Très expérimentales, les gravures de Rembrandt ont suscité l’étonnement dès son époque. Les étudier à la lumière de la tradition du sublime aide à dégager la dynamique de la pensée du graveur, tout en offrant à cette tradition l’occasion de se renouveler. Ainsi notre étude confronte l’œuvre gravée de Rembrandt à trois conceptions du sublime. Le sublime poétique de Longin, qui incite le spectateur à cultiver ses dons à l’exemple des héros antiques. Le sublime chrétien comme lien entre l’abaissement du divin et l’élévation de l’homme. Et enfin le sublime du sentiment esthétique de Burke, qui explore l’expérience de la terreur provoquée par l’obscurité. Cette confrontation est utile pour comprendre la manière dont l’image réussit à communiquer la force des passions, en conquérant son autonomie par rapport au texte. Mais la quête spirituelle de Rembrandt, qui menace d’épuiser les possibilités de son médium, constitue une mise à l’épreuve de la notion de sublime. A l’image du divin qui s’est perdu dans le sensible, Rembrandt obscurcit extrêmement ses eaux-fortes, au risque de leur faire perdre toute force d’élévation, voire toute puissance d’évocation. Le sublime ne peut plus se penser que sur le mode du retrait, voire de la disparition. Le spectateur est incité à recueillir ses traces pour devenir témoin. / In his own day, Rembrandt’s etchings had aroused surprise in his contemporaries owing to their experimental quality. To study these works in the light of the philosophical tradition of the sublime helps to bring forth the dynamics of the artist’s thought while allowing this tradition to renew itself. Thus does our study confront Rembrandt’s etchings with three conceptions of the sublime: the poetic sublime of Longinus which urges one to cultivate one’s gifts, following the examples of the heroes of the ancient world; the Christian conception of the sublime, as a link between the descent of the divine and the spiritual elevation of man; and lastly, Burke’s aesthetic concept of the sublime, which explores the experience of terror produced by obscurity. This confrontation is useful in understanding the way in which a pictorial representation can succeed in communicating the force of passions and thereby in acquiring its autonomy from the written word. Yet Rembrandt’s spiritual quest, which threatens to exhaust the possibilities of his artistic medium, puts to the test the very notion of the sublime. Mirroring the loss of divinity that follows its descent into the flesh, Rembrandt darkens his etchings to the extreme, at the risk of them losing their uplifting and even their evocative power. As a result, the sublime can no more be perceived but in its very receding and at times total withdrawal. The viewer is moved to collecting its marks and becoming its witness.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T19:30:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Irene Barbosa de Moura.pdf: 4448519 bytes, checksum: d072d40b0d823ed4e1c12ce7258efc5e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-06-18 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This study analises the means by which the work of the sculptor Victor Brecheret has contributed to transformations in referencials and symbols that guided the socio-cultural environment of São Paulo in the 1920´s and 1950´s These boundaries are important because they have pointed to the development of Modernism in São Paulo, as well as the festivities of the IV Centenary of the Capital. In the context from 1920 until 1950, there has been an attempt to recover the personal and professional trajectory of Victor Brecheret since his insertion in the Modernist Movement until the inauguration of the Monument to Flags, one of his most important sculptures considering its aesthetic value and its importance for the history of São Paulo . The character of bandeirante is essential to comprehend the construction of paulista´s memory and identity, so densely exploited by Brazilian historiography, which added a lot of value to Brazilian historiography at the time of the IV Centenary of São Paulo. Currently, the sculpture took other roles in the city, but without losing the importance and significance of bandeirante´s memory. This way, the search that is based on the connection between history and art, underlined, besides the profile and trajectory of a significant character in two moments, the transformations in the conception of paulista identity , in regional and national political context and it analysed the expansion of the city of São Paulo, in the period that has been focused in this study / Esse estudo analisa a maneira como a obra do escultor Victor Brecheret contribuiu para as transformações nos referenciais que nortearam o ambiente sócio cultural de São Paulo nas décadas de 1920 e 1950. Tais balizas são importantes por terem marcado o desenvolvimento do Modernismo Paulista bem como as festividades do IV Centenário da capital. No contexto de 1920 a 1950, recuperei a trajetória pessoal e profissional de Victor Brecheret desde sua inserção no Movimento Modernista até a inauguração do Monumento às Bandeiras, uma de suas esculturas mais importantes tanto pelo valor estético como para a história de São Paulo. A personagem do bandeirante é essencial para o entendimento das construções da memória e da identidade paulista, tão exploradas pela historiografia brasileira e isso valorizou o Monumento às Bandeiras na época do IV Centenário de São Paulo. Atualmente, a escultura assumiu outros papéis na cidade, mas sem perder a importância e o significado da memória bandeirante. Dessa forma, a pesquisa que está embasada na relação entre história e arte, sublinhou, além do perfil e da trajetória de um personagem significativo nos dois momentos, as mudanças na concepção de identidade paulista, no cenário político regional e nacional e analisou a expansão da cidade de São Paulo, no período estudado

The aim of this dissertation is to understand and analyze the museum location decision, defined as where museum founders choose to establish or relocate their institution. The empirical case is the museum population of New York City from 1910-2010. In three substantive chapters, I explore this complex decision process from the organizational-level, the population-level, and the audience-level. In the first chapter, I argue that the museum location decision has evolved over the past century, and has experienced three major paradigm shifts. Out of each era, a new model of the museum location decision has taken hold, resulting in the current organizational landscape. I demonstrate how these eras emerged through historical, comparative case studies of two New York museums, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In second chapter, I show that the location decisions illustrated through the histories of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art are representative of New York's museum population overall. Using a dataset of all museums that have existed in New York City (and all of those museums' relocations), I chronicle the aggregated movements of the museum population between 1910 and 2010. I argue that the three eras of the museum location decision interacted with key demographic changes to create the unique distribution we observe today. The insights from these findings indicate that the spatial diffusion of museums in New York is systematically patterned in relation to demographic changes. The final substantive chapter is devoted to exploring the possibility that institutional location impacts audience composition. I argue that proximity to museums and other kinds of arts institutions is a significant, yet understudied determinant of attendance. The introduced concept of institutional exposure suggests that local access to arts institutions has cognitive, behavioral, and interactional consequences. Although directly testing the effect of institutional exposure is beyond the parameters of this dissertation, I show that there is a strong correlation between exposure and attendance. I illustrate the increasingly unequal access to arts between white and African American New Yorkers, which correlates highly with still-unexplained low attendance rates of African Americans. The observed evolution of the museum location decision explains when and how New York institutions adopted and then abandoned each institutionalized practice of museum location. In the Conclusion, I highlight several implications of this work, both of sociological theory and on current cultural policy.

No description available.

O neoconcretismo ocupa posição singular no panorama das artes plásticas no Brasil. O discurso hegemônico sobre o grupo, compartilhado por críticos de formação e extração diversas, enfatiza o caráter de ruptura e seu papel determinante para desprovincianizar a arte brasileira e inseri-la em linha de continuidade com as vanguardas construtivas européias. A proposta deste trabalho é acompanhar como o discurso a respeito do grupo, forjado inteiramente por seus membros, ganha consistência e transforma-se em guia para os intérpretes da geração seguinte, que tratarão de erigi-lo em mito fundador, com conseqüências importantes para a narrativa em torno da arte no país. A tentativa é investigar as condições de formulação desse discurso por parte das lideranças teóricas e em seguida indagar os motivos capazes de transformá-lo numa linha interpretativa vitoriosa na fortuna crítica sobre arte no Brasil. / Neoconcretism occupies a singular position in the panorama of the visual arts in Brazil. The hegemonic discourse regarding the group, shared by critics from different backgrounds and schools, stresses its impact and determinant role to insert Brazilian art alongside European construtivist avant-garde movements. This thesis traces the ways through which the discourse regarding the group, shaped entirely by its members, gains consistency and becomes the guideline for critics of the following generation, who will build it into a founding myth, with important consequences for the narrative about Brazilian art. The attempt is to investigate the conditions of formulation of this discourse by the leading figures of the neoconcrete group, and ask about the reasons the led it to become a winning interpretative path about art in Brazil.

The state of Oregon often has been viewed as a utopia. Figures of speech borrowed from the romantic sublime, biblical pilgrimage, economic boosterism, and millenialist fatalism have been used to characterize it. The visual arts also have responded to Oregon's utopian myth. During the nineteenth century, the landscape was a primary focus for utopian art. In the twentieth century, past human achievements, recreation, agriculture, and industry have joined the environment as themes which inspire utopian imagery. The objective of this study is to demonstrate that twentieth-century art that responds to Oregon's utopian myth has given rise to an iconography which both energizes and reflects the development of that myth and which informs an important component of the state's identity. Using as a criteria that which idealizes Oregon as a place, an inventory of utopian art was compiled. It includes over 300 works of visual art, plus a number of artists for whom utopian subjects served as a consistent element. From this information, dominant themes were identified which demonstrate the existence of iconography, or visual symbolism, that expresses Oregon's utopian myth. Through the themes of natural environment, heroic images of Oregon's human past, and interaction between humans and the environment-plus numerous sub-themes-the artistic evidence demonstrates that visual imagery and symbols play an important role in how Oregonians define themselves and their history. It also suggests what form the state's utopian myth, identity' and the decisions made by its people may take in the next century.

This thesis culminates in an exhibition resulting from the artist’s investigation of the relationship between space and time, and on perception and experience of space with connections to ‘everyday’ ideas of space. A recurring link in this paper is the process of ‘being present’ in relation to spatial viewing. The artist’s studio practice focuses on the visual changes she sees within a particular space or spaces, and how these visual changes are perceived and experienced when presented to the viewer in a photographic image. The intention is to present a photographic image to the viewer that not only changes the space from which it originally came, but also highlights the beauty of the space that may be missed or overlooked. The research questions the way people see, the visual representation of the ‘void’ or ‘empty space’, and spatial representation. The paper also discusses how the artist visually perceives and experiences space. The work of other artists and writers who research space, time and perceptual consciousness are also considered. / Master of Arts (Hons)

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city of Berlin was faced with the challenge to reunify in both political and cultural realms. Berlin is noted throughout history as a metropolis that is characterized by flux; the Post-Wende [Post-Wall] era is another remarkable transitional phase in Berlin’s history. During this era, the city was extremely porous and susceptible to cultural forces that could easily define the city’s malleable future. This essay discusses such forces and events that were planned by the city government, as well as an organic grassroots force that was especially significant in the cultural reunification. This force is the squatting culture that was spurred by the excess of unused and unclaimed buildings in the center of Berlin. Many of the squatters are coalitions of artists who embody the renitente Kultur [unruly culture] that characterizes Berlin. Analyzed in this essay is a group of squatting artists, known as “Gruppe Tacheles das Kunsthaus” who inhabited the ruins of a historical building in the Mitte neighborhood located in the center of Berlin. The creators of Tacheles breathed life back into the ruins by establishing ateliers, a restaurant, a club, a movie theatre, a sculpture garden, and a bar in the building that became an artists’ haven with international fame. Artists, both residential and visiting, have treated the crumbling building like a makeshift giant canvas and it is now covered in layers of graffiti and stands as the Gesamtkunstwerk [total and universal ideal work of art] of the reunifying Berlin that has become an international hub for artists. Due to escalation in property value, an effective owner of the property on which Tacheles stands has stepped forward and taken actions to evict the artists and demolish the building in order to build luxury offices. Most of the artists have left the site, leaving it as a ghostly shell of the bustling community it once was. Near twenty artists remain and protest the actions to destroy their work of art that had come to live symbiotically with the city. At this point, there is one appropriate event to occur next in the lifeline of the site: the building must be demolished in a ceremonious explosion to mark the passing of its vitality, so that its legacy can live on untainted in the future phases of Berlin’s culture.

This thesis, which studies the effect Loïe Fuller had on artists at the turn of the 20th century, redefines her role in art and society. An American dancer born in 1862, Fuller is often hailed as one of the forefathers of modern dance and a technological engineer, but she is too rarely shown in control of how the audience perceived her. This work gives an overview of Art Nouveau and the Universal Exposition of 1900 in Paris in which she performed. It closely examines her impact on painters, illustrators, and lithographers: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Will Bradley, and Jules Cheret. It also studies her influence on sculptors: Raoul Larche, Agathon Léonard, and Pierre Roche; architect Henri Sauvage, and writer Stéphane Mallarmé. In this work, Fuller is not solely presented as the physical embodiment of Art Nouveau but as an active shaper of artistic movements of her time. It portrays her as active rather than passive.

Anselm Kiefer was born in Germany, 1945—the year of Adolf Hitler’s suicide, and subsequently, the end of World War II. His own beginnings were shrouded by a national “repression” of history. This repression was at odds with Kiefer’s needs to establish his own origin. For this reason, the spirituality in his earlier work is often overshadowed by its subject—Nazi Germany. This thesis will look back on Kiefer’s work through the lens of mythology in an effort to re-evaluate his earlier art within the context of his works since 1990. From the 1970s to the present, Kiefer has drawn from mythology to find links between personal and universal human experience. We begin by examining Kiefer’s controversial Attic Paintings of 1973. In the Attic Paintings, German and Christian mythology helped Kiefer understand his origin as a post-war German artist. Kiefer then turned his attention to myths from outside cultures throughout the 1980s. We will look closely at three paintings from the 1980s that incorporate Greek, Judaic, and Egyptian mythology in an effort to understand Kiefer’s larger goals in broadening his mythological base. Following this discussion, we will examine two paintings from the 1990s and his 2007 permanent installation at the Louvre Museum. These selected works serve to illustrate how Kiefer presented his own cultivated, personal mythology under the stars in his still ongoing cosmic series. The 1990s mark Kiefer’s broadest expansion yet; in a sense, he went from “the attic to the universe” over the course of three decades.