Abstract not available

This thesis argues that the concepts of curiosity and the marvellous resurface at different moments in cultural history, most notably in periods of transition and epistemological uncertainty. The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ‘culture of curiosity,’ which is characterised by the amateur collector’s engagement with rare and boundary-crossing objects in the process of assembling a cabinet of curiosities, presents a rich contextual foil against which to place the practice of the Surrealists and of some contemporary artists and curators; it has profound resonances for the relationship between modernism and postmodernism, and between art and science. Within modernism, the Surrealists initiated a large-scale, fundamental probing of the principles underlying rationalist thought, and of the categories and hierarchies of academic art and bourgeois taste, which had dominated Western culture since the Enlightenment; and within postmodernism, artists and curators who revert to practices of collecting and appropriate protocols of the natural sciences question institutional frameworks of knowledge production, identity formation and meaning making through material artefacts. In both instances, curiosity and the marvellous – and the related themes of classification and dilettantism – have emerged as especially effective and resonant means of reading dominant culture against the grain. More specifically, this thesis contends that the Surrealist marvellous is rooted in the early modern discourse of the marvellous and monstrous which was characterised by ‘paradoxes of classification.’ This is particularly evident in the Surrealists’ engagement with objects testifying to the natural marvellous and the natural fantastic: stones, coral and insects, among other things and creatures, carry distinctly subversive implications of obscuration, entanglement and excess, metamorphosis and mimicry, and deviation and transgression, straddling the boundaries between art and nature, and art and representation. Furthermore, contemporary artistic and curatorial practice drawing on the ‘age of the marvellous’ – which, in this perspective, extends to Surrealism, with the potential to recur at any time thereafter – is primarily concerned with overcoming ‘white cube’ and Beaux-Arts-Museum historicity, aesthetics and display rationales by reintroducing subjectivity, doubt and digression into the context of the museum and the sciences. In this regard, scepticism towards intellectual certainties and accomplished systems of classification leads to an informed recourse to moments in history when the meanings of objects were being constantly negotiated rather than set in stone.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: William J. Scheick and Katherine Arens. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Also available from UMI.

This thesis analyses the representation of so-called human curiosities in recent visual art, by drawing a connection to historical practices of exhibiting 'monstrous' and deformed bodies within institutions such as freak shows, anatomical collections and medical museums. The last two decades have witnessed a surge of scholarly interest in the histories of these institutions, particularly through the work of Robert Bogdan, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Rachel Adams, Richard Sandell and Samuel J.M.M Alberti, whose research can be situated in interdisciplinary humanities fields such as disability studies, museology, history of science and literary and visual studies. Concurrently, a remarkable number of contemporary artists have also turned to the history and imagery of these spaces to explore the politics of display in exhibitions of non-normative bodies. This study addresses the critical gap between these two parallel domains of inquiry, drawing upon recent studies concerning historical exhibitions of monstrous bodies to analyse how contemporary artists have simultaneously confronted and extended these traditions through their artworks. In order to show that the very notion of 'monstrous bodies' is inextricably bound up in the curious display practices that frame them, I analyse the representation of human curiosities in the work of Zoe Leonard, Joanna Ebenstein, Diane Arbus, Mat Fraser, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Marc Quinn and John Isaacs. Each chapter examines a distinct institutional context – the anatomical collection, the freak show, the art gallery, and the contemporary medical museum – to investigate how these artists challenge the meanings conferred upon extraordinary bodies within each space, bestowing new significance upon these forms within the context of their various art practices. I argue that, by doing so, artists themselves can take on roles like curious collectors, freak show talkers and teratologists, revealing the potential for 'art' to act as yet another display framework that imposes a particular set of meanings onto anomalous bodies.

As coleções precedem o gabinete de curiosidades e o museu e remete a motivações diferentes que revelam aspectos da matriz cultural de cada época. De modo análogo, as formas de organização dos objetos, livros e obras de arte seguem as referências de seu tempo sendo sensíveis às mudanças. Neste trabalho, procuramos mostrar como se dá esta relação em determinados momentos, escolhidos por suas características de ruptura e transformação. Enquanto nas \'bibliotecas\' (ou bibliografias) e nos Gabinetes de Curiosidades do Renascimento a ordem se ligava à analogia e à semelhança por parentesco (divinatio), com Descartes a semelhança passa a ser feita pela comparação, obtida pela medida. Tais mudanças se refletem tanto nas formas de arranjo e classificação dos objetos, como na própria vida dos museus, que passam a organizar suas coleções a partir de critérios artificiais e abstratos. Com o Modernismo europeu, na passagem do séc. XIX para o séc. XX, a introdução de novas tecnologias acaba por provocar novas mudanças que são sentidas até os nossos dias com a comunicação digital. Grande parte dos problemas desse museu pode ser creditado ao fato de que estabeleceu a coleção como foco de sua atuação e com isto suas atividades operacionais passaram a predominar sobre seus propósitos ou papel social. O museu do século XXI, no entanto, deverá alterar esse procedimento de modo a contemplar as relações entre as pessoas e o museu, bem como com a coleção e a obra. Só assim o museu passará a ser um espaço de experiência ou um espaço-relacional. / Collections precedes the Cabinet of Curiosities and the museum and refers to different motivations that disclose aspects of the cultural matrix of each time. In an analogous way, the forms of organization of objects, books and works of art follow the references of their time being sensible to changes. In this paper, we intend to show the way this relation happens at specific moments in history, chosen for their characteristics of rupture and transformation. While in the ?libraries? (or bibliographies) and in the Cabinets of Curiosities from the Renaissance the order was bound up with the analogy and the similarity by kinship (divinatio), with Descartes the similarity starts to be characterized by comparison of measurable attributes. Such changes are reflected in the forms of arrangement and classification of objects, as in the proper life of the museums, which start to organize their collections from artificial and abstract criteria. With the European Modernism, from century XIX to XX, the introduction of new technologies ends up provoking new changes that are felt until nowadays with the digital communication. Most of the problems of this museum can be credited to the fact that it established the collection as the focus of its performance and with this its operational activities that started to predominate on its intentions or social paper. The XXI century museum, however, will have to modify this procedure in order to contemplate the relations between the people and the museum, as well as with the collection and the workmanship. Thus the museum will start to be a space of experience or a relational space one.

No description available.

As coleções precedem o gabinete de curiosidades e o museu e remete a motivações diferentes que revelam aspectos da matriz cultural de cada época. De modo análogo, as formas de organização dos objetos, livros e obras de arte seguem as referências de seu tempo sendo sensíveis às mudanças. Neste trabalho, procuramos mostrar como se dá esta relação em determinados momentos, escolhidos por suas características de ruptura e transformação. Enquanto nas \'bibliotecas\' (ou bibliografias) e nos Gabinetes de Curiosidades do Renascimento a ordem se ligava à analogia e à semelhança por parentesco (divinatio), com Descartes a semelhança passa a ser feita pela comparação, obtida pela medida. Tais mudanças se refletem tanto nas formas de arranjo e classificação dos objetos, como na própria vida dos museus, que passam a organizar suas coleções a partir de critérios artificiais e abstratos. Com o Modernismo europeu, na passagem do séc. XIX para o séc. XX, a introdução de novas tecnologias acaba por provocar novas mudanças que são sentidas até os nossos dias com a comunicação digital. Grande parte dos problemas desse museu pode ser creditado ao fato de que estabeleceu a coleção como foco de sua atuação e com isto suas atividades operacionais passaram a predominar sobre seus propósitos ou papel social. O museu do século XXI, no entanto, deverá alterar esse procedimento de modo a contemplar as relações entre as pessoas e o museu, bem como com a coleção e a obra. Só assim o museu passará a ser um espaço de experiência ou um espaço-relacional. / Collections precedes the Cabinet of Curiosities and the museum and refers to different motivations that disclose aspects of the cultural matrix of each time. In an analogous way, the forms of organization of objects, books and works of art follow the references of their time being sensible to changes. In this paper, we intend to show the way this relation happens at specific moments in history, chosen for their characteristics of rupture and transformation. While in the ?libraries? (or bibliographies) and in the Cabinets of Curiosities from the Renaissance the order was bound up with the analogy and the similarity by kinship (divinatio), with Descartes the similarity starts to be characterized by comparison of measurable attributes. Such changes are reflected in the forms of arrangement and classification of objects, as in the proper life of the museums, which start to organize their collections from artificial and abstract criteria. With the European Modernism, from century XIX to XX, the introduction of new technologies ends up provoking new changes that are felt until nowadays with the digital communication. Most of the problems of this museum can be credited to the fact that it established the collection as the focus of its performance and with this its operational activities that started to predominate on its intentions or social paper. The XXI century museum, however, will have to modify this procedure in order to contemplate the relations between the people and the museum, as well as with the collection and the workmanship. Thus the museum will start to be a space of experience or a relational space one.

The phenomenon of princely and scientific collections that proliferated in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has become an important focus for modern historical analysis. These collections provide a microcosm of contemporary political, economic and philosophical ideas, often characterized by geographical and cultural differences. The mid-seventeenth century Kunst- and Wunderkammer studied here, instituted by the archbishops of Salzburg, brings forward themes sometimes neglected in the literature. The archbishops' collection was part of broader efforts to reinvent the city of Salzburg as a representation of both sacred and secular authority. Strategies for significant display were derived from religious and imperial ritual, drawing on the potential of objects as signifiers. In this context, I also examine some of the debates within the literature on princely and scientific collections, where the study of wonder and science begins to merge in cross-disciplinary scholarship. Finally, I highlight the role of transformation and materiality in these collections to argue that the act of collecting objects and the act of making were imbricated in the process of self-definition. Within themes of technology and process, I investigate the pursuit of creating Kunstkammer objects, as well as the business of their display and use in diplomacy.

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