The objective of this creative project is to develop a series of paintings in oil on canvas that focus on the issue of mankind's crumbling relationship with the natural world. The paintings will be produced through a process that begins with an intuitive abstract approach and will later develop layered representational imagery. My technique of painting involves initially choosing and mixing colors without regard to the finished painting, allowing the subconscious to determine the direction that the painting will take. Upon completion of the under painting, I begin creating stencils and layering imagery that provoke thought concerning nature and our place in it. This collection of paintings is representative of the process I have developed through a wide variety of influences, and is a means of communicating my concern for the ever dwindling natural environment and our connection to it. / Department of Art

The aim of this thesis is to explore the overlooked technical role of cinematography, by discussing its artistic effects. I intend to examine the career of a single cinematographer, in order to demonstrate whether a dinstinctive cinematographic style may be defined. The task of this thesis is therefore to define that cinematographer’s style and trace its development across the course of a career. The subject that I shall employ in order to achieve this is the émigré cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan, who is perhaps most famous for his invention ‘The Schüfftan Process’ in the 1920s, but who subsequently had a 40 year career acting as a cinematographer. During this time Schüfftan worked throughout Europe and America, shooting films that included Menschen am Sonntag (Robert Siodmak et al, 1929), Le Quai des brumes (Marcel Carné, 1938), Hitler’s Madman (Douglas Sirk, 1942), Les Yeux sans visage (Georges Franju, 1959) and The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961). During the course of this thesis I shall examine the evolution of Schüfftan’s style, and demonstrate how Schüfftan has come to be misunderstood as a cinematographer of German Expressionism. The truth, as I will show, is far more complex. Schüfftan also struggled throughout his career to cope with the consequences of exile. In this thesis I will also therefore examine the conditions of exile for an émigré cinematographer, and in particular Schüfftan’s prevention from joining the American Society of Cinematographers. I intend to demonstrate how an understanding of cinematographic style can shed new light on a film, and to give renewed attention to an important cinematographer who has been largely ignored by film history.

This essay is a study of Agnes Martin (1912-2004), a Canadian-born and American-based contemporary artist, and her earlier painting practice including, but not limited, to her work Falling Blue of 1963. The exploration of this piece and others frames Martin’s early work as a process of material exploration analogous to weaving and fiber art. This framing is enhanced by the friendship and professional exchange between Martin and artist Lenore Tawney (1907-2007). The textile lens, as explored in this paper, has been undeveloped compared to other approaches to Martin’s early work and practice.

Orientador: Lia Vera Tomás / Banca: Florivaldo Menezes Filho / Banca: Jorge Mattos Brito de Almeida / Resumo: Este trabalho é uma abordagem analítica do monodrama Erwartung Op. 17 - obra do expressionismo musical composta por Schoenberg a partir do texto de Marie Pappenheim - que parte das reflexões estéticas de Theodor Adorno sobre a obra e sobre o expressionismo em geral, principalmente em sua Filosofia da Nova Música. O primeiro capítulo aborda os dois conceitos de expressão que caracterizam, na ótica de Adorno, a música anterior ao expressionismo: a expressão como simulação de paixões e a expressão como organização total da forma. Cada uma delas resultou, não obstante, em um bloqueio da expressão, decorrente da hipóstase quer seja do princípio formal abstrato, quer seja dos momentos particulares isolados do todo. Este bloqueio expressivo é desenvolvido no segundo capítulo, que aborda a dinâmica através da qual, num contexto de comercialização e fetichização da cultura, a música tende a forjar uma aparente reconciliação entre a parte e o todo, entre o universal e o singular. A música expressionista realiza uma crítica dessa aparência de conciliação e dá lugar ao singular não mediatizado pela forma. Toma, como conteúdo, os gestos orgânicos, os conteúdos anímicos não mediatizados pelo conceito e pela forma e estabelece o registro documental de gestos orgânicos como procedimento formal. Em virtude do seu princípio expressivo, Erwartung se assemelha a um sismograma, que registra os abalos sísmicos. No entanto, o resultado dessa negação dos esquemas formais - tanto temático-motívicos como harmônicos - não é um simples abandono da forma em detrimento do conteúdo, mas um novo tipo de relação entre forma e conteúdo, que é desenvolvido no último capítulo, dedicado à análise musical / Abstract: This research is an analytical approach of the monodrama Erwartung Op. 17 - work from the musical expressionism composed by Schoenberg from Marie Pappenheim's text - which starts from Adorno's aesthetic reflections about the work and the expressionism as a whole, mainly in his Philosophy of New Music. The first chapter approaches the two concepts of expression that characterizes, in Adorno's view, music before the expressionism: the expression as simulation of affections and the expression as total organization of form. However, each one of these ways of expression resulted in a blockade of expression, due to hypostasis either of abstract formal principle, or of individual moments separated from the whole. This expressive blockade is developed in chapter two, which approaches the dynamics whereby, in contexts of commercialization and fetishization of culture, music trends to forge an apparent reconciliation of the part and the whole, of universal and singular. Expressionist music accomplishes a critic of this appearance of reconciliation and conveys the form nonmediated singularity. It takes, as content, organic gestures, spiritual contents non-mediated through concept and form and establishes documentary record of organic gestures as formal procedure. Due to its expressive principle, Erwartung resembles a seismogram, which records the seismic events. However, as a result of this denial of formal schemas - either thematic-motivic or harmonic - we don't see a mere refusal of form over content, but a new kind of relation of form and content, which is developed in last chapter, dedicated to musical analysis / Mestre

Thesis advisor: Judith Bookbinder / The Nazis arranged an exhibition of "degenerate" art (Entartete Kunst), shown in Munich in 1937 to insult and degrade artists who are recognized today as some of the most talented artists of the twentieth century. The success of the exhibition affected each artist in a different manner. Many fled Germany and ventured to the United States while others unwilling to leave their homeland suppressed their creative impulses for a life of fear and psychological torture in Germany. The horrific and irreversible effects on the German artists and culture can only be adequately discussed in the context of the time period preceding the exhibition. The movement toward abstraction and expression in art clashed with the rise of Nazi aesthetics to culminate in the exhibition of "degenerate" art. The lives of three artists Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann and Oskar Schlemmer are detailed in this paper. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Fine Arts. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / Jack Tworkov began painting in the 1920s and made his reputation later as an Abstract Expressionist working in a gestural style. At the age of sixty-five Tworkov put that reputation on the line by undergoing a radical transformation in style and, within a few years, emerged as one of the innovative geometric painters of the later 1960s and the 1970s. This dissertation focuses on works from 1955, when Tworkov began to paint wholly idiosyncratic canvases, to 1979, at which time he significantly changed his brushstroke, a stylistic element that functions as a thread throughout this period. Other binding concepts include a continuing attempt to reconcile painterliness and spontaneity with premeditated structure and the combination of choice and chance in generating new ideas and compositions . This dissertation attempts to provide a complete analysis of this specific portion of Tworkov's work, which has never been done, and to avail the reader of a significant collection of artist's statements drawn from a variety of sources including Tworkov's own diary notes, the art historical literature , and personal interviews with the author. The analysis of the works is contextual, within the frame work of Tworkov's career itself, and proceeds stylistically rather than chronologically, identifying, explaining, and pursuing trends in Tworkov's works over an extended period of time. Iconographic analyses are provided where most appropriate and where most illustrative Tworkov's relationship to other artists has been discussed. The work from 1955 to 1979 has been divided into three major segments: Transitional Works, including the Painterly Abstractions and the Fields; the Structural/Geometric Works, subdivided into early geometric canvases, further experiments with geometry, and the Bisections; and the System Works, including both the Knight Moves and the Three-Five-Eight series. / by Lois Fichner-Rathus. / Ph.D.

Eugene O'Neill included within his vision of humanity a series of complex, emotionally and psychologically developed black characters. Despite critical controversy over his methods or effectiveness, from his eerily silent mulatto in "Thirst" through the grandiose incarnation of The Emperor Jones and the everyman of Joe Mott and The Iceman Cometh, O'Neill created characters of African descent that thrilled and infuriated critics and audiences alike. A closer exploration of the issues involved in his portrayal of ethnically identified characters seems necessary, an exploration that does not limit itself to an interrogation of ethnicity per se in O'Neill's plays, but one that addresses the portrayal of black characters and whether or not O'Neill privileges one "race," or socially and culturally identifiable population. O'Neill's infusion of "psychology" into his black characters may have delineated them as fate-driven primitives at the mercy of their atavistic histories, but he did the same with his Irish and other ethnic characters. In fact, many critics argue that his Irish characters are particularly subject to caricature, yet O'Neill is not generally understood to be anti-Irish. Are we then to understand O'Neill's portrayal of ethnicity in the superstition and fear of The Dreamy Kid and Brutus Jones, or in the context of the playwright's bold and dismissive retort to the Ku Klux Klan's condemnation of interracial casting in All God's Chillun Got Wings? It would be a spurious examination that intentionally disregards perceived racist phenomena in O'Neill's plays. However, his depiction of racialized behaviors (and his own possible racism) must be seen to function as an extra-discursive element that ultimately does not disrupt the development of a unified body of work. His major black characters, tragic or otherwise, are not limited by their deceptively stylized portrayals but rather reflect O'Neill's quest to understand and examine the nature of a common human experience, a view that is ultimately consistent within the entirety of his canon.

The subject of this dissertation is the Finland-Swedish author Gunnar Björling (1887-1960) and his journey towards Modernism. The principle thesis of this dissertation, the idea that Björling’s distinctive language cannot be understood without an underlying modernistic current, is outlined in Chapter I. It also discusses the idea that Modernism cannot be reduced to a matter of style, but encompasses particular values, ideological stances and practical matters, such as the forming of alliances, writing manifestos and publishing journals. Chapter II examines how and why Björling came to be regarded as a modernist. A strongly contributing factor was Björling’s language, which from the very first violated prevailing ideas on acceptable forms of expression. The fact that he published his first book through the modernist publishing firm Daimon, and contributed to its journal Ultra, further confirmed his modernistic placing. Chapter III focuses on Björling’s unpublished juvenilia from the 1910’s. The young Björling wrote traditional rhyming verse but was also influenced by writings of a more symbolistic and modern character. The chapter concludes with a study of bizarrerierna, Björling’s dream notes, originally written during the 1910’s but first published in 1928. With their bold enjambments and highly compressed form, these notes came to influence the continued development of his lyrical imagery. Chapter IV deals with his debut Vilande dag (Resting day) (1922) and its symbolistically coloured language problematic. Björling struggled to find a language that would convey his experience of the limitlessness of being, a language striving to transcend words, leaving space for silence. This struggle for the right words continues in the later Korset och löftet (The cross and the promise) (1925) and Chapter V demonstrates how this is connected with the quest for God. In the wake of German Expressionism and Dadaism, Björling adopts a more disjointed syntax and a bolder and more dissonant lyrical imagery. There also occurs a thematic expansion, giving greater prominence to the daily life of the metropolis, a life transformed by media. In accordance with modernistic patterns, Björling chose to end his book with a theoretical epilogue, which is a distinctive collation of life philosophy, anti-clericalism, passionate religiousness, moral-philosophical discussions and aesthetic expositions.

Jämförande studie av likheter och skillnader mellan amerikanska och europeiska (främst tyska) stumma skräckfilmer, med tyngdpunkt på perioden 1913 – 1932 och med hänsyn till handling / manustyp, huvudperson / monstertyp, scenografi och teknik. Jämförande analys av kulturella, politiska och ekonomiska aspekter och dessas inverkan skräckfilmsproduktionen.

The prevalence of expressionism in the early twenty century was strongly related to the social environment at that time. Under the political situation of militarism and absolute monarchy, the society was facing a severe turbulence in Germany. And, an economic system based on capitalism also lead to extreme disparity between the rich and the poor. Additionally, the scientific study of rationality revealed the importance of caring for the inside needs, which gradually resulted in the prosperity of expressionism in different kinds of arts fields, including literature, theater, painting, music and so on. Expressionists started to express their feeling in a distorted way in order to show their true self and emotional experience. Arnold Schoenberg, who was one of the chief representatives in music of expressionism, used atonal composition skill as a reflection of his dissatisfaction against the reality. This study is divided into three main parts, excluding the part of introduction and conclusion. In the first part, the origin and style of expressionism in the early twenty century is introduced. Secondly, factors leading to the transformation of Schoenberg¡¦s composition skill, from the conventional method to the innovative atonal technique, are further discussed, which include the effect from other expressionists in other fields and his living environment. In the last part, Drei Klavierstucke, Opus 11 is taken as an example to demonstrate its historical background, music features, and composition techniques used in the work to specifically tell the content of expressionism.