No description available.

My thesis, “Painting History in Mid-Century America: A Case Study of Friedel Dzubas’s Mature Style (1970s)” examines why Friedel Dzubas—an American artist of German descent whose friends and supporters included the powerful critic Clement Greenberg and the artists in his circle, among them Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Helen Frankenthaler, and Kenneth Noland—disappeared from the canon of artists associated with Post Painterly Abstraction (Color Field Painting) as it evolved from the later 1950s into the 1970s. My work offers an account of the genesis of Dzubas’s mature style based on a formalist approach to the artist’s work. Chapter One presents Dzubas’s early biography, excavated for the first time from documents in the Friedel Dzubas Estate Archive to which I have been given sole access. Until now, the published critical writings on Dzubas’s works, including those of Clement Greenberg and Michael Fried, have tended to consider Dzubas’s painting in the 1970s anomalous with regard to Post Painterly Abstraction, and even more damaging, to be a nearly failed effort in the simulation of that modernist problematic. While not challenging that reception, I present clear evidence from letters and interviews of Dzubas’s more immediate interests, despite the continued grouping of his work with Post Painterly (Color Field) painters. By the 1970s, these interests showed themselves in abstract symbols of religious import and atmospheric aerial landscape painting. Rather than foregrounding the characteristics that distinguished painting qua painting in modernist theorizations—the canvas’s two-dimensional facticity, the relationship between paint-images and their framing edges, and the releasing of hue in open fields across the surface—Dzubas’s paintings highlight compositional strategies and traditional approaches to the canvas that at the time were considered anachronistic when judged against aesthetic values of material integrity, spontaneous production, color expression, and autonomy. Dzubas’s gessoed grounds, suspended images in shallow space, and allusive, tactile associations challenged modernist precepts at that time. The theory behind this attitude is explored in Chapter Two. Chapter Three presents a close reading of Dzubas’s critical reception, focusing on reviews that while vaunting his color sense and dramatic, roiling surfaces marginalized his production by linking it to his German background and the influence of the great Romantic painters. In Chapter Four, I propose that rather than merely carrying over gestural abstraction from the 1940s and 1950s in America into his own production, Dzubas was more profoundly influenced by the “touch” in historic painting, the colorito in the tradition of the Venetians dating from late Titian to the grand frescoed tableaux of Giambattista Tiepolo, whose vast expanses further inspired Dzubas to create his own religious tableau, his magnum opus, Apocalypsis cum Figuras/Crossing, A.D. 1975, 1975. My case study suggests that for his grand realization, Dzubas had reached back to his early training in decorative wall painting and to specific characteristics of Tiepolo’s vast panoramas whose figuration was grounded in affective gestures of 18th-century opera seria. Dzubas’s turn toward Tiepolo affirms his commitment to the theatrical as well as to the pictorial structures of religious depictions of the Day of Judgment.

The reception of French pictures, artists and art literature in Britain during the early eighteenth century has hitherto remained an understudied area within British art history. Modern scholarship has often characterised this period as experiencing an influx of continental influences which aided the development of British art, collecting, and patronage. However, there is the tendency to focus such a study within the latter decades of the century. This thesis combines document-based research with pictorial study in order to determine the ways that English audiences responded to the presence of French pictures, but also imitated, modified and criticised French artistic ideas and forms during the period Four chapters explore the different ways in which English travellers, collectors and patrons came to acquire, commission and learn about French painting. This will firstly be achieved through a consideration of English artists visiting Paris during this period, and associated travel literature, particularly the notebook of the painter James Thornhill. This leads to an examination of the interactions between collectors and their agents and dealers in the acquisition of French pictures on the London art market and abroad. This study also establishes the impact of French visual and literary sources on the mural paintings of Louis Laguerre and his English patrons. Lastly, this thesis considers the readership for French art literature and the contribution of English translations and treatises. Together, these topics serve to illustrate the multitude of ways in which French art and ideas became embedded within English artistic culture during this period.

This thesis challenges existing studies on Giovanni Mansueti (active 1485-1526/27) that have generally tended to undervalue his contribution to Venetian narrative painting. Rather, drawing on extensive primary research my work demonstrates how Mansueti was one of the major interpreters of the “eyewitness style”, in fact a master able to picture the unique requirements and expectations of his various patrons. Chapter 1 analyses Mansueti’s little-known cycle in the church of San Martino, Burano (The Betrothal of the Virgin, The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Flight into Egypt, c. 1510), with reference to practices of private devotion in Renaissance Venice. I investigate the paintings by drawing on textual sources that were commonly used in private devotional practices, showing how the paintings projected an ideology built on specifically Venetian interpretations of the Apocrypha. Chapter 2 is a contextual analysis of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. Using original archival findings, it firstly reassesses the Scuola’s art patronage system and bureaucratic procedure; then it investigates the identity of the individual Scuola’s members responsible for commissioning the St Mark Cycle originally decorating the walls of the Sala dell’Albergo. Chapter 3 provides an analysis of Giovanni Mansueti’s three paintings for the Scuola (The Baptism of Anianus and The Healing of Anianus, 1518; Three Episodes from the Life of St. Mark, 1525) in respect to the Sala dell’Albergo narrative cycle. The study focuses on the paintings as visual projections of the Scuola’s ideological understanding of the Muslim ‛others’. It investigates the contextual motives that prompted the Scuola’s merchant brothers to represent their commercial associate as the very tormentors of St Mark.

David Allan's artistic career may be divided into two major periods. Having first attended the Foulis Academy, he spent at least a decade in Italy, finally returning to Scotland in 1779, his home for the next seventeen years. The pictures which he executed during this second period form the basis of the present study. Since the emphasis of this study is thematic rather than biographical, some distortion of chronology is inevitable, though it is not uncomfortably obvious. At the same time, some element of biography is indispensable. This is particuarly true of the first chapter, a necessary setting of the scene which highlights Allan's training in the arts, his collection of prints, copies, original drawings and plaster casts, and the most important works from his years abroad. That part of this biographical account which deals with his Scottish career is devoted largely to Allan's work as Master of the Trustees' Academy, since the pictures with which he was occupied at this time - portraits, Conversation pieces, literary illustrations, Historical paintings and Genre scenes - are taken in groups and discussed in greater depth in the chapters which follow. Before the first chapter concerned with Allan's work in any of these genres, however, there stands a chapter dealing with the wider context of narrative painting in Britain at the time and introducing a number of themes traced throughout later chapters, where they are more fully and particularly discussed.

The Thesis examines the symbolism, and the sources of that symbolism, in the poetry and painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Chapter 1 considers the significance of the title of Rossetti's sonnet-sequence The House of Life. Chapter 2 looks at the opening sonnets of that sequence. Chapter 3 scrutinises the sonnet quartet of the Willow-wood sequence. Chapter 4 evaluates the influence of Platonism and Neoplatonism in Rossetti's art. Chapter 5 is concerned with Rossetti's use of allegory. Chapter 6 surveys the influence of Rosicrucianism on Rossetti and his immediate circle of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and on the Aesthetic School that succeeded it. This chapter closely examines the symbolic motifs of Rosicrucianism, and how these may be traced in the paintings of these artists. Chapter 7 explores the Rosicrucian influence in Rossetti's poetry. Chapter 8 further traces these influences in Rossetti's painting. Chapter 9 investigates the Goddess figure within Rossetti's later paintings.

This thesis examines several works of religious content produced by the Brescian painters Gerolamo Romano, 11 Romanino (148487-15'59) and Alessandro Bonvicino, 11 Moretto (1498-1554), produced for patrons and locations in Brescia between 15 10 and 1550. This enquiry has drawn on little used historical material in order to integrate the discussion of the images into a wider social and historical context. The key aim of this study is to establish how Romanino and Moretto defined a Brescian identity in art. This will be argued by using two different approaches in order to examine the existence, and the manifestations, of such a local identity One approach taken in this study is to look at groups of corporate patrons and to consider the works executed for them in terms of similarities of content. Chapters 2 and 3 in turn consider the works executed by Romanino and Moretto for the Congregations of Santa Giustina of Padua, and of San Giorgio in Alga. The second approach adopted for the purposes of examination of strategies for the establishment of a Brescian visual identity employed in this study is to focus on representations of the Eucharist. It will be shown that Moretto developed a new visual motif of the 'Eucharistic Christ' in response to the growing popularity of the Forty Hours devotion in Brescia.

Piet Mondrian in his essays, the majority of which were published in De Stijl, stressed the importance of a conscious understanding of the concept of evolution, both as a conception of man's spiritual and biolgical evolution. This study of his life's work examines the development of his ever growing cognizance of this concept as a 'unity in duality', and in addition his awareness of the implications of this conception. The consideration of Mondrian's life's work from the premises set by a study involved with the evolutionary nature of his work has brought into sharp focus the dialectical relationship that his latter work has to his earlier work. But in addition research conducted for this study has shown that the entirety of Mondrian's work does not exist as an isolated individual incident but as a consciously, thus dialectically related part of the History of Philosophy of Art. The methods used in the course of this study were developed from the implications of the original premises 'to consider the relationships between Mondrian's theories and practice'. To begin with, a basic philosophic background was established against which Mondrian's theories could be studied. This was followed by a careful study of his early work against the background of 19th century European Art and the theories that influenced the art of that period. A form of 'bibliography', was constructed which embraced both paintings and literature with which Mondrian could have concerned himself and been influenced by. For example, the collection of paintings in the Mesdag Museum and Dr. Schoenmaekers two books. The problem of visualizing Mondrian's lice as an evolutionary process became an early and difficult question. It was resolved through the construction of two statistical graphs, the second of which was drawn with the aid of a computer. At every stage of the close study of individual works, made by Mondrian and other artists, whose work was used for comparative purposes, analytic diagrams were constructed. They have proved themselves to be invaluable in gaining a clarification and cognizance of the evolution of Mondrian's concept of 'unity in duality', in his visual work. The major divisions of this study are concerned with the stylistic and theoretical changes that make up the parts of Mondrian's transition from an art based in the perceptual cognizance and expression of reality to the conscious manifestation of an art that was in its essential form rooted in a pure conception of reality. In realizing this form of art Mondrian also found answers to the ontological questions that had beset him in his early years and had consequently acted as a powerful motivating force to his artistic evolution. The conclusions drawn from this study of Mondrian's life's work are that his work in all its manifold aspects was, throughout his life an ever evolving expression of man's desire to understand and to manifest his understanding of the universe and as such his work was in complete concordance with his theories.

This thesis is a multidisciplinary project, drawing on the discourses of Visual Cultural Studies, Latin American history and Critical Theory. Insights from each of these disciplines interact to investigate the representation of the indigenous peoples of Mexico in the mural triptych entitled History of the Mexican People painted by Diego Rivera in the National Palace, Mexico City between 1929 and 1935. The main focus is an exploration of the mural as a cultural text, which is formed through socio-political structures and homogenising nationalist visions. The artist is seen as partly a product of history who acts, both consciously and subconsciously, as a conduit for such historical structures. The investigation requires a multi-dimensional approach as it includes emotional, aesthetic, sociological, political, cultural, philosophical, biographical and material elements. A close-reading of the National Palace mural as a cultural 'text' is undertaken in order to deconstruct certain culturally-specific political myths. The production of the fresco triptych is inextricably interlinked with the construction of the post-revolutionary Mexican nation and socio-cultural mythologies regarding the 'Indian' which are central to nationalist imagery and the post-revolutionary, anthropological theories of indigenismo. Certain distinctive racial strands of nationalist mythology which are represented in the mural are analysed within the framework of Anthony D. Smith's (1999) theory of historical ethno-mythology. I argue, following Smith, that what gives nationalism its power are the myths, memories, traditions and symbols of ethnic heritages and the ways in which a popular living past has been, can be and is rediscovered and reinterpreted by modern, nationalist intelligentsias. Smith's universal theory has not previously been applied in depth to a complex concrete situation. This thesis relates the insights of the theory of nationalist ethno-mythology to the tangible cultural text of History of the Mexican People.

This thesis contributes to the study of portraiture by delivering an appraisal of female portraits produced in the urban areas of Italy and Flanders in the fifteenth century. Scholarship on individual and selections of these items exists, but it is fragmented and influenced by Marxist-feminist views about genders and their roles in the system of patriarchy. The term ‘patriarchy’ describes a socio-political and economic organization that is male-controlled. By applying patrilineal rules of patrimonial and political transmission through social stabilisers such as the institution of marriage, it disenfranchises women from decisions that affect their life directly, and ultimately their sense of entitlement. However, in order to function successfully, it creates forms of compensation that diminish the risks of uprising by the marginalised. Concerning women, this could be seen as their feminine experience of these conditions, which feminist analyses tend to overlook. With an original survey of one-hundred and four individual female portraits dated c.1400-c.1500, this thesis explores the relationship between the image and such experience during the rise of entrepreneurial communities, because these groups relied principally on this system to prosper individually and collectively. For the task, this thesis uses a legal-anthropological method that eschews the Marxist-feminist trappings. Its results show that female agency in the domestic environment and the dowry-system produced a binary relationship between men and women and forms of public and private recognition that challenge the basic notion of female marginalisation. Secondly, the Christocentric practices developed by evangelical groups from the early-thirteenth century proved very popular amongst women because they offered varieties of autonomy and public intervention that were otherwise precluded to them. Thirdly, humanism affected a small but important group of women, whose desire for learning challenged conventional propaganda about female inadequacies. This thesis explains the ways in which these facets are integrated in the likenesses of this survey. It demonstrates that fifteenth-century spectatorship received two types of stimuli. One that invested on an affinity of appreciation of the social values of female beauty, fashion and domestic skills, and that articulated ideas of commonwealth and kinship. One other that sought affinity that was more intimate and consistent with the sitter’s psychological condition. These strands ramified into social and ethical discourses that this thesis charts and examines. The one-hundred and four portraits featured in this survey originated predominantly in Flanders and central-northern Italy, the early strongholds of European mercantile groups. Current scholarship compares Netherlandish and Italian portraiture in terms of modernity versus obsolescence because the former developed naturalistic portraits in located backgrounds in c.1430, whilst the latter preferred the profile format until the end of the century. This thesis contests this polarisation because visual and contextual evidence together suggest that sociocultural interests informed choices of formats and the circulation of likenesses to the effect that modernity in portraiture cannot be measured in mere technical terms. Fifteenth-century Netherlandish portraits are, indeed, the earliest examples of modern portraiture but this phenomenon must be understood, this thesis explains, as the product of concomitant conditions that include new media and new attitudes towards the self, caused by the secularisation of culture and the revival of Greco-Roman literature. This thesis also contributes to the knowledge of the genre because it uncovers types of female portraiture that are new to the existing assessments, thereby setting the parameters for a classification of the topic from the perspective of the feminine experience of her own mimesis.