EXPLORING IDENTITY THROUGH SELF-PORTRAITURE by ROSE M BARRON Under the Direction of Dr Melody Milbrandt ABSTRACT 1) Statement of the problem: How can art education help students deconstruct stereotypical imagery and develop meaningful artwork? How can art lessons help students construct positive identity imagery and develop meaningful artwork? 2) Procedures: I field-tested a unit of three lessons based on identity through self-portraiture to help students investigate the topic of identity in relation to personal and cultural sense of self. Student’s artworks, reflections and responses were analyzed. 3) Conclusions: Art lessons can help students construct positive identity and develop positive imagery. Art lessons can help students deconstruct negative stereotypical imagery and develop meaningful imagery. INDEX WORDS: Identity, Portrait, Self-Portrait, Race, Gender, Class, Ethnicity, Contemporary Art Education

The work presented in this thesis explores the idea of embracing, interpreting, and utilizing preexisting art work as source material for new investigations that address the changing relevance of appropriation and self-portraiture in today's culture. By recreating these paintings with photography, 'mistakes' in the form of conflicting perspectives, multiple viewpoints, and impossible lighting situations were discovered and addressed. In addition, RGB levels and color channels for both the original image and the recreated photograph were analyzed to compare overall brightness and bright spots. The photographs in this series provide new insights into the emotional content of paintings throughout the vast range of art history by placing one's self into the metaphorical shoes of 'the girl in the painting.'

EXPLORING IDENTITY THROUGH SELF-PORTRAITURE by ROSE M BARRON Under the Direction of Dr Melody Milbrandt ABSTRACT 1) Statement of the problem: How can art education help students deconstruct stereotypical imagery and develop meaningful artwork? How can art lessons help students construct positive identity imagery and develop meaningful artwork? 2) Procedures: I field-tested a unit of three lessons based on identity through self-portraiture to help students investigate the topic of identity in relation to personal and cultural sense of self. Student’s artworks, reflections and responses were analyzed. 3) Conclusions: Art lessons can help students construct positive identity and develop positive imagery. Art lessons can help students deconstruct negative stereotypical imagery and develop meaningful imagery. INDEX WORDS: Identity, Portrait, Self-Portrait, Race, Gender, Class, Ethnicity, Contemporary Art Education

This paper considers how the tradition of self-portraiture and alternative process photography can be used in conjunction with one another to perform the uncanny. I discuss the "uncanny" through three theoretical lenses: Sigmund Freud, Hal Foster, and Rosalind Krauss. I then go on to discuss how the "uncanny" has been used in alternative processes of contemporary work by examining Robert Heinecken and Joyce Neimanas. Finally by looking at Francesca Woodman's self-portraiture, I address how self-portraiture can be a type of performance and how this influenced my own series during my 2015 Fall semester. As a whole this paper addresses how my senior thesis work functions within art theory and art history.

Cases of Italian embedded self-portraiture appear in the sacred art of some of the most renowned artists of the Cinquecento and early Seicento, artists such as Bronzino, Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio. This thesis first examines the history of the practice from its origins in Quattrocento Florence and Venice then argues that an important development in the function and presentation of embedded self-portraits can be observed as Cinquecento artists experienced broad shifts in religious and cultural life as a result of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It also assesses three works by Caravaggio to suggest that embedding self-portraits in religious art was a variable and meaningful convention that allowed artists to inject both their personal and public emotions. This thesis argues that in the Cinquecento and early Seicento, the very gesture of embedding a self-portrait in sacred artworks provided a window into an artist's individuality, personality, and piety.

The written component of my thesis will take the form of an extended artist statement in which I discuss all six paintings included in my thesis exhibition. A major theme of my work is sexuality, specifically female sexuality. This thesis will begin by looking at the three miniature paintings that spearheaded the investigation of this theme. I will examine the generalized and personal feminist symbolism that these paintings contain. The two works that followed the miniatures are depictions of sexual interactions between my husband and myself. I will explain the significance of my depictions and relate them to the work of contemporary painters who deal with the same subject matter. The last painting in this series is a seven by eight foot landscape. I will explain how it relates to my figurative work and why nature has a constant presence in all of my paintings. Lastly, I will clarify why the lighting and composition of my paintings takes the form of traditional stage sets.

The Internet has been a mystifying and nebulous concept since its birth in the early 90s (Kelly). Just two years ago in an infamous public address, former Senator Ted Stevens attempted to explain the internet to the masses, calling it a series of tubes (Doctorow). This statement was followed by a flurry of blog postings, YouTube videos and general mockery from the computer savvy communities, thus confirming the fact that most people, besides the geeks, still don't fully comprehend what the Internet is. At its inception, PHDs, scientists and professors of anthropology alike hailed the Internet as a potential "gaia of cultures," and an opportunity for global communication and the exchange of ideas (Harcourt 22). Currently, it would be hard to say that the Internet is only being used for such lofty pedagogical purposes, but true to those scholarly dreams, people around the globe are exchanging ideas, more specifically videos, on YouTube, the world's third most visited website ("Global Top"). After a number of search engines, the fifth and seventh most visited sites in the world are Facebook and MySpace ("Global Top"). These top sites require no qualifications, impressive resumes, or background checks. A working email address, username and password are all anyone needs to be published on the Internet. YouTube, Facebook and MySpace all exist solely for the same purpose - to host content posted by users for others to peruse. If one were to judge our current historical moment based on our websites of choice, it would be fair to say we are self-obsessed. We exist in a culture defined by its desire and ability to look at itself online.

According to the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary, “grotesque” is defined as “a style of decorative art characterized by fanciful or fantastic human and animal forms often interwoven with foliage or similar figures that may distort the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature.” Originating from the Old Italian grottesca, cave painting, feminine of grottesco of a cave, from the time of its conception, the grotesque has been inexorably linked to art and the female. The work of other female artists that explore themes of the feminine grotesque are discussed, including Katheryn Wakeman, Jenny Saville, and Maria Lassnig. In my current work, I have been creating oil paintings of macro images of my own body to construct a fragmented and magnified, borderless, grotesque view of the body. The images focus on the mouth, due to its complicated nature as both internal and external, hidden and in plain sight, as well as due to connotations with speech, ingestion, and sexuality. The work walks a fine line between aesthetically pleasing while also commanding an uncomfortably visceral, fleshy quality. While the works are somewhat ambiguous and allow for various readings, they also allude to larger issues of sexism. The use of magnification and fragmentation references the insufficient representation of the female body both art historically —with the beautiful female nude painted by the male artist—as well as contemporarily in an overly-Photoshopped society. The visceral feeling of disgust should allow viewers to commune with their own bodies’ psychophysiological reactions and question the politics of how beauty standards are established as well as whether beauty is a valuable concept when judging the female form.

Rhetoric is analyzed primarily through lenses that seek to understand and acknowledge the identities, ideologies, and practices present within a given situation—otherwise understood as the available means of persuasion. Instead, I argue that rhetorical critics should engage in praxis-oriented rhetorical criticism where the critic foregrounds their lived experience as part of their analysis. Utilizing methods advanced by autoethnographers and performance studies scholars, I posit that the praxeological critic manifest the relevant, critical positionalities that inform their analysis through critical dialogic reflexivity, the consensual-conflictual emplotment and theorization of self, and the use of criticism as critical-self-portraiture. As such, rhetoric and rhetorical criticism exist not only as a method of being, but as a way of becoming.

The Project focused on self-reflection and insight, linking these processes to an artistic one – painting. As a way to respond to the research question: Does self-portraiture have the potential to guide us through self-reflection and insight? Workshops combining art and ways of thinking were designed and facilitated by the author, with the aim of improving the self-reflection and insight of students at LNU, based on theories of brain function and thinking. Using the workshop format, the author guided the participants through an experience of introspection through painting self-portraits. Areas of design included workshop, collaborative and critical design. A simple three-step design process was employed to create the Project, focusing on What, How and Why. Next steps included prototyping, designing the questionnaires which students completed, designing the art workshops, and advertising the workshops across campus. Results included nine respondents to questionnaires, four participants in the final workshop, and an array of findings regarding the self-reflection process and insight experienced by students through the design process. Although limitations were experienced, including a small number of participants, the results of combining self-portraiture and self-reflection and insight were mainly positive. It was concluded that this process could be proposed as a means to enhance self-reflection amongst students. Recommendations from the workshops included scaling up the process to include greater numbers of students and reaching an agreement with LNU to hold periodic self-portraiture workshops throughout the academic year, to enhance students’ self-reflection, insight and art skills. The author concluded that by holding workshops to paint self-portraits, along with exercises in self-reflection and insight, she had created a safe space for reflection. In future, students could be provided with guidance and support to use art as a platform for improving Self-reflection and insight, and at the same time enhance their art skills and potentially improve their well-being.