This practice led research examines the art historical hypotheses of Denis Diderot and Michael Fried on the role of aesthetic absorption in painting practice. It engages with these hypotheses through collaboration with six contemporary abstract painters in an address to and from painting practice. The collaboration was conducted in order to examine aesthetic absorption from the perspective of studio practice in order to develop greater understanding of its relevance to contemporary abstract painting. This was achieved by completing six objectives. First, a lexicon of the terms surrounding aesthetic absorption was developed along with a brief account of the history of engagement with the concept of aesthetic absorption. This was followed by individually interviewing each collaborator, then gathering them together for two round table discussions. All dialogue produced was transcribed, and along with the research material was made available to the collaborators through a wiki site. This material was then reflected upon through painting practice and thesis writing, to be presented finally as a written thesis and viva presentation. By opening up this in-depth dialogue on the practicalities behind Diderot and Fried’s art historical theories, this research has highlighted the concerns and hesitancies of a specific group of artists in their engagement with absorption. It bridges the gap between theory and practice by examining how painters have negotiated aesthetic absorption and the associated positions of painter-beholder and painting-beholder. This research has redefined those positions and relationships by mapping and analyzing the experiences described in the dialogues. As such, the contribution to knowledge of this research lies in its finding a new understanding of how painters can negotiate those positions. This is relevant to painting practice for two important reasons. First, it allows us, in a more structured way, to better understand the differences in the register of experience from banal or pathological types of absorption to aesthetic absorption in painting practice. Secondly, this understanding provides a framework to enable more coherent and focused programmatic modes of address from the studio in negotiating painter-beholder and painting-beholder relationships, thus providing greater conviction from the position of practice.

Derived from the Latin corrodere, meaning to ‘gnaw to pieces’, corrosion as a transformative physical process is nature at its most sublime, engendering fear and power, producing the obscure and reducing form to the darkness ‘beneath all beauty as promise of its ultimate annihilation’ (Beckley, 2001: p. 72). The thesis considers corrosion as subtraction, erasure and negation in relation to the painting process. Through experimentation with the ruination of both content and painting’s plastic, material properties the thesis reflects upon how the disruption or destruction of image and surface might relate to the un- representable. Within the history of twentieth century art negation has been cited as the defining spirit of the Modernism (TJ Clark: 1986). Jean François Lyotard suggests that it is the sublime that has provoked this destructive, nihilistic tendency and given Modern and postmodern art its ‘impetus and axioms’ (Lyotard: 1979). As the 2010 Tate research project, The Sublime Object attests, the sublime is once again ‘now’. Painting was conspicuous in its absence from the project, perhaps because as Simon Morley states ‘most sublime artworks these days tend to be installations. It is certainly getting harder for painting, the traditional vessel for evoking visual sublimity, to elicit such effects’ (2010, p. 74). This thesis will examine Morley’s position by considering how the composition of the un-presentable may be alluded to through de-composition and corrosion in painting. An expressionist enquiry into the tension between figure and ground the thesis investigates a relationship between mark, surface and the sublime.(1) Notoriously difficult to capture, the sublime is intrinsically contradictory, making an effective, overarching theory on the subject all but impossible to sustain (Forsey: 2007). Highlighting some of the problems surrounding the theory of the sublime James Elkins, in his essay ‘Against the Sublime’ (2009), suggests that the term has been mistaken for a trans-historical category and that it has been used and abused to smuggle religious content into contemporary critical writing. Further more, he describes the post-Kantian postmodern sublime as so intricate and linguistically complex as to render it effectively redundant without substantial qualification. Elkins has called for a moratorium on the term sublime and a redress of language in favor of new, direct terms (2009). This project asks if painting can facilitate this redress and provide these terms. Note (1): An enquiry that applies a necessarily heuristic approach to a project engaged with subjective, felt experience in painting characterized by and articulated through the primacy of gestural abstraction.

The following thesis applies theories and findings from cognitive psychology to notions of pictorial address and seriality in art. It is interdisciplinary and practice-led, culminating in a written outcome and a portfolio of creative work. The thesis suggests a model for the exchange of ideas within experimental psychology, art practice and art theory. The research evaluates historical and theoretical notions of pictorial address in light of concepts within visual cognition. Theories of address often refer to the temporal, spatial and postural qualities of art spectatorship. Here they are aligned with relevant psychological concepts including gist extraction, spatial representation and embodied simulation in order to make the underlying perceptual and cognitive processes explicit. There is an emphasis on seriality as a mode of address and pictorial artworks that comprise multiple discrete but related instances displayed together. Two case studies consider the serial output of Claude Monet and Andy Warhol in terms of cognitive theories of concept formation and exposure effects, respectively. The direct impact of features of seriality on the viewer in each case is discussed relative to existing art theory and established art historical narratives. The thesis culminates with presentation and discussion of the portfolio of creative work that both informed and was informed by the theoretical research. The outcomes comprise paintings, drawings, photography and mixed media installation that explore properties of variation, repetition and relational knowledge within pictorial address.

The paintings that comprise Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain: Hindsight in 2020 are the output of my research and artistic practice at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. These paintings make visible the complex experiences and misperceptions of men in contemporary society. My intent was to create paintings that bring light to some of the darker aspects of manhood and rework phobias about manhood and male homosexuality through self-deprecation. This reworking is accomplished through the integration of disparate ideas and images, including perception, location, and exteriority, into compositions wherein representation and portraiture (specifically self- portraiture) make visible particular psychological states and hidden impulses attributed to men: the torment of failure, or the desire for power and sex. Autobiography and confessions can become the best mirrors for deeper forms of self-discovery. One can be both aggressive and protected while remaining effective and hidden. The work, charming or terrifying as it may be, questions the democracies of viewership, privacy, censorship and interpersonal relationships that can exist within a multicultural society. These paintings represent my own understanding of manhood, identity and sexual orientation; the ways one shields oneself from others, develops modes of self-preservation and transcends life's inherent suffering.

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This thesis gives, for the first time, a clear exposition of the activities of the Arundel Society (1848-1897). Founded to 'collect diligently and with discrimination the highest and best examples of Art and to bring them before hundreds of English minds' the presence of Aubrey Bezzi, Lord Lindsay, Edmund Oldfield, Samuel Rogers and John Ruskin on the Society's first council meant that the initial publication of engravings after two early Italian artists, Fra Angelico and Giotto, was unsurprising. After 1856, under the guidance of Henry Layard, the archaeologist and politician, the Society became even more firmly committed to copying and publishing frescoes of the early Renaissance. The council's aim in recording and publishing these endangered works of art was to educate the taste of the public and inspire artists to embark on programmes of mural decoration. The water-colours executed for the Society are discussed with particular reference to the reactions of the council, and of members and the press to the problem of their verisimilitude. About two-thirds of these copies were published as chromolithographs and the gains and liabilities of this initially very popular method of reproduction are examined. Other methods employed by the Society to publish fac-similies of classical and medieval ivories and reduced copies of the Elgin marbles are also discussed with general reference to Victorian attitudes towards reproductions. The penultimate chapter attempts to relate the prints and monographs published by the Society to the art historical scholarship of the period. It is shown that the council's publication of decorative quattrocento, provincial cinquecento and early Flemish and German artists was influenced by Henry Layard's preferences. His monographs for the Society are discussed and compared with the more scholarly, if diverse, contributions made by, among others, G. W. Kitchin, John Ruskin, George Scharf and Ralph Wornum. In the final chapter it is argued that the Society's loyalty to the tastes of the mid-century and to the process of chromolithography led to its dissolution.

Fandom is, as scholars in relevant areas of Media Studies and Sociology attest, a vibrant aspect of contemporary culture and influential in individuals' expression and construction of their identities. This thesis examines and endeavours to challenge how fandom, defined as "emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text," is conceived and received in contemporary art. It addresses misconceptions about art by four artists who explicitly express their fan identities in their artwork and examines how a finer understanding of fandom can enrich contemporary art discourse and illuminate the artists' works. Bringing together the fields of art criticism and cultural studies, the thesis explores the impact of contemporary artists' fandom on their depiction of celebrities and the critical reception these artworks have received. The principal artists whose works and fan identities are analysed are: Ryan McGinley (b. Ramsey, New Jersey, 1977-), Elizabeth Peyton (b. Danbury, Connecticut, 1965-), Karen Kilimnik (b. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1955-) and Stella Vine (b. Alnwick, England, 1969). In addition to these, art works by eleven other prominent late twentieth and early twenty-first century artists are presented as revealing contrasts. These artists, the principal artists and their comparisons, all are not only doing something interesting artistically; their work presents different approaches to expansive concerns about the nature and function of fans and celebrity in wider culture. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate how fandom manifests itself in artists' work, whether fan feelings are discernible in their artwork and how admissions of fandom, either through artists' public declarations or evidence in their art, influence critical interpretation of art and colours public perception of the artists themselves.

This study demonstrates how royal portraiture functioned during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars as a vehicle for visualizing and processing the contemporary political upheavals. It does so by considering a notion of the 'sovereignty of the portrait', that is, the semiotic integrity (or precisely the lack thereof) and the material territory of royal portraiture at this historical juncture. Working from an assumption that the precariousness of sovereignty which delineated the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars goes hand in hand with the precariousness of representation during the same period, it reframes prevailing readings of royal portraiture in the aftermath of the French Revolution by approaching the genre less as one defined by the oneway propagation of a message, and more as a highly unstable intermedial network of representation. This theoretical undertaking is refracted through the figure of Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples (1752-1814), close sister and foil to Queen Marie- Antoinette of France, and who, as de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Naples, physically survived revolution but was twice dethroned and thrice exiled. A diverse ecology of royal portraiture revolving around Maria Carolina is presented across five case studies. Close attention to the materiality of a hyperrealistic wax bust of Maria Carolina reveals how portraiture absorbed the trauma of the French Revolution; Maria Carolina’s correspondence in invisible ink is used as a tool to read a highly distinctive visual language of 'hidden' silhouettes of sovereigns and to explore the in/visibility of exile; a novel reading of Antonio Canova's work for the Neapolitan Bourbons through the lens of contemporary caricature problematizes the binary between ancien régime and parvenue monarchy; and a unique miniature of Maria Carolina offers itself as a material metaphor for post-revolutionary sovereignty. Finally, Maria Carolina’s death mask testifies to how Maria Carolina herself became a relic of the ancien régime.