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No description available.

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.

The aim of this practice-based research project is to examine how specular highlights and proximal spaces, when perceived through the Lacanian gaze, might confound our perception of Cartesian perspectivalism in representational painting. I will analyse and question such a combination of specific visual characteristics identified within three of my paintings and related theories of looking. Specifically, these include Hal Foster’s (1996: 138) reading of the ways in which the Lacanian ‘gaze’ disrupts Cartesian perspectivalism, Norman Bryson’s (1990: 71, 79) writing on the reversal of the ‘Albertian gaze’ and Arthur Faisman and Michael S. Langer’s (2013: 1) definition of ‘specular highlights’. By analysing and mapping theoretical concerns that come from close readings of three of my paintings I will investigate whether or not our perception of Cartesian perspectivalism can be somewhat confounded by these specific visual characteristics. I will also discuss how overloading the viewer with an excessive use of specular highlights could disrupt any underlying narratives within the paintings. This will be done by subsequently re-examining these theoretical concerns back through my painting practice, forming what Dean and Smith (2009: 19) have termed an ‘Iterative Cyclic Web’. My hypothesis is that these three paintings may be nexus for a particular oscillation between different ways of looking contained within the paintings I will discuss: looking through the surface, looking across the surface and a form of being looked at from inside the surface. This thesis will be underpinned by two interconnected elements. Firstly, there will be an exhibition of selected paintings I have made, together with painting experiments and supporting material. Secondly, chapters in this text will outline the theoretical analysis of my painting practice and the subsequent studio-based analysis of questions derived from the theoretical analysis. This thesis as a whole will closely follow a practice-based research methodology drawn from Katie MacLeod’s (2000: online) writing on ‘revealing a practice’. I will move back and forth between practice and writing as a method for analysing and developing a multifaceted response to my research question.

Can nuances of surface – by drawing the viewer close – offer contemplative experience, and enable art-making methods to be better understood? I investigate Agnes Martin’s methods, which are available to those looking carefully at her paintings, focusing on the late 1950s and early 60s. Her constructions of materials found near her New York studio have received little critical attention in existing writing, despite their pivotal role in the development of her grid paintings. I re-enacted some of her methods, and adopted some of the elements that I observed in her artworks from this period, in order to better understand the relationship between found objects in these works and the marks and lines within later paintings and drawings. I focused on the particular quality of attention Martin devoted to marks, materials and surfaces, both in her work and in her working environment; this involved analysing and attempting to follow her ‘contemplative’ approach (see Chapter 2). A practical analysis extended the understanding of Martin’s methods and the effects of local North American influences, and resulted in a new body of layered and two-sided artworks, described throughout this thesis. This investigation of her meditative methods and how the field of painting can include objects and sculpture relates for the first-time Martin’s attitude toward making with some artists who are working today (see Chapters 7 and 8). It also adds to existing scholarship on Martin by comparing her surfaces’ demand for closeness (see Chapter 9) with the participatory practices of Lygia Clark and Gego in South America (see Chapter 10). Mondrian’s influence is thereby traced in separate but parallel lines of abstraction. This thesis’ main contribution is a new workshop methodology (see Chapter 12) as a guide for those who wish to research an artist and their methods. The methodology offers a discursive structure within which to investigate art practice through new practice. The presentation of new artworks in participatory workshops in an exhibition setting invites discussion about art-making methods, emphasising the role of practice in the artistic research process. New artworks were offered to be hand-held by the viewer, and this invitation to attend closely was accompanied by art-making and dialogue around practice. The responses I gathered from participants indicate that this type of active engagement can disseminate tacit knowledge and offer experience of a contemplative approach.

This practice led research examines the art historical hypotheses of Denis Diderot and Michael Fried on the role of aesthetic absorption in painting practice. It engages with these hypotheses through collaboration with six contemporary abstract painters in an address to and from painting practice. The collaboration was conducted in order to examine aesthetic absorption from the perspective of studio practice in order to develop greater understanding of its relevance to contemporary abstract painting. This was achieved by completing six objectives. First, a lexicon of the terms surrounding aesthetic absorption was developed along with a brief account of the history of engagement with the concept of aesthetic absorption. This was followed by individually interviewing each collaborator, then gathering them together for two round table discussions. All dialogue produced was transcribed, and along with the research material was made available to the collaborators through a wiki site. This material was then reflected upon through painting practice and thesis writing, to be presented finally as a written thesis and viva presentation. By opening up this in-depth dialogue on the practicalities behind Diderot and Fried’s art historical theories, this research has highlighted the concerns and hesitancies of a specific group of artists in their engagement with absorption. It bridges the gap between theory and practice by examining how painters have negotiated aesthetic absorption and the associated positions of painter-beholder and painting-beholder. This research has redefined those positions and relationships by mapping and analyzing the experiences described in the dialogues. As such, the contribution to knowledge of this research lies in its finding a new understanding of how painters can negotiate those positions. This is relevant to painting practice for two important reasons. First, it allows us, in a more structured way, to better understand the differences in the register of experience from banal or pathological types of absorption to aesthetic absorption in painting practice. Secondly, this understanding provides a framework to enable more coherent and focused programmatic modes of address from the studio in negotiating painter-beholder and painting-beholder relationships, thus providing greater conviction from the position of practice.