La thèse étudie la question du rapport à la matière des artistes britanniques et de leurs critiques à différentes étapes de la fin du dix-huitième siècle au début du vingtième siècle. Au coeur de ce travail de recherche se trouve la notion de texture, pensée comme outil critique renvoyant à la fois à la surface peinte des oeuvres et à leur iconographie. La thèse démontre que la matérialité apparaît comme une dimension fondamentale de ce qui fait la spécificité de la peinture britannique. La notion de texture, conçue comme concept plastique plus qu'essentialiste, permet de rendre compte de certaines tendances persistantes qui structurent la création artistique, la pensée théorique et le débat critique en Grande Bretagne. Sur la période observée, nombreux sont les artistes qui s'attachent à faire sentir la vérité des phénomènes naturels et le vernaculaire dans leur tangibilité. Aussi, l'approche profondément concrète de la nature (humaine et végétale) par les peintres britanniques rend compte du rapport direct qui s'opère dans leur peinture entre matière observée et matière représentée. La conscience des matériaux et du matériel, telle que la révèle le discours critique, est au centre des problématiques du champ artistique en Grande Bretagne. En historicisant ce rapport à la matière, il s'agit d'inscrire la question de la texture dans un contexte épistémologique — qui lie création artistique et empirisme — et dans un rapport, excentrique, à la modernité. Cet angle d'approche permet de relier différentes périodes trop souvent perçues comme étanches et en ce sens de porter un regard nouveau sur l'art britannique / This dissertation looks at how the meaning of the painted surface engaged artists and critics in contemporary discourses at different stages between the late eighteenth century and early twentieth century. At the heart of this research project is the notion of texture, thought of as a critical tool, referring both to the painted surfaces of artworks and to their iconography.This dissertation demonstrates that the concept of materiality is a productive optic through which the history of British art can be read. The notion of texture, conceived as a plastic concept rather than an essentialist one, allows for the identification of persistent tendencies structuring artistic creation, theoretical thinking and critical debates in Great Britain. In the period under focus, there are numerous artists who consistently try to capture the truth of natural phenomena and the tangibility of the vernacular. Thus, British painter's profoundly concrete approach to nature (human or topographical) testifies to the direct links which are created in their paintings between observed and represented matter. The consciousness of materials and of materiality, as revealed by critical discourses, is at the centre of artistic debates in Great Britain. By historicizing the approach to matter, I situate the question of texture in an epistemological context linking artistic creation to empiricism. Considered in this way, texture takes on an eccentric relationship to modernity. This prism of study allows me to link different periods too often perceived as watertight and therefore to offer a new outlook on British art.

This thesis is an examination of Blake's images of Christ and a study of his theology of art. My central premise is that these two topics are to be viewed simultaneously: that is, I argue that Blake's visualisation of Christ is an expression of his theology of art. Moreover, I contend that through his art, Blake seeks to emulate the spirit of Jesus' life and ministry in order to engender a community of Imagination which is the Divine Body of Jesus. Through a series of case studies focusing on Blake's depictions of different aspects of Christ's life, this thesis examines how Blake uses images to express his Christology and his theology of art. In Part I, I set out Blake's Christological cosmology in three chapters which deal with beginnings in Christ's life. Chapter 1 examines Christ as Creator; here, Christ inhabits a role traditionally associated with the Father, demonstrating the pre-eminence of Christ in Blake's concept of God, and the divinity of his Creation. Chapter 2 focuses on the advent, birth and infancy of Christ; Blake depicts the Nativity as the birth of Vision, emblematic of the individual embodying that state. Chapter 3 discusses the inauguration of Christ's ministry, the Baptism and Temptations; in these subjects, Blake represents Christ as immanent in the world, making it a place of Imagination and Vision, and the individual must learn to see it as such. Part II is concerned with Blake's idea of art as apocalypse, and of Christ as the supreme type of the artist - the state which every individual should embody and which Blake seeks to engender through his works. Chapter 4 focuses on the Crucifixion, a subject with which Blake had difficulty owing to his objection to the doctrine of the Atonement but which he came to view as an emblem of the individual sacrificing his/her self-hood in order to realise his/her true identity in the Human Form Divine. Chapter 5 examines the Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, exploring how Blake used these moments of transition between states in the life of Christ as types of the individual's transformation, and how these images seek to engender that process via a viewer- response aesthetic. Chapter 6 explores traditional apocalyptic subjects, in which, I argue, Christ is depicted as agent of artistic apocalypse, which for Blake consists of expunging error and embracing truth. Chapter 7 discusses Christ-like figures in Blake's depictions of Jesus' public ministry who embody the ideal state of imagination identified with Christ in the foregoing chapters, and thus act as members of Christ's Divine Body and as types for the individual's realisation of that state. I conclude with a discussion of the painting An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man (1811?) which, I argue, encapsulates the central themes of this thesis.

This essay is a study of Yinka Shonibare MBE, London-born and Nigerian-raised contemporary artist, and his recent photographic practice that includes three series: Fake Death Pictures, William Morris Family Album, and Medusa. Exploration of the series reveals insight into Shonibare’s unique relationship to photography, in which he employs the hyper-realism and theatricality of the medium to interact with individuals from British history and reveal contemporary social and political injustices.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX231423.

This Thesis is concerned with how history is narrated in two selected works by the British artists, Tacita Dean and Jeremy Deller. Chapter one considers Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (2001), a reenactment of a violent miners' strike against Margaret Thatcher's government in 1984-1985. The reenactment brought together reenactment hobbyist and ex-miners to perform the events at Orgreave and created a discourse around the imagined historical role of the working classes. Chapter two examines Dean's book Teignmouth Electron (1999), which recounts the failed voyage of Donald Crowhurst, one of the contestants of the 1967 Golden Globe Race who committed suicide after developing 'time-madness' at sea. She offers the history of this individual as a point of entry into middle-class aspirations in England in the 1960s. Produced at the turn of the 21st century when Britain's New Labour government was instigating an image of a New Britain to match its bygone glory, both works look back to moments in the past that epitomize the decline of the country's old order. Unearthing instances of failure and defeat, each artist offers an alternative glance at Britain's past and present condition than the one promoted by New Labour.

This Thesis is concerned with how history is narrated in two selected works by the British artists, Tacita Dean and Jeremy Deller. Chapter one considers Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (2001), a reenactment of a violent miners' strike against Margaret Thatcher's government in 1984-1985. The reenactment brought together reenactment hobbyist and ex-miners to perform the events at Orgreave and created a discourse around the imagined historical role of the working classes. Chapter two examines Dean's book Teignmouth Electron (1999), which recounts the failed voyage of Donald Crowhurst, one of the contestants of the 1967 Golden Globe Race who committed suicide after developing 'time-madness' at sea. She offers the history of this individual as a point of entry into middle-class aspirations in England in the 1960s. Produced at the turn of the 21st century when Britain's New Labour government was instigating an image of a New Britain to match its bygone glory, both works look back to moments in the past that epitomize the decline of the country's old order. Unearthing instances of failure and defeat, each artist offers an alternative glance at Britain's past and present condition than the one promoted by New Labour.

This Thesis is concerned with how history is narrated in two selected works by the British artists, Tacita Dean and Jeremy Deller. Chapter one considers Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (2001), a reenactment of a violent miners' strike against Margaret Thatcher's government in 1984-1985. The reenactment brought together reenactment hobbyist and ex-miners to perform the events at Orgreave and created a discourse around the imagined historical role of the working classes. Chapter two examines Dean's book Teignmouth Electron (1999), which recounts the failed voyage of Donald Crowhurst, one of the contestants of the 1967 Golden Globe Race who committed suicide after developing 'time-madness' at sea. She offers the history of this individual as a point of entry into middle-class aspirations in England in the 1960s. Produced at the turn of the 21st century when Britain's New Labour government was instigating an image of a New Britain to match its bygone glory, both works look back to moments in the past that epitomize the decline of the country's old order. Unearthing instances of failure and defeat, each artist offers an alternative glance at Britain's past and present condition than the one promoted by New Labour. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Two images of British India persist in the modern imagination: first, an eighteenth-century world of incipient multiculturalism, of sexual adventure amidst the hazy smoke of hookah pipes; and second, the grandiose imperialism of the Victorian Raj, its vast public buildings and stiff upper lip. No art historian has focused on the intervening decades, however, or considered how the earlier period transitioned into the later. In contrast, Art in India's 'Age of Reform' sets out to develop a distinct historical identity for the decades between the Charter Act of 1813 and the 1858 Government of India Act, arguing that the art produced during this period was implicated in the political process by which the conquests of a trading venture were legislated and 'reformed' to become the colonial possessions of the British Nation. Over two parts, each comprised of two chapters, two overlooked media are connected to 'reforms' that have traditionally been understood as atrophying artistic production in the subcontinent. Part I relates amateur practice to the reform of the Company's civil establishment, using an extensive archive associated with the celebrated amateur Sir Charles D'Oyly (1781-1845) and an art society that he established called the Behar School of Athens (est.1824). It argues that rather than citing the Company's increasing bureaucratisation as the cause of a decline in fine art patronage, it is crucial instead to recognise how amateur practice shaped this bureaucracy's collective identity and ethos. Part II connects the production and consumption of illustrated print culture to the demographic shifts that occurred as a result of the repeal of the Company's monopolistic privileges in 1813 and 1833, focusing specifically on several costume albums published by artists such as John Gantz (1772-1853) and Colesworthy Grant (1813-1880). In doing so, it reveals how print culture provided cultural capital to a transnational middle class developing across the early-Victorian Empire of free trade. Throughout each chapter, the gradual undermining of the East India Company's sovereignty by a centralising British State is framed as a prerequisite to the emergence of the nation-state as the fundamental category of modern social and political organisation. Art in India's 'Age of Reform' therefore seeks not only to uncover the work and biographies of several unstudied artists in nineteenth-century India, but reveals the significance of this overlooked art history to both the development of the modern British State, and the consequent demise of alternative forms of political corporation.

The following article deals with a somewhat neglected aspect of Stuart Hall’s manifold activities and its relevance for his theoretical work: his interest in and commitment to the promotion of black British art.

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