No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation explores the significance of Norman Flamboyant architecture by considering its origins, its local meanings, and its place in the larger narratives of late medieval architectural history. This examination of Normandy's role in the development of the Flamboyant style includes a brief assessment of the historiography of the Late Gothic period, with emphasis on questions of regional and national identity. Since many elements of the Flamboyant style had been imported from the Decorated Style that developed in England, a country with which France was still at war when the Flamboyant began, the relationship between these traditions remains controversial even today. To address this controversy, this project examines the motivations of Norman patrons who employed these new forms in the context of the Hundred Years War, before going on to consider the later phases of the Flamboyant, adopted in Normandy after the expulsion of the English, and the demise of the style in the decades after 1500. By linking architectural form and social context, this work clarifies the history of Norman Gothic architecture and its cultural significance.

This dissertation connects the life and work of Ai Weiwei to Chinese art history. This field is dynamic and, during certain periods, an influx of outside ideas has revolutionized it. Ai’s belief in democratic values—criticized as being anti-Chinese—is part of a tradition in China emphasizing diversity. From the Hundred Schools of Thought (zhu zi baijia) during the Warring States (475 BCE-221 BCE) to the spread of Buddhism during the post-Han era (220-589), divergent thinking has been part of China’s intellectual development. This diversity, however, has been crushed by ideology during other periods. Ai embraces diversity as the future of China. His life and work reestablish a narrative of Chinese intellectual history. This narrative is free from ideological mandates to erase the past. Ai looks at everything critically. His art reveals new ways of understanding China. His career also corresponds to the policies of opening China known as Gaige kaifang. As a result, economic issues are recurrent themes in Ai’s work. He questions the value of liberalizing China’s economy when political and judicial systems are still closed. This contradiction could have manifold consequences to the world. Another feature of Ai’s work is the legacy he inherited from his father, the Modern poet Ai Qing. This legacy is being tasked with modernizing China. The issues about modern China are addressed in this dissertation, and it is contextualized according to a balance between Western and Chinese thought. Ai has passed down this legacy to young artists, and his example recalls the axiom “the green comes from the blue and will surpass it” (qing chu yu lan, er sheng lan. A student’s abilities have the potential to surpass the teacher’s talent. Ai Qing was a great poet, but his son is his “masterpiece.” Ai Weiwei has hope that the next generation will be better than his. The way they improve it is by including heterodox voices in Chinese society. China is ascendant, but its opaque system appears to be contradictory to Ai’s desire for transparency and the sharing of information globally. The future could resemble the lamenting of Lu Xun’s provincial character Jiujin laotai: “Yes, indeed. Each generation is worse than the last.” Ai’s life and work show that the future of China is far from being determined. What is certain, and what Ai has done through his art, is that China and the world must be engaged. Human rights, specifically the freedom of expression, are paramount. The outcome of the twenty-first century depends on it.

From approximately 1900 until 1914, Odilon Redon worked almost exclusively on decorative projects, both privately and publicly commissioned. Additionally, he created numerous uncomissioned decorative works - highly ornamental paintings with decorative subject matter that were conceived of by the artist himself as decorations. Yet despite the fact that decorative works made up a significant portion of Redon's late oeuvre, he is rarely considered as a major figure within the decorative arts movement at the turn of the century, unlike his contemporaries Paul Gauguin and the Nabis. His close involvement with these artists, as well as his affiliation with a number of the same important critics, makes his exclusion from discussion of the decorative revival all the more surprising. There has been very little scholarship on Redon's decorative works that consider them in in relation to the international decorative movement. Nevertheless, his late works actively engaged with the avant-garde aesthetic theories of the time. My dissertation will place Redon in the context of the decorative and Symbolist art movements by examining the profusion of decorative projects with which he was involved during the last decades of his career. By considering important themes within these movements, like elevation of craft arts, the encouragement of floral designs, the revival of religious and mythological subject matter, and principles regarding the unification of the arts, I argue that Redon warrants consideration as a decorative painter at the turn of the century in France. My first chapter introduces the idea of the decorative revival in the nineteenth century, and considers the way the definition of the term "decorative" evolved during the period. I also present the historiography of Redon scholarship, as it relates to his decorative works. The second chapter examines the historical background of the decorative and Symbolist movements in the nineteenth century. I focus first on the pan-European decorative revival, especially in England and Belgium, then examining how this influenced French art. The Symbolist artistic movement developed simultaneously, and as such, I will examine the ways in which the two movements overlapped. Finally, I consider how Redon's artistic development was affected in this aesthetic climate. Subsequent chapters examine specific themes in Redon's decorative oeuvre, and how these related to ideas and undercurrents in the general decorative and Symbolist art movements. Chapter three focuses on flowers and nature as decoration, exploring the increase of floral imagery in both decoration and Symbolist painting, and how Redon adapted his own artistic language from these influences. Chapter four examines the revival of traditional imagery from religious and mythological subjects, as well as occultist themes, and explores the way Redon used his decorative style to create new symbolic meanings for these themes. Chapter five focuses on Redon's murals at the Abbaye de Fontfroide, in which I argue that they represent a modern Gesamtkunstwerk. My final chapter underscores Redon's place within the decorative and Symbolist movements and examines the influence he exerted on his contemporaries through his use of the decorative arts.

Rebellion against traditional aesthetics to express personal symbols and dreamlike visions connects the nineteenth-century Symbolists with the twentieth-century Surrealists. Yet the techniques of automatic writing and drawing to pursue self-discovery and the unconscious mind's inherent creativity remain primarily associated with Surrealism, and the extent to which this later movement's irrational content was inspired by Symbolist predecessors such as Gustave Moreau and Paul Gauguin remains uncertain. This dissertation explores the nineteenth-century psychological theories and occult beliefs behind automatism and the unconscious from the late Romantic to the Surrealist movements. The first chapter addresses how Romantic revolutions in art and psychology respond to theories such as mesmerism, spiritism, and the "discovery" of the unconscious, and the later impact of these developments on Symbolism. The second chapter analyzes Victor Hugo's séances and "spirit" drawings in the 1850s as early examples of automatism that influenced Symbolism and Surrealism. The following chapter expands this research to include the impact of psychology and spiritism on the Symbolist movement's esoteric subjects and increasingly abstract style. Sickened by their materialistic society and with Naturalism's attention to the physical world, the Symbolists may have attempted to release conscious control over their designs to pursue a higher reality and express the inner states and emotions that emerge during dreams and hypnosis. Although current art historical scholarship acknowledges basic connections between the Symbolists' visionary compositions and Surrealist concepts of the unconscious, the psychological and supernatural aspects of how Symbolist art transitions from dreamlike yet representative imagery towards pure abstraction and automatism merit further investigation, which I address in the final chapter. This research offers new perspectives on how the psychology of dreams and the unconscious evolved from an interest of Romantic and Symbolist artists to the ultimate revelation of individual creativity and expression in Surrealist automatism. The primary visual sources include nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century paintings; artistic, "spirit," and some scientific photographs, and artist's prints, collages, and drawings. Both consciously-created and allegedly automatic artistic productions, such as Gustave Moreau's abstract oil paintings and watercolors, reveal the development of surreal and automatic techniques and allow insight into the artists' intentions. This study divulges previously overlooked influences of painters, printmakers, photographers, critics, writers, and poets on their own era's cultural and intellectual milieu and on the aesthetic movements that followed. The conclusion offers suggestions for further research beyond the project's current scope, such as analyzing how automatism and mythology in early modern art culminated in the calligraphic, shamanistic imagery of Abstract Expressionism.

No description available.

This thesis serves as the first in-depth study of the works of Jacksonian-era portraitist Ralph E.W. Earl (1788-1838). Earl's multi-faceted contributions to the development of culture in Nashville, Tennessee complimented his work in formation of the public image of Andrew Jackson. As a young man from New England, Earl painted portraits as an itinerant artist, eventually making enough money to travel to England. He lived and worked in England for five years before spending a year in Paris and returning to the United States in 1816. Determined to paint the heroes of the Battle of New Orleans, Earl traveled to Nashville, Tennessee. He met with great success there and found a clear niche painting, thereafter settling in the up-and-coming city. Earl painted Jackson's portrait dozens of times in Tennessee and then in Washington during Jackson's presidency. The focus of this thesis is multifaceted. The story of American art is enriched with the telling of Earl's endeavors, and Earl's career functions as a unique case-study in early American art. Most importantly, Earl's portraits of Jackson helped fashion an acceptable image of the nation's seventh president. Furthermore, Earl's museum and printmaking endeavors helped expand early American culture in unique ways. This thesis contributes to the story of American art, history, and culture, by revealing the multi-faceted career of a forgotten American cultural hero.

This thesis focuses on how photomontage has been used by certain artists during periods of political unrest and artistic revolution. For the purposes of this study, "photomontage" is defined as any artwork into which a photograph is collaged in order to construct a political narrative. The photograph(s) may come from the mass media, or it can be privately created. This thesis is concerned with more than photomontage as a means of creating overtly political art, however. Specifically, Chapter One provides a general overview of the artwork and writing of the most politically motivated of the Dadas in Berlin, with particular attention to the work of Heartfield. Chapter Two examines the differing styles and goals of Hannah Höch versus the other Berlin Dadas, including Raoul Hausmann, with whom she worked closely from 1915 until 1922. Chapter Three is given to Kurt Schwitters, whose strong opinions about mixing art and politics provide a useful foil to the prevailing attitudes among his fellows. The final chapter considers photomontage as practiced by Martha Rosler in her "Bringing the War Home" works.