Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-66).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-276). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

This thesis is an analytical study of the various critical approaches taken to the work of Eva Hesse and their underlying methodologies and theoretical assumptions. Its purpose is to determine in a general way how and why the nature of criticism has changed from positions strongly influenced by Modernism as defined by Clement Greenberg to those that involved a separation of criticism from consideration of artworks as individual phenomena. / For the most part, Chapter One concerns critics' Modernist analyses of Hesse's relationship to Minimalism and their progression towards a criticism based on non-formalist, non-hierarchical theories of style. There is also a short discussion on the linkage created between Hesse's art and specific psychological traumas in her life. Included as well is an explanation of the changing conception of originality and the critic's dilemma in confronting private content through the strictures of public dialogue. / Chapter Two investigates critical discussions of experience, how art was apprehended and how meaning was transmitted. / Chapter III involves a feminist debate on the issues of gender. The content of Hesse's work was analyzed in psycho-biographical terms and within the framework of her identity as a female artist in western culture. / And finally, the thesis concludes by pointing out the evolution of criticism into a distinct, independent discipline whereby the critic articulates the theoretical contexts in which the artwork exists, but then extends in into a broader cultural setting where the critic analyzes the significance of such positions taken, its relationship to the past and future implications.

No description available.

Zugl.: Oldenburg, Univ., Diss., 2002

Research submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, March 2017 / The creative component of the research project explores, through the medium of sculpture, the notion of the liminal, with a particular focus on themes of the absurd and the unstable as characteristics of liminality. These themes may be useful for investigating and providing a valuable source for critical assessment, so as to allow for the opening of and extending of debates on reading and thinking about art regarded as ‘in-between’ the poles of a binary opposition. Broadly, it seeks to explore the historical trajectory of the 1960s artist Eva Hesse in relation to these themes, and how it resonates with my own sculpture-making and development. The aim of the written research is, therefore, through engaging with a close critical and theoretically informed reading of selected examples of Hesse’s work, to identify themes and approaches which may inform and advance the understanding of my own work produced in the context of this study. Connections will be drawn to the way in which these themes facilitate a favourable space in which the making of art flourishes. As far as viewers are concerned, such work may encourage the viewer to be an active participant in a dimension of human experience potentially not yet encountered, thereby liberating viewers’ fixed and rigid perceptual constructs. Entering into a discussion of the themes of liminality, the absurd and unstable, serves this aim. / XL2018

Zugl.: Berlin, Univ. der Künste, Diss., 2007