Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1979. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-98). / by Thomas Austin Sansone. / M.S.V.S.

This dissertation investigates the intersection of nineteenth-century figurative sculpture with an American slave economy whose impact reverberated across time and transnational geographies. Scholars have long acknowledged how sculptural depictions of the enslaved body by Hiram Powers, John Bell, and Francesco Pezzicar played vital roles in dialogues about abolition and Emancipation on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet renewed examination of individual works of art, the terms of their circulation and display, and the markets and regimes of racialized value they occupied suggests that the production and consumption of these statues also unfolded in physical and conceptual proximity with systems of commerce and commodification formed under slavery. Working at the intersection of material culture studies, critical race theory, and legal and literary studies, this study conceives of sculpture as a transactional object that inhabited an interconnected world of art and commerce spanning merchants’ exchanges and cotton factorage houses in the American South, industrial manufacturing firms in Britain, sculptors’ studios and art academies in Italy, World’s Fairs, and private homes. Following an introductory discussion of the entanglement of art and the economy of slavery in nineteenth-century Atlantic spaces writ large, chapters examine the traveling exhibition of Hiram Powers’ Greek Slave in antebellum New Orleans, the manufacture and display of John Bell’s statues depicting enslaved black and mixed- race women in the abolitionist British Atlantic, and the circulation of Francesco Pezzicar’s sculptural commemoration of American slavery between post-Civil War Philadelphia and Risorgimento Italy. From these case studies it is argued that sculpture stood as a highly visible but deeply unstable site from which to interrogate the politics of slavery, on one hand because of the medium’s entanglement with trade and commerce, and on the other because of its relationship to considerations of the corporeal. Nineteenth-century concerns with the animacy of sculpture – long understood as measures of artistic virtuosity in making a statue appear as if it were living – were inextricable from the hierarchies of race and subjectivity that shaped the institution of slavery and its structures of bodily commodification. In raising questions about the motivation and management of subjects and objects in slavery’s wake, this study complicates discussions about the status of the object in art history and criticism while contributing to broader interdisciplinary dialogues concerning race, representation, and the body.

This thesis investigates seventeenth-century Venetian funerary monuments as representing the Republic’s celebrative imagery. Going beyond the traditional interpretation of these monuments as a display of funerary memory, a series of case studies provided in six chapters examines them as rhetorical devices which celebrated Venice and instilled subtle forms of its republican propaganda. Chapter One focuses on early seventeenth-century ducal monuments and the republican ethos, scrutinising their function as ideological instruments which asserted the grandeur of Venice through their celebration of the doges. Chapter Two analyses the architectural and visual sources of the monument to Doge Giovanni Pesaro, a crucial model for later funerary monuments, focusing on the interaction between sculpture, architecture and the viewer. The comparative reading of contemporary panegyric poems of the Pesaro monument demonstrates how it was perceived as a living presence which was capable of eliciting the involvement of the viewer and gaining his or her persuasion. Monuments to the Venetian captains Caterino Cornaro and Antonio Barbaro are investigated in Chapter Three as significant examples which embody the notion of sacrifice as an act of both civic and religious piety. This forms the basis of the fabrication of the Venetian identity of the newly ennobled families and merchants through the memorials on the façades of San Moisè and Santa Maria dei Derelitti which are analysed in Chapter Four. Chapters Five and Six explore Antonio Gaspari’s project proposals for Doge Francesco Morosini and the Valier family, which remained unexecuted. Inspired by Roman Baroque architecture, Gaspari enhanced the aggrandisement of the ducal families to a quasi-imperialist state. Nevertheless, the actual Valier monument devised by Andrea Tirali remained an indirect celebration of Venice through the celebration of the doge’s achievements. The six chapters thus demonstrate how funerary monuments create a public imagery which complements the so-called “myth of Venice”.

Thesis (M.S.V.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / The major work for this thesis is the creation of a sculpture, constructed as an independently running fountain. The sculpture is composed of ceramic figures, and is installed at the M.I.T. Student Center Library. The written paper begins with a statement about water and traces the myth of Arethusa, the subject of my fountain sculpture, through references in Greek lyrics. The next section selects Presocratic thought as one basis for ideas about water and continues with discussion of poetic allusions to fountains survey of selected public fountains from several historical periods is undertaken to illustrate the change in sculptural design and purpose of these structures through history. Next the sculptural and environmental aspects of making this thesis fountain are discussed, with accompanying photographs. A brief chapter of my own poetry is included as well. / by Elizabeth Mary Cavicchi. / M.S.V.S.

This research project has explored the relationship between sound and sculpture, looking particularly at how sound can become sculptural. A sound sculpture is defined in this project as a sound-only entity, which explicitly extends sound’s physical and spatial aspects to take on the role of a physical, visual sculpture. In this research, this is achieved by the use of otoacoustic emissions. There is a lack of music and sound art material that actively intends to utilise the creative potential of otoacoustic emissions. This portfolio of works explores the bodily sensation of otoacoustic emissions and importantly, the agency the audience/listener has on changing their own perception and experience of the sound through their movement choices around an installation space. This novel application of otoacoustic emissions is what the author terms ‘otokinetic shaping’. This goes beyond that of the visual sculptural paradigm by introducing an element of audience participation and control. The pieces are created in a manner in which they are a collaboration between the artist and the audience, with the audience having more creative control than the artist on the work’s sound, structure and duration. The works also examine creative themes such as minimalism and indeterminacy controlled by computer algorithms as a method of extending the already limited decisions made in the creative and compositional process by the artist.

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archives@tulane.edu / I often find myself drawn toward objects that most would consider mundane. I am compelled to reevaluate subject matter that I have previously conditioned myself to disregard, investigate what I believe to know about the objects, and consider their new potential based on unexpected findings. My thesis exhibition explores my initial perception of repurposed cardboard boxes by fabricating realistic and formally exaggerated variations of them in clay. The three distinct categories of work within the show (trompe l’eoil boxes, abstracted cardboard boxes, and fragmented wall pieces) are an embodiment of my analytical approach to observing cardboard with a fresh perspective. Trompe l’eoil boxes provide a frame of reference. Abstracted cardboard boxes utilize unexpected characteristics of cardboard—as well as recognizable traits of clay—to challenge preconceived notions of how a cardboard box looks and functions. Wall pieces that partially resemble torn scraps of cardboard questions what remains of objects incapable of serving their intended function, while also discussing cardboard and clay materiality. A one-dimensional perspective of cardboard boxes presents them as utilitarian vessels, manufactured without ostentatious appeal, designed to protect objects we cherish, and meant to ultimately be discarded without contemplation. Through unbiased observation, formally and conceptually multifaceted layers emerge from behind initial perceptions of the box. / 1 / Holly E Ross

1 / Maclyn Le Bourgeois Hickey

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