“Forgetting Ntaba kaNdoda”: reciting performative memories at the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument
- Authors: Mama, Luthando Vukile James
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Memorialization , Collective memory in art , Memorials in art , Memorials -- South Africa -- Dimbaza , Imperialism in art , Ntaba kaNdoda Monument (Dimbaza, South Africa)
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63866 , vital:28499
- Description: “Forgetting Ntaba kaNdoda”: Reciting Performative Memories at the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument serves as a theoretical examination of the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument as a commemorative marker. My mini-thesis unpacks the notions of memory and performative memorialisation at a nationalist memorial in the former Ciskei by examining the concepts of place, memory and memorialisation, which are theoretically integral in my professional practice. This research initiates an investigation into the effects on memory in a situation where the construction of the Monument disrupted an efficacious memorialisation by the communities of Ntaba kaNdoda. In my accompanying MFA exhibition Forgetting Ntaba kaNdoda, I explore notions of place, memory and memorialisation through installations of a variety of photographic processes that are based on what I call ‘de-monumental’ and performative monuments (Widrich2014). The written component of my MFA submission relates directly to my professional art practice, developing and situating it within a relevant context. In my mini-thesis, I consider photographers working with notions of place, memory and memorialisation. Lebohang Kganye and Nassim Rouchiche’s works retrace and recall past memory in the present, while David Goldblatt and Cedric Nunn, who have photographed the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument, point the viewer to the values and histories of the communities most affected by colonialism and apartheid. These photographers’ works operate as mnemonic devices that seek to translate a lived experience at a particular place. I use Widrich’s (2009; 2014) conception of “performative monuments”, Lippard’s (1997) “sense of place” and Nora’s (1989) “lieu[x] de mémoire” and “milieux de mémoire” in approaching my professional art practice and my research into the Ntaba kaNdoda memorial. Using these entwining nodes of theories in formulating what I term ‘demonumentalisation’ in my photography practice at the Ntaba kaNdoda Monument, my photography functions as both performative memorialisation and de-monumentalisation. Remembrance, using photography as a vehicle to represent this notion at Ntaba kaNdoda, transcends the materiality of the Monument. My exhibition, in conjunction with this mini-thesis, therefore reframes and reconfigures theNtaba kaNdoda Monument as a multiplex memory place.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Zundiqondisise!: investigating voice, visibility and agency in the work of Xhosa women crafters who work in community art centres in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: Tutani, Zodwa
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Art centers -- Eastern Cape , Community arts projects -- Eastern Cape , Women artists, Black -- Eastern Cape , Ethnic art -- Eastern Cape , Agent (Philosophy) , Art and society -- Eastern Cape , Voice (Philosophy) , Critical discourse analysis , Postcolonialism and the arts , Feminism and art , Curatorship -- Eastern Cape , Art, Xhosa -- Conservation and restoration , Gompo Community Art Centre , Nomzamo Old Age Centre
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146546 , vital:38535
- Description: A curatorial practice, Zundiqondisise! Reclaiming Our Voice is a twofold study comprised of curatorial practice and a written thesis, both of which are interdependent, examining the significance of space, agency, voice, and visibility in the works of Xhosa women crafters from the Eastern Cape. The study explores ways of reading and displaying indigenous art, as well as the archiving and inserting of these essential but neglected creative works of black women into the discourse of South African contemporary visual arts. This scholarship takes into account the social, cultural, and labour conditions that give rise to the perceived voicelessness in the ‘craft’ work of Xhosa women who work from community art centres. Through collaborating with two groups of women from two Eastern Cape art centres, namely Gompo Community Art Centre in East London and Nomzamo Old Age Centre in Ilitha Township, the study undertakes to locate, highlight and authorise these women’s voices and agency. This undertaking is carried out through a textual inquiry and curated exhibition, two interdependent components of this study, working with black feminist and postcolonial theories that enable me to formulate a critical discourse and practice towards a reflective scholarship on black women’s ‘craft’ work. It is a scholarship whose various chapters and curatorial interventions are tailored to excavate ancient Xhosa wisdom found in folklore and cultural practices of the everyday. This scholarship also provides new understandings that demonstrate and appreciate the fertile and significant though marginalised indigenous ways of creative expressions and knowledge production.
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- Date Issued: 2020
What makes a painting good?: an enquiry into the criteria used in evaluation
- Authors: Frost, Lola
- Date: 1988
- Subjects: Painting -- Appreciation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2461 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008542
- Description: From introduction: "To affirm that a work of art is good or bad is to commend or condemn, but not describe . Thus criticism does not, and cannot, have the impersonal character and strict rules applicable independently of time and place," .. . (Macdonald 1966: 111) "Criticism and appraisal, too, are more like creation than like demonstration and proof." (Macdonald 1966: 112) This essay articulates evaluatory criteria that are used by both critics and laymen and which are cross -culturally applicable. Thus it seeks to articulate relatively objective types of criteria which we all use when evaluating paintings. This essay articulates fixed and objective criteria, but within these categories recognizes that there is much room for skillful, sympathetic and knowledgeable criticism. Thus criticism is a creative act. These objectively- articulated criteria are best seen as aids to, rather than carbon copies, for evaluation.
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- Date Issued: 1988
Visualising the Psyche: Perspectives on mental health in the medium of comics
- Authors: Solomon, Tayla Shan
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Spiegelman, Art -- Maus , Kelly, Joe, 1971- -- I kill giants , Niimura, J M Ken -- I kill giants , Brosh, Allie -- Hyperbole and a half , Comic books, strips, etc. -- Psychological aspects , Comic books, stripa, etc. -- Therapeutic use
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/148413 , vital:38737
- Description: The field of Psychology is constantly shifting in its understanding of mental health. Scholars have been critiquing Psychology’s narrow perspective of what constitutes ‘normal’. Many dealing with mental health issues fear that they will be misunderstood and are confronted with systems and institutions that they find unempathetic. This mini-thesis conceptualises creative empathy as a solution to these problems. It is based on the idea that every experience is unique and therefore cannot be wholly understood without engaging in an imaginative process. The appropriateness of the comics medium as a tool for promoting this strategy is explored with a focus on the use of visual imagery to tell stories of distressing experiences. It looks at Tayla Shan Solomon’s The Adventures of Apparently-Anyone-Can-Do-It-If-TheyJust-Try Bug! (2019), Art Spiegelman’s Maus (I & II) (1986), Joe Kelly and JM Ken Niimura’s I Kill Giants (2011), and Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half: unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened (2013). This mini-thesis analyses various techniques employed by comics artists to create compelling stories of idiosyncratic experiences, including the use of symbolic imagery and framing.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Unearthed : personifications of widowhood and acts of memory : volume 1 and 2
- Authors: Arbi, Linda Margaret
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Widowhood -- Social aspects -- South Africa Widowhood -- Social aspects -- Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) Widows in art -- South Africa Widows in art -- Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) Memory in art -- South Africa Memory in art -- Cape of Good Hope (South Africa)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2428 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002225
- Description: By researching visual traditions of representing widows in relation to a social role, I explore how these may be related to processes of mourning and memory. My study begins with an historical reading and, along with an analysis of Renaissance widow portraiture, I trace the experiences of widows in the Cape of Good Hope. For the purposes of this thesis, I have selected images of widows to investigate memory-work particularly when speaking of loss. I re-view these memory processes through recent historical and art historical discourse with reference to contemporary South African artworks in order to understand how public memory is formed by way of visual documentation. These narratives around widowhood have informed the subject matter for my Master’s exhibition and shed light on my own experience as a widow. The interaction between objects and memory are of particular interest and manifest in my studio art practice.
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- Date Issued: 2009
Ukwowa mumwela nabangeli: transcendence, flight and inculturation in Zambian devotional artwork
- Authors: Mulenga, Aaron Samuel
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Idols and images in art -- Zambia , Transcendence (Philosophy) in art , Christianity and culture -- Zambia , Flight in art , Christian art and symbolism -- Zambia , Representation (Philosophy) , Black people in art , Ethnicity in art , Group identity in art , Art and society -- Zambia , Yombwe, Laurence
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146278 , vital:38511
- Description: With a focus on my artistic practice, this paper seeks to interrogate the tensions and overlaps in various representations of transcendence that have shaped my spirituality by interrogating how these have featured in Eurocentric Christian iconography and Zambian cultural practices, particularly cultural artefacts used for spiritual flight, housed in Zambian museums. Transcendence is understood by some as a change in a person’s physiological or psychological state that allows them to go beyond their experience of time, place or being. I understand transcendence to be the moment that one’s spirit is elevated beyond the limitations of their physical body. The use of Biblical text relating to flight will also be discussed as a comparative study to explore how transcendence through flight operates within Christianity and a Zambian cultural context. Furthermore, I shall interrogate how black artists (particularly Zambian), such as Laurence Yombwe, address the omission of black people from Christian iconography (which is predominantly depicted as white people). I aim to highlight the important role that representation plays in allowing for an individual to experience transcendence. I believe inculturation is a fitting solution to address some of the pitfalls in Christian iconography brought about due to the lack of representation of black people. Inculturation can be understood as an adaptation in the way the gospel of Jesus is preached to non-Christian cultures, and in turn, how these cultures influence the teachings of the gospel. Finally, I will explore how transcendence as a concept applies in my artworks and how the materials I use highlight this concept. Through my art, I grapple to combine what seem like disparate spiritual paradigms, arising from my culture and my faith. My artwork seeks to contribute to the work that particular artists (a majority of them black) are grappling with to correct the lack of representation of black people in Christian iconography. I will use the notion of inculturation as an avenue through which to interrogate the tensions I experience while exploring the concept of transcendence.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Traditional and Christian elements in contemporary pictorial African art in South Africa with special reference to the works of John Muafangejo, Azariah Mbatha and Dan Rakgoathe
- Authors: Kilian, Julie
- Date: 1987
- Subjects: Muafangejo, John N., 1943-1987 -- Criticism and interpretation Christian art and symbolism -- South Africa Mbatha, Azariah -- Criticism and interpretation Rakgoathe, Dan -- Criticism and interpretation Art, Black -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2483 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012635
- Description: Art is the outward, visual manifestation of the undying soul of a people. The genius displayed in the day to day articles produced in traditional tribal society is equally present in the art produced by the Contemporary African Artist. The Contemporary African Artist finds himself in an interesting position, in that he is, at one time, a part of two different worlds, two different cultures, has taken place, the and his art provides evidence of the acculturation that coming together of indigenous, traditional African culture and 'European' or 'Western' culture. It follows that the contemporary African artist's work would display characteristics and elements derived from both of these worlds, since art is not created in a vacuum, but is, invariably, the outward, visible expression and symbol of an artist's environment, culture, emotional and intellectual responses and his beliefs. The study of Contemporary African Art reveals that despite the many divergences from the traditional or classic forms, a great many traditional influences and characteristics still persist in the same. An analysis of Contemporary African Art will also show that a significant body of works bear a marked influence of Christian teachings and biblical themes, as well as the influence of exposure to various forms of Swedish Medieval, Byzantine, Romanesque and Carolingian art.
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- Date Issued: 1987
Through the Camera Obscura : exploring the voyeuristic gaze through Grahamstown's architecture
- Authors: King, Taryn
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Architecture -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Camera obscuras -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Voyeurism in art , Gaze in art , Architecture and society -- South Africa -- Grahamstown , Human figure in art , Women in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2511 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018937
- Description: My study explores the politics of viewing and the gaze. I argue that the gaze both arrests and objectifies the body, which in turn transforms subjects into objects therefore regulating social behaviour. The basic notion of the gaze will be explored throughout this thesis and thereby contextualizes my sculptures, which are casts of my naked body. My particular concern lies in how the ideas of surveillance have had an influence on architecture and buildings in Grahamstown. Throughout this mini thesis, I will explore a number of architectural spaces of Grahamstown such as the Provost prison, Fort Selwyn and the Camera Obscura which I argue were all designed based on the ideas of surveillance. The entanglement of Grahamstown architecture and the female form as a subject of voyeurism forms an important part of this thesis, as the context of Grahamstown architecture is centered on visibility, which in turn subjects people to a form of discipline. The Provost Prison, the Camera Obscura and the forts of Grahamstown are all good examples of this. Outside of this, the female body is also subjected to the gaze, which in turn suggests that the female body is also under surveillance and as a result also becomes disciplined. My installation is a response to Antony Gormley’s Event Horizon, in which he placed 33 steel and fibreglass casts of his own naked body at an elevated level on buildings around Manhattan and Brazil. In this discussion I have contextualized my work with reference to the ideas of different theorists. The three main theorists I have cited are Michel Foucault, Jonathan Crary and Laura Mulvey. Foucault is specifically cited due to his discussion on Panoptic power, surveillance and docile bodies. Crary makes a number of important points with regards to the ideological operations of the Camera Obscura as well as its history while Laura Mulvey’s writings form the basis of the voyeuristic gaze from the perspective of a feminist.
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- Date Issued: 2015
These aesthetics are not new: Post-Internet conditions and their effect on contemporary ideas of representation in Painting
- Authors: Grecia, Callan
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Art and the internet , Digital media -- Philosophy , Technology and the arts , Aesthetics , Painting -- Philosophy
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/46333 , vital:25601
- Description: These Aesthetics Are Not New draws inspiration from the effect of digital technological progress on a consumer society. The Internet as a source of ubiquitous imagery reaffirms the idea that in a Post-Internet age there is nothing new, only conditions affected by a networked way of life. In this thesis I attempt to question contemporary ideas of representation and art making, specifically within the medium of oil paint, in a digitally consumed culture of instantaneous access. I interrogate the repetitive imagery that pervades our online experiences, and I speak about how I use my grasp of painterly knowledge and lexicon to replicate digital conditions in the real world to further cement my position that contemporary aesthetics, (digital, physical or both) are not new. I first introduce the reader to the idea of the Post-Internet, exploring the digital’s encroachment on our physical spaces and it’s relation to the politics of the medium of Oil Paint. I then address the concept of the Image-Object, and unpack this idea by comparing and contrasting emoji’s in relation to gestural mark making and the ascription of meaning through iconographic methods in Oil Painting. This culminates in an analysis of my physical practice in relation to these ideas, and concludes with my observations on the future of our ways of seeing, as affected by the Internet and technological progression.
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- Date Issued: 2017
The working method of the modern painter
- Authors: Grant, David
- Date: 1977
- Subjects: Painting, Modern -- 20th century , Painting -- Technique
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2503 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014984
- Description: [From Introduction]. Prior to 1800 advances made in painting could often be accredited to the advances made in paint technology. Since the beginning of the last century however, paint technology has stabilised, moved into the background and allowed the artist to create with the medium rather than be dictated to by it. This stabilising of art technology has also generated a lack of interest in technique, leading in turn to a number of painting techniques being lost. In some ways we know less today of the oil medium and its correct use than was known to Jan and Hubert Van Eyck and their followers. However, if this lack of concern with technique has produced a large number of valid artistic statements which are unlikely to survive physically, it also means that the hoardes of painters who painted technically perfect paintings with no valid art statement have dwindled as well.
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- Date Issued: 1977
The visionary artist
- Authors: Lambert, Moira
- Date: 1980
- Subjects: Blake, William, 1757-1827 Blake, William, 1757-1827 -- Symbolism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2441 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006113
- Description: Reading and personal experiences have often drawn my attention to the exceptionally high incidence of despair, "nervous disorder", alcoholism, nihilism and even suicide, among modern artists. I would like in this work to look at the visionary, Blake, against the problem of 'breaking the sound-barrier' and against the background of disastrous attempts at this by modern artists.
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- Date Issued: 1980
The use of ritual as physical and spiritual medium and its documentation in Buhlebezwe Siwani’s contemporary visual arts performance
- Authors: Lila, Philiswa
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Arts and religion , Ritual -- South Africa , Performance art -- Religious aspects -- South Africa , Women performance artists -- South Africa , Siwani, Buhlebezwe, 1987-
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/166160 , vital:41334
- Description: This thesis is motivated by my experience of Inzilo: Ngoba ngihlala kwabafileyo, a live performance by South African visual artist Buhlebezwe Siwani. The performance took place at Michaelis Galleries, University of Cape Town (UCT), as part of a group exhibition Between Subject and Object: human remains at the interface of art and science (2014), which accompanied the Medical Humanities in Africa Conference (from 28 – 29 August 2014). As an entry into my discussion, I describe how Siwani’s performance makes use of death and burial ritual in what seems to be an intention to make art that is (re)presenting an activity of reality to invade and control the sphere of feelings, emotions and a sense of ceremony that is dependent on both ritual and rites of the performance. I grapple with the fact that I experienced a ritual performance in a gallery space. Furthermore, I question how walking out of the performance I thought of the lines between art and/or life. The role of ritual in my thesis explores the symbolic meanings, powers and intentions of ritual rites in Africa. This reflection maps out historical locations that are relevant to the major debates, definitions, themes and the experiences of ritual as part of academic research. From Siwani’s practice as an artist and isangoma to other expressions in the fields of history, sociology, religion, feminism, to mention a few, my thesis is an enquiry that engages ritual and performance art theory and scholarship. Through a qualitative analysis, my methodology rejects a chronological, thematic and discipline centered research. Rather, I use a multidisciplinary approach based on critical visual analysis as knowledge creation in the visual arts, for example archives, documentation, performance, text, video, installation, painting, sculpture, etc. The findings suggests that the role of ritual in performance art is not a singular exploration, nor is it based on separating ritual and performance art. The results further reveal that ritual in performance art is not a reenactment of patterns and human behaviours, nor is the notion of reenactment used to denote the myriad meanings and functions of re-performing historical ritual events into performance art. Throughout, my thesis provides a focus that demonstrates the significance of how ritual in performance art has a profound subjective (personal or individual) and collective holistic way of serving human and spiritual needs, and that of creating an environment that is open to the content and context of art as it relates with traditional African religious practices, beliefs and knowledges. Focus is given to three major themes that make up the three chapters of my research: firstly, I reflect on death as personified by Siwani’s performance Inzilo: Ngoba ii ngihlala kwabafileyo and her role as isangoma. Here death is used to draw specific attention to the body in process of embodied presence and absence of physical and spiritual worlds. Secondly, drawing on Siwani’s concept of secrecy and boundaries of concealing and revealing rituals meanings and powers as isangoma, I question the role of secrets, which highlights the significance of bodies (human and natural sites of ritual) in ritual performance. Finally, the idea of a trace is explored. The intersecting use of a trace as the thinking-making-doing of ritual in performance articulates a connected thread that sets in motion the trace of ritual (installation, image and marked space pf ritual) as an afterlife that offers a continued space of processual ceremony for multiple effective encounters and movements..
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- Date Issued: 2020
The tightrope walker
- Authors: Dale, Jessie Patricial Dill
- Date: 1977
- Subjects: Art and religion , Art criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2498 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013336
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- Date Issued: 1977
The shaman and the artist: a personal enquiry
- Authors: Cull, Cleone
- Date: 1975
- Subjects: Art, Shamanistic Shamans Artists
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2478 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1010640
- Description: This inquiry incorporates anthropological surveys on the life and character of the shaman, some writings of the American Plains Indians, and artist's, whose life and work reflects the power/life force so integral to the beliefs of these so called primitive cultures. Since the artist cannot be separated from his environment, the actions and reactions of society have also been explored. The method of inquiry has been to establish, first, the way of the shaman, and then the way of the artist. Although each artist, reflects only certain aspects of the enquiry, there is a strong affinity in the life and works of them all.
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- Date Issued: 1975
The relationship between the concept 'art' and its institutionalisation during the period 1850-1871 in South Africa
- Authors: Steyn, Pieter Andrew
- Date: 1985
- Subjects: Art, South African -- 19th century Art -- Political aspects Art and society -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2438 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005626
- Description: This research evolved as part of a personal struggle to understand my role as 'art' student. As such the essay is concerned with both the theory and practice of 'art', and the relationship between the two. It is, however, my experience of the lack of an analysis of the concept 'art' as a social and historical phenomenon, and the suppression of the politics of culture in most fine art courses, that has led me to concentrate on theoretical and political issues, rather than the formal aspects of painting. This essay is therefore not concerned with individual 'works of art', but with the general category 'art' as an organisational form. Despite its limitations, the essay goes beyond the personal by exploring some of the social, political, economic and cultural processes that form the broader social context in which the examination of 'art' should take place.
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- Date Issued: 1985
The relationship and commitment of an artist to his or her society in a revolutionary environment
- Authors: Jones, Jacqueline
- Date: 1989
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:21163 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/6662
- Description: From Introduction: In Aesthetics after Modernism, Peter Fuller writes that "good art can only be realized when a creative individual encounters a living tradition with deep tendrils in communal life" (Fuller, 1983: p.36). Yet Francis Bacon believed that "the suffering of people and the differences between people are what have made great art, and not egalitarianism ... " (Brighton and Morris, ' 1977: p.234 and 235). If it is true that art was once an integral part of society and reflected the aspirations of the whole community, its effect on society today has become marginal. Throughout history, especially since the emergence of Romanticism in the nineteenth century, the relationship between art, the artist and the public has become more and more tenuous. The spread of capitalism has resulted in widespread changes in methods of production, literacy, and industrial and technical development. Societies have become so diversified that today art no longer expresses the values and spiritual concerns of a unified society, but rather the individual or the small group. Given this, it has become impossible to return to a system of shared values and beliefs. To preserve some kind of 'truth', art has become a self-evolving activity, autonomous from political, social and economic concerns, and the term 'art for art's sake' is synonymous with many artists working in western capitalist societies.
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- Date Issued: 1989
The question of validity in Vasari's art historical concept
- Authors: Gibb, Barry
- Date: 1983
- Subjects: Vasari, Giorgio, 1511-1574 -- Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2465 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008574
- Description: From Introduction: Giorgio Vasari's first and second editions of his 'Lives of the Artists I appeared respectively in 1550 and 1568, just after the great period of Renaissance art in Florence and Rome had ended. As a practising Florentine architect, painter and sculptor who travelled extensively in Italy, sari could write with authority on the development of these arts throughout what he saw ~s the whole Renaissance period in that country, from the l ate 13th to the mid-16th century. Gathering information from all possible sources, his 'Lives' constitute the first comprehensive historical - critical survey of Italian Renaissance art. Much of their value resides in the first hand information they contain concerning the artists (Michelangelo in particular) who were his contemporaries, and in reflecting the aesthetic attitudes prevalent in a peak period in the history of art.
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- Date Issued: 1983
The quality of threat in modern painting
- Authors: Radford, Anne Margaret
- Date: 1979
- Subjects: Painting, Modern -- 20th century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2453 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007578
- Description: From Introduction: We not only tolerate violence, we put it on the front pages of our newspapers. One-third or one-fourth of our television programmes use it for the amusement of our children. Condone! My dear friends, we love it." -Karl Menninger, psychiatrist. War is one of the most violent of man's past-times, yet many of the atrocities committed are termed heroic deeds. Andre Malraux, one of the leading writer-philosophers of his day, praised the international involvement by so many writers, artists, etc. in the Spanish Civil War as one of the most wonderful deeds of brotherhood in the history of mankind. There is a strange idolatry that is often accorded to violent criminals such as the early American outlaws, and people like Charles Manson, around whom an entire cult has sprung up. The "aggressive machismo" is something that boys and young men strive to achieve in most countries in the Western world. Scientlsts and philosophers have puzzled these paradoxes for centuries, and this effort to unravel the mystery of violence and aggression bears a fateful significant. For the quality of human life and the survival of man are involved. Robbery, rape, riots, vandalism, are all now part of man's existence. Around the world, violence has soared. In London, violent crimes increased by 39 per cent in three years. Even sports events (the soccer fans stage gang wars at most soccer matches nowadays, especially in England,) and entertainment ---books, movies, television--- have become permeated with violence. It has not always been as bad as this, and as art imitates life, life imitates art, and so aggressive paintings, threatening paintings are now commonplace. In this dissertation, I have studied this development of threat in painting. What follows is the course my study has taken.
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- Date Issued: 1979
The multiple image in art : a personal response
- Authors: Swift, Anthony J M
- Date: 1976
- Subjects: Art, Modern -- 20th century , Art -- Themes, motives , Art appreciation , Art, Modern -- 20th century -- Philosophy
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2497 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013330
- Description: The development of this thesis is akin to that of a painting. It is subject to various influences that have evoked ideas and each idea has stimulated other ideas, thus the continuity could have gone beyond the bounds of this work. It is not so much an amalgamation of similar ideas but a development of diverse ideas which have, once composed, a common factor - the Multiple Image. Image refers to some paintings that have been made or part of them, a photograph, a film, a subject visualized in the mind or a complex reforms which is suggestive. Multiple refers to anything that relatively repeats itself, has facsimilies of itself, triptychs, polyptychs or is a conglomeration of ideas in a work of art. Intro., p. 1.
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- Date Issued: 1976
The manipulated photographic images of Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy: "a deconstructural approach"
- Authors: Fry, Roger Bruce
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Man Ray, 1890-1976 Moholy-Nagy, László, 1895-1946 Photography, Artistic
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2470 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009447
- Description: From introduction: In the following essay an emphasis has been placed on manipulated photographic images. Although this implies a whole variety of ways in which these images can be manipulated e.g. in collage, silkscreen etc., the emphasis here is on images that have a fabricated or deliberate manipulation of subject matter to make up the photograph.
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- Date Issued: 1986