Master of Visual Arts / The title Normal What refers to a group of paintings that emerged from my Masters of Visual Arts 2004/05 studio project. Individual paintings are chronological self portrait reflecting upon my own experiences and those in the wider community who at some point in their lives have had to endure the struggles, and negative stigma that is so often attached to those who have become marginalised and detached from mainstream society. People found in this category include the disabled, homeless, unemployed, and those with addiction problems. Each painting bears a close connection with techniques associated with abstract expressionist painting. This radiates through the vast expanse of drips, stains and explosions which appear to suffocate the paintings delicate monochrome surface. Strong references to Kristeva’s theory on Abjection arrive through the aggressive and violent outbursts of paint that evoke an atmosphere of symbolic horror, personal dysfunction and social oppression. This emerges out of the shadows and private spaces of the painting’s domestic interior. Deep emotional, psychological, sociological sensitivities are raised throughout my studio practice. Combined with a series of unresolved tensions, and questions surrounding normality run deep a consequence of society’s push for normality are being felt most acutely by those effected by this form of sociology. The ideas raised through my studio project had a profound influence on the research being conducted for the dissertation. Kristeva’s theory on Abjection, along side the practices of Eva Hesse, Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin emerged from a group of highly emotional abstract paintings. This strengthened the connection between the studio project and the dissertation. Aimed at deepening a personal understanding an commitment to researching the subject of normality and how it could be successfully articulated through a visual narrative.

Master of Visual Arts / The title Normal What refers to a group of paintings that emerged from my Masters of Visual Arts 2004/05 studio project. Individual paintings are chronological self portrait reflecting upon my own experiences and those in the wider community who at some point in their lives have had to endure the struggles, and negative stigma that is so often attached to those who have become marginalised and detached from mainstream society. People found in this category include the disabled, homeless, unemployed, and those with addiction problems. Each painting bears a close connection with techniques associated with abstract expressionist painting. This radiates through the vast expanse of drips, stains and explosions which appear to suffocate the paintings delicate monochrome surface. Strong references to Kristeva’s theory on Abjection arrive through the aggressive and violent outbursts of paint that evoke an atmosphere of symbolic horror, personal dysfunction and social oppression. This emerges out of the shadows and private spaces of the painting’s domestic interior. Deep emotional, psychological, sociological sensitivities are raised throughout my studio practice. Combined with a series of unresolved tensions, and questions surrounding normality run deep a consequence of society’s push for normality are being felt most acutely by those effected by this form of sociology. The ideas raised through my studio project had a profound influence on the research being conducted for the dissertation. Kristeva’s theory on Abjection, along side the practices of Eva Hesse, Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin emerged from a group of highly emotional abstract paintings. This strengthened the connection between the studio project and the dissertation. Aimed at deepening a personal understanding an commitment to researching the subject of normality and how it could be successfully articulated through a visual narrative.

Pour respecter les droits d’auteur, la version électronique de ce mémoire a été dépouillée de ses documents visuels et audio‐visuels. La version intégrale du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal. / Marc Chagall est un artiste juif qui a défié l’interdiction mosaïque de représenter la divinité. Il a entre autres réalisé plusieurs tableaux sur le thème de la Crucifixion, un sujet particulièrement délicat pour un artiste attaché à son identité juive et à un art à tendance autobiographique. Ce mémoire examine les conditions qui ont permis l’adoption et le développement, par Chagall, d’une iconographie revisitée d’un important motif chrétien. Parmi les circonstances qui ont facilité l’hybridation culturelle à laquelle se livre Chagall dans ses Crucifixions, il faut signaler la liberté nouvelle, à la fois au niveau des dispositifs figuratifs et du traitement pictural, apportée par le modernisme dans l’approche des grands genres traditionnels dont relève la peinture religieuse. Dans un tout autre registre, le mémoire se penche sur les circonstances historiques exceptionnelles ayant exercé une pression pour que l’expérience tragique des Juifs du XXe siècle trouve à s’exprimer dans des images à portée universelle. / Marc Chagall is a Jewish artist who challenged the Mosaic interdiction to represent the deity. He has among others in the modern period made several paintings on the theme of the Crucifixion, a particularly sensitive issue for an artist attached to his Jewish identity and practising an art with a strong autobiographical component. This dissertation examines the conditions which allowed the adoption and the development, by Chagall, of an important Christian subject whose iconography he freely revisited. Among the circumstances that facilitated the cultural hybridization in which Chagall engaged in his Crucifixion, we must point out the new freedom, both at the level of figurative devices and pictorial treatment, brought by modernism in the approach of major traditional genres to which religious painting belongs. On a quite different register, the dissertation examines the exceptional historic circumstances met by Chagall before and during the execution of the Crucifixions. These circumstances have exerted pressure that allowed the tragic experience of the Jews of the XXth century to find expression in images of universal significance.

A defining feature of American abstract expressionist painting is its enormous size and scale. Heroic ambition, the vast American landscape, and the sense of "something big" happening in American painting are often cited as determining factors in this phenomenon. This dissertation examines how Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko not only painted large-scale canvases but, following trends in modern architecture, shifted their painting towards the construction of architectural environments, thus promoting the transformation of painting from a window in the wall to a wall without a window. The artist and architect Tony Smith, a close friend and colleague of these painters, played an active role in encouraging their interest in modern architecture. As a result of their investigations into the physical, as well as conceptual, limits of the canvas, these artists shifted the viewer’s experience from a perceptual experience of pictorial space to a physical encounter with actual space. In contradiction to the notion of the purely optical, one could describe this as a somatic viewing experience, tactile and active, which anticipated specific concerns of 1960s minimalism. This achievement redefines Pollock's, Newman's, and Rothko's legacy to the subsequent generation of artists and places their production into a broader historical framework. / text

Marc Chagall est un artiste juif qui a défié l’interdiction mosaïque de représenter la divinité. Il a entre autres réalisé plusieurs tableaux sur le thème de la Crucifixion, un sujet particulièrement délicat pour un artiste attaché à son identité juive et à un art à tendance autobiographique. Ce mémoire examine les conditions qui ont permis l’adoption et le développement, par Chagall, d’une iconographie revisitée d’un important motif chrétien. Parmi les circonstances qui ont facilité l’hybridation culturelle à laquelle se livre Chagall dans ses Crucifixions, il faut signaler la liberté nouvelle, à la fois au niveau des dispositifs figuratifs et du traitement pictural, apportée par le modernisme dans l’approche des grands genres traditionnels dont relève la peinture religieuse. Dans un tout autre registre, le mémoire se penche sur les circonstances historiques exceptionnelles ayant exercé une pression pour que l’expérience tragique des Juifs du XXe siècle trouve à s’exprimer dans des images à portée universelle. / Marc Chagall is a Jewish artist who challenged the Mosaic interdiction to represent the deity. He has among others in the modern period made several paintings on the theme of the Crucifixion, a particularly sensitive issue for an artist attached to his Jewish identity and practising an art with a strong autobiographical component. This dissertation examines the conditions which allowed the adoption and the development, by Chagall, of an important Christian subject whose iconography he freely revisited. Among the circumstances that facilitated the cultural hybridization in which Chagall engaged in his Crucifixion, we must point out the new freedom, both at the level of figurative devices and pictorial treatment, brought by modernism in the approach of major traditional genres to which religious painting belongs. On a quite different register, the dissertation examines the exceptional historic circumstances met by Chagall before and during the execution of the Crucifixions. These circumstances have exerted pressure that allowed the tragic experience of the Jews of the XXth century to find expression in images of universal significance. / Pour respecter les droits d’auteur, la version électronique de ce mémoire a été dépouillée de ses documents visuels et audio‐visuels. La version intégrale du mémoire a été déposée au Service de la gestion des documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Denna uppsats utgår från målningen Vir Heroicus Sublimis från 1950 av den abstrakta expressionisten Barnett Newman och installationen One and Three Chairs från 1965 av konceptkonstnären Joseph Kousuth som en undersökande metod för att förstå intentionen med mitt eget verk Sitta från kandidatutställningen Lampa, Blomma på Konstfack hösten 2020. Arbetet med uppsatsen har haft en undersökande form från början till slut utifrån fria associationer mellan Sitta och de konsthistoriska verken som ingång.

The Emma Lake Artists’ Workshops from the 1950s to the 1970s were a series of professional workshops held in northern Saskatchewan, under the auspices of the University of Saskatchewan and Regina College, for the creation and advancement of a dynamic arts culture in the province and as a way for the individual artists there to overcome feelings of isolation from the Canadian cultural hubs. Throughout the course of the Workshops provincial and federal attitudes, and cultural policies and perspectives on cultural nation building exerted an overarching influence in the shaping of the Workshops. The Workshops drew the attention and support of many established celebrity U.S. artists and it is due to their presence and influence at the Workshops that it is possible to examine the provincial and national response to perceived U.S. cultural imperialism. The founding and maturity of the Workshops is a case study of the ways in which the politics of Canadian nationalism and the effects of U.S. cultural imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries interacted to impact the growth and development of art communities across Canada. The Workshops serve as an example of the effects, on a regional art movement, of Canada’s relationship with the United States, and Canadian response to the perceived threat of cultural imperialism from the U.S. Because the Workshops were a microcosm of cultural production, involving artists who, aside from their participation at Emma Lake, were often fairly isolated from the ebb and flow of art currents inherent to larger cultural centers, the Workshops are also an important case study of the effects of national and provincial policy on the regional arts. The Workshops’ history reveals that ideas of nationalism, regionalism and continentalism can come together to have a profound and unique effect on the development of an art community. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2011-12-20 17:29:24.88

El propósito de este estudio es abordar el concepto de espacio y, en particular, su desocupación, a través de tres obras: Caja Vacía/Metafísica de Jorge Oteiza, Who´s afraid of red, yellow and blue de Barnett Newman y el Pabellón de Alemania de Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. El discurso se construye a través de un transitar sobre la banda de Moebius y en su vaivén y en su doblez aparecen y desparecen imágenes, ideas y textos sobre los que fluye la voluntad de construir una interpretación nueva sobre el objeto descrito. Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze y Gaston Bachelard son los tres sostenes teóricos de esta estructura. Y más cerca y más lejos de este texto siempre se mantiene la difícil tarea de entender cuál es la forma de habitar y de ser (Ich bin) del hombre en la tierra. / The purpose of this study is to address the concept of space and, in particular, its disoccupation through three different pieces of work: Empty/Metaphysical Box by Jorge Oteiza, Who´s afraid of red, yellow and blue by Barnett Newman and German Pavilion by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The discourse is constructed through a move on the Moebius band, its swing and double apparition and disappearance of images, ideas and texts which build a new interpretation of the subject matter. Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze and Gaston Bachelard are the three theorists of this structure. The difficult task of understanding what is the way of living and being of man (Ich bin) on earth always remains what is closer and further away from this text.