Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 30 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes a video file in the QuickTime format. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 30).

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Burford discusses his development as a painter while earning his MFA at the University of Iowa. He emphasizes that he wanted to paint in a style understandable to layman and critic alike and came to be known as a figurative artist. Three black and white photos of the oil paintings laid in. The two paintings "Circus workers" and "Reclining figures" depict African American men, the third "Vigilantes" shows two hooded Ku Klux Klan-like figures.

The renewed interest in representational figure painting that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s caused artists, art historians, and critics to consider whether or not this contemporary work belonged to the abstract, modernist direction painting had taken in the 20th century. This paper considered the problem as it was reflected in the careers of contemporary figure painters Philip Pearlstein, Jack Beal, and Alfred Leslie. The opinions of critics and historians and the views of the artists themselves were researched. The critics reached the consensus that all three artists' works were a logical extension of the modernist tradition in painting. Pearlstein concurred. He felt strongly that subject matter was irrelevant if the artist's attitude toward it was modernist in sensibility. Beal and Leslie found that abstract modern art was of little interest to them and concerned themselves with figure painting as a narrative genre allowing personal expression.The author also used this issue as a framework for the evaluation of her own series of three representational oil paintings of human figures wrapped in fabric. After describing the paintings, she concluded that they did reveal aspects of the artists' and critics' criteria of modernism (i.e. evenness of detail, large scale, and aggressive imagery) that should be pushed further in future work.

Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2002.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 2000. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 21 p. : col. ill. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 9).

This dissertation explores the emergence of figuration in prehistoric China. It approaches the topic by focusing on image-makers’ engagement with the materials they used to fashion figural works. Chapter 1 presents a survey of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images created from the Epipaleolithic through the Neolithic periods. It highlights a multiplicity of forms, materials and representational approaches while uncovering recurring patterns. Chapter 2 introduces the principal theories scholars have applied to discuss this corpus, and draws out their similarity with paradigms used in Western scholarship on prehistoric art. The discussion further draws attention to a bi-directional influence exerted on the reception of prehistoric imagery in Europe and China. Chapter 3 focuses on images produced prior to or around 5,000 BCE, and repositions their emergence in the context of broader interests in materiality and representation. The analysis uncovers trends and explores circumstances that notably led image-makers separated in time and space to represent human heads as flat entities. Chapter 4 investigates the role of pareidolia in the emergence of images. It reveals that perceptive imagination informed the creation of some works, when craftspeople drew inspiration from forms in raw materials or artifacts. Chapter 5 explores the possibility that image-makers sought to achieve material-representation synergies. The discussion presents a new taxonomic model addressing materiality and the sensory channels through which figurative images are perceived, and it describes how these factors possibly constituted a core aspect of mimesis. The analysis proposes that some image-makers employed both visual and tactile qualities of substances to represent animals and human beings.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1993. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 24).

This diploma thesis deals with the issue of intermediation of abstract art in gallery education programs for primary school students. Its theoretical part outlines the process from figurative to non-figurative imaging through the theory and history of art. The term of abstraction is further expounded by general and developmental psychology. The final theoretical part deals with the intermediation of art and all its connections, including potential difficulties which can occur. The empirical part contains a research with gallery lecturers, which brings and analyzes their attitude to the process of gallery-educational programs providing intermediation of non-figurative art to pupils of younger school age.

Although the earliest known literary evidence for a dual-sexed divinity on Cyprus dates to the fifth century BCE, archaeological evidence indicates there was a tradition on the island of sexually ambiguous imagery which predates the literary sources. This information prompted the present research, which traces the tradition back to the earliest known examples on Late Neolithic Cyprus, and tracks its evolution through to the Cypro-Archaic period. Rather than rely upon descriptions, photographs and drawings presented in consulted publications, the various international museums that house the figures were visited by the writer in order to physically examine the images. Controversial aspects of these figures were discussed with senior museum staff and/or curators. If figurines were unavailable for viewing, where possible, photographs were acquired from the relevant museums, and controversial aspects of the figures discussed by email. As a result, the majority of the images discussed in this thesis have been examined and photographed by the author. A catalogue of the sexually ambiguous imagery for Cyprus from the Neolithic to the Cypro-Archaic period has been compiled and is included in this work. It is proposed that the imagery is of Cypriot innovation, and consists of proto-anthropomorphic, anthropomorphic and half-animal, half-human representations. The genre is influenced from its earliest period by the figurative art of the Syro-Anatolian mainland, but from the Late Bronze Age onwards, influences from the western Mediterranean and Aegean are also evident. Despite the periods in which there is little evidence for figurine production, sexually ambivalent imagery re-emerges when figurative evidence is once more apparent in the archaeological records. Furthermore, stylistic continuity of the genre from one period to the next is also apparent. This continuity is regardless of the cultural changes which occur intermittently during the seven millennia period relevant to this study. Although it is not until the Cypro-Geometric period that there is firm evidence to support a religious interpretation of sexually equivocal imagery, it is suggested that the genre from the earliest period was at least associated with fertility, and perhaps religious cult.