This practice-based research sets out to explore modes of address and spectatorship in relation to contemporary painting. Taking as its point of departure Michael Fried’s Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (1980), I question whether painting can be performative without becoming theatrical and what this means for spectatorship specifically. Throughout, I aim to establish the contemporary conditions required for painting to firstly be sincere (non-theatrical) and secondly to ‘activate’ the spectator (as well as itself) and thus become ‘performative’. In this way something gets done (J.L.Austin) as opposed to just being described and a reality is changed. I have undertaken detailed research into ‘theatricality’ and ‘performativity’ as concepts, the latter possessing the potential to give power to the artwork and viewer simultaneously, thus enabling both the artwork and spectator to be at once ‘activated’. This sits in opposition to traditionally passive object/subject models of spectatorship. I utilise ideas of ‘action’ throughout the process of my research. The action-reflection spiral constitutes a large part of my method and I also intend for it to be transparent in the outcome of the research i.e the artworks and their consequent agency. Chapter one focuses on theatricality with particular emphasis on Michael Fried’s book Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (1980), which is used to scaffold the structure of my argument. I break down his argument into three key terms: ‘absorption’, ‘theatricality’ and ‘tableau’ and discuss them in relation to the paintings, collages and assemblages in my 2011 show titled My Brother is a Hairy Man. Chapter Two involves a discussion of my second 2012 exhibition titled, The King of Hearts Has No Moustache, in relation to performativity (Dorothea von Hantlemann) and networks (David Joselit) within gallery contexts. I unpack this discussion of performativity through the individual discussion of the two exhibition spaces (the front room and back room). In Chapter Three I focus predominantly on spectatorship’s potential for performativity with particular focus on Alfred Gell’s anthropological theory of art. I consider this theory of social agency in relation to my 2013 exhibition Escape The Esplanade which addressed the dichotomy between the spectacle and the spectator, reversing the traditional roles in the process. Through a renegotiation and expansion of the term tableau I conclude a framework was put in place from which the spectator could be ‘absorbed’ and activated in larger exhibition environments. In addition, networked displays of painting, engendered collective sociability and many-to-one (as opposed to one-to-one) performatives, as was demonstrated by the installation of the back room of the second exhibition. This more ‘plural’ performativity ultimately resulted in more ‘activated’ spectators. Finally through an inversion of traditional modes of address in Escape the Esplanade the spectator simultaneously became the spectacle and the artworks spectators. In this way painting, and spectatorship became performative whilst evading theatricality.

‘Figure-ground’ is about the production of meaning based on the perception of contrasts or binary oppositions and segregations. Viewers of my paintings, and of the kind of paintings that interest me, have the impression that the ‘figure’ subsides or slips or fades into ‘ground’, or that the ‘ground’ is more powerful or dominant than the‘figure’, or that the ‘figure’ is insecurely attached, suggesting it is incapable, unwilling, too acquiescent or complicit to fully differentiate itself from the ‘ground’. I address flux, mutation, indistinctness and complementarity within the visual field of painting. I develop and extend the heuristic context for the interpretation of my studio practice and for work of a similar kind, and then feedback this new context into my practice in order to generate new works, also in the process shedding a new light on my interpretative models. Beyond this, I also make a more general argument for the re alignment of the relationship between art theory and practice - one that can better incorporate a sense of in between-ness, indistinctness or liminality. My approach is comparative: I look at East Asian art and ideas and, in particular, deploy the writings of the French Sinologist and philosopher François Jullien, in whose work there is the attempt to expand Western epistemology, ontology, semantics and aesthetics via a discussion of Chinese thought and aesthetics. Jullien proposes a paradigm that draws the ‘in-out’ respiratory rhythm or pulse within the perceptual field towards the centre of a theory of representation, a theory that seeks to account for consciousness from the ‘inside’ rather than the ‘outside’. The consequence of this relocation of agency is an interpretative framework that is firmly grounded in a nondualistic and holistic approach, foregrounding affect and empathetic relationships between artist and work, viewer and work, and self and the world. Traditional East Asian thought begins with similar premises to poststructuralism in the West: the ‘self’ is an illusion and the possibility of knowledge of reality independent of thought is dismissed as untenable because there is no objective reality accessible to us. Everything depends on the bias of the mind, rather than on anything we can identify as an innate attribute of reality itself, thus there is no escape from our lived experience, and we are profoundly limited by the interpretive knowledge of our mind; we are trapped within the ‘prison house of language’. But within the different recursive orientations that characterize ‘East’ and ‘West’ the interpretation and consequences of these insights are understood in quite different ways. I explore why this should be the case and what some of the consequences are, both theoretically through the written text and performatively through my studio work.

The image of George Romney presented in his early biographies is of a successful society portraitist by day but the creator of `sublime and infernal reveries' at night by candlelight. Today these passionate designs from literature are characterized as proto- Romantic but, paradoxically, they were created within the context of a disciplined renaissance-humanist tradition. Romney's amateur and professional literary friends supplied him with a profusion of potential subjects and produced eulogistic verses about the artist and his works, stressing his sensitivity, seclusion, humble origins and natural genius. Taking their cue from the formulaic writings about artists from antiquity and the renaissance, the poets applied to Romney legends concerning artistic predispositions towards melancholy and emotional depth and provided a format in which his works of sentimental or tragic themes could be appreciated. The desired end result of their concerted and contrived enterprise was a fame for the artist which also reflected glory on the writers. Post-Romantic-historical methodologies have taken for granted that deference on the part of the artist t wards a visors and patrons carried negative associations and have underestimated the collaborative nature of creativity in the eighteenth century. George Romney's career demonstrates that even within changing social and creative orders, and a long-side more modem impulses, longstanding traditions involving a close association between artists and advisors, striving for mutual benefits, survived well into the early-Romantic period. Examination of the extensive money primary source material, including correspondence with literary friends and his jottings on subjects and artistic theories in notebooks is undertaken within the context o f an analysis of Romney's works and the means of their promulgation. This thesis offers a new interpretation of Romney's career and argues that artistic production in late eighteenth- century Britain cannot be fully understood unless the ambitions and methods of the literary figures advising artists are considered.

The concerns of this thesis are aligned with approaches to the historical study of sexuality, gender and identity in art, society and culture which are increasingly articulate and questioning at present. However, it is distinct from these recent studies because it redirects attention toward a stimulating encounter with the past through new theoretical proposals and interpretive perspectives on the manner in which mythology asserts itself as the vehicle for expressing male same-sex erotic behaviour, gender performance and masculine identity in the visual culture of the Italian Renaissance. By following a methodological, historiographical and interdisciplinary mode of enquiry, this thesis formulates and expresses new perspectives which engage with the representation of masculine concerns relating to these historically specific matters in the visual domain of the period. Conventional historical definitions of traditional art historical models of masculinity are also called into question through reassessment of how the function of the ideal male nude body in Renaissance art was shaped by particular social and historical contexts in different regions of Italy during the sixteenth century. These interrelated themes are approached in three stages. Firstly, there is interpretation of the complex and convoluted meanings within the narrative of the mythic sources, as well as decoding and contextualising of the symbolic messages of the images in question. Secondly, I assemble and examine the textual evidence that exists about erotic and social relationships between males in the Renaissance so that their historical significance can be tracked and placed in the context of the tension which existed between Renaissance Italian judicial and religious proscription and commonplace behaviour. And thirdly, I offer comprehensive analyses and interpretive frameworks which are informed by and based upon a wide range of written as well as visual sources together with evaluation of competing theoretical perceptions. The main arguments are presented in three chapters: The central theme of Chapter One is gender performance with specific focus upon the integral and didactic role of pederasty in visual representations of myths which conflate erotic desire between males and philosophical allegory. The historical phenomenon of pederastic relationships between males is addressed through interrogation of the pictorial vocabulary of Benvenuto Cellini’s marble Apollo and Hyacinth (1545), and Giulio Romano’s drawing of Apollo and Cyparissus (1524).The arguments and theories discussed and analysed in Chapter Two deal with Michelangelo’s depiction of Ovidian mythic narratives. Here, close attention is paid to the intricate nuances and sophisticated iconography used by Michelangelo for three highly finished presentation drawings - The Rape of Ganymede (1532), The Punishment of Tityus (1532) and The Fall of Phaeton (1533) - which Michelangelo presented to Tommaso De’ Cavalieri. The chapter aims to encourage a re-evaluation of these three drawings as a meaningful and connected narrative endowed with significant cultural and personal significance relating to their creator’s anguish about physical desire and its relationship to what modernity terms as ‘sexuality’. In Chapter Three, I consider how several works featuring the theme of Apollo flaying Marsyas can be read as articulations of the imaginative and ideological structures of the formation and preservation of masculine identities. The chapter addresses the iconographic visibility of the theme of flaying and explores the philosophical and literary metaphoric significance of this myth. Primacy is given to destabilising dominant conceptualizations of the heroic male nude as a subject in art throughout all these selected case studies. Centred as they are on sexual attraction or destruction rather than idealisation of the male figure, these chapters offer a revaluation of ways of seeing the archetypal heroic nude in a myriad of ways.

This study analyses art in Brazil from earlier 20th century modernismo to the official arrival of abstractionism at the MAM-SP in 1949. It is divided in two parts, and considers the political and socio-cultural realities and the nationalist and internationalist currents that underpinned the two art historical periods. Part 1 covers the first phase of modernismo (1917-1929) and argues that, whilst acting towards the renovation of Brazil’s aesthetic-literary realm, the movement challenged the political discourse on racial difference and white supremacy implied in the academicist view, thus it undermined the ‘coloniality of power’ inherent in the traditional academic rhetoric. It also argues that on the international front, Brazilian modernismo was original because it extracted from the primitive reference a counter-narrative to Western epistemology. Part 2 analyses modernismo from 1930 to the MAM-SP’s first international abstract art exhibition of 1949. One of its main arguments is that State patronage, during the Vargas populist dictatorship, appropriated the emancipatory programme of 1920s modernismo and turned it into an ideological representation of the nation. The State not only turned this programme into propaganda, but also facilitated its canonisation. The other main argument is that international abstractionism arrived in Brazil thanks to the intersection between the growing need for an international art institution in the country, and the agendas of national and international free-enterprise capitalism. The thesis establishes a dialogue between the art historical period chosen, and the evolution of patronage and art institutions in the country, thus it explores aspects of the complex relationship between art/culture and patronage/power. It identifies and discusses the two major roles played by patronage in the Brazilian field of cultural production during the first half of the 20th century, that is, its legitimising agency, and its participation in the culture war between aesthetic-literary reformers and traditionalists.

During the past decade one of the bestsellers in the American art market was a group of figurative-representational paintings from post-Unification Germany. Dubbed “New German Painting”, this body of work included artists with explicit East German affiliations, such as the so-called “New Leipzig School”, as well as artists who trained at academies in former West Germany. While the American art critical discourse predominantly promoted the art as a new kind of German history painting, which confronted the country’s recent past of division and reunification, the reception amongst German art critics was more negative by far. The latter did not see a serious engagement with recent German history in the new body of art, and dismissed the painting as catering to a growing post-socialist nostalgia industry. Moreover, the traditional figurative style of painting, which was adopted in particular by artists trained at academies in post-Wende East Germany, was often criticized as an aesthetically and politically reactionary artistic position. In spite of the obvious social and political connotations of the art critical discourse on the “New German Painting”, art historical scholarship has barely examined this new body of art in light of underlying interactions between the painting’s aesthetic content and the social-political context of post-Unification Germany. This is a surprising omission, considering that scholars of modern German art are traditionally deeply concerned with the interplay between aesthetic and political continuities and discontinuities. A possible explanation for this gap in the literature is that art history lacks a framework to capture the intersecting aesthetic and social-political notions that have emerged in the discourse on the painting. This thesis aims to overcome this shortcoming by examining the phenomenon “New German Painting” from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines sociological with art historical approaches. The theoretical perspective builds on innovations in the sociology of art, which complement established concerns with social structure with a sensibility for aesthetic specificity. In the empirical parts of the thesis this perspective is used to trace continuities between the new painting and its reception with earlier moments in German post-World War II art history; as well as to examine the social context and historical moment in which the painting emerged. Particular attention is paid to affinities between the discussion of the “New German Painting” and current crossdisciplinary academic literature on nostalgia in post-Wende Germany. Overall, the thesis argues that this more encompassing approach is better suited for revealing how the phenomenon “New German Painting” sits at the centre of debates about collective memory and cultural identity in post-1989 Germany, including the complex relations between the former East and West that characterise these debates.

The dissertation recontextualizes the iconographical developments of the Last Judgement scene in Central Italian mural painting in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries by exploring the theological and political contexts in which these scenes were produced. Two striking events mark the evolution of the Late Medieval Last Judgement scene: first, the revival of the 'complete' Last Judgement after a period of contraction, and second, the separation of Heaven and Hell from the Last Judgement. Both of these features reflect an increasing anxiety about the fate of the soul in the afterlife: a fate which, by the end of the thirteenth century, had moved from the end of time itself to the moment of an individual's death. The first chapter concerns Pietro Cavallini's fresco in S.Cecilia in Trastevere (c.1293), its place within the Roman tradition of Last Judgement scene, and its role as the earliest surviving monumental example of the 'complete' Last Judgement. Chapter II concerns the frescoes of S.Maria Donnaregina in Naples (c.1317-23), patronized by the Angevin queen, Maria of Hungary. In 1266 the Papacy conferred on Charles I of Anjou the Kingdom of Naples in exchange for defense of the Papal States, and the Angevins became the chief administrators of civil and penal justice throughout the Papal States and independent Guelf city-states. A discussion of Angevin iconography establishes a connection between Angevin self-image and the Last Judgement scene. Chapter III is devoted to Giotto's Last Judgement at the Arena Chapel in Padua (c.1305) and its imitator at S.Maria Maggiore in Tuscania (c.1320). The chapter includes a discussion of thirteenth-century papal decrees concerning the fate of the soul in the afterlife, the appearance of the penitent patron at the foot of the cross, and the possibility of a Papal-Angevin-Guelf influence on the production of both of these frescoes. Chapter IV on the "Angevin Connection" begins with a reinterpretation of the iconography of the Florence Baptistery mosaics (c.1271-1330) in terms of their patronage by the Church and the exclusively Guelf Guild of the Calimala. The first instance of the separation of Paradise and Inferno from the Last Judgement, in the Magdalen Chapel of the Bargello in Florence (c.1322), is discussed in light of the civic function of the chapel and of Angevin control of the office of podesta. The relief panels of the façade of Orvieto Cathedral (c.1290-1330) are also considered in view of Papal and Angevin domination of that city. In Chapter V the influence of the Magdalen Chapel's separation of Heaven and Hell is linked to the increasing secularization of the Last Judgement scene as evidenced in the Campo Santo, Pisa (c.1330) and the nave of S.Croce, Florence (c.1330). The revival of the 'complete' Last Judgement scene in Late Medieval Central Italy was the result of theological changes concerning the afterlife, the rise of the penitential movement, and the formation of the Papal-Angevin-Guelf alliance for whom the triumphant scene of judgement became emblematic. The individual's anxiety about the fate of his soul at the moment of death and the appropriation of the Last Judgement for use in secular contexts affected the separation of Heaven and Hell from the Last Judgement and brought about the secularization of a traditionally sacred scene.

As the endurance of Wright’s soubriquet ‘of Derby’ shows, the association between Wright and Derby is distinctive in its ongoing cultural resonance. The legacy of this today is the Joseph Wright Collection at Derby Museum and Art Gallery – the largest collection of his work in the world. This thesis is, therefore, concerned not with arguing for the relationship between Wright and Derby but with attending to how it has been represented and claimed during the 19th-century. This will encompass both how the relationship influenced Wright’s posthumous reputation and how it was enlisted in Derby as the painter was incorporated into the town’s social and cultural fabric. The different claims made upon the artist’s life and locality will become apparent through this, demonstrating the changing relation between painter and place as it was adapted and appropriated according to different times, places, and discourses. This refurbishment of the painter throughout the 19th-century is significant as it provided cultural continuity at a time when the town was rapidly transforming. Exhibitions were an important medium through which the relationship was shaped and represented: within Derby there was a display of Wright’s work nearly every decade. These represent important moments in which Wright was enlisted as a source of cultural capital and in which his reputation was shaped and sustained. Following the natural chronology of the period, the thesis will first consider Wright’s immediate commemoration through the networks of people and circulation of objects involved in sales of his work and his literary representation. In 1839 the Derby Mechanics’ Institute exhibition was heralded as ‘Derby’s first exhibition’; Wright’s prominent display in this implicated him within the civic culture of the 1830s. As momentum around exhibitions and Wright built in the latter half of the century, the exhibitions in 1866, 1870, and 1877 will be considered in relation to one another, consolidating Wright’s presence within the town. Lastly, the thesis will close with the 1880s, when Wright’s association with Derby was celebrated and claimed through a large retrospective exhibition of his work, the beginning of a municipal art collection, the publication of his monograph, and a display at the Royal Academy in 1886.

No description available.

Using unpublished source material at Princeton University, the University of British Columbia, the British Library and the National Art Library in the V&A, this thesis aims to broaden current scholarly understanding regarding Rossetti's exposure to, interest in, and subsequent appropriation of aspects of monastic life and saintly legend in his religious and secular paintings and poems. The intention of part one of this thesis is to discuss and analyse Rossetti's early interest in monasticism and the legends of the saints. Rossetti's attraction to Catholic ritual and ceremony, both in terms of its aesthetic impact and the feelings of awe it engendered, will form the background to a discussion of his admiration for pre-Reformation art. The concern which he displayed in his own paintings and poems for saintly legend and theological mysteries will be shown to have its origins in early Christian art, as well as in the apocryphal lives of the saints and the writings of the Church Fathers, which had seen a resurgence in popularity in the wake of the Oxford Movement. Rossetti's growing fascination with art as a vehicle for the conveyance of religious ideas will be considered in relation to the early and mid-nineteenth century revival of interest in the medieval painter-monk and in the practice of illumination. Rossetti's 1856 watercolour Fra Pace will be examined in this context. The pertinence of the example of St Luke, who used his art as a preaching tool, will also be considered, Rossetti having returned to this concept directly, and obliquely, throughout his career in both his visual and poetic art. The influence of the quasi-monastic Nazarene painters, also called the German Brotherhood of St Luke, will be examined. Rossetti's suggestion of "Brotherhood" as an appendage to "Pre-Raphaelite" will be considered within a specifically monastic context, looking at the artist's family history, analogous artistic communities, and the revival of interest in ascetic institutions within the nineteenth century. The extent to which the works of the Pre-Raphaelite group showed a basis towards asceticism will be analysed, as will contemporary reactions to this.