Thesis (M.A.)--Washington State University. / Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis is an inquiry into the debates about the relationships between architecture, painting, and sculpture. The survey focused on the twentieth century, during which the disciplines of art and architecture resumed a close relationship, taking into consideration the historical context. The interaction emerged with Beaux-Arts Schools, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau movements until 1900s, and continued with Deutscher Werkbund, Bauhaus and De Stijl during the early twentieth century / and, focused on Minimalist Art, which emerged in the 1960s in America with the concept of &ldquo / architectural sculpture&rdquo / . One of the architects who was influenced by the Minimalist artworks was Frank Gehry. His method of combining art with architecture was taken as the motive to choose Gehry&rsquo / s work as the case study. His striking forms contribute to the development of a final product as a large-scale urban sculpture and a style that is collectively referred to as &ldquo / sculptural architecture&rdquo / . How does Frank Gehry&rsquo / s architecture approach to the condition of art? This question underwent examination in order to shed light on the dialogue between art and architecture, as well as the professional relationships between creators in these fields. At this point, the discussion turned to the issue of collaboration through which artists and architects find the opportunity to design together. Examining the influence of artists on Frank Gehry, it is observed that, interactions with art affected him when he was developing his characteristic style and such collaboration enriched the final product and increased the potentials of independent disciplines.

Focusing on works between the 1960s and the early ’80s, this thesis sets the literature of Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) and J.G. Ballard (1930–2009) within the context of twentieth-century architectural theory and history (written), design (drawn), productions (built), professional practice (managed), and pedagogy (taught). The primary aim of this study is to explore the discursive exchange between literature and architecture, while probing the putative association between postmodernity and architecture. By introducing a broader set of social phenomena into debates about postmodernity, my thesis enables a revaluation of how the architectural idiom is interpreted in literature. Using textual and visual analysis, this thesis argues that Barthelme’s and Ballard’s literary works operate at an intersection of the visual arts and mass media. Responding to American and European twentieth-century visual avant-gardes and socio-cultural transformations, architecture participates in the formulation of avant-garde conceptual frameworks. Critically, architecture is not only an aesthetic discipline; it is also a social discourse. Through the discipline’s alignment with ‘new’ and ‘old’ avant-gardes, Barthelme and Ballard use architecture as a point of creative departure to undertake formal and thematic literary experiments. For both authors, contact with the architectural avant-garde has literary consequences. This thesis considers four interconnecting ways literature and architecture ‘speak’ to each other: representation, discourse, formal comparisons, and influence or inspiration. Within my study these topics are examined through critical meditations on architecture from geographical (Fredric Jameson, David Harvey), architectural (Robert Venturi, Charles Jencks) and visual cultural (W. J. T. Mitchell, Marshall McLuhan) sources. Also figuring prominently are epitextual materials, especially archival documentation from the Donald Barthelme Literary Papers at the University of Houston and the Papers of J. G. Ballard collection at the British Library. This thesis opens up new ways of understanding the interart pluralism that characterises the postmodern.