Understanding Gilgamesh – brokenly – is to understand life brokenly. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the narrative of life. It records the full cycle of the nerve and aplomb of youth, of the doubt and crisis of midlife, of the acceptance and quiescience of maturity. Moreover, this understanding is a broken understanding. It starts with the clay tablets that are broken in a literal sense of the word. Further, the narrative is a narrative of broken-ness – the story ends in tears. A man has lost his last chance of obtaining life everlasting. Yet he manages to recuperate despite his failure. The first part of this thesis examined the world of Gilgamesh. Initially he was known as the Sumerian king Bilgames. He makes his appearance in the form of oral compositions that are recited or sung in the royal courts of kings during the Sumerian period: sheer entertainment, nothing really serious. At his side is his loyal servant Enkidu who supports his master in everything he does. Akkadian gradually ousts Sumerian as vernacular, yet the latter continues to dominate as the language of culture and court. Bilgames survives the reign of the Sargonic dynasty, and even revives during the glorious Ur III period of Shulgi and of Ur-Nammu. Sumerian Bilgames-poems are recorded in writing. However, by the time that Hammurapi draws up his legal codex, the Sumerian Bilgames is known as the vibrant Akkadian king Gilgamesh. His servant Enkidu is elevated to the status of friend. Together they defy men, gods, monsters. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh goes even further in search of life everlasting. He reaches Uta-napishtim the Distant in order to learn the secret of eternal life. The optimism of the Old Babylonian Kingdom is replaced by the reflection and introspection of the Middle period. Life is difficult. Life is complex. The Gilgamesh Epic is once again re-interpreted and supplemented by a prologue and an epilogue: both begin and end at the same place, at the walls of Uruk. Here Gilgamesh looks back and forward to his life and contemplates about the meaning of life in general. The second part of this thesis dealt more specifically with the story – the literary aspects of the Epic. Genette’s theory illuminated several interesting literary devices with regards to the rhythm and pace of the narrative. However, much of the reflective nature of the Epic was also revealed. There were moments of looking forward, and looking backward: after Gilgamesh broke down in tears at the end of the Epic, he suddely gained perspective on life. Somehow a broken narrative focused into a meaningful whole that may just make future sense. Jauss’s theory illuminated why Gilgamesh refuses to be forgotten, why he is once again alive and well in the twenty first century. Although he was buried in the ruins of Nineveh for a thousand plus years, he is suddenly back on the scene – and not for academic reasons only. Not only scholars of the Ancient Near East take an interest in the old Epic, but also people from all sectors of life. Somehow Gilgamesh seems to respond to questions that are asked even by those who understand nuclear physics – but who grapple with the paradox of living meaningfully. Understanding Gilgamesh – brokenly – understands life. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Ancient Languages / unrestricted

The thesis Intentions of art photography. Possibilities and limits of Eco's reception aesthetics on the example of the exhibition "Thus Spoke LaChapelle" is dedicated to photographs of a significant advertising and art photographer David LaChapelle, a theory of reception of Umberto Eco. LaChapelle's photographs serve as a means in which will be analyzed the limits and possibilities of Eco's reception aesthetics. Also there will be used three different interpretations of selected photos (the photo Deluge and the photographic series Museum).

The diploma work "The differences between perception of metonymy in photography and in movies from the perspective of reception aesthetics" deals with different uses of the figure of speech - metonymy - in visual communication. The metonymy is primarily used as an ornamental device of language expression. It is also distinguishable in purely visual information that is provided in photography and certain film shots. In visual communication, metonymy is also used for embellishing of the visual content or, at least, its correction. This work is focused especially on these examples of the use of metonymy that employ the method of reception aesthetics, which was up to now applied only to literary works. The subjects of interest of the reception aesthetics are so- called places of indeterminacy and the horizon of expectation which is also the focus of this work in addition to its main focus on metonymic expression in movies and photography. The first part of this work deals with the theory of the reception aesthetics and its main exponents. The second part deals with the relationship between the recipients and the media, specifically photography and movie. The last part of this work deals with the theory of rhetorical figures, particularly metonymy and its special form - synecdoche, and it's application...

Studiens syfte var att uppmärksamma den svenska konstnären Elli Hemberg. Som ett exempel på ett av konstnärens offentligt placerade verk, analyserades och tolkades skulpturen Tre löv (1974) med ikonografisk/ikonologisk teori och metod. Analysen inspirerades även av semiotisk och receptionsestetisk teori och metod. Konstnären gestaltade en skulptur i rostfritt stål föreställande tre löv. Genom att använda ett klart och enhetligt formspråk skapade konstnären balans och harmoni, men även liv och rörelse i skulpturen. Skulpturens inre mening tolkades som samtida kritik av modernismens konstutveckling. Olika slags kontexter kan ha avgörande betydelse för betraktarens tolkning av verket. / The aim of the study was to draw attention to the Swedish artist Elli Hemberg. As an example of one of the artist´s publicly placed works, the sculpture Three Leaves (1974) was analyzed and interpreted using iconographic/iconological theory and method. The analysis was also inspired using semiotic and reception aesthetic theory and method. The artist created a stainless steel sculpture representing three leaves. By using a clear and uniform design language, the artist created balance and harmony, but also life and movement in the sculpture. The inner meaning of the sculpture was interpreted as contemporary criticism of the development of art during the modern era. Different kinds of contexts can be decisive for the viewer´s interpretation of the sculpture.

The concept of art experience among beholders is well-known but lacks empirical studies on everyday art experiences among laypersons. In this bachelor thesis, the appearance of layperson beholders’ art experience is explored by a qualitative interview study method. Eleven chosen responders are individually interviewed at Härnösand Art Gallery beholding the same assorted visual artwork. Descriptions and narratives are compared to artists’ intentions as shown in a separate interview. The theoretical approach leans on psychology and perception in art, focusing on the aesthetics of reception. Although a small-scale investigation in a rather narrow context, the investigation shows interesting findings: It highlights the frequency and intensity of everyday art experience in laypersons and the easiness of defining pictorial art from other informative or commercial pictures. Further, it highlights that the process of art experience perception has a strong hold of autonomy and is perceived as very personal and part of own personality. It also shows the rapid perception and endurance of mood as response and interpretation in contrast to the continuous processing of details and meaning. Lastly, the comparison of the artist’s intention and the beholders’ experience shows concordance.These properties of everyday common art experience can be a causal factor for the general prevalence of art in society.

The aim of this study is to analyse the contemporary art critical reception of Siri Derkert’s Ristningar i naturbetong (translates to Engravings in natural concrete) (1965) at the metro station of Östermalmstorg in central Stockholm, and further contextualising the reception within the art debate of modern and public art in 1960’s Sweden. Using linguist Norman Fairclough’s three step-discourse analysis as both methodological and theoretical starting points, combined with art historian Wolfgang Kemp's reception aesthetics, archived newspaper articles, principally from the year 1965, are read and analysed in the study. Aided by a thematic division of the analysis through the themes expression, content, material and permanence some broad conclusions can be made. The results of the study conclude the reception of Derkert’s public work of art as generally positive. There is a consensus in the view of Ristningar i naturbetong in its originality, expressivity, modernity and, in regards to material and technique, experimentality. The artwork’s musical elements, political statements and use of the Norwegian natural concrete, are to a high extent represented in the analyzed articles. In several places the language connotes religious themes in its comparisons of Derkert’s artwork to churches and cathedrals, an element in the reception that is interpreted as a way to enhance the future understanding and potential of the work of art.

The thesis concerns the artworks by Johan Sylvius in the staircase, upper vestibule, upper north guard room and upper gallery of the Drottningholm Palace, as painted performances. They are studied as performative cultural encounters with a historically situated beholder but will also be regarded in relation to their spatial and artistic surrounding. From the theoretical framework of performativity and reception aesthetics, the results indicate that the images have the potential to inscribe the beholder within certain postulates on power relations and politics of identity, through working with splendour, naturalism, narrative and the function of the rooms they are located in. The results further point to the images’ manners of effecting the beholder on several levels through an employed pluralism and lastly, that they both build upon and re-produce the relation between monarch/nobility, where the former is the sole figure who both grants status and can remove it in an instance.

This study examines the concepts of art, politics and art institution departing from three cases of exhibition situations at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, 1998–2008. The cases are considered in relation to different aspects of the museum’s identity as an art institution. The first case, the Pontus Hultén Study Gallery (2008–), is an interactive exhibition space containing 34 mechanical screens for displaying art. It is understood here as a comment on the museum’s identity as a collecting institution. The author critically analyses a number of common oppositions in avant-garde theory regarding museum culture, such as the museum as a place for passivity rather than activity, preservation rather than initiation, and ultimately death rather than life. The second case, the exhibition series Moderna Museet Projekt (1998–2001), was marked by the ambition to integrate artworks into contexts outside the physical museum building. Here case analyses focus on the distinction that the series established between art and a presumed alternative, such as life, reality, or politics. The third and last case, the sound installation Forty-Part Motet (2001) by Janet Cardiff, was installed in an exhibition space that actualised the ideals of the so-called white cube. In the institutional critique of the 1960s and 1970s, this exhibition space was dismissed as isolated and detached from society, an idea that is critically examined. Throughout the different case studies, spectator positions and potential agency are of particular concern. This thesis concludes that the concepts of art and politics are different permeable forms of experiences, visibilities and practices, that cross and intertwine. This conclusion is informed by Jacques Rancière’s notions of aesthetics and politics. In this reading, the art institution is not a barrier separating art from politics, reality or life, but nor is it a dead or deadening space. Rather, the art institution, as a social space and concept of art, is considered as intertwined with other forms of visibilities and experiences. Thus, regarded as a frame for a certain type of visibility, the art institution is capable of establishing a difference that is both unproblematic and urgent.

Notre travail se consacre à l’étude exhaustive de l’œuvre cinématographique et théorique du cinéaste coréen contemporain Jang Sun-woo. Celui-ci fut d’abord un critique et un théoricien du cinéma, son concept de « Cinéma ouvert » (1982) vise à introduire et à penser un « nouveau cinéma ». Jang Sun-woo souligne le besoin d’une critique, d’une invention formelle et aussi d’une théorie pour le cinéma coréen saisie dans la logique de son Histoire. En particulier, le cinéaste coréen s’y positionne pour réaliser un cinéma en vue de l’harmonie entre l’individu et la communauté.Le « Cinéma ouvert » est un concept qui fusionne le cinéma et le théâtre. Il est influencé, d’une part par le Madanggeuk, le théâtre moderne coréen composé de plusieurs unités plus ou moins indépendantes de la narration, et d’autre part, par la théorie du montage d’Eisenstein travaillant sur la dialectique entre la continuité et la discontinuité. Pour Jang Sun-woo, l’œuvre reste ouverte, c’est-à-dire non close sur elle-même, au sens où elle ne s’achève qu’au moment de la réception par le spectateur. Les films intègrent explicitement l’expérience du spectateur, proposent le dialogue avec celui-ci et créent des initiatives en matière d’interpellation. Pour ce faire, ils emploient la répétition, la métamorphose, l’analogie, l’allégorie, l’abstraction et certaines formes d’hybridation. Notre monographie observe l’évolution de l’œuvre de Jang Sun-woo dans son ensemble (critiques, films, publications), en approfondissant les questions essentielles et spécifiques que celle-ci soulève : comment les notions de Minjung (peuple), de masse, de spectateur évoluent-elles ? L’esthétique de l’ouverture peut-elle permettre d’émanciper le spectateur et à quel type de changement aspire-t-elle ? Enfin, quel rituel Jang Sun-woo organise-t-il en vue de réaliser l’Utopie ? / This thesis devotes itself to the analysis of the film and the theoretical work of Korean contemporary director Jang Sun-woo. He was initially a critic and a film theorist, his concept of "Open Cinema" (1982) aims to introduce about "the new cinema" which accentuates the need of the critics, the formal invention and also a theory for the Korean cinema with the consideration about its historical context. In particular, Jang Sun-woo insists on making a movie with the harmony between the individual and the community.The "Open Cinema" is a concept that combines the aesthetic of the film and the theater. Firstly, it is influenced by the Madanggeuk, the modern Korean theater is composed with several acts more or less independent of the narrative. Secondly, it is inspired by Eisenstein’s theory of editing which is based on the dialectic form between the continuity and the discontinuity. For Jang Sun-woo, the film remains open in a sense that it finds its conclusion in the interpretation of the audience. In his idea, the film incorporates the experience of the audience and creates his interpellation. To realize that, Jang Sun-woo proposes several rhetorics of image like repetition, metamorphosis, analogy, allegory, abstraction, and certain forms of hybridization.Our monograph observes the evolution of Jang Sun-woo’s whole work (critics, films, publications) which raises the essential and specific questions: how the concepts of the Minjung (people), the mass and the audience were developed? Can the aesthetics of openness allow the audience to be emancipated and what kind of change it implies? Finally, what sort of ceremonial Jang Sun-woo organizes for performing Utopia?

Syftet med uppsatsen ”Medmänsklighet och Gudomligt Beskydd – en receptionsestetisk studie av Maria (Återkomsten) och Skyddsmantelmadonnan” är att ur ett receptionsestetiskt perspektiv närma sig skulpturerna Maria (Återkomsten) av Anders Widoff och Skyddsmantelmadonnan av Lena Lervik. Skulpturerna finns i och i anslutning till Uppsala respektive Lunds domkyrka. Genom receptionsestetikens metod där man tittar på ett konstverks interna faktorer som rör verkets inre organisation samt externa faktorer såsom platsen där konstverken är placerade, andra konstverk som relaterar till verket, en myt eller berättelse som är viktig för förståelsen av konstverken etcetera, rör sig uppsatsen fram mot en diskussion kring vem som är verkens implicite betraktare, dvs. ideala betraktare. Uppsatsen ämnar även diskutera hur jungfru Maria gestaltas i de berörda skulpturerna: vilken bild konstverken ger av Maria. Metoden för att diskutera vem som är verkens implicite betraktare och hur betraktaren aktiverar konstverken i relation till platserna är besök på de platser där konstverken finns för att i denna miljö möta verken och läsning av relevant litteratur. Slutsatsen är att skulpturerna är medvetet placerade i anslutning till kyrkorum och att platserna utgör en viktig dialog med konstverken. Skulpturerna ger väldigt olika bilder av jungfru Maria: Maria (Återkomsten) gestaltar Marias mänskliga sida och Skyddsmantelmadonnan är mer av en gudinnegestalt, en Moder Jord och urmoder som beskyddar mänskligheten. Verkens implicite betraktare är någon som vistas på platsen och möter verken med en öppenhet; verken har båda en öppenhet i framförallt ansiktsuttryck som öppnar för olika tolkningar. Den implicite betraktaren – i meningen den ideala betraktaren – är en människa med en öppenhet för en andlig dimension men är inte nödvändigtvis troende. Betraktaren behöver inte ha kunskap om vem jungfru Maria är, verkens tillkomsthistoria, verk som kan tänkas relatera till skulpturerna etcetera men det kan fördjupa upplevelsen. / The purpose of the essay "Humanity and Heavenly Protection – a Study of Mary (The Return) and the Protective Cloak Madonna Based on the Theory and Method of Reception Aesthetics" is to approach the sculptures Mary (The Return) by the artist Anders Widoff, and The Protective Cloak Madonna by the artist Lena Lervik. The sculptures are placed inside Uppsala Cathedral and outside Lund Cathedral respectively, and the study is based on the theory and method of reception aesthetics, where one looks at an artwork's internal factors that relate to the work's internal organization, as well as external factors, such as the situation of the work, relating works, or myths or stories that are important to understanding the work. Through this theory, a discussion about the implicit (ideal) beholder of the works takes place. Furthermore, the essay aspires to discuss the representation of Virgin Mary in the sculptures: what images of her the artworks present. The discussion of the implicit beholder, as well as the question of how locations affect the viewer’s activation of the works, was based on visits to the sites, as well as the study of literature on the artworks and the theory used.  The conclusion is that the sculptures are intentionally placed in the vicinity of cathedrals, and that the sites constitute an important dialogue with the artworks. The sculptures present very different images of the Virgin Mary: Mary (The Return) embodies Mary's human side, while the Protective Cloak Madonna is more of a Goddess figure, a Mother Earth and ancestor who protects humanity. The implicit beholder of the works is someone who visits the sites and encounters the works with an open mind; the sculptures have openness to them, especially in the facial expressions that invite different interpretations. The implicit (ideal) beholder is a person with an open mind to a spiritual dimension, but is not necessarily a Christian. The viewer does not need to know who Virgin Mary is, nor the history of the artworks or relating works, even though such knowledge might deepen the experience.