The aim of this thesis is to describe and analyze the Swedish artist Marianne Lindberg De Geer’s public sculpture Jag tänker på mig själv in relation to the female nude as a traditional motif within the western art and aesthetic. The artwork in question depicts two naked upright standing women, one of whom is represented as emaciated and skinny and the other one as voluminous and fat. By using previous research on the subject of aberrant bodily representations as its main theoretical framework and with a methodological approach based on visual semiotics, this study has found that Jag tänker på mig själv is to be seen as a deviant representation of the female body in several ways. The way in which the female body is represented in Marianne Lindberg De Geer’s sculpture has shown to deviate not only from the traditional female nude but also from the visual norms that usually characterizes aberrant representations of the female-coded body.

The study critically examines public art in postcolonial Zimbabwe‘s cities of Harare and Bulawayo. In a case by case approach, I analyse the National Heroes Acre and Old Bulawayo monuments, and three contemporary sculptures – Dominic Benhura‘s Leapfrog (1993) and Adam Madebe‘s Ploughman (1987) and Looking into the future (1985). I used a qualitative research methodology to collect and analyse data. My research design utilised in-depth interviews, observation, content and document analysis, and photography to gather nuanced data and these methods ensured that data collected is validated and/or triangulated. I argue that in Zimbabwe, monuments and public sculpture serve as the necessary interface of the visual, cultural and political discourse of a postcolonial nation that is constantly in transition and dialogue with the everyday realities of trying to understand and construct a national identity from a nest of sub-cultures. I further argue that monuments and public sculpture in Zimbabwe abound with political imperatives given that, as visual artefacts that interlace with ritual performance, they are conscious creations of society and are therefore constitutive of that society‘s heritage and social memory. Since independence in 1980, monuments and public sculpture have helped to open up discursive space and dialogue on national issues and myths. Such discursive spaces and dialogues, I also argue, have been particularly animated from the late 1990s to the present, a period in which the nation has engaged in self-introspection in the face of socio-political change and challenges in the continual process of imagining the Zimbabwean nation. Little research focusing on postcolonial public art in Zimbabwe has hitherto been undertaken. This study addresses gaps in this literature while also providing a spring board from which future studies may emerge. / Microsoft� Word 2010 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

En 1946, la parution à New York de l’Histoire de l’impressionnisme de John Rewald consacra l’aura d’une historiographie scientifique du mouvement, cautionnée par un investissement documentaire. Cette qualité l’opposait à un monde profane, dominé par une tradition orale et en particulier la réputation de certains témoignages. Un examen attentif ne saurait pourtant donner raison au postulat d’une nature exclusivement savante du document. Une documentation impressionniste se constitua en effet, dès le début du XXe siècle, par l’intermédiaire de producteurs hétéroclites, artistes, témoins, héritiers, critiques, journalistes, aussi bien qu’historiens professionnels, conservateurs et universitaires. Elle peut ainsi être envisagée autant comme le fruit d’une quête de la vérité factuelle que comme l’appropriation d’un objet d’étude populaire, à travers ses empreintes écrites et visuelles. L’appareillage des lectures de l’impressionnisme réunit de la sorte : les autographes ; les memorabilia, meubles ou immeubles chargés du souvenir des peintres ; les technologies photographique et cinématographique. Ces documents participaient en outre d’une culture visuelle plus vaste, incluant les monuments et les plaques commémoratives dans l’espace public, ou encore les motifs transformés par l’acte pictural en points de vue remarquables. L’étude historique et critique de l’écriture de l’histoire impressionniste comme (dé)monstration documentaire permet de revenir sur les circonstances sociales et visuelles de sa mise en œuvre, sur les enjeux de carrière auxquels elle participa, et sur les missions qui lui furent assignées au sein de différents discours sur l’art, savants et profanes. / In 1946 the publication of John Rewald’s History of Impressionism in New York consecrated the aura of the movement’s scientific historiography, supported by documentary investment. This quality confronted laymen’s narratives, which oral tradition and some witness’s accounts’ reputations dominated. Yet, a close consideration could not agree with the assumption of an exclusive scholarly nature of the document. Since the beginning of the 20th century, varied producers, such as artists, witnesses, heirs, critics, journalists, as well as professional historians, museum curators and academics formed an impressionist documentation. It thus can be interpreted as a quest for factual truth, as much as an appropriation of a research object through its written and visual marks. The equipment of impressionist readings hence gathered are: autographs; memorabilia, movable and physical assets as souvenirs of artists; photographic and cinematographic technologies. Moreover, these documents fit into a broader visual culture which included monuments and commemorative plaques of the public sphere, or motives transformed by pictorial acts into remarkable viewpoints. A historical and critical study of such a writing of history as documentary (de)monstration allows here to look back to its execution’s social and visual contexts, the career issues in which it participated, the goals that had been assigned to it within both scholars’ and laymen’s art discourses.

Post-war sculpture created by members of the Royal Academy of Arts was seemingly marginalised by Keynesian state patronage which privileged a new generation of avant-garde sculptors. This thesis considers whether selected Academicians (Siegfried Charoux, Frank Dobson, Maurice Lambert, Alfred Machin, John Skeaping and Charles Wheeler) variously engaged with pedagogy, community, exhibition practice and sculpture for the state, to access ascendant state patronage. Chapter One, The Post-war Expansion of State Patronage , investigates the existing and shifting parameters of patronage of the visual arts and specifically analyses how this was manifest through innovative temporary sculpture exhibitions. Chapter Two, The Royal Academy Sculpture School , examines the reasons why the Academicians maintained a conventional fine arts programme of study, in contrast to that of industrial design imposed by Government upon state art institutions for reasons of economic contribution. This chapter also analyses the role of the art-Master including the influence of émigré teachers, prospects for women sculpture students and the post-war scarcity of resources which inspired the use of new materials and techniques. Chapter Three, The Royal Academy as Community , traces the socialisation of London-based art societies whose memberships helped to identify sculptors for potential election to the Royal Academy; it then considers the gifting of elected Academicians Diploma Works. The empirical mapping of sponsorship for elected sculptors is investigated to determine how the organic profile of the Royal Academy s membership began to accommodate more modern sculptors and identifies a petition for change which may have influenced Munnings s speech (1949). Chapter Four, The Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions , explores the preparatory rituals of the Selection and Hanging Committees, processes for the selection of amateurs works, exhibit genres and critical reception. Moreover it contrasts the Summer Exhibitions with the Arts Council s Sculpture in the Home exhibition series to identify potential duplications. Chapter Five, Sculpture for the State , considers three diverse conduits facilitating the acquisition of sculpture for the state: The Chantrey Collection administered by the Royal Academy and exhibited at the Tate Gallery; the commissioning of Charles Wheeler s Earth and Water (1951 1953) for the new Ministry of Defence, London; and the selection of Siegfried Charoux s The Neighbours (1959) for London County Council s Patronage of the Arts Scheme . For these sculptures, complex expressions of Britishness are considered. In summary this thesis argues that unfettered by their allegiance to the Royal Academy of Arts its sculptors sought ways in which they might participate in the unprecedented opportunities that an expanded model of state patronage presented.