The statement of the problem for this creative thesis project was: How to construct photomontages that expressed the photographer's personal concerns regarding the human condition and the environmental status of the earth. Secondary components of this problem were the use of color within the work and how to reproduce this color. The goal of this project was: To stimulate individual awareness resulting in a reevaluation of one's own position and responsibilities towards humanity and the environmental status of the earth.A description of the significance of this problem is given along with supportive research. This project provided the photographer with an opportunity to use an artistic process to express environmental concerns that grew out of the photographer's environmental studies.Methods used to solve this problem included the collection of visual elements from readily available pre-printed material such as magazines and books. By combining these elements together in a new context a collage or montage was created. After the montage image was complete it was photographed on color slide film. These color slides were then placed in a projector system connected to a color laser copier. Each slide was projected on to the bed of the copier and scanned. This scanner communicated the image's digital signal to a color laser printer which produced a color laser print.Finally, each photomontage color print was window matted on white 100% acid free rag mat board and placed in a white frame for exhibition. An exhibition was held in the Ball State University Theatre Lounge/Gallery. Included in the appendices of this thesis is a copy of the exhibition flyer, artist statement and press release.A description of each individual piece is provided within_ this thesis. Addressed in this section are the formal properties of each photomontage. Techniques used in the construction of each photomontage are outlined. The expressive elements are identified arid their functions explored as they apply to the montage image. It is within this section that the photographer's opinions and feelings are expressed.The last section of this thesis is the evaluation and conclusion. In the photographer's opinion this project was a success because the photomontages express the personal concerns of the photographer. Also, these photomontages did stimulate awareness and reevaluation in the audience as reported by members of the audience to the photographer. / Department of Art

This dissertation presents the early work of Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula and Fred Lonidier as an attempt to intertwine political and aesthetic practice that was fundamentally distinct from the dominant, contemporaneous models of politicized avant-garde art. Throughout the first half of the 1970s these artists were in constant, close dialogue with one another, and, for the first time, this dissertation attempts to read their work during this period as a shared project. Considering the initial few years of their careers, it is an effort to understand how their practice emerged, and how it set itself apart from predominant forms of Conceptual art, post-Minimalism and institutional critique. In particular, it will explore how these three artists conceived of a relationship between political and aesthetic practice that was not dependent upon a self-reflexive investigation of their own art work's conditions of possibility. Drawing on realist and documentary traditions from the first half of the 20th century, Sekula, Rosler and Lonidier sought to create art that was always related to something beyond itself, developed in relation to the social world in which it existed. These artists neither assumed dependence on a given institutional, discursive formation, nor held out for an absolute escape from the institutions of the art world. Instead, they moved strategically between various locations, various publics and various discourses in a continual attempt to speak intelligibly within those sites most relevant to the political struggles they addressed. In order to understand this strategic movement, it is necessary to read these artists’ works as utterances within momentary, contested discursive fields. As a result, this dissertation will provide close readings of several works through a detailed consideration of the particular situations in which they were created, displayed and received. Whether as flyers handed out at protests or self-consciously gallery friendly photo-text works, every piece will be read as a precise intervention within a specific location. Following this approach, each chapter focuses on a small number of works and reads them within the social and political events they both instigate and enter into, whether those are, as in the first chapter, a public dispute over the nature of art between two academic departments, or, as in the second chapter, the protests against the Vietnam War. Through each of these analyses this dissertation outlines these artists' shared attempt to produce art that only emerges through the discourses into which it enters, but is never entirely home wherever it might find itself. By describing this fundamental premise of Rosler, Sekula and Lonidier's work, this dissertation both seeks to provide a more adequate accounting of this group’s shared project, and an alternative model for conceiving of the relation between political engagement and the post-war avant-garde.

My dissertation examines the role played by the surrealist object in the avant-garde strategies of the French surrealist group, in the difficult political circumstances of the 1930s. In my reading, the surrealist object is located in a critical relation to modern art; it depends on the invention of collage for its own realization, but it also attempts to supersede modernism through an act of desublimation, the return of art to its sexual origins. A n understanding of this critical relation is established through Peter Burger's Theory of the Avant-Garde, through the use of psychoanalytic theory, and through an understanding of the difference between Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics. The object's invention in 1931 is then related to the cultural debates occurring on the revolutionary left in France and the Soviet Union. The surrealists wish to achieve an alliance with the Parti Communiste Francais, but avoid the politicization of the cultural field undertaken by the Communists in both countries. They answer the demand for the politicization of art with the supersession of art, for which the object provides a model. In the 1930s, the surrealists develop the notion of a revolutionary science that would forge a relation between action and interpretation. They attempt to indicate such a relation in a number of experimental texts, taking unconscious thought as the object of their investigation. As a central category of their reflection in this period, the surrealist objects are often given as extra-aesthetic examples of such thought in physical form. The rise of the Popular Front and the move of the P.C.F. towards a reformist politics presented a crisis for the surrealist movement. A number of surrealists, like Tristan Tzara, Rene Char and Roger Caillois, split with their group in order to work with the Popular Front, while the larger part of the surrealist group broke with the P.C.F. and the Soviet Union. The break with Stalinism led the surrealists to the point of an alliance with the modern art they had once claimed to supersede; from now on, interpretation would be preserved, at the expense of action. The surrealist object, which had exemplified the relation between action and interpretation, begins to recede from view after 1936, as the avant-garde project that had brought it into being became increasingly difficult to sustain.

My dissertation examines the role played by the surrealist object in the avant-garde strategies of the French surrealist group, in the difficult political circumstances of the 1930s. In my reading, the surrealist object is located in a critical relation to modern art; it depends on the invention of collage for its own realization, but it also attempts to supersede modernism through an act of desublimation, the return of art to its sexual origins. A n understanding of this critical relation is established through Peter Burger's Theory of the Avant-Garde, through the use of psychoanalytic theory, and through an understanding of the difference between Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics. The object's invention in 1931 is then related to the cultural debates occurring on the revolutionary left in France and the Soviet Union. The surrealists wish to achieve an alliance with the Parti Communiste Francais, but avoid the politicization of the cultural field undertaken by the Communists in both countries. They answer the demand for the politicization of art with the supersession of art, for which the object provides a model. In the 1930s, the surrealists develop the notion of a revolutionary science that would forge a relation between action and interpretation. They attempt to indicate such a relation in a number of experimental texts, taking unconscious thought as the object of their investigation. As a central category of their reflection in this period, the surrealist objects are often given as extra-aesthetic examples of such thought in physical form. The rise of the Popular Front and the move of the P.C.F. towards a reformist politics presented a crisis for the surrealist movement. A number of surrealists, like Tristan Tzara, Rene Char and Roger Caillois, split with their group in order to work with the Popular Front, while the larger part of the surrealist group broke with the P.C.F. and the Soviet Union. The break with Stalinism led the surrealists to the point of an alliance with the modern art they had once claimed to supersede; from now on, interpretation would be preserved, at the expense of action. The surrealist object, which had exemplified the relation between action and interpretation, begins to recede from view after 1936, as the avant-garde project that had brought it into being became increasingly difficult to sustain. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Master's Degree in Technology: Fine Art(Printmaking), Technikon Natal, 2000. / This dissertation is concerned with the effects of censorship on the arts community during the apartheid era in South Africa, and in the post apartheid era that followed. Through interviews and various sources, a picture will be presented that examines the contrasts and similarities of the two eras. Chapter One will present an overview of South African history, from its beginnings in 1653 to the first popular election in 1994. It will show how the religious beliefs and accompanying attitudes of the in-coming colonialists created a social atmosphere in which the system of apartheid was able to flourish and grow. It will also show how apartheid ultimately crumbled under pressure from growing resistance and violence among the people it sought to control. Chapter Two is comprised primarily of the results of several interviews with selected artists, showing how the various individuals thought about censorship, how they dealt with all the restrictive laws, and how they were able to pursue their art making under these conditions. Personal experiences illuminate the effects of such censorship, and opinions about the value and necessity of censorship are summarized. Various of the interviewees talk specifically about what actions they took under the apartheid regime, and how they viewed, and continue to view, the role of the artist in society. Chapter Three uses several case studies to illustrate what is currently happening concerning censorship and art in the post-apartheid era. Opinions and reactions to current conditions will be presented, and specific instances of censorship or attempted censorship will offer a comparison with the previous era. This will illustrate how much liberty artists today enjoy in South Africa. Several significant issues are raised by such examples; Issues of potency and importance to any culture. Finally, the artists themselves look ahead, and provide a picture of the future for arts in this society . / M

Orientador: Marcelo Augusto Totti / Banca: Rodrigo Czajka / Banca: Thaís Regina Pavez / Resumo: A presente pesquisa aborda o engajamento da bossa nova por meio da análise da obra fonográfica de Sérgio Ricardo, momento de impasses de uma geração de artistas que se debateu no limiar do engajamento artístico, da politização das artes e da emergência de uma indústria cultural no Brasil. Temos no período um projeto desenvolvimentista que contempla grande parte da classe média no Brasil, dessa mesma classe média surge um grupo de artistas e intelectuais que estão completamente relacionados com uma dimensão ideológica e política produzida em décadas anteriores, anos 1920, 1930 e 1940 (como o modernismo cultural, literatura regional, etc.) e usam da arte para tematizar questões que a política não consegue resolver. Sérgio Ricardo é um desses artistas que se sensibilizam com essas questões da realidade nacional, dos problemas da desigualdade social, da pobreza, mas eles não são oriundos dessa classe pela qual se sensibilizam. Demonstraremos como a obra de Sérgio Ricardo reflete, concomitantemente, uma síntese e um desajuste fecundo no processo de politização da arte e do artista na passagem das décadas de 1950 e 1960, tendo como referência a questão do nacional-popular e o engajamento de intelectuais e artistas contra a ditadura militar instaurada em 1964. Sérgio Ricardo demonstra através de suas canções que é possível assumir a vertente da bossa nova Nacionalista sem abandonar as formalidades estéticas da bossa nova Intimista. Aproximou-se dos músicos populares, mas nunca negou... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This research addresses the engagement of bossa nova by recording work of Sergio Ricardo's analysis, deadlocks time of a generation of artists who struggled on the threshold of artistic engagement, the politicization of the arts and the emergence of a cultural industry in Brazil. In this period we have a developmentalist project that contemplates a large part of the middle class in Brazil, from the same middle class a group of artists and intellectuals who are completely related to an ideological and political dimension produced in previous decades, 1920s, 1930s and 1940s cultural modernism, regional literature, etc.) and use art to thematize issues that politics can not solve. Sérgio Ricardo is one of those artists who are sensitive to these issues of the national reality, the problems of social inequality and poverty, but they do not come from this class by which they are sensitized. We will demonstrate how Sérgio Ricardo's work reflects, simultaneously, a fruitful synthesis and mismatch in the process of politicizing art and the artist in the 1950s and 1960s, with reference to the national-popular issue and the engagement of intellectuals and artists. Artists against the military dictatorship established in 1964. Sérgio Ricardo demonstrates through his songs that it is possible to take on the bossa nova Nacionalista side without abandoning the aesthetic formalities of bossa nova Intimista. He approached the popular musicians, but never denied the influence of jazz or class... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

This dissertation studies the creative practices of citizens who use cultural resources to engage in political criticism in contemporary Cuba. I argue that, in order to become visible as political subjects in the public sphere, these citizens appeal to cultural forms and narratives of self-representation that elucidate the struggles for recognition faced by emerging social actors. I examine blogs, garage bands, art performances, home art exhibits, digital literary supplements, improvised academies, and informal networks of publication that, as forms of aesthetic experimentation with stories of everyday life, disclose a social text. I suggest that their narrative choices emphasize their status as 'regular citizens' in order to distinguish themselves from both traditional voices of political opposition and institutionally accredited cultural producers--professional artists, academics, musicians. This recasts sites of cultural production as models of alternative citizenship where the concept of the political is re-imagined and where the commonplace, pejorative meaning of the term amateur is contested. On the fringes of the republic of letters, adjacent to traditional sites of cultural production, these oblique uses of culture consequently question legitimate forms of public speech. They demand that the way in which the relationship between aesthetics and politics in Cuba has been traditionally studied be reconsidered. Read in tandem with discourses against and about them from the lettered city--in literature, cultural criticism, film, and visual arts--I also follow the trope of the amateur under revolutionary cultural politics. I suggest that these contemporary voices have a contradictory genealogy in the cultural practices of the early decades of the Cuban Revolution. I try to show that these cultural practices become politically and socially significant because they try to resist--though not always successfully--cooptation by two forces: the remnant of bureaucratic, state-capitalist tendencies on one hand, and the rapid commercialization of popular culture for a foreign audience on the other. As a result, both the reconfigurations of the cultural field and the contested meanings of democracy in post-Cold War Cuba are re-examined through a reading of informal hubs of cultural production. The functions of culture in late socialism can be then comparatively studied by looking at an institutional framework in transition through the social and political subjectivities that are both expressed in, and constituted by, corresponding aesthetic practices and forms.

In the period following the Cinquecento Renaissance, contemporary seventeenth century Venetian artists were presented with two enormous challenges. The first was to attempt to reinterpret their visual tradition within a shifting political climate without declining into an overt stylistic retrospection. The second was to try and retain a semblance of the personification of state identity—those qualities that had been established and distinguished by Venetian art in the Cinquecento —and which were present in the visual patrimony of paintings and drawings. Carlo Ridolfi, art critic and author of Le maraviglie dell’Arte (1648) eloquently stated the problem in his biography of Giovanni Contarino, a student of Titian’s, when he praised the work of the Cinquecento masters as the epitome of artistic production to the extent that he says, “it is with reason that one could use as motto the two columns of Hercules with the words: “Ultra quid faciam?" it is in fact vain to pretend better examples, and rarer beautiful things could be made.” This dissertation considers two parallel issues at work: the stylistic legacy of Cinquecento Venetian masters and their importance in the work of their Seicento heirs, and the purposeful dissolution and sale of collections of work by those masters during the seventeenth century. The business activities of art dealers Marco Boschini (1602/5—1681), Paolo del Sera (1614—1672) and their associates are examined alongside their perceptions and criticisms of Cinquecento and Seicento artistic production, and the voracious appetite of English collectors for Venetian pictures in the opening decades of the seventeenth century is considered. Exploring the situations—political (the artist), economic (the dealer), and social (the patron)—present in Venice during the early seventeenth century and their direct relation to the perceived aesthetics of a cultural legacy, this project provides a reassessment of how established value sets in Venetian art were considered successful or not within their cultural context, and how those stylistic evaluations affected artists working in Venice during the early Seicento.

This study examines the impact of new museological theory on museum education practice at the Vancouver Art Gallery in relation to a re-installation of Emily Carr's work. It is a case study that concerns both the negotiation of meanings around Emily Carr's work as they are situated within current and traditional art historical/ historical beliefs, and the desire to offer museum visitors a more sufficient or comprehensive educational experience. The dissertation examines the installation of Carr in a variety of galleries across Canada (National Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver Art Gallery) as a means of contextualizing a range of problems associated with museum practice. The National Gallery chapter explores issues of ideology raised by the new museology. The chapter concerning the display at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria concerns the particularities of site and place (Victoria was Carr's birthplace) as well as notions of resonance and contextualization in art displays. The discussion of the Art Gallery of Ontario concerns contextualization of a different sort, the display created with a solid foundation in educational literature. A temporary exhibition of Carr's work juxtaposed with that of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun in Vancouver offers an entry point into a discussion of subjectivity and curatorial epistemic authority, while the resulting re-installation of Carr at the Vancouver Art Gallery (the case) is explored as one possible approach to issues raised in the earlier chapters, by the challenges of post-modem theorists to historical understanding, historiography, and museum practice.