This thesis explores a number of interdisciplinary writings on the Italian past by later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artistically minded critics and cultural commentators, with a view to recovering their historiographical importance. Beginning with an exploration of the parameters and scope of a genre defined as 'aesthetic history', along with some theoretical work grounded in current debates about the nature of historical representation, this thesis goes on to offer in-depth discussion of texts on the Italian past by John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence and Adrian Stokes. By offering a critical reconstruction of each author's thinking about the past, along with the cogent and ill-explored engagements they make with historiographical study, this thesis affords the reader a better understanding of some of the tensions present in historical writing - tensions surrounding issues of epistemology, visuality, psychology and materiality - during what were decades of great change in historical thinking. Moreover, this thesis offers a detailed investigation into the important role played by the Italian past in the aesthetic-historical canon, which in turn produces a more complicated picture of the connections between literature, aesthetics and historiography during this period.

An analysis of the thought of Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte) with regards to his literary tastes and influences as part of his wider philosophy. The thesis considers how the literary influences to which Napoleon was subject impacted upon his aesthetic ideas and in turn affected the nature of his rule.

This reflexive account is of a phenomenological study that took place over two years. It explores how a group of primary-aged children perceive, express and reflect on their embodiment through movement. Children aged between four and eleven took part in sessions of yoga, somatic movement and developmental play during the school day. The data include field notes, observations, a reflexive journal, photographs of and by the children, their drawings, mark-makings, writing and posters. Children were also interviewed at the end of the study, when they had an opportunity to reflect on all their work and experiences. All the children were capable of expressing and reflecting on their experiences, and the oldest children in particular appeared to enjoy and seemed to benefit from the reflective process. By linking together a sense of self-awareness and reflection, the children appeared able to gain insight into their embodied experience and reflect on emotions, feelings and events. Embodiment is a process as much of a state of being, and as such has implications for perceptions of mind and body, learning, and reflective practice. This approach to embodied reflective practice thus has potential for educators, and teacher trainers as well as direct work with children.

In this thesis, the role and the significance of the Kantian theory of art and concept of genius in Kant&rsquo / s system is examined. In this examination, it is aimed to answer the question of the meaning of being human in Kant&rsquo / s system through art and artist. To this end, Kant&rsquo / s consideration of art from the spectator&rsquo / s standpoint and ignorance of artist&rsquo / s perspective are criticized. In conformity with this criticism, throughout the thesis, depending on Kant&rsquo / s conceptualization of the genius, the artist&rsquo / s perspective and artistic experience are tried to be exhibited. In order to understand and interpret the artist&rsquo / s perspective, the meaning of the concepts of nature and freedom that arise along with the concept of genius is clarified. By considering the effects of the freedom and the natural necessity on genius, it is asserted that since the necessity of the naturally endowed talent of genius and the freedom of the productive act of genius cause to the one and the same act, the creative activity of genius refers to the unity of all the dualities in the Kantian system and hence to the completeness of the system. As a result of this claim, art, which arises from the dual nature of human, becomes the way to unite this duality.

This thesis aims to explore the role and significance of the aesthetic experience in Kant&rsquo / s philosophy. To accomplish this aim / firstly, the role of aesthetic power of judgment is discovered in subject&rsquo / s production of truths about the sensible world which is attributed to the cognitive power of understanding. Secondly, the role of aesthetic power of judgment in subject&rsquo / s representation of the good and in formation of moral judgments is demonstrated. Aesthetic power of judgment which enables both the reception and production of the beauty as a necessary harmony and unity brings an aesthetic and intuitive determinability to the acknowledged transcendent field for knowledge. The thesis is concluded by the affirmation that aesthetic power of judgment as an orienting interpretative power is a necessary condition for the subject, who is limited in knowledge and sensibly conditioned in the realization of moral purposes, in order to know and to have a moral life.

In this dissertation, focusing on the problem of &ldquo / aesthetic form&rdquo / and its relation to the distinction between natural and artistic beauty, it is argued that the Japanese philosopher Kitar

Photorealism was a movement which focused on meticulously reproducing the quotidian photograph on a large scale. Despite its popularity from between 1967-1977, it was often considered by critics to be vacuous and anachronistic. This was due to several factors, most significant of which were its focus on the outmoded practice of pictorial realism, the banality of its subjects and its apparent plagiaristic approach to the photograph-as-source. This neutral and cool aesthetic was misunderstood as superficial and served to render the movement the very antithesis of aesthetic creativity. This thesis seeks to reconsider such apparent objectivity in Photorealist painting by presenting a semiotic reading of Photorealist practice that will form the basis of the central argument in this thesis. This argument posits that there are evidential layers of signification embedded within the making of a Photorealist work which enact perceptual, conventional and historical conditions that deny the project of visual neutrality. This argument will prove that Photorealism was not a clear continuation of traditional pictorial realism, but a more conceptual movement which questioned conceptions of the phenomenological real. It will also show how, in Photorealism’s transmutation of the photographic aesthetic, it instigated the development of a hybrid visual language – a ‘route to meaning’ – which served to occupy the vacant space between the painting and the photograph. To reveal the development of such a language, and its inherently subjectivist foundations, I will inquire into the Photorealist painting from its very beginnings – from perceptual conception to conclusion – within the realm of the artist. The methodology for such an inquiry will involve the development and application of a heuristic model, informed by a semiotic approach, which will show how reality in Photorealism is mediated and transformed in the process of (re)-presenting the photograph. This model will categorise the key stages of activity and influence in the Photorealist process, showing at each stage how visual language is engendered and compounded. By adopting such an approach this thesis will show that Photorealist paintings, contrary to much criticism, managed to establish a unique and significant manner of depicting the real that is now worthy of contemporary reappraisal.

This thesis tries to distinguish kitsch and art with the help of philosophical hermeneutics by reading it in the light of Derrida&rsquo / s interpretation of Hamlet in Specters of Marx. It defines kitsch as experience in order to go beyond both of the two main approaches, namely, the one that sees kitsch as an object and the one that reduces it to the behaviour of the subject. It tries to show that kitsch is not just an aesthetic problem, but also, a political one.

This study analyses the invisible forms of repression in the Bolivian art system by interpreting Roberto Valcárcel’s artwork in the light of Herbert Marcuse’s ideas on repression and liberation as expounded in Eros and Civilization. It considers, on the one hand, Valcárcel’s artwork in relation to the liberating role that Marcuse attributes to art (via phantasy, polymorphous eroticism, and Orphic paradigm). On the other hand, it explores the strategies devised by Valcárcel against repression, such as self-promotion, multiple texts, play, humour and unmasking certain repressive truths. The reading of Valcárcel’s work via Marcuse is supported by archival research from contemporary newspapers, exhibition documentation and Bolivian art history, which provide relevant information about the sorts of latent repression to which Valcárcel’s artworks responds. The dissertation is organised in five chapters in which examples of repressive beliefs are unveiled. Chapter One examines El Movimiento Erótico (The Erotic Movement, 1983) and the manifold strategies used by Valcárcel to escape the traps of a presumed type of sexual liberation (sexist and genital oriented) and capitalism’s culture industry. Chapter Two discusses artworks where the intentional construction of open meaning challenges the norm of a univocal creation and consumption of art. Chapter Three studies some of Valcárcel’s humorous identities in contrast with the dramatic, and overly serious self-perception of Bolivians artists. Chapter Four explores Valcárcel’s use of play, black humour and deceit as effective devices to escape hidden authoritarianism in society during dictatorial regimes. Chapter Five analyses how Valcárcel’s work unveils the latent repression in the idealisation of indigenous heritage through play and anti-thesis. The dissertation introduces a new topic into the study of art in Bolivia – veiled repression – at the same time that it sheds light on the potential of the artwork of Roberto Valcárcel to open new ways of historicizing and thinking about art in Bolivia.

Taxidermy specimens and displays have become increasingly liminal features in contemporary society. Viewed variously as historical curios, obsolete relics or more malignantly as ‘monstrosities’, they can be a source of discomfort for many. Taxidermy objects have become uncomfortable reminders of past scientific and colonial practices which have sought to capture, order and control animated life and as such have become increasingly problematic items for their owners. As a result many taxidermy displays have been dismantled and mounts relegated to ‘backstores’ to gather dust. The paradox is that taxidermy as a practice is a quest for ‘liveness’, to impute life back into the dead. Much like the taxidermist, my goal in this thesis is to revive and restore: to renew interest in and reassert the value of taxidermy collections by recovering what I shall term as the ‘biogeographies’ of their making and continued maintenance. Considerable academic attention has been paid to the ‘finished’ form and display of taxidermy specimens inside cabinets, behind glass – in other words, to their representation. By way of contrast, this thesis recovers the relationships, practices and geographies that brought specimens to their state of enclosure, inertness and seeming fixity. These efforts are aligned with work in cultural geography seeking to counteract ‘deadening effects’ in an active world through a prioritisation of practice (Dewsbury and Thrift 2000), and elsewhere draw on research arguments and approaches originating in historical geography, and the history of science. The thesis firstly investigates historical developments in the scientific and craft practice of taxidermy through the close study of period manuals, combined with ethnographic observations of a practicing taxidermist. Critical attention to practice then facilitates the recovery of the lifeworlds of past taxidermy workshops and the globally sited biogeographies behind the making of individual specimens and collections. The thesis required the purposeful assemblage and rehabilitation of diffuse zoological and historical remains to form unconventional archives, enabling a series of critical reflections on the scientific, creative and political potentials of taxidermy.