This research entitled Images of the urban experience in contemporary painting began as an investigation into the consequences of urbanism such as human alienation and personal detachment. As a studio based research, this practice was based on five individual exhibitions of contemporary paintings accompanied by four underlying theoretical exegeses. These components together with the involvement in various group exhibitions, awards and professional practice documented in a research portfolio were developed over a three-year period. As each series of paintings was exhibited, new priorities and directions were established. These developments ranged from documentation of the decline in the conscious organisation of urban life images to the utilisation of media and techniques to promote greater fluidity and painting spontaneity. The theme of human alienation in this investigation developed into a focus on the existential predicament of place-bereft individuals. As the nature of location was brought into focus, an exploration of the influence and question of place emerged. This concept gave rise to an investigation into place-panic or human anxiety at the prospect of an unknown place. / Doctor of Creative Art

This work includes a study of the theoretical bases to explain the violence as an expression of human alienation in capitalist society. The objective is to study the theoretical basis underlying the violence and its worsening in the contemporary capitalism, its connections with the alienators processes of production and social reproduction. This theoretical composition is based on the Marxian critical reference about alienation, intending to provide evidence to investigate the material bases that underlie this phenomenon in capitalist society. We start from assumption that understanding violence as an expression of alienation human in this society requires analyzing it in the capital accumulation process, in the productive restructuring and the worsening violence by crises intrinsic to capital accumulation logic. We expose violence as socio-historical category that its objectives as social complex existing in daily life of men, because it belongs to the human-socials relations and It is connected to economic, political and cultural conditions which make a class society. In its diverse contemporary manifestations, it is evident that in a class society, as the capitalism, violence reaches the progressive worsening level, since it has a real existence that reverberates in the daily lives of individuals. / Este trabalho compreende um estudo das bases teóricas que explicam a violência enquanto expressão de alienação humana na sociedade capitalista. Objetiva-se estudar as bases teóricas que fundamentam a violência e seu agravamento no capitalismo contemporâneo, bem como suas conexões com os processos alienadores da produção e reprodução social. Esta composição teórica baseia-se no referencial crítico marxiano sobre alienação, tendo em vista fornecer elementos que permitam investigar as bases materiais que fundamentam este fenômeno na sociedade capitalista. Parte-se do pressuposto de que compreender a violência enquanto expressão de alienação humana nesta sociedade requer analisá-la com base no processo de acumulação do capital e de agravamento da violência no decorrer do desenvolvimento socioeconômico, sob a lógica da acumulação capitalista. Considera-se a violência como uma categoria sócio-histórica que se objetiva como complexo social existente no cotidiano da vida dos homens e se acha conectada às condições econômicas, sociais, políticas e culturais que constituem uma sociedade de classes. Em suas diversas manifestações contemporâneas, numa sociedade de classes, como a capitalista, a violência atinge o patamar de agravamento progressivo, uma vez que repercute na totalidade da vida cotidiana dos indivíduos.