History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing History of Art and Architecture Theses and Dissertations by Author "Cheng, Joyce"

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    César Moro Between Indigenism and Surrealism
    (University of Oregon, 2014-09-29) Beaver, Katlyn; Cheng, Joyce
    Current scholarship too narrowly studies Peruvian surrealist César Moro's (1903-1956) graphic and poetic works as two equivalent mechanisms of expression and overemphasizes his rupture from surrealism in 1942. In this thesis, I integrate study of Moro's plastic and graphic works with his curatorial endeavors and revise common perception of his definitive break from surrealism, focusing instead on his turn to surrealism in 1927. Engaged in efforts to combat the repression of indigenous and pre-Columbian histories in Peru during the 1930s, I argue that Moro employed surrealist collage as a decolonial enterprise in order to oppose the entrenched nationalism of indigenismo artwork, the most important movement of Peruvian modernism. This thesis demonstrates that Moro's crticism of pictorial indigenismo artists like Peruvian José Sabogal (b. 1888-1956), leader of the movement, has its roots in his surrealist collage enterprise and continues even after his defect from surrealism in 1942.
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    From Art to Performance: Marcel Duchamp’s Imagery of Chess Exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery
    (University of Oregon, 2015-08-18) Lancaster, Meredith; Cheng, Joyce
    In 1944, Marcel Duchamp organized a widely publicized exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City, The Imagery of Chess. This thesis will explore The Imagery of Chess exhibition in terms of the intertwined aspects of Duchamp’s identity: artist, chess master, publicist of art, and curator. Using chess as a paradigm, the trajectory of Duchamp’s interest in chess as an object to chess as a process will be traced. This thesis will argue that the exhibition synthesized the “successive moves” of Duchamp’s career as an artist, chess master, publicist of art, and curator while popularizing European avant-garde art in the eyes of the American art public. The Imagery of Chess also served as a precedent for two subsequent performances in which Duchamp participated in the 1960s: his chess performance with Eve Babitz in 1963 at the Pasadena Art Museum and the 1968 Reunion performance with John Cage.
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    From the Avant-Garde to the Humanitarian: Kati Horna's Photomontages and Photography (1937-1938)
    (University of Oregon, 2024-01-09) Cleary, Elizabeth; Cheng, Joyce
    The Mexican-Hungarian photographer Kati Horna (1912–2000) photographed the Spanish Civil War and created photomontages for the anarchist organization, the CNT-FAI (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo-Federación Anarquista Ibérica/National Labor Confederation-Iberian Anarchist Federation) between 1937 and 1938. Scholarship to date has debated whether Horna’s political activism or her association with interwar avant-garde groups played a greater role in her work. In this thesis, I suggest that Horna’s political activism and her associations with Dada, Constructivism and Surrealism are inseparable aspects of her work by tracing Horna’s work from Hungarian Activism in the mid-1910s to what has been described as humanitarian photography in the 1930s. I argue that Horna’s work reveals the proximity of the avant-garde groups on the one hand and, on the other, the ambiguous relationship between art and politics during the European interwar years.
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    Imperfect Inclusions: Exhibiting Non-Western Art at the Museum of Modern Art, 1935-2019
    (University of Oregon, 2021-04-27) Shaw, Samantha; Cheng, Joyce
    During its ninety-year history, the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) has undergone four major architectural renovations, accrued a permanent collection of almost 200,000 works, mounted over 5,000 exhibitions, and constructed a vast archive of publications. Apart from these transformations, the museum’s curatorial mission over the decades attests to an effort in expanding its representation of modern art beyond the so- called Western canon. In brief, it went from exhibiting modern art’s relationship to non- European influences in the early twentieth century to orchestrating major interventions within its concentration of great Eurocentric canonical modern masterworks in the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries. To trace this effort historically and assess its success and failure, I will examine major MoMA curatorial endeavors since its founding in 1929, including William Rubin’s famous 1984 “‘Primitivism’ in Twentieth-Century Art: Affinity Between the Tribal and the Modern” exhibition and Glenn Lowry’s 2019 permanent museum collection reinstallation.
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    A New Method of Surface Ornamentation: Ludwig Hevesi's Malmosaik in Gustav Klimt's Faculty Paintings, Beethoven Frieze and Stoclet Frieze
    (University of Oregon, 2013-10-03) Globig, Aleksandra; Cheng, Joyce
    The Austrian art critic Ludwig Hevesi wrote the article "Gustav Klimt und die Malmosaik" in August of 1907 after seeing two separate exhibitions with paintings by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The first exhibition had three easel paintings and the second, three decorative ceiling paintings. Despite the obvious differences between the two types of paintings, Hevesi noted a stylistic continuity between them. He created the term, Malmosaik, applicable to both easel and decorative painting, in order to discuss this continuity in his written criticisms. This thesis examines the applicability of the Malmosaik in Klimt's Faculty Paintings, Beethoven Frieze and Stoclet Frieze, and its impact on traditional notions of medium purity in turn-of-the-century Vienna. The Malmosaik, as it developed in Klimt's work, is discussed here as an innovative, non-medium specific aesthetic unique to Vienna.
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    Photographing the "Phantoms of the Living": The Fotodinamismo Futurista of Anton Giulio and Arturo Bragaglia, 1911-1913
    (University of Oregon, 2014-06-17) Barth, Rachel; Cheng, Joyce
    Between 1911 and 1913, two Italian brothers named Anton Giulio Bragaglia and Arturo Bragaglia produced Futurist photography which they termed "photodynamism." These images, together with the theoretical manifesto Fotodinamismo futurista, represent a remarkable effort in avant-garde photography and theory in the early 20th century. The Bragaglias' intent in making these photographs was to produce deeply emotional images of modern dynamic motion which convey the spiritual essence of human beings that becomes exteriorized in the process of physical movement. Through a short, intense campaign in 1913, Umberto Boccioni succeeded in expelling the Bragaglias from the Futurist movement. Because of this, the importance of their photography has often been neglected, underrepresented or misrepresented in scholarship. This thesis offers an alternative reading of the photodynamic project based on its occult foundation and a better sense of how to understand photodynamism within the context of the movement and the broader history of photography.
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    Toward a New Landscape: The Architectural Photography of Gabriele Basilico, 1978-1984
    (University of Oregon, 2015-01-14) Szumita, Lauren; Cheng, Joyce
    Trained as an architect shortly before becoming a photographer of urban spaces, Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico (1944-2013) is celebrated for his work on the city in transition. Beginning in 1978, Basilico refrained from photographing people and turned his attention to the architectural structures that make up a city, an approach that would define the remainder of his career. His focus on architecture and urban landscapes places Basilico in the realm of the "new landscape photography" in Italy, which is recognized for depicting previously overlooked areas of the city, such as defunct industrial sites, with renewed interest. This thesis investigates three seminal works in Basilico's early career that secure his position in the new landscape photography. I argue that he maintains an intentional subjectivity, an intimate connection with his subject, which manifests itself through a humanistic or anthropomorphic presence in his photographs, articulating the true essence of his urban subjects.
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    (Un) Forming Nature: Kurt Schwitters's Merz Barn (1947-1948)
    (University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Pounds, Megan Pounds; Cheng, Joyce
    This thesis centers on Kurt Schwitters’s Merz Barn (1947-1948), exploring the relationship between nature and the Merz principles of formung (forming) and entformung (un-forming) within the context of this late work. The Merz Barn, the last of Schwitters’s Merzbauten, has yet to receive the extensive level of research accorded to its famous Hannover predecessor, resulting in an underdeveloped grasp of the project as a whole within Merzbau scholarship. The present study considers Schwitters’s increasing orientation towards nature as a model for artistic creation to elicit an understanding of the ways in which his paradoxical Merz formula, “Formen heißt entformeln,” evolved during his period of exile. I contend that Schwitters employed the organic processes of natural growth and decay to realize the principles of formung and entformung in his Merz Barn. Furthermore, the sculptural interior underscores the dialectical exchange between forming and un-forming, highlighting the liminal space between the opposing processes.