Although much of Gustav Klimt's work is well recognized, his painting Hope II (1907-1908) has received little attention in academic studies. Rejected by his peers on its initial exhibition, this work was found offensive by even his staunchest supporters. Second wave feminists have also been critical of his painting, finding in it an objectification of women. This is likely due in part to the central subject of the piece involving pregnancy. Klimt was unafraid to paint images that shocked and diverged from traditional aesthetic styles. During a time of rapid social change and development of the feminist movement, Klimt offered fin-de-siècle Vienna an image that invited conversations about female sexuality, identity, and fertility. This paper constitutes a rereading of Klimt as empathetic to the female experience by way of a close analysis of Hope II. The artist's closeness to many women indicates his awareness of their plight. His portrayal of fertility in this painting offered a new perspective of womanhood in art with a depiction of woman as autonomous and empowered. Criticism from second-wave feminists often follows Klimt's work. However, his continued representation of the female body should be read as a glorification of the body rather than objectification of it.

Bodies, burdened with narratives and inscribed by laws, function as signifiers of the State propaganda and nationalisms that supercede the Individual. The Image Stammers discredits the seamless fusion of the body-politic of the Singapore state with that of the Individual. This paper looks at the State as its singular source of artistic stimulation and seeks to dislodge the ventriloquised voice of that State acting upon the art object and its producer, so as to liberate the image from the singular meaning the State imposes. To do this, the analysis in this paper intervenes in the State and its organ, the media, in their attempt to imprison the reality of the performance image so as to reverse the silence that has been demanded of the artist. By reinstating this voice into the visual work the author has produced in this text, based on theories of 'internalised' Orientalism discussed by Geraldine Heng and Janadas Devan, as well as notions of abjections in the work of Elizabeth Grosz anfd Julia Kristeva, this paper attempts to strip the State of its veneer of 'purity' to expose an underside that subjects female bodies to forms of nationalism which are now more codified than ever. This paper foregrounds textual and visual embodiment as a testimony of lived experience which may further entrench, notions of Singapore as an authoritarian state. The Image Stammers bears no pretension of objectivity nor a 'politically safe and correct' one within the context of this paper, but instead, strewns fragments of subjectivity throughout its textual landscape. It seeks to overturn the 'impurity' of the abject (signified by performance art and contemporary artists) as defined, loathed and expelled by the State, into the power of resistance and maintenance of the integrity of the Individual. The Image Stammers retrieves the abject as markers of the limits of State power to become signifiers of resistance for its reconstitution into allies of the artist / Faculty of Performance, Fine Arts and Design

This research aims to suggest a means of creating a closer relationship between technological artwork and its viewers through applying 'naturalising' technology in art using the theory of Yin-Yang O-Hang. The questions are raised : 1/. What are the vital factors of technological artworks? 2/. What sorts of methods can make using technology in arts more effective? 3/. How to overcome the difficulties in getting an intimate relationship between viewers and technological artworks? In order to optimise the aesthetic use of technology in art, the research is thus focused on 'naturalising' technology as a possible solution to overcome the negative aspects of technological artworks through the application of the theory of Yin-Yang O-Hang.Throughout this research, the author has discussed the fundamental concerns of the theory and its applications in Western and Eastern art. Furthermore, in investigating a number of artworks, the trends have been explored in technological art which are compatible with nature and humanity. The author has tried to find a way of applying the theory of Yin-Yang O-Hang to make technological art more intimate and accessible to viewers / Master of Arts (Hons)

This research paper places the three Research Projects 2 DIVINE, CARNIVAL, and HER STORIES: THE WENTWORTH WOMEN against the background of memory, remaking history, play, as well as hermeneutics. It is argued that the understanding of a work of art involves participation in its meaning by the audience which is not so much a mere receiver of information as a catalyst of the work's content. This Research Paper also attempts to place the three Research Projects, which when combined are entitled REMEMORIES/IMAGETEXTS, into a feminist remaking of history (in Barbara Kruger's sense), realigning the male-oriented histories with a female presence. Questioning the 'historical document' as the authority on history, and giving alternative versions of the life of Jeanne d'Arc and the life of Sarah Cox Wentworth are some of the concerns in the Research Projects. How these three Research Projects came to be linked is that each was originally exhibited during 1995 for the Twentieth Anniversary of International Women's Year, in venues from Penrith to Paddington. Their making spans many years, and in essence comes down to a fascination with the portrayal of women throughout history.That our images of women originally derived from how women were portrayed in carnival is one of the emerging themes, and that there are a number of different memories of specific events, depending on who is remembering them, and what their (hidden) agenda entails. In moving between time zones, questioning the portrayal of 'woman as sign', and subverting the traditional sign of woman, the artist puts forward the argument that women are the producers of signs and thus not merely objects as represented by signs / Master of Arts (Hons)(Visual Arts)

This research into Indonesian socialist-realism art, examines how art has shaped the political and social environments of the new order government. This text examines contemporary artists’ attitudes toward social commitment and social commentary during the period 1980-1995. Conflicting views of contemporary Indonesian artists were obtained from research undertaken in Indonesia in 1995. In this thesis, the problem is raised that Indonesian socialist-realism art is not only a style of art for contemporary Indonesian artists, but also as a union of artists’ attitudes towards Indonesian society. This argument is used to further understand modern Indonesian art from the ‘inner’ point of view / Master of Arts (Hons)

This thesis explores a complex concept of home with respect to issues of belonging and displacement from both a personal and transnational1 perspective, which deals with the here in New Zealand and there in the Netherlands. Through the visual and the poetic, in printmaking, book art, digital photography and installation--drawing on auto-biographical experiences of migration, as well as contextual research--I have been investigating the concept of "home" as a hyphen. This hyphen motif aptly performs the migrant condition of between here and there, a liminal space of betweenness and transition, where internal and external worlds, here and there, past and present, intersect. This intersection point, marked by hyphenation, always performs across multiple borders and thereby emphasises a spatial-temporal liminal register experienced by many transnational. In textual practice a hyphen is a punctuation sign that connects and separates two different entities. As such, here the hyphen begins to evoke an interesting spatial-temporal paradigm for transnational, who are placed between two or more divided geographies, sociographies and cultural identities. As well as being a link between multiple series of dual entities and conditions, the hyphen can simultaneously signify an ambiguous area of liminality--a psychological space of neither here nor there, an undecidability of identity and belonging, which, on various levels, is symptomatic for many transnational. This project explores how this hyphenated position influences a sense of identity and belonging and its relation to our postmodern world.

Historical events captured in an abstract manner have the ability to produce a profound effect on the emotions. The purpose of this research is to create a time-based computer media work, using dialogue from playwright Anne Nelson's The Guys, based on the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, with emphasis on visual imagery, particularly the use of line and color, to enhance the dramatic and emotional content of the piece. The stylistic direction of the thesis work is greatly influenced by selected works of abstract expressionists Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline, whose artwork was shaped by the social backdrop of World War II.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Department of Art History, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--RWTH Aachen. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 357-411).

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-264).