This dissertation examines the intersecting space between word and image that characterizes the photographic essay as a distinct medium. To illustrate the power negotiations that occur in the interstices of word and image, this dissertation applies art critic Elizabeth McCausland's 1943 theory of the genre to four Depression-era photographic essays concerned with African-American life: Eudora Welty's "Black Saturday," Julia Peterkin and Doris Ulmann's Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933); Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White's You Have Seen Their Faces (1937); and Richard Wright and Edwin Rosskam's 12 Million Black Voices (1941). By examining these photo-texts created and published during the interwar years, I hope to parse the medium-specificity of both the genre's constitutive parts (the photograph and the text) while also respecting the hybrid form (one marked by struggle rather than equality) that their combination creates. Investigation of these photographic essays within this theoretical framework and in the context of 1930s publishing practices illustrates the power of the photographic essay to construct racial identities and broadens the critical understanding of the compelling yet confusing genre that is the photographic essay. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2010. / April 26, 2010. / Word and Image, Eudora Welty, Documentary Photography, Photographic Essay, Great Depression, Richard Wright, Edwin Rosskam, Erskine Caldwell, Julia Peterkin, Doris Ulmann, Margaret Bourke-White / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert Neuman, Professor Directing Dissertation; Diane Roberts, University Representative; Lauren Weingarden, Committee Member; Adam Jolles, Committee Member.

The oil on canvas painting Amor and Psyche attributed to Flemish artist Denys Calvaert in 1568 has subdued UV, IR and X-ray analysis. The result of these multispectral analysis provided a point of departure from the concept of materiality for further reasoning regarding: attribution, provenience, art period, display and panting technique. The painting is dated though not signed, and the dating is not consistent with Calvert’s signatures. The art period is coherent with the date. Marks, seals and conservation status might support its considerable age. The paintings mythological subject and painting technique might imply that it was destined for a private broad art market in Bologna. The painting technique in IR and X-ray show a relined canvas with an Italian 16th Century traditional built up painting layers, little underdrawing, little tracing and compositional changes. In comparison to a similar version of the subject attributed to Lorenzo Sabatini, it is plausible one version made by pupil Calvaert sprung from one composition in his master Sabatini’s workshop.

"The Semblance of Things: Corporeal Gesture in Viennese Expressionism" examines the critical discourse surrounding the iconography of expressive gesture in fin-de-siècle Viennese visual culture, including their manifestation in early twentieth-century figural painting, modern cabaret and marionette theater productions, and alongside their theoretical explication in the emerging psychoanalytic discourse on clinical hysteria. Within this study, I consider how, and to what end, Viennese artists, actors, and playwrights experimented with the contorted, unnatural, and theatrical staging of corporeal form at the turn of the century, and the meaning these gestures were accorded in the visual and performing arts, as well as in psychological discourses examining the pathological body. My research demonstrates that a certain vogue for theatrical movements inspired by clinically-hysterical taxonomies, which I conceptualize as hysto-theatrical gestures, existed concomitantly among physicians, thespians, and playwrights in fin-de-siècle Central Europe, the latter of whom adapted these clinically-codified movements to the theatrical stage. Although modern psychological science would attempt to lay claim to these gestures and their meanings in the late nineteenth century, examples of these corporeal forms can nevertheless be identified in concurrent French Symbolist painting and modern German theater. Such hysto-theatrical gestures likewise provided the symbolic body language adopted by Viennese Expressionist painters in the early years of the twentieth century. This language was further imbricated by the widespread use of marionettes in avant-garde theater, the semiology of which was commonly understood as metaphors for human corporeality within the contemporary critical literature. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2010. / April 2, 2010. / Viennese Expressionism, European Modern Art, Hysto-theatrical Gesture, European Modern Theater, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele / Includes bibliographical references. / Adam Jolles, Professor Directing Dissertation; Natalya Baldyga, University Representative; Roald Nasgaard, Committee Member; Robert Neuman, Committee Member.

Leonardo da Vinci's decoration of the Sala delle Asse in the Castello Sforzseca in Milan is a fresco decoration commissioned by Ludovico Il Moro, the Duke of Milan in 1498. The work is best described as an emblem of ducal power. In this thesis I will provide interpretations for two of the principal motifs in the room. The fresco, which covers the walls and vault, is developed around an illusionistic structure formed by sixteen mulberry trees whose interlaced branches are bound by a golden, knotted rope. The trees and the rope both offer a wealth of symbolic and punning allusions. The mulberry, or moro tree, referenced the Duke's nickname, The Moor, and the knotted, arabesque rope provided additional wordplays. The complex, interlaced patterns of the rope represented Moresque, or Moorish designs. Ludovico Il Moro, The Moor, used these ornamental patterns as a personal symbol. The rope motif alludes to the name of the artist, as Moresque interlaces were also known as fantasia dei vinci. In addition to these puns, there are various layers of symbolic meaning encoded within the iconography of the room. Political, dynastic, and Platonic allusions are all referenced in the fresco decoration. In this study I will seek to integrate the iconographic elements of the room, which includes commemorative plaques honoring the Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian I, and a shield emblazoned with ducal arms. I will also trace the evolution of the mulberry tree as the personal symbol of the Duke, and address the function of this highly arcane imagery. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2011. / April 4, 2011. / Leonardo da Vinci, Ludovico Sforza, Sala delle Asse / Includes bibliographical references. / Jack Freiberg, Professor Directing Thesis; Stephanie Leitch, Committee Member; Robert Neuman, Committee Member.

In this thesis I argue that Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) composed the first volume of Le Antichità Romane (1756) to emphasize his expertise and knowledge of ancient Rome's monuments and topography. My study questions the objectivity of the volume's visual and textual components. In Volume I, views of the city, two topographic maps, an explanatory index of three hundred and fifteen monuments, trompe-l'oeil renderings of fragments of the Severan Marble Plan, and passages quoted from Frontinus seemingly verify Piranesi's archaeological conclusions. I analyze these elements, taking into consideration the role of this volume as the reader's inaugural experience of the work and the reference point for the other three volumes. I examine Volume I as a crafted construction: I begin my study by describing the contents of Volume I, and clarify that contrary to other assessments of the Antichità, the volume is not merely a pictorial survey of ancient Rome. Instead, the imagery of the volume coordinates with text to comprehensively describe the city through visual and verbal means. I follow this inventory with an analysis of Piranesi's use of trompe-l'oeil for many of the volume's images. I connect Piranesi's use of trompe-l'oeil to conventions in antiquarian illustration to show that this pictorial tactic was aligned with current anxieties regarding the preservation of the remains of antiquity. I demonstrate that illusion enables Piranesi to imply interaction with the antique artifacts, thus underscoring his involvement in contemporary antiquarian activities. Additionally, I posit that the use of this pictorial tactic enables Piranesi to blur the distinction between artifact and fiction: I show that not all of the artifacts depicted in the volume are accurately portrayed, and the distinction between Piranesi's hypothetical reconstructions and the artifacts is often intentionally blurred. Finally, my thesis concludes with my reconstruction of the reading experience of the volume. I isolate a specific location described through the maps, index entries, and a supplementary veduta as a case study for this examination. By tracing Piranesi's delivery of information about this site through the disparate media contained within the volume, I reveal the role that the organization of the volume's components plays in conveying archaeological data and in guiding the reader through the artist's deductions. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 2008. / April 30, 2008. / Severan Marble Plan, Trompe l'oeil, Piranesi, Vedute / Includes bibliographical references. / Robert Neuman, Professor Directing Thesis; Lauren Weingarden, Committee Member; Stephanie Leitch, Committee Member.

In 2005, Polish-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko, known for using video projections to animate existing public monuments and architecture in more than a dozen countries, exhibited his first large-scale indoor video projection titled "If You See Something…" at Galerie Lelong in New York City. This series of video projections responded to changes in public policy regarding immigration after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The title, inspired by an ongoing homeland security campaign in New York City, referred to posters that encouraged suspicion of immigrants by vaguely demanding, "If you see something, say something." The Lelong exhibition, because of its site-specificity and controlled voyeuristic environment, allowed the artist to manipulate the dynamic of communication in the public sphere. Wodiczko inserted the voices of immigrants, the implicit targets of the campaign, while silencing those conditioned to fear these "strangers." The figures, all presumed to be immigrants, acted out private dramas of pain through audible conversations that center on themes such as deportation, political harassment, racial humiliation, detainment, and exclusion. What is significant about "If You See Something…" is that it is Wodiczko's first projected video environment in a gallery space. The Lelong exhibition functioned similarly to his previous projections in process (the obtaining of private testimony for public display) and motive (the encouragement of democratic exchange). Yet, the gallery's smaller scale and controlled interior environment drastically changed the effect of the projection on the viewers who were transformed into individual voyeurs rather than collective spectators. My overall approach to the installation seeks to establish an understanding of "If You See Something..." by addressing its complicated relationship to issues of the public and private consumption of art, memory and traumatic testimony, and postmodern monumentality. By looking critically at the effects of the installation's content, style, and motive for both the viewer and participating subject (including the artist himself), I encourage an understanding of how the projection functioned as a challenge and alternative to the concept of conventional monuments. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2010. / March 26, 2010. / Holzer, Fearless Speech, Testimony, Art, Projection, Democracy, Video, Krzysztof, Wodiczko, Monument, James E. Young, If You See Something, September 11, Galerie Lelong, Immigration, Polish Art, Counter-monument, Monument, Nancy Fraser, Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Thesis; Adam Jolles, Committee Member; Roald Nasgaard, Committee Member.

Cloud Gate, a monumental, sculptural-structure by artist Anish Kapoor, provides the focal point of this paper. I demonstrate through an exposition of specific art critical, art historical, and phenomenological reasoning why Cloud Gate functions as an agent of embodied awareness. Despite Cloud Gate's high-profile status within a burgeoning family of abstract public art, scholarship does not adequately address its appropriation of features from the 1960s minimalist idiom; its indebtedness to theoretical concerns explored by New Generation or abstract modern sculptors; or its tacit condition as an object representative of concerns within phenomenological discourse. I utilize a three-pronged methodology to address these gaps in the knowledge base related to Cloud Gate. First, I analyze a facet of mid-twentieth-century art-critical discourse pertaining to formal shifts in sculptural media. I examine the polemical interaction between Michael Fried and Rosalind Krauss to discern how their thinking hastened the propagation of monumental, abstract art within the public sphere. Next, I perform a stylistic analysis of selected objects from Kapoor's oeuvre. In part, this analysis is positioned within the framework of Krauss's Klein group schema, which provides a scholarly basis for introducing the idea of sculptural interiority and exteriority. I juxtapose specific sculptures and sculptural-structures by Kapoor with works of similar scale by New Generation sculptor Phillip King and modern abstract sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Alexander Calder. Finally, with an art historical framework in place supporting notions of how Kapoor's Cloud Gate alters ambient space and implies abstract ideas of bodyhood, I investigate two other installations by the artist. Memory and Whiteout demonstrate how he has become increasingly concerned with specific facets of phenomenological theory. I expose how Kapoor's exploration of these themes manifests in Cloud Gate, producing a monumental, public sculpture capable of making one aware of embodied human nature, as well as the concerns of being an individual with stakes in the public sphere. The paper concludes with a synopsis of how this analysis intersects existing scholarship on Kapoor. Further, I outline a few of the many directions in which this research could be expanded at a later date. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2010. / March 30, 2010. / Klein Group, Rosalind Krauss, Michael Fried, Phenomenology, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Phillip King, Minimalism, New Generation, Public Sculpture, Monumental Sculpture, Abstract Sculpture, Millennium Park, Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Thesis; Michael D. Carrasco, Committee Member; Stephanie Leitch, Committee Member.

The chief objective of this study is to examine the post-1948 life of forty-six paintings, originally a part of the United States Department of State's Advancing American Art collection. When given a second life after the collection's aborted international tour and subsequent auction, these paintings helped shape the university/museum collections and identities of four regional academic institutions: Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama; the University of Georgia, Athens; the University of Oklahoma, Norman; and the University of Washington, Seattle. No one has yet treated the domestic aftermath of the Advancing American Art exhibition and the fate of the State Department's collection. Yet the acquisition of paintings from Advancing American Art by colleges and universities formed the nuclei of their collections of American art. In the process, the acquired works vivified the study of American contemporary art in the 1940s and 1950s, helped develop the modernist canon in the United States, advanced the careers of American artists associated with the exhibition, and contributed to the development of prominent regional cultural facilities, and by extension the universities' respective identities. In addition, an analysis of the post-exhibition lives of these paintings amplifies the socio-political context of the exhibition beyond what has been written. Traditional study of American art has focused on the artists and stylistic movements emerging from major metropolitan areas, particularly in the northeastern U.S., thus marginalizing other sections of the country. Little has been written about the role played by regional fine art collections and the museums that house them in defining the nation's art history. The Advancing American Art exhibition offers an important opportunity to study that role. Instead of making the controversial paintings disappear into the depths of storage vaults, universities displayed them as important examples of avant-garde American art. Furthermore, the dissemination of the paintings to the South, Midwest, and Northwest broadened the audience for vanguard art domestically. Thus, this study of regional collections, using the wealth of virtually untapped archival resources available, aids understanding of the reception of contemporary art outside larger metropolitan areas. A rigorous reconsideration of the subject demonstrates that the dispersal of paintings to four forward-thinking regional public academic institutions contributes to our more nuanced understanding of the regional reception of modernist art. More important, a study of the unanticipated consequences of the cancellation of the touring exhibition also provides insight into the institutional histories of regional American museums. Regional universities had a critical need for original paintings, as they developed new curricula in contemporary visual arts to accommodate increased student enrollment due to returning military personnel from World War II. Thus, the dispersal of the collection contributed to the growth of academic programs, the stimulation of interest in current American art, and the development of the prominent fine art museums now located on these campuses. Based in part upon previously untapped archival resources, this study considers for the first time these four institutional recipients of paintings from the Advancing American Art collection and paves the way for future scholarship on the exhibition's regional impact. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2010. / October 15, 2010. / modern art, university museums, twentieth century, controversy, censorship / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Dissertation; R. Bruce Bickley, Jr., University Representative; Jack Freiberg, Committee Member; Adam Jolles, Committee Member.

In May of 1928, the Premier salon indépendant de la photographie opened to the public. This exhibition, better known as the Salon de l'Escalier, was the first occasion at which modern photography was critically recognized in France. French art critic and publisher Florent Fels (1893-1977) organized the show because of his dissatisfaction with the annual salon of photography, the Salon International d'art photographique de Paris, and its support of pictorialism. In this thesis, I expand upon current scholarship on these exhibitions by comparing the 1927 and 1928 writings of Fels and Pierre Mac Orlan with those of Luc Benoist and René Chavance. The former writers are both generally associated with modern photography while the latter authors introduced the annual salon catalogues of 1927 and 1928, respectively, and are thus connected with pictorialism. Through this comparison I discovered that, though traditionally set at odds with one another because of the exhibitions with which they are associated, these critics were nevertheless uniformly interested in steering photography away from pictorialism and advocating a new conception of the medium. To illustrate this, I consider those aspects of the style with which each critic took issue and what they offered as alternatives. I have organized this thesis into three chapters. Chapter one addresses the terms by which these authors rejected pictorialism. In chapter two, I introduce what these critics suggested as alternatives to pictorialism—the photograph as document and snapshot—to delineate their conceptions of what modern photography should become. In chapter three, I discuss Fels' and Mac Orlan's conception of photography as poetry, which provided a way to distinguish the medium not only from the photography that came before but also from all other media. Pictorialists strove to distance photography from its mechanical or scientific nature to show that the medium was an art. In contrast, the critics Fels, Mac Orlan, Benoist, and Chavance argued that photography could and should be both a mechanical medium and a conduit of subjective expression. My analysis of their primary documents illustrates that two groups of critics that have been assumed were opposed, in fact, had much in common. This not only shows that this period, considered crucial in the history of French photography, cannot be reduced to a simple series of events but that other transitional moments in the history of photography deserve closer scrutiny. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2011. / March 31, 2011. / Photography, Pierre Mac Orlan, Florent Fels, Salon International d'art photographique de Paris Premier salon indépendant de la photographie, Pictorialism, Modern photography, French art criticism, Luc Benoist, René Chavance / Includes bibliographical references. / Adam Jolles, Professor Directing Thesis; Karen Bearor, Committee Member; Lauren Weingarden, Committee Member.

In August 1912, American photographer Alfred Stieglitz published Gertrude Stein's word portraits of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse in a special issue of Camera Work. Most scholars agree that these word portraits inspired the invention of the object portrait in the American visual arts. Marius de Zayas, Francis Picabia, Marsden Hartley, Man Ray, Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven, Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth, and Georgia O'Keeffe explored the genre as members of American artistic circles from 1912 through the 1930s. As the genre developed, these artists drew simultaneously upon the semantic and syntactic play of cubist collage, photomontage, Dada language experiments, assemblage, and traditional fine art practices. The identification of Stein's word portraits of Picasso and Matisse as the source of inspiration for object portraiture is secure in scholarly literature. Yet, the theoretical relationship between the two over time remains unexplored. Moreover, scholars have failed to consider other literary experiments by Stein, such as Tender Buttons: Objects, Food, Rooms (1914) and the word portraits produced after 1911, as contributing factors in the genre's development. Steinian scholarship primarily attributes her portrait theory to the application of the American psychologist William James' system of characterology, which addresses the mental phenomena of simultaneity, stream of consciousness, and a continuous present. As Stein created a linguistic correspondence to Jamesian perception, she employed an alternative language system that made use of repetition, fragmentation, metaphor and metonymy, word play, punning, word heap (or a conscious, volitional emptying of words), nonsense, and sound associations. In so doing, Stein questioned and attacked traditional modes of identity construction in her experimental writing. Her primary objective was to capture modern character and personality as revealed through modern experiences. I argue that the development of the object portrait genre as practiced by the artists listed above must be considered in light of the profound impact of Gertrude Stein's portrait theory, embedded in the cultural interest in personality and psychology, as demonstrated progressively over the course of her literary career. Like Stein, the artists believed that traditional visual language systems based on mimesis were incapable of describing modern personality and alternative lifestyles. Instead, they employed an alternative visual language of objects associated with their subjects to replace portraiture's traditional reliance on physical resemblance as an indicator of character. Thus, they invented a new means of conveying essential personality traits. I argue further that Stein's development of an alternative language system based on Jamesian psychology, to question traditional modes of identity construction in her experimental writing, contributed to the overall structure and meaning of object portraiture. Art historians have addressed aspects of this argument but they have not attributed this to the artists' interests in Stein's writing specifically. Therefore, the primary objective of this dissertation is to bring together the literary scholarship on Stein's word portraiture and the related art historical scholarship on object portraiture to reconsider the claims made in each in an attempt to discern parallel themes and stylistic choices evident in the genre's development as a visual form of expression within the American avant-garde. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2011. / June 20, 2011. / Alfred Stieglitz, Gertrude Stein, American art, modern art, object portrait / Includes bibliographical references. / Karen A. Bearor, Professor Directing Dissertation; John J. Fenstermaker, University Representative; Adam D. Jolles, Committee Member; Roald Nasgaard, Committee Member.