Ilya Repin and the Zaporozhe Cossacks

Standing above other nineteenth-century century Russian painters, Ilya Repin has proven himself through his technical mastery and unrelenting quest for artistic exploration. Thi s has placed him among Russia\u27 s most influential artists. This study examines Repin\u27 s life and prolific career. The obj ective of thi s research i s to explore the unique marriage between art and politics in nineteenth-century Russia. This proj ect focuses on Repin\u27 s 1 8 80 painting of the Zaporozhe Cossacks as a basis to explore the conflicting forces that befell Rep in, and also as a means to better understand the tempestuous atmosphere of the time. This painting reflects the opposing aesthetic, moral and philosophical ideas that marked this period in Russia history. Through both academic and artistic research methods, this study will give a comprehensive and intimate analysis of Ilya Repin\u27 s painting in the context of nineteenth-century Russian mi and politics

THE REALISM OF ALGORITHMIC HUMAN FIGURES A Study of Selected Examples 1964 to 2001

It is more than forty years since the first wireframe images of the Boeing Man revealed a stylized hu-man pilot in a simulated pilot's cabin. Since then, it has almost become standard to include scenes in Hollywood movies which incorporate virtual human actors. A trait particularly recognizable in the games industry world-wide is the eagerness to render athletic muscular young men, and young women with hour-glass body-shapes, to traverse dangerous cyberworlds as invincible heroic figures. Tremendous efforts in algorithmic modeling, animation and rendering are spent to produce a realistic and believable appearance of these algorithmic humans. This thesis develops two main strands of research by the interpreting a selection of examples. Firstly, in the computer graphics context, over the forty years, it documents the development of the creation of the naturalistic appearance of images (usually called photorealism ). In particular, it de-scribes and reviews the impact of key algorithms in the course of the journey of the algorithmic human figures towards realism . Secondly, taking a historical perspective, this work provides an analysis of computer graphics in relation to the concept of realism. A comparison of realistic images of human figures throughout history with their algorithmically-generated counterparts allows us to see that computer graphics has both learned from previous and contemporary art movements such as photorealism but also taken out-of-context elements, symbols and properties from these art movements with a questionable naivety. Therefore, this work also offers a critique of the justification of the use of their typical conceptualization in computer graphics. Although the astounding technical achievements in the field of algorithmically-generated human figures are paralleled by an equally astounding disregard for the history of visual culture, from the beginning 1964 till the breakthrough 2001, in the period of the digital information processing machine, a new approach has emerged to meet the apparently incessant desire of humans to create artificial counterparts of themselves. Conversely, the theories of traditional realism have to be extended to include new problems that those active algorithmic human figures present

Japonisme in Polish Pictorial Arts (1885 – 1939)

This thesis chronicles the development of Polish Japonisme between 1885 and 1939. It focuses mainly on painting and graphic arts, and selected aspects of photography, design and architecture. Appropriation from Japanese sources triggered the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages which helped forge new art and art educational paradigms that would define the modern age. Starting with Polish fin-de-siècle Japonisme, it examines the role of Western European artistic centres, mainly Paris, in the initial dissemination of Japonisme in Poland, and considers the exceptional case of Julian Fałat, who had first-hand experience of Japan. The second phase of Polish Japonisme (1901-1918) was nourished on local, mostly Cracovian, infrastructure put in place by the ‘godfather’ of Polish Japonisme Feliks Manggha Jasieński. His pro-Japonisme agency is discussed at length. Considerable attention is given to the political incentive provided by the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904, which rendered Japan as Poland’s ally against its Russian oppressor. The first two decades of the 20th century are regarded as the ‘Renaissance’ of Japonisme in Poland, and it is this part of the thesis that explores Japanese inspirations as manifested in the genres of portraiture, still life, landscape, representations of flora and fauna, erotic imagery, and caricature. Japonisme in graphic and applied graphic arts, including the poster, is also discussed. The existence of the taste for Japanese art in the West after 1918 is less readily acknowledged than that of the preceding decades. The third phase of Polish Japonisme (1919-1939) helps challenge the tacit conviction that Japanese art stopped functioning as an inspirational force around 1918. This part of the thesis examines the nationalisation of heretofore private resources of Japanese art in Cracow and Warsaw, and the inauguration of official cultural exchange between Poland and Japan. Polish Japonisme within École de Paris, both before 1918 and thereafter, inspired mainly by the painting of Foujita Tsuguharu, is an entirely new contribution to the field. Although Japanese inspirations frequently appeared in Polish painting of the interwar period, it was the graphic arts that became most receptive to the Japanese aesthetic at that time. The thesis includes a case study of Leon Wyczółkowski’s interbellum Japonisme, and interprets it as patriotic transpositions of the work of Hiroshige and the Japanese genre of meisho-e. Japonisme in Polish design and architecture is addressed only in the context of the creation of Polish national style in design (1901-1939). Art schools in Britain and America became important centres for Japonisme at the beginning of the 20th century. The thesis considers the case of Cracow Academy of Fine Arts, which due to radical changes introduced by its new director Julian Fałat, became an important centre for the dissemination of the taste for Japanese art in Poland

Evolution and Ambition in the Career of Jan Lievens (1607-1674)

The Dutch artist Jan Lievens (1607-1674) was viewed by his contemporaries as one of the most important artists of his age. Ambitious and self-confident, Lievens assimilated leading trends from Haarlem, Utrecht and Antwerp into a bold and monumental style that he refined during the late 1620s through close artistic interaction with Rembrandt van Rijn in Leiden, climaxing in a competition for a court commission. Lievens's early Job on the Dung Heap and Raising of Lazarus demonstrate his careful adaptation of style and iconography to both theological and political conditions of his time. This much-discussed phase of Lievens's life came to an end in 1631when Rembrandt left Leiden. Around 1631-1632 Lievens was transformed by his encounter with Anthony van Dyck, and his ambition to be a court artist led him to follow Van Dyck to London in the spring of 1632. His output of independent works in London was modest and entirely connected to Van Dyck and the English court, thus Lievens almost certainly worked in Van Dyck's studio. In 1635, Lievens moved to Antwerp and returned to history painting, executing commissions for the Jesuits, and he also broadened his artistic vocabulary by mastering woodcut prints and landscape paintings. After a short and successful stay in Leiden in 1639, Lievens moved to Amsterdam permanently in 1644, and from 1648 until the end of his career was engaged in a string of important and prestigious civic and princely commissions in which he continued to demonstrate his aptitude for adapting to and assimilating the most current style of his day to his own somber monumentality. Lievens's roving and acquisitive character expressed itself in his dynamic Flemish-style landscape drawings after 1660. These much-vaunted works have drawn attention away from how Lievens systematically fulfilled his ambitions as a history painter. This dissertation seeks to address the imbalanced view of Lievens's later career by examining his character and ambitions and success in light of the language his early patrons and biographers used to discuss his talent and self-confidence

An analysis of the contribution of four painters to the development of contemporary Zambian painting from 1950-1997

This study presents an analysis of the contribution of four painters to the development of contemporary Zambian painting, from 1950 to 1997. This is preceded by a brief history of Zambian painting, including Bushmen rock painting and early Bantu art, which is followed by an account of the way western influence, introduced by the white man, started changing the style of painting in the country as it began to affect indigenous artists. In the work of artists who began painting from about 1900 to 1950, both western and traditional stylistic influences can be seen. While the painters whose work is analysed in this thesis had some knowledge of Zambian art before 1950, they were mainly influenced by western ideas of painting. From a list of more than ten painters ofthis period from 1950 to 1997, I selected: Gabriel Ellison, Cynthia Zukas, Hemy Tayali and Stephen Kappata because I know them personally and therefore had access to them and their work, which facilitated my analysis of their work and its contribution to Zambian painting. This analysis takes the form of four chapters, one for each artist, in which relevant biographical and educational background is outlined, followed by an analysis of examples of\vork. Finally, ways in which each painter, through exposure to the Zambian public and artistic community, contributed to further development in Zambian painting, are emphasised

‘SELBY WARREN: AUSTRALIAN BUSH ARTIST AND TRIBE OF ONE’

In this thesis I have looked at the life and works of the Australian self-taught artist, Selby Warren, who was born in 1887 and spent his whole life in rural New South Wales near the small, inland city of Bathurst. Warren was typical of many self-taught artists in that he was completely untrained in art, unaware of the artworld and, having worked as a labourer, only began painting in earnest after semi-retiring at the age of seventy-six. Almost a decade later he was discovered by an art lecturer who introduced him to a city dealer and gallery owner and his work was exhibited in commercial galleries in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. During this brief (three year) period he was reasonably well known in art circles but this soon ended and he spent the remaining years of his life in his home town of Trunkey Creek. He died in 1979 aged 91. Warren exemplified the experiences shared by many self-taught artists both in Australia and overseas. I consider the events involved in the growth of interest in self-taught art and the ensuing influences it (and related phenomena like primitivism and primitive art) had on approaches to modern art movements from the turn of the twentieth-century until about 1980 in Europe, America and Australia. George Melly’s idea of the ‘tribe of one’ 1 and how it relates to artists like Warren and his ilk is explored. An analysis of Warren’s paintings and those of his Australian, European and American contemporaries is provided in a response to the view that it is the sometimes unusual lives rather than the output of self-taught artists that is too often used in the discussion of a unique, but not uncommon, art form

Playwriting as a visual art: A study of contemporary English-speaking dramaturgy using the works of five playwrights trained as fine artists

In a visual culture where the dividing line between the theatrical and visual art forms is becoming increasingly blurred, it is important to reconsider the ways in which the spatial is conceived. Space is another non-linguistic medium of communication-it does not convey ideas through language, but through an array of visual and spatial components augmented by aural or linguistic threads. Robert Wilson, Maria Irene Fames, John Byme, David Storey and John Arden were trained as fine artists before becoming playwrights. Their works are used to describe stage space as a visible medium of expression. These playwrights make use of principles from painting, sculpture and installation to create spatio-temporal images that work with a text to form a theatrical performance. They have constructed their pieces with an implicit visual structure that is essential to their staging. Each manipulates aesthetic concepts gleaned from the fine arts as mechanisms to create three dimensional theatrical compositions, which can be categorised as 'scopic building blocks'. By analysing these mechanisms with a methodology and vocabulary drawn from the visual arts, a theatrical conception of spatial analysis will become apparent. These playwrights will be placed in the context of the theatre as a seeing place, into which artists often have crossed over and made use of as an expressive form. Then a summary of the playwrights' fine art training will introduce their aesthetic technique, thereby connecting their visual art and theatrical work. Their working methods will be examined so that their 'playwriting' or 'visual scripting' can be defined. Once the evidence is presented, there will be an exploration of the ways in which these techniques can be applied to physical theatre, theatres of images or other visually influenced texts

Scottish scenes and Scottish story : the later career of David Allan, historical painter

David Allan's artistic career may be divided into two major periods. Having first attended the Foulis Academy, he spent at least a decade in Italy, finally returning to Scotland in 1779, his home for the next seventeen years. The pictures which he executed during this second period form the basis of the present study. Since the emphasis of this study is thematic rather than biographical, some distortion of chronology is inevitable, though it is not uncomfortably obvious. At the same time, some element of biography is indispensable. This is particuarly true of the first chapter, a necessary setting of the scene which highlights Allan's training in the arts, his collection of prints, copies, original drawings and plaster casts, and the most important works from his years abroad. That part of this biographical account which deals with his Scottish career is devoted largely to Allan's work as Master of the Trustees' Academy, since the pictures with which he was occupied at this time - portraits, Conversation pieces, literary illustrations, Historical paintings and Genre scenes - are taken in groups and discussed in greater depth in the chapters which follow. Before the first chapter concerned with Allan's work in any of these genres, however, there stands a chapter dealing with the wider context of narrative painting in Britain at the time and introducing a number of themes traced throughout later chapters, where they are more fully and particularly discussed

How to Look Sachlich: Fashion and Objectivity in Weimar Germany

“How to Look Sachlich: Fashion and Objectivity in Weimar Germany” is an analysis of the representation and treatment of fashion in the late Weimar works of the architect and designer, Lilly Reich (1885-1947) and the painters, Otto Dix (1891-1969), Christian Schad (1894-1982), and Lotte Laserstein (1898-1993). Its argument is that these artists, through their acute handling of clothing and fabric, pushed the aesthetic program of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) beyond strict Sachlichkeit (objectivity) and ultimately show that Neue Sachlichkeit, contrary to its association with sobriety, is a style of material extravagance. The terms “Sachlichkeit” and “Neue Sachlichkeit,” popular in every facet of Weimar culture from fashion to architecture and painting to journalism, connoted matter-of-factness, functionality, and realism. By examining the treatment of fashion and fabric in these paintings and architectural projects, this study, drawing upon design and architectural theory, sheds new light onto the painterly practices of Neue Sachlichkeit, while also demonstrating that an emphasis on surface materiality was an aesthetic strategy common to both the architecture and painting of the period. In this way, fashion and an accentuation of tactile surfaces serve as critical links between architectural Sachlichkeit and painterly Neue Sachlichkeit during the Weimar Republic. Schad, Dix, Laserstein, and Reich undermine rationality and sobriety in their sachlich and neu sachlich works by emphasizing the texture and appearance of material surfaces to the extent that they take on expressive lives of their own. By presenting this material excess, these artists respond to a cultural preoccupation with objectivity, the sociopolitical conditions of the period, and counter the outgoing discourse of spiritualized subjectivity that was tied to Expressionism. For Schad, Dix, Laserstein, and Reich, Sachlichkeit offered a mode of cultural production that was oriented around externalized facts and the objective world. Instead of exposing social realities through abstraction and appeals to emotion, these artists represented tangible surfaces and charged them with the task of expressing the material realities of modern life. While neither rational nor sober, the striking appearance of surfaces in their works is nonetheless “objective” in the sense that it constitutes a mimetic response to the processes of objectification and fetishization in market capitalism, which transform both people (subjects) and commodities (objects) into instruments to aid in its perpetual growth.PHDHistory of ArtUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137172/1/okristin_1.pdfDescription of okristin_1.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

Still Life and Death Metal: Painting the Battle Jacket

This thesis aims to conduct a study of battle jackets using painting as a recording and analytical tool. A battle jacket is a customised garment worn in heavy metal subcultures that features decorative patches, band insignia, studs and other embellishments Battle jackets are significant in the expression of subcultural identity for those that wear them, and constitute a global phenomenon dating back at least to the 1970s. The art practice juxtaposes and re-contextualises cultural artefacts in order to explore the narratives and traditions that they are a part of. As such, the work is situated within the genre of contemporary still life and appropriative painting. The paintings presented with the written thesis document a series of jackets and creatively explore the jacket form and related imagery. The study uses a number of interrelated critical perspectives to explore the meaning and significance of the jackets. Intertextual approaches explore the relationship of the jackets to other cultural forms. David Muggleton’s ‘distinctive individuality’ and Sarah Thornton’s ‘subcultural capital’ are used to emphasise the importance of jacket making practices for expressions of personal and corporate subcultural identity. Italo Calvino’s use of postmodern semiotic structures gives a tool for placing battle jacket practice within a shifting network of meanings, whilst Richard Sennett’s‘material consciousness’ helps to understand the importance of DIY making practices used by fans. The project refers extensively to a series of interviews conducted with battle jacket makers between 2014 and 2016. Recent art historical studies of still life painting have used a materialist critique of historic works to demonstrate the uniqueness of painting as a method of analysis. The context for my practice involves historical references such as seventeenth century Dutch still life painting. The work of contemporary artists who are exploring the themes and imagery of extreme metal music is also reviewed