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<p> The Lincoln Memorial Monument is one of the most successful monuments in Washington D.C. Abraham Lincoln's achievements in his presidency left imprints on every American's life. His memory lives on through the generations. The monument was originally considered a Union Civil War and Presidential memorial, but has evolved into something more. This thesis will analyze the evolution on this monument. This memorial has adapted to a shifting nature of its meaning to different generations throughout the history of the United States. This nature is attributed to its location, the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil War, and the personal character of Abraham Lincoln. </p><p> A major aspect of success comes from the location and iconography of the site. The statue alone inspires a spiritual connection to the struggles of Lincoln. The memorial was placed on the direct axis of the National Mall. This is considered a location of great honor and is easily accessible to visitors. The site and design also allows a massive amount of people to gather and participate in events on the grounds of the monument. A visit to the Lincoln Memorial is a remarkable journey though American history and the extraordinary memorials and monuments of the National Mall. </p><p> Another crucial aspect to the success of this monument in Washington D.C. is the struggle for civil rights. The Civil Rights Movement was able to use the monument as a stage for protest. The movement could then use the Lincoln Memorial and the character of Lincoln as part of its iconography. This fundamentally changed the meaning of the Lincoln Memorial Monument. This allowed a major shift in the meaning of the movement, allowing the monument to grow within another generation of Americans. </p><p> The personal life and views of Lincoln led to many of his successes and accomplishments throughout his political career. His experiences in life impacted many of his policies and the laws that he stood for in the United States. Lincoln's character proved to be inspirational in a time of need and slavery. His political stances paved the way for sociopolitical changes in the United States. His character is a crucial aspect in understanding the need to honor such a great man. The circumstances of Lincoln's death have also made him into a martyr for abolition. The assassination created a legacy in the history of the United States. </p><p> Events of the Civil War and its time period also played a crucial matter in the Lincoln memorial's success. The American Civil War and the division of the United States of America proved to be an altering time in American history. Many Southern politicians fought for the right to maintain individual states' rights. These rights mainly pertained to slavery. As the conflict over slavery continued, a total of eleven states seceded from the Union to create the Confederate States of America. The Civil War lasted four years with hundreds of thousands of deaths. In the end, the Union triumphed and the United States remained one nation.</p>

<p> During the 1950s <b>Katharine Prentis Murphy</b> (1882-1967) used authentic colonial era furnishings to create a series of complex, multi-layered museum and historic house installations that highlighted the aesthetic qualities of American antiques and placed her at the forefront of the post World War II Colonial Revival movement. Murphy placed objects from the 1750s into highly patterned and brightly colored room settings, which was an unorthodox design strategy for the time but one that incorporated popular trends and tastes of the 1950s. Her post war room settings appealed to consumers who were not ready to give up traditional furniture, or the conventional values and virtues associated with it, but who also wanted modern comfort and up-to-date styling. Murphy's displays revealed her own point of view as a designer and demonstrated how the resilient Colonial Revival movement evolved and expanded in the context of 1950s modernism.</p>

<p> This thesis explores Gregory Ain's planned housing communities spanning the period 1939-1948, connecting their conception to the theoretical legacy of Modernism that began with the <i>Congr&egrave;s Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne</i> (CIAM) in Europe a decade earlier. Expanding on existing scholarship, this thesis attempts to contextualize Ain's One Family Defense House Project (1939), Park Planned Homes (1945-47), and Mar Vista Tract (1946-48) within the social, political, and economic context of the interwar and postwar period. Although the latter two projects are more well-known, I attempt to expand the understanding of their design through new and lesser-known examples by Ain in the area of tract housing and contemporaneous housing examples. These include his manifesto for a project entitled Preliminary Proposal 'A' for a low-cost community housing development in Southgate, California and the U.S. government's Basic Minimum House (1936). The three projects discussed in this thesis expand the context within which one views the typical tract house, but also the avant-garde approach to Modernism during this era and the years that followed.</p>

<p> Because of the lack of provenance or accompanying text, the depictions of anthropomorphized animals on ancient Egyptian New Kingdom ostraca and papyri have long puzzled Egyptologists. Attempts to understand the ostraca usually focus on the role reversals where predatory animals serve their natural prey, which is evident in some of the motifs. Some scholars have suggested that these images are satirical and served as an outlet for mocking elite society. However, their social and cultural context, which has not been thoroughly explored until this dissertation, shows that it is unlikely that the images were considered to be negatively charged social satire. Rather, it is more likely that they were envisioned as humorous parodies of primarily elite imagery that were produced by individuals who considered themselves to be elite as well. "Anthropomorphized Animal Imagery on New Kingdom Ostraca and Papyri: Their Artistic and Social Significance" is also the first time the vignettes are given a full art historical treatment in which the formal qualities of the drawings are studied and evaluated. As a result, this dissertation addresses the aesthetic value of these drawings in ancient Egypt, which will be of interest to the discipline of art history on more general terms as well. Another section of this dissertation discusses the narrative potential of the papyri and ostraca on which these anthropomorphized images are drawn. Though the narrative qualities of these images have been discussed before, this dissertation addresses the broader concerns of visual narrative construction in ancient Egyptian art, which has thus far been given little scholarly attention. The figured ostraca and papyri on which these anthropomorphized animals are drawn show that visual narrative construction in ancient Egypt is not necessarily linear and sequential, but can also embody fluid, and more open-ended narrative constructions that is evident in not only the decorative programs of elite tombs, but in written ancient Egyptian literature as well.</p>

This creative project resulted in five metal handbags, each based on a specific period from art history: Egyptian, Classical, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Memphis. These styles range from early human history to contemporary times and possess very explicit and identifiable motifs. They maintain links to each other and impact design to this day.The project culminates in an exhibit. A brief description of the relevant era is printed on attached tags to generate mini art history lessons. People who see or use the handbags will gain exposure to art history they may not otherwise seek out, potentially piquing their curiosity. The aim is to sell all five handbags so they may demonstrate that art history is a vital part of human history because it continues to inform and inspire a spectrum of endeavors from advertising and fashion to engineering and design. / Department of Art

<p> In December 1911, the public exhibition of Kandinsky's Komposition V shattered the world of Western illusionism as audiences knew and understood it - or so the traditional tale goes. Yet the relative abruptness with which abstraction supposedly shocks the art world not only presents a misleading impression; it in effect creates a great riddle. If the Western art world spent centuries organized under a unifying goal of perfecting imitation, why would it now so suddenly turn its back on its institutional underpinnings by challenging, negating, or exploding the principles it had worked so hard to develop? This project responds by rejecting the presuppositions of the riddle and arguing against the traditional narrative, claiming instead that the invention of abstract art in the 1910s was neither abrupt nor unprecedented, but was already being described, theorized, or created in the 19^th century, only in literature rather than painting. Through close reading and literary analysis, I present three moments in the German literary canon in which abstract art is imagined or becomes theoretically possible: Heinrich von Kleist's Empfindungen vor Friedrichs Seelandschaft (1810), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poem "Howards Ehrenged&auml;chtnis" (1821), and Gottfried Keller's Der gr&uuml;ne Heinrich (1855, 1879). Composing these moments are three different authors who write at three different decades, speak through three different genres, and conceive three different modes of abstraction, none of which contemporaneously achieved painted form. Connecting these moments is the following argument: each constitutes an example of the invention of abstract art in a 19^th-century literary text prior to the visual actualization of abstract art in the early 20^th century. With such images in circulation well before 1911, this study features the crucial role of literature in foregrounding the cultural developments essential for abstract artworks to "speak for themselves" in the medium of painting by establishing certain preconditions involving need, spectatorship, and the self-awareness of the artist. Thus by conceptualizing abstract images in their writing, these three 19^th-century German authors also produce necessary components of the theoretical grounding required for the 20^th-century birth of abstract art.</p>

<p> This research investigates <i>anusmr&dotbelow;ti</i> (Sanskrit), <i>rjes su dran pa</i> (Tibetan), anussati (P&amacr;li), and considers how this term might serve as a link for finding a commonality in practices in H&imacr;nay&amacr;na, Mah&amacr;y&amacr;na and Vajray&amacr;na traditions. The research was inspired by the work of Buddhist scholars Janet Gyatso, Paul Harrison, and Matthew Kapstein. Each of them has noted the importance of the term anusmr&dotbelow;ti in Buddhist texts and Buddhist practice. Harrison sees a connection between H&imacr;nay&amacr;na practices of <i>buddh&amacr;nusmr&dotbelow;ti </i> and a host of Mah&amacr;y&amacr;na and Vajray&amacr;na practices. He notes that <i>buddh&amacr;nusmr&dotbelow;ti</i> can be seen as a source of later, more elaborate Vajray&amacr;na visualization practices ("Commemoration" 215). Gyatso investigates contextual meanings of the term <i> anusmr&dotbelow;ti</i> and cites meanings that include an element of commemoration and devotion. She notes that varieties of <i>anusmr&dotbelow;ti </i> are considered beneficial for soteriological development and are deliberately cultivated for that purpose (<i>Mirror of Memory</i> 2-3). Matthew Kapstein refers to a type of anusmr&dotbelow;ti that is the palpable recovery of a state of being or affect. This, he says, is not simply the memory of the experience but the recovery of the sense of <i>being </i> in that state ("Amnesic Monarch" 234). Essential to the research were the teachings of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche and Anam Thubten Rinpoche on Buddha-nature and Pure Vision. </p><p> In this study I have coined the terms "Buddha-nature anusmr&dotbelow;ti" and "Pure vision <i>anusmr&dotbelow;ti.</i>" Though these terms do not appear in the literature, they may be seen as useful in investigating core remembrances (<i>anusmr&dotbelow;ti</i>) in the Mah&amacr;y&amacr;na and Vajray&amacr;na traditions respectively. "Buddha-nature <i>anusmr&dotbelow;ti </i>" refers to a key remembrance or commemoration in Mah&amacr;y&amacr;na Tibetan literature and practice. "Pure Vision <i>anusmr&dotbelow;ti </i>" refers to a key remembrance or commemoration in Vajray&amacr;na Tibetan literature and practice. This dissertation cites passages from key texts and commentaries to make the point that these coined terms meaningfully reflect a major aspect of their respective traditions. They describe that which is worthy and important, that which should be remembered and commemorated. </p>

<p> My thesis work, which consists of a series of small scaled, mixed media constructions, is inspired by the beauty and complexity of the natural world in which we live. There is beauty in the harmony and balance found in the intricate arrangements and order of a variety of living systems such as the rising and falling tides, human DNA structures, life cycles of plants, and the orbits and rotations found in our galaxy. Each work is intended to reveal the density and sophistication of these networks through layers of information and intricate detail. Found wooden cases, drawers, wire, reclaimed metals and recycled plastic, found glass objects, thread, monofilament, and mylar are just a few of the materials I work with to create my sculptures or assemblages. </p><p> The beauty and sophistication of the diverse elements in the natural world have inspired me to create these small scale assemblages or microcosms. Using science and nature as a foundation, I allow my interest in the reuse and transformation of found objects to direct the construction of these intimate environments. I hope the size of the work and layers of visual information entice viewers to explore the spaces and consider the numerous associations evident from my unique orchestration of elements.</p>

Focusing on the event-based work of San Francisco dancer and choreographer, Anna Halprin, this dissertation argues that relational art and aesthetics is an integral feature of modernism that can be traced to the emergence of dialogue in art practices of the 1950s and 60s. I argue that John Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics provided Anna Halprin, and other artists in her circle, with a coexistent experiential site for art’s conception and production. This alternative aesthetic model was based on an embodied, holistic approach to aesthetic experience that was fundamentally different from the Kantian-based formalism articulated by Clement Greenberg. Uncovering this alternative aesthetic model matters, not only because it is a neglected tradition with contemporary theoretical resonance, but because it allows us to see that event-based art produced during the 1960s was not merely deconstructive; it also had a constructive social purpose, namely the modeling of temporary, non-totalizing communal experiences. I analyze this contingent collectivism through an anarchist lens, in order to demonstrate that anarchic principles and models of agency were enacted and kept operational in art communities, networks, and events and, furthermore, were supported by holistic philosophies grounded in concrete experience. / Graduate