Thesis (D.CA.)--University of Wollongong, 2003. / Typescript. Bibliographical references: leaf 124-129.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1983. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 34).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, May 2009. / Electronic version restricted until 29th May 2011.

Raising ghosts examines the political and cultural climate in Australia in the mid-20th century, and proposes that e?migre? and migrant artists to a significant extent were the catalysts of change and progenitors of new forms of painting in the post-war years. It uncovers a largely hidden but fertile terrain in Australian modernism. / thesis (PhDVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2000.

This following is a study on abstract painting: the critical reception and analysis of painterly practice--performative, experimental, dissenting--in New York from 1936 to 1951. By metonymy, this study also looks at the figure in the political realm via the critiques offered by socially-oriented critics at this time (some of whom were also art critics). As the boundless secondary literature on this period has noted, the painting of the New York School would "triumph" with "stunning success" by the late 1950s. In other regards, the subject of this dissertation is that of failure. The revolution (or, "the idea of Revolution") that had been hoped for by so many left-wing radicals in the 1930s never quite came to pass or, later, went horribly wrong: first in Spain and then elsewhere. "Modern art, like modern literature and modern life," Clement Greenberg concluded in a 1948 essay on the Old Masters "has lost much." Greenberg's essay on the Old Masters appeared in the same number of Partisan Review as Hannah Arendt's essay, "The Concentration Camps." This is the generation of critics, intellectuals and artists who bore the brunt of articulating the unspeakable horrors of the Camps and the Bomb--manmade places and events that were "beyond human comprehension." This study is also about belief, of kinds: a Modernist belief in the agency of the artist, in the discernment of the critic, and of a "superstitious regard for print," to which Greenberg referred with irony in a 1957 essay (artists didn't always believe what they read, he would conclude). Irving Howe, the founder of Dissent in 1954, supposedly once quipped that, "when intellectuals can do nothing else, they start a magazine." The dissertation at hand contains a number of kinds of critical statements: ones of ambiguity and of skepticism, and others of crisis and disinterest, directed towards art objects and elsewhere, and expressed by writers at mid-century, some especially subtle and acute. Modernist belief, even if betrayed too often, allowed these critics often to escape velleities, or other empty gestures, in their writing.

Raising ghosts examines the political and cultural climate in Australia in the mid-20th century, and proposes that e?migre? and migrant artists to a significant extent were the catalysts of change and progenitors of new forms of painting in the post-war years. It uncovers a largely hidden but fertile terrain in Australian modernism. / thesis (PhDVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2000.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Sydney, 2007. / Title from title screen (viewed 26 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy to the Dept. of Art History and Theory, Faculty of Arts. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

This thesis examines the figurative work of Portuguese-born artist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908-1992) completed between 1930 and 1946, in the cities of Paris, Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. This thesis divests Vieira’s work of the persistent formalist framework from within which her artistic production has thus far been examined. Unlike any previous study, it explores the artist’s paintings through specific themes, subjects and forms of expression. By uncovering these narrative premises, we are able to re-assess the overall significance and contribution of Vieira’s pre-war work to her post-war oeuvre. Moreover, the interpretative framework that develops from this account re-draws Vieira’s position within the modernist canon; contrary to prevalently held views, her work ceases to be autonomous from its cultural field. The historical awareness embedded in the artist’s choice of subjects and themes captures the significance of the moment in history in which these paintings were completed. Yet, a contextual examination of Vieira's work in relation to the major streams of thought of the twentieth century reflects its elusive aesthetic nature. Each chapter examines specific themes and subjects. The first three chapters explore Vieira’s use of memory and the imagination through the expression of the child-like and the naïve, as ways to escape the mimesis of traditional painting. The introduction of these images alters the third person narrative quality of her work by bringing the artist’s perceptions to the forefront of her artistic production. The following three chapters explore Vieira’s subjective spatial quality, either through the use of linear formations of space, memory as projected on to urban landscapes, or simply by using her own image, in its numerous forms, as a spatial signifier. Moreover, in identifying Vieira’s choice of themes and forms of expression, this study observes the cross-roads of creativity that modernism inspired, disclosing the richness and plurality of sources involved in the production of painting, including literature, print-making and film.

Finding equilibrium in forms, colour-form combinations and images has long been a concern of mine. I recognise a persistent manner of working within my art practice that utilises geometry, mathematics and colour to arrive at compositions that have a sense of beauty and equilibrium. Abstraction has been of significant interest to me and the three collections of work that I developed during my Master of Fine Arts studies - 'Colour:Form:Ratio', 'Photography-Free Zone' and 'Construction-Abstraction' - illustrate the different ways I have applied my interests in abstraction. Until the completion of the 'Colour:Form:Ratio' painting series my approach to abstraction was cerebral and self-reliant. While I was satisfied with results of my initial investigations and experimentation with abstract forms in painting I felt that the work lacked a social connection. I thus became interested in addressing what I perceived as this shortfall in my abstract painting. A new body of photographic work that had been evolving in parallel to my painting practice seemed to offer a solution. I realised that the photographs could be used to construct a new version of abstract composition. The images shared a similar colour and geometrical configuration to that illustrated in the 'Colour:Form:Ratio' Series. With this breakthrough, I began 'painting by eye', replacing my brush and palette with the camera and using it to capture and frame colours and geometric forms from my surrounding environment. In order to test my new methodology of arriving at abstract compositions extracted from the world around me, I selected two communally shared spaces - the gallery/museum and the construction site - as the sourcing ground for my photographs. The result of my experimentation has been two collections of work: 'Photography-Free Zone' and 'Construction-Abstraction'. Both series reflect my experience of the gallery/museum space and the construction site while illustrating the transferral of my painting process to the photographic medium. The most favourable realisation I made in the process of making these works was that the subject matter I captured with the camera possessed aesthetic and theoretical qualities in keeping with my former painted artistic vocabulary, despite being removed from the physical act of painting.

Finding equilibrium in forms, colour-form combinations and images has long been a concern of mine. I recognise a persistent manner of working within my art practice that utilises geometry, mathematics and colour to arrive at compositions that have a sense of beauty and equilibrium. Abstraction has been of significant interest to me and the three collections of work that I developed during my Master of Fine Arts studies - 'Colour:Form:Ratio', 'Photography-Free Zone' and 'Construction-Abstraction' - illustrate the different ways I have applied my interests in abstraction. Until the completion of the 'Colour:Form:Ratio' painting series my approach to abstraction was cerebral and self-reliant. While I was satisfied with results of my initial investigations and experimentation with abstract forms in painting I felt that the work lacked a social connection. I thus became interested in addressing what I perceived as this shortfall in my abstract painting. A new body of photographic work that had been evolving in parallel to my painting practice seemed to offer a solution. I realised that the photographs could be used to construct a new version of abstract composition. The images shared a similar colour and geometrical configuration to that illustrated in the 'Colour:Form:Ratio' Series. With this breakthrough, I began 'painting by eye', replacing my brush and palette with the camera and using it to capture and frame colours and geometric forms from my surrounding environment. In order to test my new methodology of arriving at abstract compositions extracted from the world around me, I selected two communally shared spaces - the gallery/museum and the construction site - as the sourcing ground for my photographs. The result of my experimentation has been two collections of work: 'Photography-Free Zone' and 'Construction-Abstraction'. Both series reflect my experience of the gallery/museum space and the construction site while illustrating the transferral of my painting process to the photographic medium. The most favourable realisation I made in the process of making these works was that the subject matter I captured with the camera possessed aesthetic and theoretical qualities in keeping with my former painted artistic vocabulary, despite being removed from the physical act of painting.