This thesis takes a new approach to Domenico Tiepolo’s (1727-1804), Divertimento Per li Regazzi (c.1795-1804), it is arguably the artists most enigmatic graphic work, which features the commedia dell’arte character Pulcinella. The drawings have hitherto been subject to rigorous connoisseurial analysis. Indeed, in his introduction to ten of the drawings in a catalogue of Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings in The Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, James Byam Shaw states that this particular series of drawings has now become so famous ‘that it is hardly necessary to add to the literature of the series.’1 In my opinion it would be a great pity if future generations of scholars were discouraged by this remark, for I believe the drawings still have much to ‘tell’ the contemporary art historian and would further benefit from increasingly interpretative readings. Previously, scholars have regarded Domenico Tiepolo as an imitator of his father, Giambattista Tiepolo (1696-1770), and interpreted the re-appropriation of motifs in the Divertimento as signs of old age and fatigue. I suggest, on the contrary, that in this series of drawings in particular, Domenico was an innovator. This project carves out new territories within the study of the series in that it focuses on the playful nature of the drawings, and how the suite can be understood in relation to contemporary theory concerning games and play, and ludic musical/improvisatory forms. Additionally, the drawings are discussed as a case history in a now popular emerging dialectic on the late works of aged artists: here I consider how these drawings, often funny, poignant, sensitive and delicate reveal how the elderly painter reconciles himself not only to the passing of his own life and the extinction of his family line but to an entire political, cultural and visual tradition.

The practice-led research was concerned with the development of the combination of high relief prints and the creation of different shades of printmaking inks through heat. The research was in the proportion of 60% practice and 40% theory. To locate this research within contemporary practice, the study began with the literature review and consideration was given to the work of artists, who use heat in their work. The literature review also investigated embossed patterns and relief techniques including the work of artists who produce imagery through pronounced relief. Existing colour systems were reviewed and these assisted a framework for correlating the colour samples that were modified through the application of heat to printing ink. This review demonstrated that there was no compelling evidence to suggest that artists had seriously taken into account the connection between heat, colour and relief pattern. Studio research consisted of a series of studies that explored the potential of heat and its facility to change the effect of printmaking inks. In this research, temperature, variation and duration were all recorded. Research also examined the ability of heat to relax and release paper fibres under pressure thereby achieving extremes of positive and negative relief, as well as embossed and textured surfaces. This was done by exploring different methods of pressing paper under heat to form and print a variety of high relief, involving concave and convex forms. The research also examined punctured paper, tears, and embossed holes and examined how the fragmentation of paper fibres could be enhanced through heat. The research culminated in the making of a series of full scale prints that demonstrate the use of heat and its ability to enable high relief prints and subtle changes of colour. The research concluded with an examination exhibition and a written dissertation.

The aim of this thesis is to offer a re-evaluation of our cultural assumptions concerning the monstrous in the work of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746- 1828), specifically his collection of etchings Los Caprichos (1799). In my study there are three closely related areas of investigation: the image of the monstrous body in Goya's work; the cultural aspects of monsters and monstrous forms in Western discourses and in the Spanish Enlightenment; and the theoretical encounter between the history of the sciences and deconstructive criticism. The interaction between these three areas provides a background against which to understand the Goyaesque body within the context of Spanish cultural practices. Through an examination of eighteenth-century Spanish reformist absolutism, this thesis explores the contradictions, limits, or insufficiencies of the Spanish Ilustraciön in order to establish the ideological, cultural and artistic context out of which Los Caprichos emerged. One of the central issues that runs through my study is to establish how far, and in what ways, Los Caprichos can be seen as an Enlightenment work. Traditional readings of Los Caprichos have paid very little critical attention to the monstrous human bodies depicted in the collection in the context of eighteenth century discourses on monstrosity and corporeality. Los Caprichos invite a more complex, multifaceted consideration both of the body and the monster, of corporeality and monstrosity. By focusing on the Goyaesque body, the aim of this thesis is to open up a series of questions on the ways in which the monstrous body can be thought of in the critique of culture. This study therefore seeks to provide a cultural history of the monstrous body in the art of Goya, showing how his pictorial representations in the collection of etchings Los Caprichos offer a critique of reason and problematize the perception and treatment of (European and Spanish) Enlightenment configurations of the body. It is my contention that Los Caprichos can be read in Enlightenment ways yet there are elements of an ideological, cultural and artistic nature that problematize such credentials, pointing to the limits and contradictions of the Spanish Enlightenment itself.

Since the 1980s and 1990s, cultural commodities produced in both Britain and Japan have enjoyed an upsurge in global popularity, giving rise to notions of “Creative Britain” and “Cool Japan.” As a result of this boom, British and Japanese governments have attempted to develop and/or collaborate with both domestic and foreign cultural industries as a solution to national economic decline. This turn to culture as a means of generating economic revenue is part of a global trend where neoliberal economic ideas converge with the rise of a “creative economy.” This thesis argues that the image of Victorian Britain in Japanese shōjo manga, as well as in British neo-Victorian fiction, suggests that the history of free trade and British imperialism in East Asia in the nineteenth century underpins this increasing emphasis on cultural commodity production and export in Britain and Japan. In other words, British and Japanese neo-Victorian texts published in the period 1980-present demonstrate that what we call “globalisation” today is deeply informed by economic relations and cultural hierarchies established between distant places in the nineteenth century. Recognising these connections between past and present helps us understand why the Japanese today “choose” to consume British “high” cultural goods, and why the Japanese state and cultural industries “choose” to focus their energies on exporting popular culture products. These “choices,” I argue, are historically conditioned by Japan’s encounter with the West, and especially Britain, in the nineteenth century, and the perception of British cultural superiority that this encounter has fostered. In examining the transnational networks that connect Britain and Japan in the nineteenth century and in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, this thesis uses a “global history” framework to expand existing approaches to neo-Victorianism, girl culture in Japan, and World Literature.

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This thesis provides a comparative analysis of the way contemporary processes of global change have affected the development of the publishing industry in nations which can be labelled small. It is centred on the cases of Scotland and Catalonia, nations with comparable political and demographic similarities in size and composition but also disparities in terms of their linguistic distribution and governmental organisation. The analysis interprets the sectors as a whole, looking specifically at the publication of texts in trade, academic and specialist markets. The research includes an overall qualitative analysis which synthesises a quantitative approach by adapting the interpretive perspective of social network analysis to undertake a survey of each sector in its entirety. This is supplemented with in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders that represent the poles of the sector in microcosm, as identified through the survey data. A model is developed as an analytical framework, which provides a theoretical contribution to the subject area and underpins the structure of the research. The study identifies the relationship between processes of change at the level of global enterprise and markets and the development and sustainability of materials published at the level of the local, and analyses how this inter-relation contributes to national identity development whilst considering the extent to which these processes affect the dynamics of this industrial activity in the cases of Catalonia and Scotland. Wider conclusions about other comparable small nations are drawn by interpreting the similarities and differences in these two nations. Particular factors for consideration include the linguistic status and socio-political situation of each location. The study also incorporates a diachronic perspective by underpinning the research with a contextual analysis of the historical development of the publishing industry in each nation from the seventeenth century to the present day. This research aids understanding of the position small-national cultures occupy in an increasingly globalised market and is designed to provide the basis for examination into the subject area from other comparable nations by focusing in on particular cultural variables as suggested in the conclusion.

Propaganda conceived for distribution via the medium of the pictorial poster creates artwork that can be productively examined from an aesthetic as well as political perspective. When this artwork is primarily restricted to conflict propaganda from the second decade of the twentieth century, the temporal and contextual considerations assist in focussing the poster’s role as a functional object, not only within a propaganda campaign but also within the wider visual ecology of an era. For the poster to operate as an effective means of propaganda distribution, the propagandist requires composition that incorporates constructs capable of attracting the viewer. In isolating a particular construct, its manifestation has the potential to be utilised as a tool in the unpacking of the imagery; consequently the concept of a propagandist promotion of an alternate reality as a challenge to a current real, and the prospective movement from one to the other, can be literally and figuratively conveyed via its employment as a pictorial trope. In this regard, the construct deemed to represent not only movement, but movement at its most beautiful thereby forming a focus for attraction, is the serpentine curve that in 1745 William Hogarth scribed and titled the line of beauty (Hogarth, 1997 p6). In concentrating on the poster within the wider genre of early twentieth century visual conflict propaganda, and creating new associations with aesthetic and metaphoric concepts pertaining to the line of beauty, this research becomes the articulation of how each contributory element within the artwork’s construction ‘respectively influences the identity and the economies of the other’, thereby providing ‘a model by which to focus and rethink’ these relationships (Ostrow, 2005 p226). The line of beauty serves as both cause and effect of the process by which the relationships are reconsidered, thus provoking an innovative discourse as to the potential impact of the whole upon the visual culture field.

This project explores the notion of a world experienced and mediated through the image. The focus is on issues related to representation of that world to self through image-based narrative. Central to the creation of these worlds is imagery published in various public access media such as television, the internet, print publishing. Although filtered and interpreted personally, because of their ubiquity and familiarity, these images collectively constitute representation of our culture. Our construction of the world (the way we represent it to ourselves) is contingent on our encounter with such images.Sited within the milieu of a media-fixated age, the project aims to deal with our desire to make sense of the litter of images that people our visual horizon. The project seeks to employ these images as objects of direct experience and to consider the subjective frameworks and cultural narratives through which they are filtered.The work will play on the desire to make relational sense of images, often by invoking narrative. Painting will be used as a means to provoke encounter between imagery, with the performative act of painting, itself a narrative, both being and representing a process of mediation

This project explores the notion of a world experienced and mediated through the image. The focus is on issues related to representation of that world to self through image-based narrative. Central to the creation of these worlds is imagery published in various public access media such as television, the internet, print publishing. Although filtered and interpreted personally, because of their ubiquity and familiarity, these images collectively constitute representation of our culture. Our construction of the world (the way we represent it to ourselves) is contingent on our encounter with such images.Sited within the milieu of a media-fixated age, the project aims to deal with our desire to make sense of the litter of images that people our visual horizon. The project seeks to employ these images as objects of direct experience and to consider the subjective frameworks and cultural narratives through which they are filtered.The work will play on the desire to make relational sense of images, often by invoking narrative. Painting will be used as a means to provoke encounter between imagery, with the performative act of painting, itself a narrative, both being and representing a process of mediation