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.

No description available.

Elizabeth Waltenburg es una artista contemporánea argentina. En su muestra, despierta!, las obras en óleo sobre tela representan a mujeres, niños y animales en fondos extraños y deprimidos. Ella utilize simbolismo de animales y figuras femeninas para discutir el feminismo actual. Ella trabaja en un tiempo complicado por el feminismo, el postfeminismo, la critica de ambos, y un sistema de comunicación global. Su trabajo marca una tendencia hecho por la confusión de todos estos movimientos. Esta tesis discute su trabajo en el contexto de la historia de representaciones de mujeres, de niños y de animales para llegar a una mejor comprensión de los que hace ella. English: Elizabeth Waltenburg is a contemporary Argentine artist. In her show, “Wake Up!”, the oil on canvas works represent women, children and animals on strange and depressed backgrounds. She uses the symbolism of feminine and animal figures to comment on contemporary feminism. She works in a complex era marked by feminism, post-feminism, criticism of both schools and a system of global communication. Her work incorporates elements from all the issues above. This thesis discusses her work in the context of the history of representation of women, children, and animals in order to arrive to a better comprehension of the kind of work she does.

This dissertation examines the practice of embedding devotional objects, such as relics and painted panels, into mural images in Italy between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. Examples can be found as far south as Amalfi, and as far north as Lombardy, and in a variety of ecclesiastical institutions, ranging from urban cathedrals, remote hermitages, and influential monastic centers. Yet despite its widespread application—found even in the Arena Chapel in Padua—the practice has never been systematically studied. Older studies of the sites taken up in this dissertation generally omit mention of their embedded objects altogether, either because the objects were seen as incidental to the larger image in which they were set, or because their inclusion did not follow certain post-medieval parameters of artistic progress. The works of this study elide traditional divisions within the study of medieval art, traversing the categories of icon and narrative, portable and monumental, and “image” and “art.” This study contends that medieval image-makers engaged the aesthetic and symbolic potential of mixing diverse media. The introduction gives an analysis of the notions of “medium” and “mixture” in the Middle Ages in order to elaborate the heuristic concepts that drive the ensuing chapters. Chapters 1-3 each examine a specific type of embedded object, and consider the various modes of combination exhibited therein. Chapter 1, “Assimilation,” examines relics that were embedded within mural images, and focuses on the apse mosaic of San Clemente in Rome, ca. 1120. Chapter 2, “Fragmentation,” analyzes the insertion of circular wooden panels in murals, and centers on the apse fresco of Santa Restituta in Naples, ca. 1175. Chapter 3, “Mediation,” considers the rectangular panel of God in the Arena Chapel in Padua, produced by Giotto between 1303 and 1305. To recuperate the intermedial practice of embedding objects in mural images, I examine the technical and aesthetic features of mixed media murals in relation to coeval understandings of mixture, media, and mediation. It was a practice that involved an understanding of the mural image not just as a flat surface for pictorial elaboration, but as a physical and spatial entity that could be manipulated and thematized within the image itself. By incorporating relic or panel into a mosaic or frescoed mural, medieval image-makers nested objects traditionally viewed as portable and venerable, into one understood as fixed and site-specific. This maneuver gave the mural a stratified quality of assemblage, producing registers of difference and ambiguity between container and contained, image and object, surface and depth. Throughout the dissertation, I explore these dialectics, demonstrating how and to what ends embedded objects establish difference, only to transcend it. The ambivalent understandings of mixture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—sometimes a hybrid, at other times, a metamorphosis— inform my analysis of the mixed representational systems of this study. The period may be characterized by a growing intellectual interest in the observation and manipulation of physical substances, the study of which was seen to reveal the connective fabric of God’s cosmic order. The works studied here participate in this broader attention to the processes of the natural world. I therefore consider how medial combinations were seen to signal analogous behavior in the mixtures discussed by theologians, natural philosophers, and artists. Attending to both the constituent parts and the symbolic value of their combination, I show how the act of embedding worked by analogy to figure the theological processes of assimilation, fragmentation, and mediation.

Als Maltechniker, Restaurator, Radiologe und Hochschullehrer ist Kurt Wehlte für die Berufsgeschichte der Konservierung-Restaurierung eine wegweisende Persönlichkeit. Seine interdisziplinäre Arbeits- und Denkweise prägte ein Berufsbild des Restaurators, welches bis heute nachwirkt. Anhand seines wissenschaftlichen Nachlasses, insbesondere dem sogenannten Röntgenarchiv, wird die Entwicklung der kunstwissenschaftlichen Radiografie in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts beschrieben und Wehltes Anteil an dieser Entwicklung nachvollzogen. Das Röntgenarchiv dokumentiert seine Tätigkeit als Radiologe zwischen 1931 und 1963 anhand von rund 600 Röntgenaufnahmen, vielfältigem Bildmaterial zu weiteren bildgebenden Verfahren und zahlreichen Schriftquellen. Unterteilt in Kurt Wehltes Lebensstationen in Dresden, Berlin und Stuttgart wird im Band 1 der Arbeit sein vielfältiges Schaffen beleuchtet und die inhaltliche Verknüpfung seiner unterschiedlichen Tätigkeitsfelder auf dem Gebiet der kunstwissenschaftlichen Radiografie aufgezeigt. Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung erlangten vor allem seine frühen Röntgenaufnahmeserien an Museen in Deutschland für Alan Burroughs Röntgenbildarchiv am Fogg Art Museum der Harvard University Mass./USA. Ebenso seine interdisziplinären Forschungen, in denen er wegweisende verfahrenstechnische Neuerungen entwickelte, neue Erkenntnisse zur Auswertung von Gemälde-Röntgenaufnahmen erlangte und die Unbedenklichkeit der Untersuchungsmethode endgültig nachwies. Kurt Wehlte verdankte seine erfolgreiche Laufbahn auch einem politischen Opportunismus. Die Zusammenarbeit mit Organisationen und Kulturbehörden während der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus ist Zeugnis deutscher Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Band 2 der Arbeit stellt eine neu entwickelte Arbeitsmethode für die systematische Erfassung von kunsttechnologischen Phänomenen im Röntgenbild vor, die ebenso für die Bewertung historischer Röntgenbildauswertungen genutzt werden kann. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der systematischen Erfassung werden anhand von Fallbeispielen diskutiert. Diese sind thematisch mit dem wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Teil der Arbeit über die Röntgenbildkonvolute der Gemälde von Vincent van Gogh und Rembrandt van Rijn verbunden.:Vorwort Einleitung I. Die kunstwissenschaftliche Radiografie Entwicklungen von 1895 bis 1928 II. Das sogenannte »Röntgenarchiv« im Nachlass Kurt Wehltes Beschreibung des Bestandes III. Vom Kunstmaler und Restaurator zum Maltechniker und „Röntgenologen“ Dresden 1925–1930 IV. Ein Spezialist für „maltechnische Röntgenographie“ Berlin 1930–1949 V. Die kunstwissenschaftliche Radiografie in Forschung und Lehre Karlsruhe und Stuttgart 1949–1963 VI. Systematische Auswertung von Röntgenbildern Erfassung und Verwertung von Bildinformationen aus digitalen und historischen Röntgenbildbeständen VII. Schlussbetrachtung Kurt Wehlte als forschender Maler VIII. Anhang / As a painting technician, conservator-restorer, radiologist and university teacher, Kurt Wehlte is a seminal figure in the professional history in the field of conservation-restoration. His interdisciplinary way of working and thinking shaped a professional image of the restorer that still has an impact today. Based on Kurt Wehlte's scientific estate, in particular the so-called X-ray archive, the development of art-scientific radiography in the first half of the 20th century and Wehlte's part on it is described. The estate documents his activities as a radiologist between 1931 and 1963 based on around 600 X-radiographs, also a wide range of other technical images, like early UV-photographs and IR-photographs and numerous written sources. Volume 1, divided into Kurt Wehlte's stations in life (Dresden, Berlin and Stuttgart), sheds light on his multifaceted work and shows how his activities in the field of art-scientific radiography are linked in terms of content. Particular his series of X-radiographs taken in German Museums for Alan Burroughs' Collection of X-radiographs at the Fogg Art Museum (today part of Harvard Art Museums), gained importance in the history of science. The same applies to his interdisciplinary research, in which he developed procedural innovations, gained new insights into the evaluation of X-radiographs of paintings, and definitively proved the harmlessness of the examination method. Kurt Wehlte also owed his successful career to political opportunism. His cooperation with organizations and cultural authorities during the National Socialist era is also a testimony to German cultural and scientific history. Volume 2 presents a newly developed working method for the systematic recording of art technological phenomena in X-radiographs, which can equally be used for the assessment of historical X-radiographs evaluations. Possibilities and limitations of systematic recording are discussed. This is based on case studies, which are thematically linked to the scientific historical part via X-radiographs of paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt van Rijn.:Vorwort Einleitung I. Die kunstwissenschaftliche Radiografie Entwicklungen von 1895 bis 1928 II. Das sogenannte »Röntgenarchiv« im Nachlass Kurt Wehltes Beschreibung des Bestandes III. Vom Kunstmaler und Restaurator zum Maltechniker und „Röntgenologen“ Dresden 1925–1930 IV. Ein Spezialist für „maltechnische Röntgenographie“ Berlin 1930–1949 V. Die kunstwissenschaftliche Radiografie in Forschung und Lehre Karlsruhe und Stuttgart 1949–1963 VI. Systematische Auswertung von Röntgenbildern Erfassung und Verwertung von Bildinformationen aus digitalen und historischen Röntgenbildbeständen VII. Schlussbetrachtung Kurt Wehlte als forschender Maler VIII. Anhang

Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio's Looking Glass is an ironic allusion to both the concave mirror and the biconvex lens. It was these simple objects, in colloquial terms a shaving mirror and a magnifying glass, which Artemisia Gentileschi and her father Orazio, learned from Caravaggio how to use to enhance the natural phenomenon of the camera obscura effect. Painting from a projection meant that Artemisia could achieve an extreme form of realism and detail in her work. This knowledge, which was of necessity kept hidden, spooked the Inquisition and also gave artists, who knew how to manipulate the technology, an extreme competitive edge over their rivals. This dissertation challenges the naive assumptions that have been made about Artemisia's working practices, effectively ignoring the strong causal links between art and science in Seicento Italian painting. Introducing the use of optical aids by Artemisia opens up her story to a whole new generation of scholarship. / Art History / M.A. (Art history)

Artemisia Gentileschi and Caravaggio's Looking Glass is an ironic allusion to both the concave mirror and the biconvex lens. It was these simple objects, in colloquial terms a shaving mirror and a magnifying glass, which Artemisia Gentileschi and her father Orazio, learned from Caravaggio how to use to enhance the natural phenomenon of the camera obscura effect. Painting from a projection meant that Artemisia could achieve an extreme form of realism and detail in her work. This knowledge, which was of necessity kept hidden, spooked the Inquisition and also gave artists, who knew how to manipulate the technology, an extreme competitive edge over their rivals. This dissertation challenges the naive assumptions that have been made about Artemisia's working practices, effectively ignoring the strong causal links between art and science in Seicento Italian painting. Introducing the use of optical aids by Artemisia opens up her story to a whole new generation of scholarship. / Art History / M.A. (Art history)

Die praktische Arbeit des Monumentalmalers Hermann Prell (1854–1922) wurde zeitlebens von einer intensiven Auseinandersetzung mit Fragen der Maltechnik begleitet, die sich in seinen umfangreichen Aufzeichnungen niederschlug. Aufgrund seiner zahlreichen Kontakte zu Zeitgenossen, wie Hans von Marées und Arnold Böcklin, stellt sein schriftlicher Nachlass eine wichtige Quelle zur kunsttechnischen Entwicklung um 1900 dar. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit werden seine Forschungen zur Maltechnik und die Beschreibung der von ihm angewendeten Materialien sowie Techniken das erste Mal tiefgreifend untersucht und umfassend vorgestellt. Die erhaltenen Dokumente bieten die Grundlage für eine Aufschlüsselung der verwendeten Rezepturen und handelsüblichen Künstlermaterialien sowie deren Kontextualisierung. Des Weiteren ergänzen historische Abbildungen und Vorstudien zur Erarbeitung der Komposition und Maltechnik den Blick auf den Werkprozess. Ebenso wird die kunsttechnologische Untersuchung von ausgewählten Werken mit der Auswertung der Quellen kombiniert. Während seiner monumentalen Aufträge galt sein besonderes Interesse der technischen und künstlerischen Umsetzung eines Gesamtkunstwerkes. Hermann Prell widmete sich eingehend kunsttechnologisch relevanter historischer und zeitgenössischer Quellenliteratur, zum Beispiel von Cennino Cennini und Ernst Berger. Die Freskotechnik nahm im breiten technischen Spektrum seines Œuvres einen hohen Stellenwert ein. Daneben spielte die Beschäftigung mit Tempera sowohl für das Staffeleibild als auch für die Wandmalerei eine große Rolle. Insgesamt wird erstmals ein Überblick über Hermann Prells angewendete Kunsttechniken in ihrer Vielfalt sowie deren Genese gegeben. / Throughout his life Hermann Prell (1854–1922) – known for his monumental paintings – accompanied his practical work with intense explorations of questions related to painting technique. This is reflected in his extensive writings. Prell was also engaged in a lively exchange with other artists, such as Hans von Marées and Arnold Böcklin. Hermann Prell’s writings combined with his contemporaries’ present an important source on painting technique around the turn of the 19th century in Germany. This study provides the first in-depth examination and comprehensive presentation of Prell’s research into painting techniques and a description of the materials and techniques he utilised. The preserved documents provide the basis for analysing the recipes the artist used and commercially available artists’ materials as well as their contextualisation with current research. Our view of his working process is further supplemented by historical reproductions and preparatory studies that served Prell to develop his compositions and painting techniques. Furthermore, the results of recent technical examinations of selected artworks are combined with an evaluation of the written sources. For his numerous large commissions for government buildings, Prell was particularly interested in the technical and artistic realisation of a Gesamtkunstwerk. He occupied himself extensively with related historical and contemporary sources, for example, the writings of Cennino Cennini and Ernst Berger. Amongst the broad technical range of his oeuvre the fresco technique assumed particular importance. In addition, his occupation with tempera’s use for easel paintings as well as wall paintings played a major role. In conclusion, for the first time Hermann Prell’s various applied techniques and materials as well as their genesis are given a comprehensive overview.

Im Zentrum der vorliegenden Arbeit steht die Untersuchung der Temperamalerei in München zwischen 1850 und 1914. Die Temperamalerei entwickelte sich in diesem Zeitraum zu einem maltechnischen Trend, dem sich Vertreter unterschiedlichster Kunstrichtungen anschlossen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung ergänzt bisherige Studien zu diesem Themengebiet, die sich vorwiegend auf die Auswertung von Schriftquellen stützten, durch einen interdisziplinären Forschungsansatz, der erstmals kunsttechnologische Untersuchungen von Gemälden mit einer umfassenden Auswertung der Quellen kombiniert. Im Fokus steht die individuelle maltechnische Entwicklung von vier Künstlern, die zu den einflussreichsten Protagonisten der Münchner Kunstszene gehörten: Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), Franz von Lenbach (1836–1904) sowie Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944). Es wird beleuchtet, wie diese äußerst unterschiedlichen Künstlerpersönlichkeiten die Temperamalerei erlernten, welche Vorbilder sie hatten und wie sie ihr maltechnisches Wissen untereinander weitergaben. Ferner wird untersucht, welchen Stellenwert die Maltechnik in ihrer Malerei einnahm und inwiefern ein Zusammenhang von Bildinhalt, formaler Gestaltung und maltechnischer Umsetzung besteht. Die Untersuchung zeigt auch die zeittypische, breite Palette der Malmaterialien und ihre Kombinationen im Bildaufbau auf: Diverse selbst hergestellte Temperafarben und kommerzielle Tempera-Tubenfarbenprodukte kamen wahlweise in einer schichtenweisen Malerei oder als Primamalerei zur Anwendung. Daraus resultiert ein breites Spektrum unterschiedlicher Erscheinungsbilder, die von einer im klassischen Sinn Tempera-ansichtigen Malerei mit strichelndem Farbauftrag bis zu einer nass-in-nass modellierten Primamalerei reichen, welche üblicherweise mit der Ölmalerei in Verbindung gebracht wird. Folglich erweiterten sich im Vergleich zu klassischen Ölmalerei mithilfe der Temperafarben die individuellen, maltechnischen Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten der Künstler. Dies ist neben einer verbesserten Haltbarkeit der Gemälde und einer rationelleren Arbeitsweise der wesentliche Grund für die Faszination, die die Temperamalerei auf die untersuchten Künstler ausübte. / This study focusses on the investigation of tempera easel painting techniques in Munich between 1850 and 1914. During this period, tempera painting evolved to a trend that was joined by various artists of different art movements. This investigation complements previous studies on this topic, which mainly relied on the analysis of written sources, with an interdisciplinary approach that combines art technological examinations and a comprehensive evaluation of the written sources. The main focus is to investigate the individual painting techniques of four important protagonists of the Munich art scene at that time: Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), Franz von Stuck (1863–1928), Franz von Lenbach (1836–1904) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944). The study outlines how they learned to paint in tempera, which models they had and how they passed on their practical knowledge. Furthermore, it shows up the wide range of painting materials and the various possibilities of their application: The artists could choose between various self-made tempera paints and commercially available tempera paint tubes, which they applied either alla prima or in layers. This results in a wide range of different paint appearances, ranging from a tempera-like appearance in the classical sense up to a wet-on-wet modelled alla prima painting, which is conventionally associated with the visual appearance of oil painting. Consequently, tempera painting helped them to extend their individual means of expression compared to traditional oil painting, which is – in addition to an improved durability and a more rational way of painting – the main reason for their fascination of the tempera painting technique.