Early art in Buddhist cultic sites was characterized by the absence of anthropomorphicimages of the Buddha. The Buddha was instead represented by different signs, like awheel, a tree, a seat and footprints. This study emphasizes the transformation this artunderwent from simple signs to carefully made aniconic compositions representing theBuddha in a narrative context. Buddhist aniconic art has been explained by a prohibition against images of theBuddha or by a doctrine that made it inappropriate to depict the body of the Buddha.This study rejects such explanations. Likewise, the practice of different meditationalexercises cannot explain this transformation. Instead, it is important to understand thatearly art at Buddhist cultic sites consisted of simple signs belonging to a shared sacredIndian culture. This art reflected a notion of auspiciousness, fertility and abundance.The formation of Buddhist aniconic art was indicated by the connection of these auspi- cious signs with a narrative tradition about the life and teachings of the Buddha. The study emphasizes the importance Sakyamuni Buddha played in the formation ofBuddhist art. The Buddha was interpreted as an expression of auspiciousness, but hewas also connected with a soteriological perspective. Attention is also focused on thefact that the development of Buddhist art and literature was a gradual and mutualprocess. Furthermore, Buddhist aniconic art presaged the making of anthropomorphicimages of the Buddha. It was not an innovation of motive for the Buddhists when theystarted to make anthropomorphic images of the Buddha. He was already there.

La sculpture d’Himachal Pradesh connaît entre le septième et le quatorzième siècle un grand développement, dû à un bouleversement des conditions religieuses et politiques en Inde du Nord. Des souverains locaux légitiment alors leur pouvoir sur les vallées qui constituent cet état montagneux du nord de l’Inde en utilisant, entre autres procédés, la construction de temples et la dédicace d’images. Ces dernières révèlent, par leur iconographie et par leur style, certaines des conditions historiques et politiques dans lesquelles elles ont été créées. Grâce à une observation des oeuvres, regroupées en quatre grands ensembles spatio-temporels, nous avons tenté, dans cette thèse, de mettre à jour les transferts d’influences artistiques à la fois entre l’Himachal et les régions voisines et en Himachal même. Cette observation nous a également permis de proposer des hypothèses sur l’histoire des dynasties locales et sur leurs pratiques religieuses. / Changes in the political and religious situation in Northern India at the beginning of the medieval period caused new developments in the sculpture of Himachal Pradesh between the 7th and the 14th centuries. By using, among other means, the construction of temples and the consecration of images, local kings seeked to legitimize their power. Thus, the sculptures, through their iconography and their style, reveal some of the historical and political conditions in which they were created. By means of a strict observation of those works, classified in four groups by their localisation and datation, we tried, in this thesis, to distinguish some of the processes of artistic influences, between Himachal and neighboring regions, as well as in Himachal itself. This careful examination allowed us then to speculate about the history of local dynasties and about their religious practices.

In this dissertation, I chart the conflicting and shifting assertions of meaning for Northwest Coast objects in Canada through a series of representational projects implemented between 1922 and 1961, beginning in January 1922, with the prosecution by the Department of Indian Affairs of participants in the Cranmer potlatch. The intersection between the concept of the 'fatal impact' or death of First Nations societies under European modernization, federal assimilationist policies, the government's exercise of disciplinary control, and the expansion of public museum collections was explicitly illustrated when the Lekwiltok, Mamalillikulla, and the Nimpkish peoples surrendered over seventeen cases of ceremonial objects in exchange for suspended sentences for violating the potlatch ban. The dissertation concludes by examining the Gitanyow agreement, engineered between 1958 and 1961, in which Gitanyow laws, histories and territories would be published by the government of British Columbia in exchange for the removal and replication of four crest poles. The raising of the poles' replicas in 1961 coincided with Canadian parliament's approval of the enfranchisement of First Nations people, the theoretical end to the era of assimilation in Canada. These events bookend a period in which representation continued to be entwined with politica and social conditions created by the Indian Act that depended on promulgating views that First Nations lifeways were vanishing. However, production of Northwest Coast objects retained significance throughout this period, such objects playing complex and multifaceted roles. Because of the symbolic and financial value many Euro-Canadians attached to First Nations objects, "art" proved an avenue for communicating First Nations-related social, political and economic issues. The objects produced or displayed between 1922 and 1961 operated through the projects I describe in the intertwined transformative processes of identity construction and boundary marking among individual First Nations groups and within Canadian national identity. Through these projects, important steps were taken in formulating two major characteristics of the post-1960 period: 1. a burgeoning market in Northwest Coast objects constructed as "traditional;" and 2. First Nations activism for land claims and self-determination using "tradition" and "art" as a platform in activism for land claims and self-determination. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

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This study represents five years of research on the symbolic cosmologies of four Plains Indian tribes: the Crow, the Pawnee, the Kiowa, and the Cheyenne. Although the lexicons of the four tribes reveal many color and number patterns, there appear to be certain color and number categories that are more pervasive than others. Review of the early ethnographies and folklore texts has found the color categories of red, yellow, black, and white to be significant symbols in both ritual and myth. Further investigation suggests symbolic patterns involving the numbers two and four are also important to the Crow, Pawnee, and Cheyenne. Kiowa ritual and folklore patterns reveal the numbers two, four, and ten to be dominant numbers. Through the early ethnographies, the color red and the number four, among others, were found to be symbolically significant. Red frequently symbolized the rank of a chief, a warrior, and a virtuous woman or wife. The number four often represented symbolic gestures or motions such as those seen in the arts of painting, dancing, or drumming. This symbolic linkage of color and number patterns has been expressed in rituals such as the Sun Dance and the Morning Star Sacrifice. The Sun Dance was practiced with variations by the Crow, Kiowa, and Cheyenne. The Pawnee practiced the Morning Star Sacrifice. / Thesis (M.A.)--Wichita State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Anthropology.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, 2006. / "October 2006." "UMI number: 3232583"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references (p. 218-231) Also available online (fee-based).

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In reconstructing the meaning of prehistoric artifacts, the art historian's task is particularly difficult. Scholars dealing with this period of time have to build their arguments on scarce archeological data, often unaided by written documents. Due to this lack of information, prehistoric female figurines are the subject of innacurate iconographic interpretations. In the case of the Mesoamerican Preclassic, the missing data is supplemented by subjective perceptions about people who do not belong to the scholar's own sex or ethnic background. The resulting misinterpretations fill the interstices between the information available and the historical facts. The traditional view that considers these figurines nothing more than beautiful women stop any further inquiries into the subject. Sometimes, the scholar's own fantasies substitute for logical arguments. Scholars writing on Mesoamerican iconography must be careful not to follow many of their predecessors to avoid confusing their colleagues, students and the general public.

One of the most compelling contemporary Native artists whose work challenges assumptions about Native art is Bob Haozous, who has been creating socially conscious art since 1971. He is known for his monumental steel structures; simplified visual language, controversial subject matter, and ironic humor that engages and sometimes enrages the viewer. Haozous faults contemporary American Indian art as a commodity for the dominant consumer culture, stating, "Indian artists are just glorified interior decorators." This statement reflects the market norm that Native art must embody meaningless stereotypes of Indian culture and must function in the art and culture system in order to be commercially viable.Haozous's work challenges these assumptions about Native art and, for the most part, operates outside of this system. Most of Haozous's work offers the viewer a cultural critique, one that some might consider ideologically dangerous: dangerous because it questions the status quo, dangerous because it exposes the dominant culture from the point of view of the margin, and dangerous because it is in a permanent state of ambiguity, perpetually liminal. Often his work demonstrates borders, borderlands, or liminal places, both ideological borders and physical borders. The emotional affects of Haozous's art on the viewer range from discomfort to anger, from indifference to infuriated. Given the fact that much of his work is public art, it is broadly seen and many viewers can not ignore the dialogue that takes place in his art.I examine how Bob Haozous's art depicts and critiques issues such as cultural assimilation, Indian identity, genocide, loss of language, and destruction of the earth, using humor and irony or trickster discourse, as a part of his visual language. What I propose in this dissertation is that Haozous's concept of "indigenous cultural dialogue," as expressed in his art, using visual and written language with trickster traces, provides a critical language with which to discuss Native art, cross culturally. Furthermore, that the recognizable element that can be use in the critical discussion or examination, is tricksternot trickster in corporeal form, but in subtle or obvious uses of humor or irony or in trickster's reversal of ideas.

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