This thesis investigates the socially imagined representation of two areas of the global South, through the lens of contemporary art. It traces the historicisation of urban Latin America and the Arab world along a timeline of critical lenses, questioning their construction as imagined sites. Re-occurring tropes from exhibition spaces acting as representations of the global South on a macro-level are contrasted with observations from a local level, in an ethnographic study of nineteen artist groups of four capital cities of Latin America and the Arab world. The research draws upon sociological methodologies of research, arts methodologies and historicisation to chart the scope and function of these groups against the backdrop of the global art-institution’s so-called geographic turn and it’s romanticisation of the precarious state as the new avant-garde. Moving away from the traditional cartography of art and social history, this thesis offers an expanded concept of collectivity and social engagement through art, and the artist group as unit of social analysis in urban space. Putting these ideas into dialogue, artist-led structures are presented as counter-point to collective exhibitions and to the collectivity of national identity and citizenship. An abundance of artist groups in the art scene of each city represents an informal infrastructure in which a mirror image of inner-workings of the city and art world become visible through this zone of discourses in conflict. This unorthodox exploration of art, region, and collective expression launches into the possibility of new constellations of meaning, tools to recapture the particulars of everyday experience in the unfolding of large narratives. Examining the place of collective art practices in the socio-political history of the city, this intervention into current theory around the role of art from the global South traces the currents and counter-currents of the art-institution and its structures of representation re-enacted in places of display and public discourse -- the museum, the news, the gallery, the biennial,the street and the independent art space.

Can nuances of surface – by drawing the viewer close – offer contemplative experience, and enable art-making methods to be better understood? I investigate Agnes Martin’s methods, which are available to those looking carefully at her paintings, focusing on the late 1950s and early 60s. Her constructions of materials found near her New York studio have received little critical attention in existing writing, despite their pivotal role in the development of her grid paintings. I re-enacted some of her methods, and adopted some of the elements that I observed in her artworks from this period, in order to better understand the relationship between found objects in these works and the marks and lines within later paintings and drawings. I focused on the particular quality of attention Martin devoted to marks, materials and surfaces, both in her work and in her working environment; this involved analysing and attempting to follow her ‘contemplative’ approach (see Chapter 2). A practical analysis extended the understanding of Martin’s methods and the effects of local North American influences, and resulted in a new body of layered and two-sided artworks, described throughout this thesis. This investigation of her meditative methods and how the field of painting can include objects and sculpture relates for the first-time Martin’s attitude toward making with some artists who are working today (see Chapters 7 and 8). It also adds to existing scholarship on Martin by comparing her surfaces’ demand for closeness (see Chapter 9) with the participatory practices of Lygia Clark and Gego in South America (see Chapter 10). Mondrian’s influence is thereby traced in separate but parallel lines of abstraction. This thesis’ main contribution is a new workshop methodology (see Chapter 12) as a guide for those who wish to research an artist and their methods. The methodology offers a discursive structure within which to investigate art practice through new practice. The presentation of new artworks in participatory workshops in an exhibition setting invites discussion about art-making methods, emphasising the role of practice in the artistic research process. New artworks were offered to be hand-held by the viewer, and this invitation to attend closely was accompanied by art-making and dialogue around practice. The responses I gathered from participants indicate that this type of active engagement can disseminate tacit knowledge and offer experience of a contemplative approach.

This thesis explores the interaction of word and image through an intellectual framework which engages with artistic practice. By providing an overviev of interarts debates, it is suggested that notions such as the 'sister arts' have tended historically to privilege word over image. This privileging which has circumscribed word / image relationships is addressed by the Enlightenment thinker Gotthold Lessuig who differentiates between the arts in terms of medium specificity. In problematising the ways in which interarts debates have posited word/image in a dualistic relationship, this thesis exposes the difficulties in establishing an adequate critical discourse for dealing with the conjunction of words and images. A broadly poststructuralist critical framework is introduced in order to challenge the ideologies and ingrained assumptions that have dominated imcrarts debates. This study will attempt to put into practice a deconstruction of binary relations, by questioning the stability and the authority of language. It will also address the notion of an 'imperialism of language' in fixing the meaning of the visual image. Drawing upon the work of Barthes, Derrida and Lyotard, this thesis will attempt to find ways of reconfiguring the dialectical relationship between word/image wherein the two are seen to be engaging in dynarruc interactions. It will be suggested that the overcoming of word/image antagonism since the 1960s has begun to shape interactions of theory and practice in the art world itself where the influence of poststructuralist theory can be seen in artistic practices such as Concepwal art. Key issues that will be addressed include representation and meaning, the notion of textuality, framing, and the 'eruption of language into the aesthetic field'. The intellectual framework is enhanced through a detailed analysis of selected contemporary artists whose work is based on the creative juxtaposition of word and image. These case studies, which focus on Barbara Kruger, Susan Hiller and artists' books, integrate word and image, theory and practice, in order to consider issues such as a feminine aesthetic, peinture fiminine, a critique of representation, and the interaction of form and content. The case studies will be examined within the context of postmodern artistic practices. Overall, this thesis engages with the complexities of developing: a suitable framework for visual analysis, one in which word and image are in a dynamic relationship. This study will suggest that many of the issues directly conceming word and image interaction are played out in the work of contemporary artists, and that it is the challenge of theory to attempt to engage with artistic practice.

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Throughout his career, Francisco de Goya drew, etched, and painted several recurrent themes. One which began early in his career and was revisited by the artist even in the last years of his life while in exile in Bordeaux was anticlericalism. Goya lived during turbulent times in Spanish history, with the role of the Catholic Church changing as governments and kings also changed. His art reflects the many abuses of power the Church and its clerics perpetrated on the Spanish people during this period. Throughout his oeuvre, Goya critiques the clergy and the Catholic Church for misconduct such as sexual abuse, greed, acts of violence, and hypocrisy. If we consider the decades in Spanish history in which Goya lived we note that the clergy and the church were reformed under the enlightened monarchs of the Bourbon dynasty and were almost completely disbanded under French control during the War of Independence against Napoleon. We subsequently see a complete reversal with a reinvigoration of the Church and the Inquisition under the restoration of Fernando VII. It makes sense that Goya, an artist who used his art to provide us with a social critique of Spanish life, would have turned to the many wrong doings of the Church since it was one of the most important and powerful institutions in Spain during his lifetime. Goya's critiques of the Church were harsh, humorous, and many times intentionally ambiguous. My dissertation examines a still much neglected facet of Goya's art, namely his depictions of anticlericalism throughout his career. I address how the cultural, religious, social, political, and literary history of Spain help to explain why the artist denigrated members of the Catholic Church in his art. A great deal has been written on some of Goya's well-known religious paintings, yet his fierce anticlericalism that informs so much of his art has been largely overlooked. The first chapter introduces anticlericalism and examines the historiography of Goya's works. It also explains my methodological approach and how my dissertation seeks to expand upon the scholarship that discusses Goya's complex relationship with religion. My second chapter addresses the role of religious commissions in Goya's early career from his training to his beginnings in the royal court of Madrid. I emphasize how even in his early career, Goya's religious paintings had begun to satirize the Catholic clergy as well as depart from traditional religious iconography. Subsequent chapters focus on works he created while he was becoming the most famous and sought after artist in Spain. Specifically in chapters three and four I examine anticlericalism in his print series Los Caprichos and Disasters of War as well as in his paintings and drawings completed while living in Spain. My final two chapters examine Goya's anticlericalism in the last years of his life, first under the restored monarchy of Fernando VII and then during his self-imposed exile in Bordeaux. The late works reveal the extent to which Goya continued to meditate on and represent the abuses of the Catholic clergy in Spain, a topic that would be on his mind until his final days.

From 1880 until the enforcement of Prohibition in 1920, depictions of food consumption evolved as a newly significant genre of American art. As restaurant dining became increasingly popular and the social norms governing food changed rapidly, the dining table functioned as a space for the negotiation of class, ethnicity, and identity. In the contexts of increased immigration, shifting class structures, and tumultuous urban environments, depictions of food consumption served essential sociocultural functions. Artists and viewers utilized depictions of food to justify and internalize difference, often working to combat change. The proliferation and diversification of food imagery during this period is evidence of changing tastes, for both food and imagery. Depictions of restaurant dining, food labor, ethnic restaurants, and other venues for food consumption served as spaces for the negotiation of change and the performance of class, identity, and status.

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