This practice based PhD research is conducted through my installations One Hundred Ten Thousand (2011-12), Rituals to Mutations (2013) and Blackballing (2013). It is a journey from the sites of propagation marginalised villages in the outskirts of Beijing and a forgotten Buddhist temple in Chongqing, Central China - through the production processes to exhibitions in global venues. This research examines the potentiality of nomadism as a political position. This specific agency provides a unique setting through which this inquiry makes a contribution to the field of contemporary art in the contexts of globalisation, nomadic subjectivity, new materialism and the posthuman/postanthropocentric condition, and to visual language. It argues for a more ethical and material relationship with others, human and non-human. I examine how transformative, intersubjective relations, nomadic politics, extensive lived experience, local knowledge and different levels of collaboration might be addressed by my artworks and how these processes might be encountered by the viewer. I explore how the use of these different fluid connections in my work might transform our sense of ourselves and our relationship with others, human or not. As a process of rereading and reconstituting, starting from specific cultural details like those of Chinese village graveyards, and interconnecting spatial, historical, sociopolitical and metaphysical reconfiguration, the research project examines the possibilities of merging them with emergent, unexpected bodies of knowledge and systems of interdependence. Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytical notion of abjection is a frame of reference through which I develop methodological tools. In this research, I situate this psychoanalytical, Eurocentric and rather limited notion in more anthropological and extended fields of relationships, especially in relation to notions such as ‘becoming’ (Gilles Deleuze) and animism (Anselm Franke), and to local knowledge and nomadic discourses (Rosi Braidotti). I do this in order to examine how oppositional relations between the Self and the Other and dualistic concepts might be transformed. I evaluate my research in dialogic relation to other artists’ works, via reflexive conversations alongside theoretical propositions and in relation to my political nomadic position as a researcher and practitioner. This research leads to a re-evaluation of how concepts of abjection and resistance might be rethought in art practice. By integrating processes of abjection with Deleuzian ‘becoming’, my artworks explore how transformative processes of, for example, material(ities), rituals or pollution, might be engendered in systems of relations in which oppositional relations between subjects and objects (human and non-human) are destabilised and operate inclusively.

Waltercio Caldas é um dos artistas mais controversos da História da Arte no Brasil. Insere-se na própria história da arte, bem como cria as bases para uma produção historiográfica, na qual a busca da formação da identidade nacional é um objetivo a ser atingido. Releituras de obras clássicas, novas propostas de olhar as obras de arte, o diálogo com as formas e espaços são algumas das tendências apresentadas por Caldas desde sua exposição inaugural no inicio da década de 70 do século passado. O grande momento de Caldas é o livro quadro Los Velásquez. Onde o artista desconstrói o celebre quadro Las Meninas, de Velásquez. Expondo o visível e o invisível, propõe uma nova dimensão para com os espaços e limites da arte. Este trabalho visa buscar um panorama da trajetória de Waltercio Caldas e estabelecer as relações entre este e a História da Arte, para então buscar a identidade do artista por trás da obra / Waltercio Caldas is one of the most controversial artists in the history of art in Brazil. He is part of the History of Art, as well as laying the groundwork for a historical production, in which the search for the formation of national identity is a goal to be reached. Re-interpretations of classics, new proposals to look at works of art, the dialogue with the forms and spaces are some of the trends presented by Caldas since its inaugural exhibition in the early 70s of last century. The highlight of the book is de Caldas - Los Velazquez framework. Where the artist deconstructs the famous painting Las Meninas by Velazquez. Exposing the visible and invisible proposing a new dimension to the spaces and boundaries of art. This work aims to get an overview of the trajectory of Waltercio Caldas and establish relations with History of Arts and to then seek the identity of the artist behind the work

This thesis examines the motives behind museum loan and exchange policies and how loans can act as a new avenue for protecting and preserving paintings. When borrowed artworks are transported from one museum to another, there are many variables that come into play and careful planning is necessary for the safety of the object. Specific case studies of several well-known and respected museums that engage in and encourage loans will explore the complex nature of lending policies, their effect on the condition of artworks and their significance and impact on the museum world. This thesis culminates in an analysis of the loan fitness and possibility for transport of Joachim Beich’s Untitled, a painting in the Scripps College collection.

From the late nineteenth-century until the outbreak of World War II, monuments were erected in large numbers across the United States. Critics referred to the phenomenon as "statue mania," because of the number and diversity of monuments appearing in cities across the country. Women's clubs and organizations were heavily involved in this monument culture, commissioning and raising funds for monuments to America's heroes. After the Woman's Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition advanced the idea of a monument honoring women's work in civic space, organizations began to commission monuments to honor individual women. With few precedents to build on, both artists and patrons were challanged to create a visual language that could represent the work of real women, ideally. These monuments first followed the established form of the "hero statue," using historical figures to represent precedents for women's contemporary demands for the economic and social privileges of citizenship. Women became voters when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, but still lagged behind full economic and social equality. A brief period of experimentation in the 1920s attempted to create monuments representing the accomplishments of women's collective work, demanding recognition of the demographic at large as contributing members of the electorate. By the 1930s, "ideal" figures replaced individual identity in women's monuments, reflecting the demand to acknowledge the many women participating every day in reform work. Public monuments visually marked the narrative of women's reform work in civic space, supporting their patrons' ambition for autonomy and the rights of full citizenship in a democracy.

This master's thesis seeks to dispel the myth that nineteenth century painter Paul Delaroche's art was either apolitical or politically conservative. Through an examination of Delaroche's portraits of the late Napoleon I in conjunction with contemporary napoleonic prints, one finds that Delaroche was, indeed, deeply involved with contemporary politics. A close examination of his portraits shows that this involvement manifested itself in support for both the Cult of Napoleon and for the Bonapartist party.

An exploration of the various ephemeral sources of Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers. This thesis brings together other authors' observations of Baroque ephemera. Additional sources are proposed by the author to create a more complete discussion of the fountain and its relationship with Baroque ephemera.

"The Still Life" explores debates over single manhood in the culture of the nineteenth-century United States. Until recently, the "bachelor" was less an identifiable social type than a battleground for discourses of privacy and intimacy, sympathy and sentiment, and labor and leisure. Representations of the bachelor tended to excite readers' concerns about the relationships among emotion, public behavior, and intellectual prowess. Concentrating on constructions of the bachelor within specific discursive arenas, this dissertation examines "bachelorhood" as a way culture organized a wide range of ideologies and experiences. Though the bachelor's particular significance faded in the twentieth century, a conceptual roadblock dramatized by the figure remains: the notion that an emotionally rewarding family life and the production of works of public significance are fundamentally at odds.;The Introduction traces the evolution of the notion of "bachelor" from European religious, martial, and academic origins to its United States version. Distinguishing "bachelorhood" from "single manhood," it sets the terms of inquiry within the theoretical context of cultural studies of masculinity.;The first chapter explores an apparent paradox: while much American writing of the early nineteenth century declared the single male a dangerous figure, Washington Irving's use of the bachelor as narrator evoked a quite different response. as a sentimental male narrator, Irving's bachelor participated in the construction of sympathy (crucial to post-Revolution politics) by observing the family and re-uniting alienated members of the body politic.;Chapter Two moves this discussion into the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance and Melville's Pierre suggest a very different relationship between manhood and the domestic than Irving's model, one that criticized domesticity. Subverting the language of domestic spheres, these stories suggest that intimacy and privacy could be at odds.;The final chapter argues that we see competitive individual masculinity as a complex product of a shared domestic life. It focuses on fin-de-siecle still life paintings by William Harnett and John Peto that depicted men's paraphernalia. These paintings and the contemporary popular literature of masculine domesticity suggest that the new urban bachelor culture was a companionate one, forged in shared living spaces.

Through my dissertation, I embark on a biographical, cultural and historical study of artist and abolitionist Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796-1881), primarily known as a nineteenth-century portrait painter and engraver in New Haven, Connecticut. Although Jocelyn received little formal training, he sought to become a preeminent portrait painter. Together with his younger brother, Simeon Smith Jocelyn (1799-1879), he established a successful engraving firm designing banknotes, maps, atlases, and book illustrations.;Jocelyn lived in an age of evangelical revivalism commonly called the Second Great Awakening. He was a devout Congregationalist and saw the various aspects of his life embedded in his religious convictions. Jocelyn's diary chronicles his beliefs, social views, hopes, fears, daily struggles, and his plans to develop and attain artistic acclaim and economic success.;My dissertation reveals an artist not unlike other enterprising men of the New Republic or most portrait painters of his era who struggled to earn a living. Yet Jocelyn was extraordinary because he created the most important portrait of an African in the nineteenth-century, Cinque (c.1813-1879), leader of the Amistad rebellion of 1839. This portrait challenged Jacksonian-era concepts of portraiture and became one of the most significant icons for the abolitionist movement. For Jocelyn the portrayal of Cinque was the galvanizing event of his life as an artist, abolitionist, and Christian.;Jocelyn not only challenged the concept of conventional portraiture, but also nineteenth-century racial stereotypes by depicting a black man as a man of dignity. Jocelyn used Cinque's portrait to dissociate black skin and African-ness from traditional depictions of black men that linked them with slavery. Jocelyn was not afraid to show an African as a man of power, independence, and intelligence---traits portraitists generally associated with white people.;His depiction of Cinque as an idealized hero was intentional, and it aided the abolitionist cause. Nathaniel Jocelyn created a visual abolitionist language in his portrayal of Cinque by crossing the boundaries of race and imbuing the portrait with an iconography rich with abolitionist and Christian symbolism.;Jocelyn led a multifaceted life as a Christian, abolitionist, portrait painter, inventor, engraver, and esteemed teacher. He had the confidence, admiration, and respect of his peers and the New Haven notables as he maintained intimate ties with the world of art and abolition.

This dissertation traces the decline of history painting and its domestication in Other artistic forms in the United States. In the three decades between the Mexican-American War and the Centennial, the market for historical art went through a major transformation. Artists shifted from historical to contemporary subjects or represented historical themes in everyday-domestic settings. Monumental history painting, which was supported by art unions and private patrons during the antebellum period, came under critical attack and lost its status as a form of high art. Critical opinion turned especially against paintings of historical struggle and heroic sacrifice which seemed to be removed from the domestic experiences of middle class audiences. Painters domesticated the high moral drama of history painting in more intimate scenes.;I analyze the contest over historical representation from several directions. Part One discusses the institutional changes affecting the transformation of historical art. I focus on two institutions, the American Art-Union and the Cosmopolitan Art Association, a number of private patrons, and several art critics and art journals. Part One establishes a historical framework for the discussion of three individual painters discussed in Part Two. The careers of Emanuel Leutze, Lilly Martin Spencer, and Eastman Johnson allow me to trace the domestication of history through a spectrum of cultural forms including history, genre, and portrait painting.;This study links the decline of history painting to a cultural process which included specific constituencies---artists, patrons, critics---competing for cultural authority. Antebellum history painting had a weak institutional basis and was unable to consolidate a supportive audience. The focus on three painters and their attempts to negotiate changing perceptions of what constituted historical authenticity reveals complex process in which history painting lost its credibility.;My approach to the transformation of history painting relies on various methodological and theoretical sources, including the social history of art, cultural studies, material culture, and the philosophy of history. The dissertation applies theoretical framework to the study of history painting and other historical representations and brings into focus an emerging bourgeois art public in the States.

My dissertation, "Artful Manipulation: The Rockefeller Family and Cold War America," examines how the Rockefeller family used the Museum of Modern Art, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection to shape opinions about America, both at home and abroad, during the early years of the Cold War. The work done at Colonial Williamsburg tied the Rockefeller name to the foundations of American society and, later, to the spread of global democracy in the Cold War world. The establishment of a new museum for the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art collection in 1957 renewed the narrative that American folk art was the basis for American modern art, thus creating a legacy of creative cultural production that could match America's Cold War economic and military power. A close reading of the Museum of Modern Art's famous 1955 Family of Man exhibition shows how the Rockefellers promoted America as the head of the post-war global family. The show, a large scale photography exhibition, glorified universal humanism as the only option for global peace after World War II. The implicit message of the show, which traveled nationally and internationally through 1962, was that Americans would lead the free world in the second half of the twentieth century. In their insistence on shaping American society in their view, the Rockefellers shut out dissenting opinions and alternative narratives about American culture. A consideration of James Baldwin and Richard Avedon's 1964 photo-text Nothing Personal is then offered as a rebuttal to the narrative of modern American culture endorsed by the Rockefellers. In Nothing Personal, James Baldwin's essays and Richard Avedon's photographs signify on the narrative of white domination, the same narrative evoked across the Rockefellers' institutions. Juxtaposing Nothing Personal against the hegemonic work of the Rockefellers' cultural organizations offers readers a consideration of how narratives of exclusion necessitate and give life to narratives of resistance.