This thesis responds to a call to bring humanities into organisation studies. The researcher analyses and interprets contemporary Surrealist paintings for understanding organisational dystopia. While organisational dystopia is not new to the field of Critical Management Studies (CMS), it is a concept enriched by a variety of imaginative stances addressing marginalised or silenced experiences of work life. One such area of imagination is painting. Paintings have historically examined work as a subject of art, yet art has been missed in organisation studies. To address this issue, as well as contribute further to an understanding of organisational dystopia, this thesis presents a case for expanding the field of culture studies in CMS by looking into Surrealism and paintings. This thesis is one of the first of its kind to analyse and interpret paintings in the discipline of organisation studies. The researcher formulates an original framework for examining the contemporary Surrealist paintings by the artist Tetsuya Ishida, who represents the dark, gloomy dystopia of Japanese salarymen. The framework is a system to analyse form (material) and content (meaning), and to interpret paintings. Through this devised framework, paintings are analysed and interpreted in response to two research questions: What are qualities of organisational dystopia? and What are themes of organisational dystopia? The researcher elaborates on organisational dystopia in two ways. First, in the identification of qualities of organisational dystopia, including objectification of labour. Second, in the recognition of themes of organisational dystopia, such as a totalitarian control of private space and complexities of escaping or enduring a dystopia. By addressing organisational dystopia, the researcher presents a warning about the darkness of progress. This research contributes in the two main ways: adding to knowledge on organisational dystopia and arguing that paintings are a valuable method to research design. Thus, this thesis presents a way forward for organisation studies to investigate concepts and criticisms via imagination and art.

This thesis analyses European themes in the work of the American painter RB Kitaj. It focuses most closely on the 1960s, a relatively under-researched period of his work, certainly compared with the 1970s and 80s, in part because most of the existing literature follows Kitaj's reading of his own oeuvre. Using canvases from the 1960s as examples, the thesis examines Kitaj's concerns with the history of the European Left prior to World War II. Study of these paintings reveals how, even at this early stage of his career, Kitaj conflated autobiography and history. A comparison of Kitaj's published and draft texts, written during and after these paintings were made, shows him altering their meaning according to his current concerns. This, in turn, shows how his revisions influenced later scholars' readings. Furthermore, due attention is given to two important, though often overlooked, bodies of work from the 1960s: the screenprints and the installation made at Lockheed for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Both reveal a sustained engagement with European themes, such as the Industrial Revolution, Modernism and its legacies, and Jewish history. Whereas Kitaj emphasised the centrality of Judaism to his work throughout the 1970 and 80s, he downplayed his concern with technology and Modernism, although both continued to inform his imagery until well into the 1980s. His shift away from new technology (eg photo-screenprinting) and a Modernist aesthetic, in favour of life drawing, is analysed against contemporary artistic debates in Britain, together with his fascination with the evolving history of the European Left during the 1970s. Kitaj's work reveals a sustained but constantly modulating, at times conflicted, meditation on European history and culture from an American perspective. In the final analysis, however, his engagement with Europe is, perhaps, the result of a spiritual and psychological impulse rooted in his personal and family history.

In 1949, Giorgio de Chirico held a one-man show at London’s Royal Society of British Artists. It featured 100 paintings including Old Master copies (early 1920s), Renoiresque female nudes (1930s), and Neobaroque work (since the late 1930s). Founded on the artist’s belief that “traditions are our greatest riches, they are the stout pillars of progress”, the exhibition created an “immense museum of strangeness” inhabited by the melancholic ‘shadow’ of 15th-19th century European masters. The displayed artwork prompted one British critic to ask: “Can art advance by going backwards?” Taking this comment as its starting part, the present thesis explores de Chirico’s complicated relationship with the great masters, seeking answers as to how and why he sought to take possession of the past. Constituting one of the most misunderstood and under-researched areas of his career, it challenges the Surrealist-fuelled opinion that de Chirico’s stylistic 'volte-face' of 1919 repudiated his early Metaphysical art (1910-18) in support of the theory that the great masters inform his entire career (1908-76). Interpreted as an integral part of the dechirican aesthetic, I maintain that his post-1910 work employs the great masters as a vehicle for lending tangible form to his understanding of Nietzschean metaphysics, principally eternal recurrence and 'dépaysement', two themes explored in 1910-18. Rather than a Return to Craft in a quest to restore the great tradition of painting, I argue that de Chirico uses ancient painting techniques – along with great master compositions, styles, subject matters and application of colour – as secondary, 'dejà-vu'-like filters that provoke sensations of metaphysical revelation, surprise and enigma. The ‘mysterious transformation’ of their work allows de Chirico to sing a “new song” about the past and present that sit “on the great curve of eternity.” Such work does not deal with repudiation, reaction or revolution, but renaissance: the journey of metaphysical discovery. An in-depth examination of de Chirico’s critical and autobiographical texts (1911-62), which explore the notions of journey and discovery, strengthens this theory, as does the study of his recently-inventoried art library and collection of prints and reproductions. An investigation into de Chirico’s interpretation of originality, 'originarietà', copying, imitation, appropriation, and repetition not only reveals the influence they exerted on his great master choices but, when examined 'vis à vis' definitions favoured by Carrà, the Surrealists (Breton), Return to Order sympathisers and select Postmodernists, his place in art history is adjusted. Given the profundity of this rapport, this thesis contests criticism directed at his late ‘egocentric kitsch’ great master-inspired work (1940s-50s), alternatively categorising it as ‘bad painting but good art’. By acknowledging the pioneering aspect of this corpus (1908-76), this New Old Master demonstrates that art can, indeed, advance by going backwards.

There is virtually no existing theory specific to an aesthetic context for Saudi Arabian art. This reveals the problem inherent in reading and positioning this work in the light of the artists and critics identification as authentic product of the Saudi Arabian Kingdom. The Thesis reconsiders the position of art in Saudi Arabia, positing the work's hybridity as yet not recognized in Saudi Arabia as one of the most significant challenges for contemporary Saudi Arabian artists. The Thesis questions the authenticity that defines this work, according to the Saudi Arabian perspective. Developing an alternative perspective, the Tesis aims to define and understand the hybridity of Saudi Arabian paiting.

Separate landscape is a research that combines a theory and practice through the examination of 'non-place'. Non-places such as airports, waiting lounges, car parks, shopping malls have been defined as places which lack a sense of history, social relations, and identity.

This thesis suggests that a range of major and some minor Scottish nineteenth-century artists’ approaches to figurative art, c.1800-1900, were informed by, and in some cases decisively influenced by, the prevalence of naturalism as fostered by the Trustees’ Academy, Edinburgh. The Trustees’ Academy was selected as a case study for this thesis due to its prominent position in art education as a leading Scottish institution, particularly for the first half of the nineteenth century. Despite scholars noting the far-reaching influence of certain nineteenth-century Scottish artists, such as David Wilkie, discussions of Scottish figurative painting predominantly focus on the personal development of artists’ oeuvres or artists, and grouped generally by style or chronology. Moreover, there is no dedicated published study on the nineteenth-century history of the Trustees’ Academy and its pedagogical methods; similarly, the discussions of Scottish naturalism have formed part of larger contributions related to specific artists and movements. This thesis presents new research from unpublished archive papers related to the Trustees’ Academy in the National Archives of Scotland, and it adopts a contextual and comparative approach by exploring the history of the TA and its pedagogical approaches in relation to wider trends in Scottish art and as relevant in England and abroad. Following discussions established by Duncan Macmillan and John Morrison, it suggests that naturalism developed in Scottish figurative painting as a conceptual motif and as a stylistic tool. The conceptual strand was rooted in poetry, which explored both the ‘Celtic’ and ‘pastoral’, with each being evocative of a romanticised, ‘natural’ way of life. This thesis proposes that naturalism, as a style, was more fully developed in the nineteenth century, in part developed by artists’ pursuit of personal depictions of Scotland’s land and people. Naturalism, as posited by this thesis, was part of Scotland’s wider search, post-Union, for its national identity within its ‘union-nationalist’ framework. By elucidating this new approach in Scottish artists’ depictions of the figure, this study aims to enhance our understanding of Scottish nineteenth-century systems of art education and approaches by artists to the model, and to contribute to research on Scottish national identity in nineteenth-century painting.

The Cabinet of Count Charles Cobenzl lies at the heart of the Hermitage Museum, forming the core of the collection of Old Master Drawings. Yet despite perpetual references to him as ‘grand collectionneur’, no study of Cobenzl’s collecting has ever been undertaken. Nor, in the absence of prosopographical studies of art production or collecting in the Austrian Netherlands in the middle of the eighteenth century, or indeed of other individual collectors, has it been possible to set him in a ‘collecting context’. Bringing together the works of art themselves and Cobenzl’s abundant correspondence, this thesis assesses what he owned, how and why he acquired it, the political and intellectual framework for his collecting and how he perceived the objects in his possession. Looking at Cobenzl’s roles as public figure and private collector, it shows how the latter fits into the context of the former, his collecting rooted firmly in his ambition to revive the economy and the arts of the Austrian Netherlands, in his own ambiguous status and his conflicts with the Governor, Charles de Lorraine. The battle for both real and perceived superiority was played out in many different parts of Cobenzl’s professional and private life, and he used display – the adornment of his home and his person and his collecting – as part of a play for social prestige. Cobenzl used objects as a discrete assertion of both intellectual and aesthetic superiority. This thesis proposes that Cobenzl’s transformation into a collector of drawings was an example of his perspicacious identification of emerging trends that could be turned to advantage, economic or prestigious, public or personal. He was drawn by the status of drawings, perceived as accessible only to those of greater refinement and understanding, as something elite, less accessible than the collecting of paintings. The direct and specific stimulus for his emergence as a collector of drawings lay in the provenance of two large groups of works he was offered, which permitted him to assert a very specific link to the past. It suggests that Cobenzl adopted not only the drawings, but also their histories, to negotiate social position and identity, within the context of his pragmatic utilitarianism. This egocentric study also provides the foundation for a preliminary attempt to create a context for Cobenzl’s collecting of drawings, within his circle, in the Austrian Netherlands overall, and, through analysis of his collecting practices, in the wider European context.

The culture at the ducal court of Sigmund and Albrecht IV of Bavaria-Munich was characterised by a coexistence of traditional as well as novel concepts and interests, which were expressed in the dukes’ artistic, architectural and literary patronage. Apart from examining the orthodox means of aristocratic self-aggrandizement like jousting, clothes, decorative arts and precious, exotic objects, this thesis discusses ‘innovative’ tendencies like the forward-looking application of retrospective motifs, historicising styles as well as the dukes’ genealogy, the ducal government’s imprint on the territory and the aesthetic qualities of the landscape. The study of a selection of buildings and works of art with the methodologies of the stylistic analysis, iconology and social history emphasises the conceptual relations between the ducal court’s various cultural products, which were conceived as ensembles and complemented each other. The elucidation of their meanings to contemporaries and the patrons’ intentions is substantiated with statements in contemporary written sources like travel reports, chronicles and the ducal court’s literary commissions. The principal chapters explore three thematic strands that are idiosyncratic for the culture at the court of Sigmund and Albrecht IV between 1460 and 1508, because they were consistently realised in several buildings and works of art. The first chapter provides an overview of the history of Munich, the Duchy of Bavaria and the Wittelsbach dynasty. The second chapter explores the princely self-conception at the threshold of the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era by considering the application of clothes, decorative arts, knightly skills, exotic animals, and monuments of the patrons’ erudition as means of social communication and differentiation. The third chapter considers the dukes’ awareness as well as ‘manipulation’ of their genealogy and history as a forward-looking means for legitimating and realising their political objectives. It also examines the symbolism and origins of historicising motifs in art and architecture like the Church of Our Lady’s bulbous domes that acted as markers of the ducal sepulchre. The fourth chapter scrutinizes the impact of the dukes’ government and artistic as well as architectural patronage on their territory. It also considers emergence of poly-focal panoramic views from the interiors of castle and palaces into the surrounding countryside by examining the origins of this phenomenon and the perception of the landscape’s aesthetic qualities.

This practice-based research investigates the relationship between the process of making layered images and narratives of walked journeys. Two such journeys – Franz Schubert’s song cycle, Winterreise, and the autobiographical account of John Clare’s escape from an asylum, Reccolections &c Of Journey From Essex – were examined and compared through a body of drawings, prints and paintings. A study of the construction of the two narratives highlighted their layered composition: Winterreise is experienced as a synthesis of Wilhelm Müller’s poems and Schubert’s musical setting; whilst the full impact of Clare’s account is appreciated in the context of his poetry and biography. The research began with a bookwork, a visual response to the layering of information observed in the song cycle of Winterreise, and led to the formulation of a method of interpreting narratives using Thomas De Quincey’s model of The Palimpsest. De Quincey identified the effacements, amendments and aggregation of material in a palimpsest manuscript with the absorption of experience. In paintings made to interpret the experience of Winterreise, abrading layers of a picture surface elicited the compound characteristics of the narrative: allowing one idea to be seen through another. The fictive identity of the song cycle emerged in a suite of monoprints, through their assembly of layered imagery. Conversely, John Clare’s account is that of an actual journey, physically walked. The research culminated in a focus on the terrain of the two narratives. The metaphorical landscape of Winterreise is contrasted with Clare’s more visceral relationship with earth and trees through a series of paintings based on Journey From Essex. The research discovered new possibilities in the narratives’ meaning through the invention of a visual language to describe both physical nature of walking and a distinctive sense of place.

Taking as it basis the longstanding alignment of men with an active, eroticised gaze and women with visual spectacle within Western culture, this thesis demonstrates the prevalence of this model during the Victorian era, adopting an interdisciplinary approach so as to convey the varied means by which the gendering of vision was propagated and encouraged. Chapter One provides an overview of gender and visual politics in the Victorian age, subsequently analysing a selection of texts that highlight this gendered dichotomy of vision. Chapter Two focuses on the theoretical and developmental underpinnings of this dichotomy, drawing upon both Freudian and object relations theory. Chapters Three and Four centre on women’s poetic responses to this imbalance, beginning by discussing texts that convey awareness and discontent before moving on to examine more complex portrayals of psychological trauma. Chapter Five unites these interdisciplinary threads to explore women’s attempts to break away from their status as objects of vision, referring to poetic and artistic texts as well as women’s real life experiences. The thesis concludes that, though women were not wholly oppressed, they were subject to significant strictures; principally, the enduring, pervasive presence of an objectifying mode of vision aligned with the male.