitions. When positioned in this framework, they are meant to be educational references for the audiences that view them. However, museums often condense the amount of information they provide, causing significant details of historical context to be excluded. </p><p> With such considerable omission being common in museum exhibitions, it causes one to question if this practice might be perpetuating the distribution of misleading information. Drawing on this question, I seek, with this research, to investigate how early European representations of Latin American culture in travel literature may be linked to current issues of misrepresentation. Particularly, my research is concerned with finding connections that may be present with these texts and images and the negative aspects of cultural appropriation. Looking specifically at representations of Aztec culture, I consult three texts and their accompanying illustrations from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries to analyze their misrepresentational qualities, and how they differed between time periods and regions. Finally, I use this information to analyze museum exhibition practices and how they could be improved when displaying complex historical frameworks like those of indigenous Latin American cultures.</p><p>