This thesis is an art historical study focussing on contemporary Japan, and in particular the artists Murakami TakashL Mori Mariko, Aida Makoto, and Nara Yoshitomo. These artists represent a generation of artists born in the 1960s who use popular culture to their own ends. From the seminal exhibition 'Tokyo Pop' at Hiratsuka Museum of Art in 1996 which included all four artists, to Murakami's group exhibition 'Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture' which opened in April 2005, central to my research is an exploration of contemporary art's engagement with the pervasiveness of cuteness in Japanese culture. Including key secondary material, which recognises cuteness as not merely something trivial but involving power play and gender role issues, this thesis undertakes an interdisciplinary analysis of cuteness in contemporary Japanese popular culture, and examines howcontemporary Japanese artists have responded, providing original research through interviews with Aida Makoto, Mori Mariko and Murakami Takashi. Themes examined include the deconstruction of the high and low in contemporary art; sh6jo (girl) culture and cuteness; the relation of cuteness and the erotic; the transformation of cuteness into the grotesque; cuteness and nostalgia; and virtual cuteness in Japanese science fiction animation, and computer games.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-190). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Societies in Southern Africa remain largely gift economies, their art conceived as an infrastructure within everyday life, and yet art from the region continues to be read within the values of mimetic art where art is conceived as part of the superstructure of restricted Western economic and social thinking. My research on how the problematic of the gift and Bataille’s theory of the gift, the ‘general economy’, animates various aspects of my art praxis has set out to correct this discrepancy. It includes a re-examination of the general economy of the modern African society, which Achille Mbembe has described as the ‘postcolony’, and how it has impacted on the development of my work as an artist. My research is reflexive and practice-led. The specific praxis considered has included a body of work – published novels, films, installations, multimedia artwork and personal experiences – stretching back to 2000, when I made my first conceptual work of art, as a professional artist in Malawi. The problematic of the gift within my work has been explored alongside contemporary African art with a focus on Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art, and contemporary art at large with a focus on Situationist theory and praxis. I grew up in Malawi, a Chewa, and my research identifies the aesthetic sensibility in my art praxis as being directly influenced by the Nyau gift giving tradition which manifests in Chewa everyday life through play and a robust masquerading tradition, Gule Wamkulu, now a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This thesis compares aspects of the animastic and all-encompassing Chewa Nyau philosophy to Situationism as rooted in Dada and Surrealism. In light of the recent marginalisation of Gule Wamkulu in modern Chewa society, my research identifies the contemporary artist after Situationism as the new creative elite, Gule, akin to Gule Wamkulu in the heyday of Chewa prestation society. In my praxis, Nyau philosophy identifies the ‘cinema of attractions’ (manifest in the Malawi of my childoood as ‘Nyau Cinema’), the internet and the internet bureau, as new bwalo, arenas, to orchestrate play and invariably gift giving within the liminal spaces of modern spectacular cultures and commercial networks in what Negri and Hardt have described as the age of Empire. My thesis is presented as a ‘general writing’, a form of gift giving described by Derrida, and is communicated through an intellectual panegyric with an extensive appendix documenting the nature of my art and research as praxis. The appendix includes a detourned Facebook timeline (2011-16) and legal documents from a Venetian court regarding my installation Sanguinetti Breakout Area at the Venice Biennale 2015. The panegyric is what has united the theoretical and practice components of my research into one on-going inquiry into the problematic of the gift within everyday life.

The research upon which the outputs submitted as part of this thesis are based examines the socio-cultural environment of the Northeast of Scotland, from Aberdeen to Cabrach and from Portsoy to Laurencekirk. In total, five hundred and twenty hours of research data were collected as part of a project that began in 1987. This thesis investigates and visualises aspects of cultural identity representing the historical lifestyles of the "ordinary people" within rural Aberdeenshire circa 1890s-1950s. A unique feature of this research is the use of video as a tool for data gathering and presentation. The key themes are direct observations of the "ordinary people" and the author's rural ancestors. The use of the visual dynamic and the Doric dialect capture the ordinary person's testimony what a "past way of life" was like within Aberdeenshire. The research was initiated as a response to the author's cultural pride in his ancestors. It was not initially envisaged as a formal piece of academic research; the author conducted the research from a simplistic "desire to know". However, through reflective analysis of the research it can clearly demonstrate a rigorous research methodology, which has been replicated within the thesis. The procedures and methods engage with ordinary people in the real world, and help visualise and communicate material heritage. Through the identification of suitable topics, respondent selection, data capture, data analysis, critical review, post-production, archive management and research funding, aspects of the past are sustained. This new data has the potential to be future-proof and is unique in its content. The six topic videos, refereed conference papers, television features, and press articles have captured and sustained irreplaceable data. The research output has been utilised and subjected to critical peer review by diverse user groups locally, nationally and internationally. The work has credible and diverse endorsements and has also been accepted as authentic by the host community, going a long way to developing greater cultural pride. It captures a lost cultural identity in an innovative manner and presents output in a way which is both significant to user groups and also capable of furthering greater knowledge and understanding. This practitioner-based research has the potential to enhance future developments within the field of study through the embracing of modern visual technology in its widest sense.

Contemporary Indian sexual identities are constructed out of the multiple effects of tradition, modernity, globalisation and colonialism. The nation as we understand it is constructed on the basis of a commonality which ‘binds’ its citizens, and also banishes and expels those who do not conform to this commonality. Within this logic of disenfranchisement I firmly place the Indian queer male. This thesis examines the online ‘queer’ male community in India that has been formed as a result of the intersection and ruptures caused by the shifting political, media and social landscapes of urban India. Through multi-sited ethnography looking at the role of language, class, intimacy and queer activism, this thesis explores the various ways through which queer men engage with digital culture that has become an integral part of queer lives in India. Through this approach, this thesis makes a significant contribution to knowledge. Widely available scholarship has explored the historical, literary and social debates on queer sexualities in India. To reach a more holistic understanding of contemporary Indian queer sexualities it is necessary to engage with the digital landscape, as India’s global power stems from its digital development. By looking at the multiple ways that the queer male community engages with the digital medium, I illustrate the multifaceted, complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which this community understands, accesses and performs their sexual identities within both the context of the nation and their local space. This thesis combines textual and visual analysis along with ethnographic data collected through field research in India using multiple research sites including online forums and digital spaces such as Planet Romeo, Facebook groups and Grindr as well as engaging with individuals in offline spaces (New Delhi, Kolkata, Barasat). Studying digital queer spaces across several research sites especially a cross-ethnic and cross-social comparison is unusual in this field of study and produces new insights into the subjects explored.

This work looks at the artistic production of the Porfiriato (1876-1910) with particular attention to the representation of prehispanic cultures and their incorporation into an official historiography. Whilst highlighting the growing popularity of prehispanic and conquest themes, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the research centres on the study of what may be described as a 'neo-prehispanic' genre in order to explore issues of identity and nationalism in the arts. The use of academic styles for the artistic interpretation of prehispanic material coincides with an already growing concern to redefine prehispanic cultures as 'classical' civilisations. The neo-prehispanic as a style may therefore be understood as a reappropriation of the past via western canons and art schools, and the construction of a neo-prehispanic imagery as a means of 'cleansing' the barbaric. The analysis concentrates on the function of neo-prehispanic representations by looking at the reception of these images in relation to the aesthetic ideas operating at the time, and their production within the institutional framework of the Academy of San Cartos. It also looks at State-funded projects in order to highlight the cultural politics of the Porfiriato which sought to celebrate the cultural legacies of prehispanic Mexico. The study will hence seek to explore the particularities of a national style, the function of art in the Porfiriato, and the relationship between artistic production and the construction of a national identity. All of this will be looked at in relation to history painting, monuments and architecture. The main objectives of the research aim to be both practical (a catalogue of material 'Appendix B'), and interpretative. The correct cataloguing and identification of this material together with an analysis of their function within the context of Porfirian society will provide invaluable material for more research, and will constitute the original contribution of my PhD.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis chronicles the development of Polish Japonisme between 1885 and 1939. It focuses mainly on painting and graphic arts, and selected aspects of photography, design and architecture. Appropriation from Japanese sources triggered the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages which helped forge new art and art educational paradigms that would define the modern age. Starting with Polish fin-de-siècle Japonisme, it examines the role of Western European artistic centres, mainly Paris, in the initial dissemination of Japonisme in Poland, and considers the exceptional case of Julian Fałat, who had first-hand experience of Japan. The second phase of Polish Japonisme (1901-1918) was nourished on local, mostly Cracovian, infrastructure put in place by the ‘godfather’ of Polish Japonisme Feliks Manggha Jasieński. His pro-Japonisme agency is discussed at length. Considerable attention is given to the political incentive provided by the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, which rendered Japan as Poland’s ally against its Russian oppressor. The first two decades of the 20th century are regarded as the ‘Renaissance’ of Japonisme in Poland, and it is this part of the thesis that explores Japanese inspirations as manifested in the genres of portraiture, still life, landscape, representations of flora and fauna, erotic imagery, and caricature. Japonisme in graphic and applied graphic arts, including the poster, is also discussed. The existence of the taste for Japanese art in the West after 1918 is less readily acknowledged than that of the preceding decades. The third phase of Polish Japonisme (1919-1939) helps challenge the tacit conviction that Japanese art stopped functioning as an inspirational force around 1918. This part of the thesis examines the nationalisation of heretofore private resources of Japanese art in Cracow and Warsaw, and the inauguration of official cultural exchange between Poland and Japan. Polish Japonisme within École de Paris, both before 1918 and thereafter, inspired mainly by the painting of Foujita Tsuguharu, is an entirely new contribution to the field. Although Japanese inspirations frequently appeared in Polish painting of the interwar period, it was the graphic arts that became most receptive to the Japanese aesthetic at that time. The thesis includes a case study of Leon Wyczółkowski’s interbellum Japonisme, and interprets it as patriotic transpositions of the work of Hiroshige and the Japanese genre of meisho-e. Japonisme in Polish design and architecture is addressed only in the context of the creation of Polish national style in design (1901-1939). Art schools in Britain and America became important centres for Japonisme at the beginning of the 20th century. The thesis considers the case of Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, which due to radical changes introduced by its new director Julian Fałat, became an important centre for the dissemination of the taste for Japanese art in Poland.

The dissertation argues that Ulster Catholic laity inhabited a social and cultural "frontier" through the early modern period. This mentality shaped how Ulster Catholics perceived and conceived their place and community in the rapidly changing religious, socio-economic and political situation in early modern Ulster (c.1680-1830). Though sectarian attitudes and violence are viewed as inherent in Ulster and Irish history generally, this dissertation explores the social and cultural connections between Ulster Catholics and Anglo-Scot Protestant settlers, and the social and cultural world of Ulster Catholics and Catholic converts. By examining several locales and specific Catholic families in the province, a nuanced portrait of interdenominational relationships and Catholic culture and society is forwarded. Additionally, the concerns of daily life and social connections are explored to register the amount of adaptation or resistance to the changing socio-economic and political conditions in Ulster. Moreover, the attempted Tridentine reforms of Ulster Catholic practice by the Catholic upper clergy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was another "frontier" that was alternately adapted and resisted by the Ulster Catholic laity. Analysis of Catholic diocesan letters, Gaelic poetry and songs, family and estate papers, official state papers, and other contemporary works demonstrates the complexities of local interdenominational relationships and the diverse constructions of a "Catholic community" early modern Ulster.

The thesis addresses the reception and consumption of Japanese fashion in the U.K. between 1980 and 2006 and concomitant constructions of Japanese identity in the critical discourses surrounding fashion. It examines the impacts of the sartorial traffic emanating from the Japanese fashion system, the creative outputs of which are polarised in Western critical thought as either unreflective cultural borrowings (Japanisation, appropriation) or as embodying an unfathomable Eastern aesthetic (zen, wabi/sabi, wa). Building on a substantive account of the cultural impacts of the initial encounters with the West, the investigation identifies sites where Japanese sartorial culture is consumed in the form of text, image and artefact. A variety of methodological approaches are mobilised in the analysis of data from retail outlets, cultural institutions and media publications. Material pertaining to "high-concept designers" whose outputs are largely consumed within visual and intellectual contexts is balanced by that from "high street apparel makers" operating in a more commercially-oriented manner. Findings regarding the role of an "intermediate matrix" of designers/brands employing creative approaches and retail strategies that supersede issues of culture, race and historicity are presented in order to map a creative continuum in contemporary Japanese fashion design. In addressing the imbrications of Japanese identity and contemporary sartorial practice, the thesis interrogates research findings from creative, commercial, critical, curatorial and mass media sources within a framework of existing academic accounts of the construction of Japan in the Western mind. The conclusion articulates new readings of the nature of "Japanese-ness" available to a globally connected audience and identifies a gendered differentiation between visual representations of Japanese-designed fashion mediated through the gatekeepers of sartorial culture in the United Kingdom.