Thesis (Ph.D.)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2010. / Prepared for: Dept. of Art History. Title from resource description page. Inlcudes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University. / Bibliography: leaves 100-120. Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Undergraduate honors paper--Mount Holyoke College, 2007. Dept. of Art. / CD-Rom includes images of art work. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 8).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1978. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Conceptual Art (henceforth CA) has the peculiar status of being at once a neglected topic in philosophical aesthetics, and one on which a degree of philosophical weight disproportionate to the attention it has received is placed. On the one hand it is frequently mentioned by philosophers as a problematic case, one that general theories of art have difficulty dealing with, but on the other, there is a notable lack of philosophical research taking CA as its focus. It is largely taken as a given that CA is radically different from other art in various ways and thus poses problems for some of the general statements about art that philosophers tend to make. But it is striking that these claims are not, for the most part, grounded in a thorough investigation into the nature of CA. The purpose of my research is to conduct such an investigation; to address the question of what CA is, and what makes it different from other art, in order to come to a clearer view of what particular philosophical issues or difficulties CA raises for the philosophy of art. In existing literature on CA, it is standard to take CA’s distinctiveness to have something to do with the importance of ‘ideas’. I investigate what could be meant here by ‘idea’, and identify two broad schools of thought as to what form this emphasis on ideas in CA takes: Priority Accounts, which claim that in CA ideas are the most important aspect of the work and Constitution Accounts, which claim that works of CA are ideas. I identify serious problems for Constitution Accounts, in general, and for some kinds of Priority Account. I then put forward a new kind of Priority account which I think overcomes the problems faced by its rivals.

The essay draws attention to the growing numbers of contemporary artists who are exploring and exploiting the creative protocols of design in their work. It is argued that this trend has become an important theme and pressing issue in contemporary visual art. Though it is an uneven, fragmented, widely dispersed and apparently incoherent phenomenon without any clearly defined, unitary objectives, the essay proceeds from the assumption that the adoption of design as creative idiom by a wide variety of artists is informed by social dynamics and material resources that are coherent enough to be meaningfully identified and described. It therefore sets out to develop and account of this phenomenon by situating it within our contemporary historical context. To this end, the essay first addresses the conceptual resources that are currently available to artists. The author proposes, in this regard, that a gradual mutation in the general epistemological sensibility of Modernity over the last number of decades has come to transform our understanding of the nature of, and relationship between, art, aesthetics, cognition and ethico-political life, and therefore of how art could potentially function in our individual and collective consciousnesses. More particularly, these broad epistemological developments have registered in contemporary art practice through the coagulation of two distinct sets of conceptualist priorities. It is argued that these two sets of priorities both accommodate, if not facilitate, in their own ways, the adoption of design as creative idiom in contemporary art. The essay also addresses the social conditions within which contemporary artists’ creative practices are situated. In order to identify and describe the social conditions and dynamics that may contribute towards the poignancy and currency of design as creative idiom within in art, the author utilizes the insights of a number of prominent scholars from the field of Sociology. These authors’ observations suggests that a significant transformation has taken place in the material basis of social life, over the last number of decades, under the combined influence of a number of important technological and economic developments. Together, these developments have conspired to produce a dynamic and disorientating world full of uncertainty and insecurity. The author suggests that this fluid situation may have contributed, in various ways, not only to the current prominence of design in social life, but also to the apparent willingness of artists to explore design as creative idiom in their work. Arguing that significant relations can be drawn between the work of individual artists based on the shared intellectual climate and social dynamics within which it is developed, the author tries, in the final section, to ground his observations in the concrete singularity of individual artistic practice. To this end, the work and interests of American artist Andrea Zittel is examined and interpreted. Zittel’s work is explored as an example of the complex ways in which personal motives, social forces and intellectual currents meet at the intersection of art and design.

This thesis investigates the impact of telepathy and psi on conceptual and performance art from 1968. Emerging from the author???s art practice, the thesis argues telepathy is a key leitmotif and creative concern within much post 60s art, and has become central to the practice of a number of contemporary video, performance and new media artists. This thesis is composed of two interrelated parts: an exhibition of the artwork by the author concerning telepathic processes, and a written project which uses the major themes of the exhibition to frame an historical study of a number of key contemporary artists whom, it is argued, work with telepathy. These artists, Jane and Louise Wilson, Suzanne Treister and Susan Hiller are discussed under the themes of ???twinning and doubling,??? ???technological mediums??? and ???telepathy experiments???. These themes also overlap in the authors artwork, are introduced through an overarching analysis of the work of performance artist Marina Abramovi?? and philosopher Jacques Derrida who, it is argued, provide a new model of telepathy as an art practice. In addition, the thesis argues that telepathy is an often suppressed thematic in art which may not appear to directly address it, and uses the work on the Wilsons, Treister and Hiller to re-look at other 20th Century artists and artistic themes in the light of the conclusions it draws on telepathy and art. Walter Benjamin greatly admired the Surrealists, but had virtually no time for their interest in telepathy, hypnosis and psi. Together with positive materialist misappropriations of Adorno???s Thesis Against Occultism, artistic and theoretical work with telepathy and psi has been sidelined from other important themes in art and critical theory, all of which telepathy and psi illuminate, energise and empower. The art of the author and other more recognised and established artists can be seen to work with telepathy in ways that flow into and reinforce the grain of progressive leftist practice and aesthetics. Women???s work with telepathy should be considered as important as women???s work with sexuality. Women, sexuality, Otherness, liminality, spirituality, telepathy, trauma, healing, radical politics, and other taboo areas of patriachal codes, were adandoned by macho participants of fluxus and Conceptual art. The recent conceptual and performance tilt in contemporary art sheds new light on the problem of working within and developing an effective and dynamic lineage of telepathy in post 60s art as well as early modern art movements. Contemporary developments in science, engineering, biology, psychoanalysis, warfare, popular culture and sociology show the wider relevance of discourse on telepathy. There is much at stake for visual art, aesthetics and visuality in representing, celebrating and interrogating the theme of psi and telepathy in current practice and art history. Artists??? work with telepathy and psi, although not always explicitly psychological, political or aesthetic, is often very psychologically, politically and aesthetically effective.

Thesis (MA--Art and Design) -- AUT University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print ( 1 v. (unpaged) : col. ill. ; 30 cm. + 1 DVD-ROM) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 709.2 TUR)

One hundred documents of one hundred performances. / Department of Architecture

My thesis explores the role played by form in our experience of objects of consciousness as art. In doing so, I look at the concept of form as it was understood by prominent philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, as well as form in Immanuel Kant’s aesthetics in The Critique of the Power of Judgment. My method is phenomenological and rooted in my experience of making and writing about art, as a student of studio art and of philosophy. To connect philosophical understandings of form to the experience of art in a way reflective of my experience, I show the connection between and influence on art critical understandings of form by philosophical understandings of form. In particular, I focus on Modernist formalism as Clive Bell, Roger Fry and Clement Greenberg articulated it. Modernist formalism played a role in the teaching style and content of art studio classes I attended. The role of form in our experience of art was problematized by Conceptual Art, which movement also deeply impacted the teaching style and content of my studio art classes. The tension I experienced between these two movements in art and its criticism led to my interest in this topic and informed my choice to limit the scope of my investigation to Modernist formalism and Conceptual Art. In particular, I focus on philosophically trained Conceptual Artists such as Adrian Piper and Joseph Kosuth. Changes in the way art was made and understood impacted the understanding of the concept of form not only for art critics, but also for philosophers. I include contemporary philosophical discussions of form by Bernard Freydberg and Rudolphe Gasché to show the movement and interrelatedness between art and philosophy about the concept of form. The conclusion I reach is that form in our experience of art is constructive of that experience if our consciousness of art objects is conceived of as an engaged, rather than disinterested. My rejection of disinterest in favour of engagement is adapted from Arnold Berleant’s account of the aesthetic experience. I retain a place for the object as it is given, using H.J. Gadamer’s terms “changing” and “unchanging aspects.” The object’s properties are its unchanging aspects while the shifting contextual ground on which art as an experience is built is the changing aspect. I conclude that form is a way of seeing that requires both of these aspects.