The dissertation is divided into two sections, dealing with the positive and negative faces of travel and the sea in visual art, each further subdivided by chapter. Following the introduction, Chapter 2 deals with cartography, providing a broad context for the cultural reception of travel imagery. Chapter 3 discusses Thames imagery. It is argued that the increased interest in the river as a pictorial subject was part of a growing view of London as the metropolis of a grand commercial empire, whereby the Thames was aligned to the construction of the imperial nation. Chapter 4 examines metropolitan contexts for travel and maritime imagery. Conflicts are noticed between the image of navigation as a sign for commerce, and the marginalization of marine artists from polite artistic society. Patterns of patronage also indicate an ideological and actual distancing of the maritime nation from maritime communities. The second section turns to the image of the sea as a negative force in British culture. After an introduction, Chapter 5 examines the problematic depiction of the lower deck sailor, as a contradictory figure in national culture. Chapter 6 looks at how smugglers and wreckers were visualized, as wreckers both of individual ships, and of the larger ship of the commercial state, which assumed markedly political connotations in the 1790s. Chapter 7 considers the slave trade, especially the implications of the absence of imagery dealing positively with such an important component of the maritime nation's prosperity. It is argued that the force of abolitionist images relies upon inversions of pictorial conventions. Chapter 8 examines the wider significance of shipwreck imagery, in relation to shipwreck literature. Discussion of illustrations to Falconer's poem, The Shipwreck, is extended to the wider field of the shipwreck narrative. By providing a vehicle for the expression of native virtues, shipwreck reinforced British identity's being located with the sea, at the same time as it was shown stricken by disaster. The Conclusion considers further how national concerns and values were mediated by the image of maritime disaster. Through a consideration of Loutherbourg's work of the 1790s, it is argued that the aesthetic of the maritime, by being increasingly interleaved with the sublime, permeated a wide variety of imagery. But the naturalization of the nation in the sublimity of the sea represented it continually on the verge of disintegration. For a maritime nation enduring the crises of naval mutiny and continual threat of invasion by sea, this was peculiarly apposite.

This thesis investigates the panel paintings produced in the Riminese context in the first half of the Trecento. These altarpieces, crosses and devotional panels have been widely dispersed, fragmented and decontextualised over the centuries, and this study reunites the panels and investigates the unusual iconographical traits and distinctive formats employed. The introduction looks at previous discussions of the panels and at the available documentary evidence. It also discusses the historical context in which the panels were produced. The first chapter re-examines the relationship of Giotto to Rimini and to the Riminese painters by investigating the nature of Giotto's work in Rimini, at the beginning of the Trecento, and how this work influenced local panel painting in the following decades. The second chapter investigates the surviving visual evidence and analyses the forms of iconography, and the types of visual language, utilised by the Riminese painters. The chapter also investigates, in detail, specific images employed by the painters. It reveals that the narrative image was predominant, whereas iconic imagery tended to be subordinated, and highlights the dual impact of Byzantine and modern Italian iconography. The third chapter investigates the group of extant painted crosses from the area around Rimini and proposes that the Franciscan Order was instrumental in the popularity of the painted cross in the region. The fourth chapter discusses the extant altarpieces and attempts to contextualise these fragmented works. It investigates the development of the Riminese altarpiece, from dossal to polyptych, with particular reference to the unusual formats employed in the structures. The final chapter investigates the Riminese devotional panels and links the iconographies with the female mystics of the early Trecento, as well as the Franciscan Spirituals of the Marches. The impact of Adriatic trade on the devotional panels is discussed in terms of the powerful influence of imports from Byzantium, such as mosaic and ivory icons.

This thesis seeks to broaden existing knowledge of the great Sicilian Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina whose work has in recent years been the subject of a growing corpus of research. The main objective is a reassessment of the available evidence of his legacy, in Sicily and Venice, perpetuated by the artistic activity of his immediate family circle, including his son Jacobello, his nephews Salvo d’Antonio, and Antonio and Pietro de Saliba and other close relatives. In this way, it provides precious insights into the workings of the family bottega which, there is reason to believe, Antonello and later his followers operated in both Messina and Venice. Special consideration is given to Antonio de Saliba whose works have survived better than those of the other artists. Moreover, he is the subject of many of the known documentary evidence. His artistic profile has, as a result, become better defined, but this study has also helped to clarify our understanding on the other antonelliani, and, to an extent, of Antonello himself. The thesis bases its arguments and conclusions on the functioning of artistic workshops, networks of patronage and the techniques used in structures and execution of altarpieces. The main argument is that Antonello revolutionised artistic production in eastern Sicily, and his legacy continued to be propagated without much change by his immediate circle for up to five decades from his demise. Furthermore, the thesis confirms how thanks to Antonello’s Venetian sojourn, his son and De Saliba nephews ventured to Venice, broadening their artistic horizons. Circumstantial evidence confirms that they came into contact with one of the greatest artists of the Venetian Renaissance, Giovanni Bellini, with whose bottega they were, it is here proposed, attached.

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.

In this professional report LEED for neighborhood development (LEED-ND) is analyzed through the lens of disaster resilience and mitigation. The new LEED-ND certification system recently created by the U.S. Green Building Council looks to be a popular method to create sustainable developments. LEED-ND as a system does not take hazards into account when certifying projects. Using HAZUS and hazard assessment methodologies LEED-ND is shown to do almost nothing to mitigate hazard losses. This is seen using the example of two hazard types (fire and earthquake). Since LEED-ND does not address hazards within the context of its system it is shown that LEED-ND is neither truly sustainable nor disaster resilient. Given the current trend of increasing hazard losses initiatives such as LEED-ND will have to address the issue of hazards moving forward. / text

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.

This thesis is divided into two parts. The main purpose of the first part is only to confirm further whether adding B can really improve the glass forming ability (GFA) and thermal stability. It is recently suggested that the addition of the even smaller sized B (0.08 nm) in the Mg65Cu25Y10 alloys to a certain level can further enhance GFA and provide the chance in fabricating larger bulk amorphous billet. The current study extends the concept of adding B to the Mg65Ni25Y10 based alloy, including the replacement of Ni by 1-5 at % (1, 3, and 5 at %) using the arc melting and melt spinning methods. The second part, this experiment drops magnesium element to 58 at% boldly, even lower, and the big element atom neodymium (Nd) improves to 11 at% or more upwards, different from everybody commonly used 65 at %, 25 at % , 10 at % as the main proportion composition , then to observe whether its supercooled liquid region