This thesis discusses the effects of politics and social class on Elisabeth Vigée-Lebruns initial rejection from the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783. The Académie officially rejected her, because she was married to an art dealer, and therefore, in violation of the statute that forbade academicians to mix in commerce. Art historians, most notably Mary Sheriff, have dismantled this popularly held explanation, instead focusing on the artists gender as the fundamental cause of this event. Yet, the volatile political climate and the overall class consciousness likely played an equally important role. To further illuminate this historic episode, this thesis will discuss the ways in which Vigée-Lebrun presented herself to the French public. It will offer a history of the Académies procedures governing female admission, as well as an account of other female academicians. It will argue that Vigée-Lebruns humble social class alienated her from the noble Académie members and the bourgeois members of society. Finally, this thesis will address the general dislike of Marie-Antoinette during the early 1780s and the ways in which this likely affected Vigée-Lebruns career.

This essay is an examination of the art of a Sevillan painter named Luis Jiménez Aranda (1845-1928) and his unique position as a young Spanish artist in late nineteenth-century Paris. Through his paintings and sketches, Jiménez Aranda surveyed the contemporary world with a modern flair predating both Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta (1870-1945), and Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923), two painters considered to be the principle representatives of modern Spanish painting at the end of the nineteenth century. Along with many other young painters at this time, Zuloaga and Sorolla studied abroad in France and Italy but like most Spanish artists, they eventually returned to their native country to live and work. Their time abroad seemed to bring them back to their Spanish painting roots, while for Jiménez Aranda, his time in Rome (and Paris especially) encouraged the artist's penchant for foreign subjects and styles. Yet, even in his lifetime, the artist failed to elicit the amount of interest given to his brother José and other Spanish contemporaries. By focusing on the works executed while Jiménez Aranda lived in France, and primarily in Paris, we can construct a more complete synthesis of how the artist affected ideas of Spanish modern painting in nineteenth-century France and Spain in the decades prior to the work of artists such as Sorolla, thus providing the foundation from which their art could grow. By eschewing the traditional approach to painting that so many of his Spanish contemporaries followed, Jiménez Aranda sought to engage modernity. By blending Spanish and French painting styles, the artist showed that his work as a Sevillan artist in Paris was significantly advanced in comparison to other Spanish painters at this time. Specifically, the painting entitled Lady at the Paris Exposition (1889) exemplifies his modernity of style through a complex visual celebration of the Spanish artist's painting career in Paris.

In my current body of work, the daily commute is the metaphor for a continuously evolving map, and a movement through space, time and memory.

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Gaston Bachelard later describes the abandoned nest as nothing but a thing that enters into the category of objects. Yet, it is the empty form isolated from its environment that I am able to truly appreciate as both a primal image, and as object. I discovered this appreciation in the mud nests of creatures such as the mud dauber, cliff swallow, and the shells created by barnacles. All of these nests and shell forms evoked for me the primitiveness of a refuge or a primal need for shelter. In these forms, or rather the space within these forms, I dreamt of a hiding place, a safe place, a place to be nurtured, an intimate place, and a familiar place. My intent, in my thesis Nesting Formations, is not to mimic nature directly. I am merely interested in drawing upon qualities in nature that I both enjoy formally and those that cause me to dream of intimacy, shelter, and protection.

The Kimbell Art Museums carved limestone panel, entitled The Presentation of Captives to a Maya Ruler, and dated around AD 785, is a fine example of the complex multivalence of Late Classic (AD 600-800) Maya art. The panel depicts the presentation of captives (3 Figures, possibly scribes, in the lower register) to a Yaxchilan ruler (upper left) by a sajal (a tertiary military chief on the right). This panel is unusual because of the nontraditional arrangement of the figures. Typically in Maya art, rulers are depicted on the right side, the designated location for chief rulers, which indicates power and perhaps religious authority. In this piece the sajal, a tertiary leader, can be viewed as right oriented; a situation that in a more direct way honors this noble over the chief Yaxchilan ruler. Earlier scholars who have examined this work relied on a close correspondence between the text and image, assuming an explicit relationship between the two. Yet, in many ways the imagery of the panel defies precise historical interpretation based exclusively on a direct correlation of the glyphs and imagery. The text of the Kimbell Panel describes a historical transaction, the presentation of captives from a tertiary elite to a secondary ruler. Likewise, the inscription indicates a hierarchical relationship between the two elite figures. The imagery, however, conveys more ambiguity about this political event and, accordingly, the politics of the region. Therefore, to understand the meaning of the panel, one must not evaluate the imagery as just an illustration of the textual record, but as conveying a different meaning than the inscription. The imagery has embedded more complex connotations about the turbulent politics of the Maya in the lowland Usumacinta region.

The Aztec empire was a powerful political and cultural force that dominated central Mexico prior to the Spanish Conquest. Although the leaders of the empire warred with many cities in order to extract tribute payments from the conquered, they also recognized that some towns were strategically valuable, and formed semi-alliances with these towns that served their economic and political purposes. This thesis will examine the relationship that Coxcatlan, a city 150 miles to the southeast of Tenochtitlan, had to the Aztec empire. An analysis of two deity sculptures excavated from Coxcatlan in the late 19th century will reveal that the town maintained its independence but was loosely allied to the empire. By carefully evaluating previous scholarship on these pieces, comparing them to Mexica deity statues, and analyzing archaeological and historical evidence, I will argue that these paired statues must represent Cihuacoatl and Xelhua. The local importance of these deities, as well as the uniqueness of the date glyphs found on each of these statues, implies that the town was independent. The Aztec style of the date glyphs and of the sculptures in general suggests that the town may have been emulating the imperial style in order to associate with the prestige of the capital. In order to substantiate any arguments made using the sculptures as evidence, I will also analyze tribute and conquest lists, examine the Relación de Cuzcatlan, a post-conquest questionnaire about the city and its customs; and look carefully at previous scholarship on the city and its imperial status. All of these investigations will reveal that Coxcatlan was an independent town with imperial associations.

Claude-Louis Desraiss suite of erotic drawings now held in a private collection, embody a libertine perspective relating to the politics of the French Revolution. Although little is known about Desrais and this suite, factors such as sadism, fashion, and the interior space of the boudoir relate the work to the visual culture of early modern erotica and the societal turmoil during the 1780s and 1790s. In particular, Desraiss drawings depict extreme sex acts and express anti-clerical sentiments common in the politicized pornography at this time in Paris in the early 1790s. Female aristocrats, such as Queen Marie-Antoinette, and members of the clergy were attacked in revolutionary propaganda, especially in the form of libelles and philosophical books. In the public sphere, sexualized artworks typically represented figures in mythological guises. More hardcore, subversive works were relegated to the private sphere and flourished in the libertine subculture. Libertine ideologies seem to rise with political turmoil, for instance, during the Reformation in sixteenth-century Italy, the Restoration in seventeenth-century England, and the French Revolution, where subversive literature and explicit art thrived. Libertines believed in attacking religion and the monarchy. They rebelled against societal conventions that oppressed human nature by participating in outlandish sex acts, often expressed in creative outlets including art and literature. The most notorious and extreme libertine was the Marquis de Sade who produced works in the 1790s at the height of Terror and dysfunction during the Revolution. His writings included Enlightenment views and a repertoire of pornographic tropes to express a unique insight into the political atmosphere of the Revolution. The influence of the libertine subculture is taken to the extreme in the work of Sade and Desrais. In particular, Desrais utilized sadistic sexual acts to invert gender roles. Unlike most pornography, his drawings depict a nihilistic attitude with women dominating the boudoir, but with an unclear political agenda. This served as a mechanism for rebellion against the Church and the State, not necessarily as proto-feminism. In essence, he appears to satirize everything, the Church, social hierarchies, men and women, the ancien régime and the Republic. Desraiss suite of erotic drawings exemplifies the active subculture of libertinism in late eighteenth-century France and its subversive attitude towards Revolutionary politics.

Domenico Zampieri, called Domenichino, was one of the most influential exponents of the seventeenth-century classical style. Through his critical analysis of the art of Raphael and Annibale Carracci and his frequent references to classical art, he helped to define early Baroque art in Italy. Though he is now remembered as one of the great artists of the seventeenth century, his rise to fame was far from meteoric. His fortunes changed, however, with his frescoes for the Polet Chapel in Rome. Collectively known as Scenes from the Life of St. Cecilia, these five frescoes propelled Domenichino from a little-known Bolognese artist to new heights, as one of the most celebrated painters of his generation. St. Cecilia was a popular figure in seventeenth-century paintings and many of Domenichinos contemporaries and immediate predecessors depicted her, yet Domenichinos fresco cycle stands out from the creations of other artists working in the same period. This thesis argues that Domenichinos inventive interpretation of St. Cecilias hagiography for the Polet Chapel was the driving force behind his success. To support this argument, this paper examines three main factors that contributed to the commission, the execution and the success of the Scenes from the Life of St. Cecilia. First, I provide relevant social and historical information outlining the revival of St. Cecilias cult in the seventeenth century. Second, I analyze the treatment of St. Cecilia in art by Domenichinos contemporaries and his immediate predecessors. Finally, I examine the individual frescoes in Scenes from the Life of St. Cecilia and demonstrate how his innovative interpretation of her hagiography added new themes to the canon of work featuring St. Cecilia.

This essay evaluates fictitious criticism as a heretofore largely ignored phenomenon that existed in art writing of the late 1960s and early 1970s, examining three exemplary cases: First, a set of 1969 self-interviews conducted by conceptual artists Joseph Kosuth, Robert Barry, Doug Huebler, and Lawrence Weiner. Entitled Four Interviews with Barry, Huebler, Kosuth, and Weiner, each artist drafted and responded to his own questions. In lieu of their own names the artists used a previous pseudonym of Kosuth, Arthur R. Rose, as an interviewer/critic. It is argued here that the self-interview functioned as the artists rebuff of critics claims upon their work. Second, the fictional critic Cheryl Bernstein created by art historian Carol Duncan. Bernsteins two essays, The Fake as More (1973), and Performance as News: Notes on an Intermedia Guerilla Art Group (1977), are read here not only parodies of real criticism, but as acting (both in the past and present) in a performative manner. The final case examined is artist Robert Morriss 1971 article, The Art of Existence: Three Extra-Visual Artists, Works in Process. Morriss essay, in which he reviewed of the work of three invented artists, was published in Artforum. This essay suggests that Morriss article has a dual function: it rejects the authority of the critic, as well as augments his carefully crafted artistic persona. Often relegated to the footnotes of art history, these three cases allows for a re-examination of expectations of veracity in criticism, the practice of institutional critique, and the value of fictitious criticism for art history. This essay proposes that fictitious criticism has an important position in the transition from a modern to a postmodern mode of discourse in art writing, and ends with the proposition that the complexity of fictitious criticism, coupled with art historys lack of attention to the genre, suggests a rich store of information for, and about, the discipline of art history itself.