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At the end of the 19th century, Americans heralded the end of the westward march across the continent. The West had been won. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner put it best when in 1893 he proclaimed: And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history. Long understood as a geographically remote wilderness where the epic struggle between civilized and savage would determine the fate of Americas future, suddenly the frontier defined the nations past. Previous scholars, in examining the work of artists, writers, entertainers, and others, have explored how certain individuals fashioned a nostalgic legacy of western expansion at this moment in the nations history. My dissertation charts new territory in this field by exploring how Americans nationwide fashioned a legacy of western expansion in an assemblage of works of art neglected until now, sculptural monuments erected in public space. In so doing, it provides a fresh understanding of the nations defining legend, the myth of the frontier, and how this myth corresponds to the history upon which it is based. By employing the Smithsonian Institution American Art Museum Inventory of American Sculpture to examine the entire range of public monuments commemorating western expansion from 1890-1930, my study provides an unprecedented synthesis on this topic. Inventory research revealed one striking pattern--monuments focused overwhelmingly on two figures, the Indian and the pioneer. It also led to one surprising finding--while represented as combatants in the battle for the continent in the 19th century, both figures would be remembered heroically in the wake of western expansion, each the foundation upon which citizens would construct American identities in the early-20th century. Thus, in a series of case studies complementing my Smithsonian Inventory research, my dissertation examines the life of two mythic American figures, the Indian and the pioneer, and how these figures were used to fashion a legacy of western expansion in a rich array of artifacts including public sculptures, minted coins, and memorial highways.

This dissertation deals with two periods in the history of a room in the Sforza Castle known as the Sala delle Asse: the fifteenth-century, when Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508) commissioned Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) to paint it and the late-nineteenth-to-early-twentieth century when the Sala was re-discovered and subjected to a major restoration by the Italian architectural historian Luca Beltrami (1854-1933). Beltrami's participation in the Sala's re-discovery in 1893, the architectural and pictorial alterations he ordered in preparing the room for public view, and his monographic presentation of the Sala's fifteenth-century history will be discussed here using new archival evidence. The author will argue that Beltrami's interventions ultimately shifted attention away from the Sala's fifteenth-century circumstances and transformed it into a key component of the ambitious restoration scheme that Beltrami had formulated for the Sforza Castle as whole. This was a scheme that supported certain political and cultural ideologies about Milan at the turn of the twentieth-century. In an effort to provide an alternative voice for the Sala to that of Beltrami, the author will use new archival documentation to discuss the participation of Paul Müller-Walde, a German art historian who is credited with the actual re-discovery of the Sala but whose contributions remained curiously absent from all modern art-historical literature dealing with the Sala. Acting on the premise that a more plausible and much needed interpretation for the Sala's fifteenth-century history is needed, the author will offer a reconsideration of some of the Sala's most basic problems such as dating, location and possible uses. The author will also deal with Leonardo's contributions and the perils of characterizing the Sala as yet another work that sprang fully from Leonardo's imagination, with little interference or direction from outside sources. Finally, the author will deal with Ludovico Sforza's reasons for commissioning the Sala and lay the groundwork for an expanded and alternative interpretative discourse intended to broaden the avenue of investigation of this important and unique commission in Renaissance art. This dissertation concludes with an extensive Register of Documents containing reproductions or transcriptions of important fifteenth-, nineteenth- and twentieth-century documents for the Sala delle Asse.

This dissertation is the first monographic study in any language of Japans official war painting produced during the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 through the Pacific War in 1945. This genre is known as sensô sakusen kirokuga (war campaign documentary painting). Japans army and navy commissioned noted Japanese painters to record war campaigns on a monumental scale. Military officials favored yôga (Western-style painting) for its strength in depicting scenes in realistic detail over nihonga (Japanese-style painting). The military gave unprecedented commissions to yôga painters despite the fact that Japan was fighting the materialist West. Large military exhibitions exposed these paintings to civilians. Officials attached national importance to war documentary paintings by publicizing that the Emperor had inspected them in the Imperial Palace. This study attempts to analyze postwar Japanese reluctance to tackle war documentary painting by examining its controversial and unsettling nature. The art community has been hesitant to reflect on its alignment with the regime by relegating responsibility for wartime collaboration to individual artists. That hesitance has resulted in a critical gap in the history of modern Japanese art. This study attempts to fill the void by examining artistic and political circumstances surrounding war documentary painting from three perspectives as follows. (1) Art historical significance: Yôga war documentary paintings offer a record of yôgas development since the Meiji period. Critics say that yôgas expression during the war was exceptional, but I show it was consistent with yôgas history. (2) Nationalistic pragmatism toward art: Modern Japanese leaders were often motivated by nationalism. This study illustrates that the alliance forged between the wartime regime and the art community was a continuation of Meiji governing tradition. (3) Ideological and propaganda aspects: By analyzing documentary paintings of what officials called the Holy War (Seisen) of 1937-1945, this study demonstrates central propaganda mechanisms in the images. Without a single portrayal of the Emperor, Japanese war documentary painting expressed the absolute importance of the imperial order over the individual.

I Won't Play Primitive to Your Modern: The Art of David Neel (Kwagiutl), 1985-2000 examines the production and reception of one artist's work as it crosses discursive arenas. This dissertation theorizes that, at times, Neel draws upon his schooling in photojournalism and his training as a carver to challenge Eurocentric assumptions tied to two ideals: that looking is disinterested, and that justice is blind. At other times, Neel uses the same skills to provoke an experience of viewing that yields political or spiritual transcendence. I Won't Play Primitive to Your Modern, then, investigates overlaps and gaps between different conventions and experiences of looking in a study connected to questions of epistemology, metaphysics, and phenomenology. My research examines Neel's art in conjunction with his own mobility through Mexican, African-American, Asian and Euro-American communities, as well as indigenous North America. My interpretation is predicated on evidence derived from oral histories, fieldwork, and archival research. I also apply strategies of visual analysis informed by an interdisciplinary array of theories about looking forwarded by scholars such as Barbara Stafford, Susan Sontag, Christopher Pinney, James Clifford, Roland Barthes, W.J.T. Mitchell, Robert Davidson (Haida), Nancy Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache), and Charlotte Townsend-Gault. My analysis of Neel's artistic production and reception also draws upon theories of embodiment that include Transformation, the Kinship I, and The Four Sacred Directions as well as ideals of objectivity embedded in the disciplines of art history and law. This study concludes that Neel's use of photography's reproductive capabilities, his references to the importance of copying in the aesthetic of carving, his knowledge of media outlets, and his life of migration have enabled him to slip himself and his images into multiple discursive communities that espouse distinct aesthetic sensibilities and political agendas. The import of Neel's project lies in his capacity to engage his viewers with, and thus reveal, political and aesthetic differences that provoke debate about group identity, about his own identity and about the meaning of his art.