Art History Theses and Dissertations
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Images of Protest: The Barrier Wall Art of Ron English and Other Artists
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)This thesis looks at illegal public art produced on state built barrier walls. The focus is on the artist Ron English, and his artworks produced on the Berlin Wall, Israeli Barrier Wall, and Mexican Border Fence. I examine ... -
The Form of No-Form: Reconstructing Huineng in Two Paintings by Liang Kai
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)The authenticity and interpretation of two Sixth Patriarch paintings, traditionally attributed to Liang Kai, have long been debated by critical scholars. Because of the lack of inscriptions on the paintings to indicate the ... -
“Back to Zero:” The Artistic and Pedagogical Philosophy of Anni Albers
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)This thesis investigates Anni Albers’s development from a student at the Bauhaus to a teacher at Black Mountain College, focusing on her unique pedagogical practice that was informed by what she called a “back to zero” ... -
Performing Upon Her Painted Piano: The Burne-Jones Pianos and The Victorian Female Gender Performance
(University of Oregon, 2017-09-06)This thesis centers around three pianos designed and/or decorated by the Victorian artist Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: the Priestley Piano, the Graham Piano, and the Ionides Piano. I read and interpret the Burne-Jones ... -
The Essence of Itō Jakuchū's Colorful Realm of Living Beings
(University of Oregon, 2017-05-01)This thesis focuses on the Colorful Realm of Living Beings, a set of thirty-three hanging scrolls by an Edo-period painter named Itō Jakuchū (1716 – 1800). The Colorful Realm was already considered a masterpiece during ... -
Wearing the Hat of an Other: Alterity and Self-Fashioning in Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione's Oriental Heads
(University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)In the late 1640s, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione produced two series of etchings, which historians have named his Oriental Heads, depicting a variety of figures in exotic headgear. The persistence of Oriental headdresses ... -
Western-style Painting in Pan-Asian Context: The Art and Historical Legacies of Kuroda Seiki, Li Shutong, and Go Hui-dong, 1889-1916
(University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)From the late nineteenth century, works inspired by Western art spread to China and Korea through Japan. Thus, Western art came to be accepted in China and Korea as a reinterpretation of Japan’s development of Western art, ... -
Critiquing the French: The Satirical Monuments of James Gillray and George Cruikshank
(University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)In eighteenth-century England, general anxieties towards the unchecked and excessive British power and authority were caricaturized in images depicting France and its people. Extensive literature has been published on the ... -
The Cultural Theatrics of Early Modern Images of Demonic Possession
(University of Oregon, 2016-11-21)Artists creating images of demonic possession during the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation communicated theological messages by accentuating the most famous and dramatic exorcisms. This project proposes an interpretive ... -
A WORLD IN PRINT; FOREIGNERS IN JAPAN’S EARLY MODERN BANKOKU JINBUTSU-ZU
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27)Japanese woodblock prints featuring foreigners that appeared after the opening of ports such as Yokohama to international trade in the mid-nineteenth century are broadly referred to as Yokohama-e (or “Yokohama Pictures”). ... -
(Un) Forming Nature: Kurt Schwitters's Merz Barn (1947-1948)
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27)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 ... -
Say What I am Called: A Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Self-Referential Inscriptions
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27)This thesis compiles a working corpus of Anglo-Saxon self-referential inscribed artifacts to examine how the inscriptions and supports utilize self-reference to push the viewer to understand the social and cultural ... -
Art Beyond the Generic City: Yang Yongliang’s Photo Composites 2007-2012
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27)This thesis examines the digital photo composites of Chinese artist Yang Yongliang (b. 1980, Shanghai) from 2007-2012 by selecting three distinct series that focus on three cities. This thesis approaches Yang’s Shanghai-based ... -
A Genuine Dilemma: The Piombino Apollo and Fraud in the First and Second Century Greco-Roman Art Market
(University of Oregon, 2016-10-27)In 1832, fishermen pulled a full-body bronze sculpture of a youth, now called the Piombino Apollo, from the sea near ancient Populonia. Under life-size, the piece resembles an Archaic kouros, though it has some notable ... -
Departing from History: Sharon Hayes, Reenactment and Archival Practice in Contemporary Art
(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)This thesis addresses reenactment and archival practice in the work of Sharon Hayes, a mid-career multi-media artist renowned for her use of archival documents to pose questions about history, politics, and speech. I do ... -
On the Use and Meaning of Wood in Chinese Imperial Architecture
(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)Wood is the primary structural building material of Chinese imperial architecture. This thesis argues that there are practical and symbolic reasons why wood was chosen instead of stone for politically and ritually important ... -
Curating Buddhism: Reimagining Buddhist Statues in a Museum and Temple Setting
(University of Oregon, 2016-02-23)This thesis considers whether a Buddhist statue in a museum context can be both aesthetic and devotional. By reexamining the relationship between a devotional object, its surrounding space, and its viewer, this thesis will ... -
Collecting Memories: Rachel Whiteread’s House and Memory in Contemporary London
(University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)Contemporary British artist Rachel Whiteread is celebrated for her ability to cast everyday objects that force the viewer to think about the spaces they typically ignore. House, one of Whiteread’s most well known and written ... -
Painting Photography: Robert Bechtle and the Critical Legacy of 1960s Photorealism
(University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)In the early 1970s, New York gallerist Louis K. Meisel devised a formal set of criteria to identify a group of artists he referred to as Photorealists. Despite the serious limitations of Meisel’s initial formulation, his ... -
Divinity & Destiny: Marian Imagery in Rubens' Life of Marie de' Medici
(University of Oregon, 2015-08-18)In 1622, the Dowager Queen of France, Marie de' Medici, had recently returned to Paris after a period of exile imposed by her son, Louis XIII, and commissioned a monumental cycle of images from Peter Paul Rubens to decorate ...