Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of London, 1973. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 486-493).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 44-45).

Dissertation (PhD)--University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 308-315). Also available via the World Wide Web.

In this diploma thesis I will deal with symbolism and meanings of exotic cat beasts in different spheres of the Roman Empire. First part will emphasize cat beasts in general. Familiarization with species and subspecies of these beasts and their appearance in time of the greatest territorial expansion of the Roman Empire. In the next main chapter, which contain several sections, I will look into their effect on different parts of people's life (art, funerary context, entertainment etc.). Part of these chapters will be also comparation of the impact of cat beasts on cultures around Roman Empire, on the basis of which I want to evaluate which parts of this impact Romans could adopt and which part are their own. In the end part of thesis, I will focus on archaeological findings related directly with exotic cat beasts. In the very end this work contain also bibliography list of used literature and list of illustrations. Key words Cat beasts, Roman Empire, culture, art, propaganda, arena, gladiator, lion, leopard, tiger, impact.

No description available.

The world is a fractured place, faceted and fascinating in variety but broken in strife. Artist Gerhard Richter, said “Art is the highest form of hope” and the thinker Martin Heidegger said that art is a “happening of truth”. Marc Chagall hoped his art connected with people’s lives and sufferings and would become infused with prayer for redemption. How does visual art (and thinking theoretically and theologically about art) contribute toward hope and truth that bring the fragments of society into personal and communal connection? This is a practice-based (or studio-led) thesis in stained glass making at the juncture of the interdisciplinary fields of visual culture and religion. Making the visual art of stained glass windows involves collaborating, selecting, breaking, combining – processes that embody the unifying of disparate pieces. There are three projects and three chapters included in this research that work cohesively to show how visual art can facilitate a shift in us to see with compassion that guides our actions to care, and the word “EidenSight” is introduced to give vocabulary to this. Research draws primarily from reflections on collaborative studio work, visual art and visual artists, aesthetic theory (especially of Heidegger’s essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”) and thinking theologically through these sources. Stained glass has been a profession of work and a profession of faith; here the ancient art is created for contemporary places and raises questions theoretically and theologically and identifies themes that contribute to an understanding of how art affects us. Over the centuries, stained glass has contributed to architecture, art history, and theological aesthetics, as well as viewers’ personal and social experiences, from ecclesial settings to public spaces. This research contributes three commissioned site-specific stained glass installations (two in the US and one for the University of Stirling’s Art Collection) that lead the written thesis which is embedded full of images and has a correlating website: www.eidensite.weebly.com. The results are visual and verbal: requirements for the practice-based thesis include a heavily documented practical element in correlation with a shorter written component (30-80,000 words). Within the limits of these parameters, this research offers completed stained glass windows and a written thesis that includes insights from those projects, plus three chapters on: the material of glass, the space of the window, and the implications of being stained and a main conclusion that ties those elements together contributing to the overall thesis question: can art help us see with compassion that leads to care. Three institutions now have an original work of art substantiated by written theory, and the submitted thesis is substantiated by works of art viewable on different continents.

Within the field of theological aesthetics, this project assesses the divide between theological accounts of art and the re-emergence of religious imagery in modern and contemporary art. More specifically, American Protestant theologians and their accounts of visual art will be taken up as a representative set of contemporary theological inquiry in the arts. Under this category, evaluation will be made of three diverse traditions in American Protestant thought: Paul Tillich and Liberal Protestantism, Francis Schaeffer and the Neo-Calvinists, and the open evangelical accounts of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Dyrness. With respect to modern and contemporary visual art, this evaluation judges the degree to which theologians have understood the primary concepts and dominant narratives of various modernisms and postmodernisms of art since the end of the nineteenth century, recognised the watershed moments in the lineage of the twentieth century avant-garde, and acknowledged the influence of critical theory not only upon the contemporary discourse in aesthetics and art production but also in the social reception of art. In tracing the re-emergence of religious imagery in modern and contemporary art, this project takes up three diverse traditions: the Crucifixions of Francis Bacon and the memento mori art of Damien Hirst, the ‘re-enchantment’ of art in the work of Joseph Beuys, and the art of ‘False Blasphemy’ associated with lapsed Catholics like Rober Gober and Andres Serrano. By assessing what theologians have written concerning visual art and the surprising return of certain religious imagery in modern and contemporary art, this study will intimate a new way forward in a mutually beneficial dialogue for art and religious belief.