Thesis (B.A.)--Bryn Mawr College, Dept. of Art, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Waikato, 2010. / Title from PDF cover (viewed 28 July, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 461-507)

The purpose of this study is to look at how the figure is imaged through the photographic medium today. Through this purpose I aim to explore the individual expression of the photographer in his photographic medium; the expression of the figure within the medium and the diverse practises of this medium in society - to build up an awareness and understanding of the diverse representations of the human form. The general aims of study are: 1 - to study how these three photographers choose to photograph the figure, through their technical, compositional and individual approach. 2 - to show how diverse the usage of the photographic figure is in the visual world. 3 - to expose an awareness of the photographic figure as transformation of an expression of self. 4 - to show the relationship between the photographer and the figure, the camera and the photographer, the camera and the figure, and the photographic figure and the viewer. 5 - to study my own photographic imagery in relation to the other imagery discussed. My research information was collected through: observations, discussions, literature and practical exploration. This study will attempt to draw conclusions, from its explorations, that will highlight the importance of the individual eye: that it is the individual eye that becomes the vehicle of transformation.

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The dissertation examines the appearance and meanings of corporeal anomaly in the arts of Postclassic Mexico (AD 900–1521). Drawing specifically upon those categories of the human or divine body that are regularly termed aberrant, grotesque, or otherwise “deformed” by scholars of Mesoamerican art, the images discussed here include dwarfs, hunchbacks, twins, animal-human hybrids, disfigured deities, and disembodied limbs, among others. While similarly distinctive images can be identified among earlier Mesoamerican artistic traditions, the variety of idiosyncratic bodies that pervade the arts of the Postclassic period, in addition to the breadth of available historical sources, make it the ideal lens through which to analyze many of the most fundamental issues of indigenous Mexican visual culture. Relative to Classic Maya art, a tradition of naturalism and linear elegance greatly resembling that of early modern European painting and sculpture, the art of the ancient Mixtecs, Toltecs, and Nahuas (Aztecs) is sometimes perceived as rigid, laconic, and hulking—even brutish—by comparison. Featuring complex figural abstractions and esoteric symbolism, these later traditions are further distinguished by the specificity of their physical deformations, including twisted faces, palsied limbs, contorted spines, extra appendages, and other unnatural anatomies. Consequently, Postclassic art offers an inventory of difference that is unique not only among Mesoamerican art but among Western traditions as well, making it doubly challenging to interpret its motivations and significance. However, by analyzing the role of such extraordinary bodies within the broader anthropocentric worldviews of ancient Mesoamerica, this study offers useful strategies for unpacking the complex religious, political, and formal motivations that govern much of Postclassic visual culture. As I argue, extraordinary bodies share a common identity as transformational characters occupying specifically transitory states. As shape-shifters, gatekeepers, divine conduits, and shepherds, it is in the liminal regions of existence—the “betwixt and between” of reality and myth—where such figures live and serve as the custodians of heaven and earth. With tremendous regularity, their irregular forms indicate and define the various “borderlands” of Mesoamerican ideology, from the hinterlands of the urban center to the margins and gutters of hand-painted books. In short, a distinctly Postclassic notion of physical deformation stands at the threshold between creation and dissolution, center and periphery, life and death.

Orientador: Milton Terumitsu Sogabe / Banca: José Leonardo do Nascimento / Banca: José Paiani Spaniol / Banca: Jorge Sidney Coli Júnior / Banca: Sérgio Niculitcheff / Resumo: O corpo humano no Ocidente é, sem dúvida alguma, desde as primeiras manifestações expressivas da humanidade, o tema mais recorrente na história das representações, inclusive no campo privilegiado das artes visuais, no lapso que vai da Grécia no século VI a.C. até a Arte Contemporânea, período abordado de modo sincrônico no presente estudo. Nosso objetivo principal foi a analise das relações que se estabelecem entre o corpo da obra (sempre tomada como representação) e o corpo do observador no momento da fruição estética. Essa relação, inerente ao fenômeno artístico, altera-se a cada contexto em função de uma complexa rede de significações, as quais não se restringem às especificidades das linguagens expressivas. Por isso, foi determinante considerar o fato de que o espaço entre o corpo da obra e o corpo do observador - assim como o espaço que separa o leitor (observador) e o presente texto (obra) nesse momento - também é preenchido virtualmente por suas experiências pessoais e pelas diversas representações que se fazem do corpo no complexo cenário sociocultural. Em outras palavras, além das representações específicas ao campo das artes visuais, foi necessário considerar e abordar algumas das múltiplas dimensões da cultura expressas nas representação sociais, políticas, religiosas, jurídicas, médicas, científicas e sexuais do corpo. Essa decisão se deve ao fato de considerarmos que entre o observador e qualquer obra há um espaço virtual povoado por suas experiências pessoais e pelas demais representações produzidas no universo da cultura. O corpo através de seus sentidos, a obra em sua autonomia e esse espaço carregado de significações deslizantes formam uma orgânica e complexa rede, como se estivéssemos no centro de uma cidade onde interações locais podem levar a uma ordem global mais complexa / Abstract: Since the first expressive demonstrations of humanity, the human body is certainly the most recurrent subject in the history of representations in the West, from the 6th century B.C in Greece to Contemporary Art, period approached of synchronous mode in this study. Our main objective was to analyze the relations established between the body of the work (always taken as a representation) and the body of the observer at the time of the aesthetic fruition. This relationship inherent to the artistic phenomenon, changes in each context, depending of a complex network of meanings, which are not restricted to the specificities of expressive languages. Therefore, it was important to consider the fact that the space between the body of the work and the body of the observer - as well as the space that separate the reader (observer) and this text (work) at the moment - is also virtually filled by their personal experiences and the several representations, which make the body in the complex sociocultural setting. In other words, more than specific representations of visual arts field, it was necessary to consider and to approach some of the multiple dimensions of culture, expressed in social, political, religious, legal, medical, scientific and sexual representation of the body. This decision is due to our consideration that there is a virtual space inhabited by their personal experiences and by other representations produced in the cultural universe between the observer and any work. The body through its feelings, the work on its autonomy and the space, full of sliding meaning, form an organic and complex network, as if we were the center of a city where local interactions can lead to a more complex global order / Doutor

Believing that ideas about evolution and genetics are playing an increasing role in popular conceptions of who we are and what it means to be human, I sought ways to express this through my art. In particular I tried to articulate these notions through figurative sculpture. As the role of figurative sculpture in expressing current ideas about being human has declined in the West, I saw this as a challenge. It was the intent of my Masters program to reposition the sculpted body back within contemporary western cultural contexts. For an understanding of those contexts I relied heavily on my own culturally embedded experience and observations. I took as background my readings of evolutionary inspired literature and linked it with my interpretations of the genetic mythologies so prevalent in recent movies. The result was an image of contemporary humans as multifaceted, yet subservient to their genes. These genes appear to be easily manipulated and the product of technological intervention as much as, if not more than, inherited characteristics. As part of developing a sculptural form able to manifest this, I investigated some non-western traditions. I used field trips and residencies to research Buddhist and Hindu sculptures of the body and developed an interest in the spatial and conceptual relationships between those bodies. Through making figurative work in the studio, I came to realise the figures' inadequacy in expressing temporal relationships. As temporal change is a fundamental element of evolution and genetics, I needed to explore this element. The result was a number of series; groups of works that create their own context of relationships. Not all these groups use sculptures of the body but they evoke the notion of bodies, naturally or technologically hybridised, mutating, transforming, evolving and related to each other generationaly through time.

This paper is about the subjectivity of the body, and what this means in terms of my artistic practice. Composed in two sections, the first section addresses issues of personal history as content, the use of language in relationship to visual art, and experimental language as a tool to communicate visceral knowledge. I discuss the feminist critique of cultural, artistic and academic hierarchies, and explore how these themes inform my work. The second section examines the body of work I have developed within the MFA program. I explain the artists who have influenced my development, and give specific examples, whenever possible, of formal and conceptual influences. I use images of my own paintings, studio, and exhibitions to illustrate the progression of my practice. In conclusion, I contemplate the upcoming thesis exhibition, and explain my intentions regarding its completion. / vi, 56 leaves : col. ill. ; 29 cm

This dissertation explored visual representations of death in the photographic work of Andres Serrano and Joel-Peter Witkin, as well as the MAFA candidate's (David Buchler) own art practice. It looked at historical overviews of representations of death from the Middle Ages to present, as a means of contextualising and locating the reasons as to how images came to be the way they are in the present. Selected artworks were examined with particular theoretical reference to Phillipe Ariès' investigation into the changing attitudes towards death in Western society and Julia Kristeva's abjection theory. This dissertation focuses on the abjection of death and more specifically the corpse and the treatment of it in the work of Serrano and Witkin. This project explored some of the reasons why the images in this dissertation may be seen as disturbing and confrontational. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2010.

Believing that ideas about evolution and genetics are playing an increasing role in popular conceptions of who we are and what it means to be human, I sought ways to express this through my art. In particular I tried to articulate these notions through figurative sculpture. As the role of figurative sculpture in expressing current ideas about being human has declined in the West, I saw this as a challenge. It was the intent of my Masters program to reposition the sculpted body back within contemporary western cultural contexts. For an understanding of those contexts I relied heavily on my own culturally embedded experience and observations. I took as background my readings of evolutionary inspired literature and linked it with my interpretations of the genetic mythologies so prevalent in recent movies. The result was an image of contemporary humans as multifaceted, yet subservient to their genes. These genes appear to be easily manipulated and the product of technological intervention as much as, if not more than, inherited characteristics. As part of developing a sculptural form able to manifest this, I investigated some non-western traditions. I used field trips and residencies to research Buddhist and Hindu sculptures of the body and developed an interest in the spatial and conceptual relationships between those bodies. Through making figurative work in the studio, I came to realise the figures' inadequacy in expressing temporal relationships. As temporal change is a fundamental element of evolution and genetics, I needed to explore this element. The result was a number of series; groups of works that create their own context of relationships. Not all these groups use sculptures of the body but they evoke the notion of bodies, naturally or technologically hybridised, mutating, transforming, evolving and related to each other generationaly through time.