The emotive qualities of light as a prime factor in artistic expression
- Authors: Brooks, R B
- Date: 1965
- Subjects: Light in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2502 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014659
- Description: What we do possess to-day as 'art' a faked music, filled with exotic and showcard effects, that every ten years or so concocted out of the form-wealth of millenia some new "style'' which is no style at all since everyone does as he pleases. A lying plastic that steals from Assyria, Egypt and Mexico indifferently. Yet this and only this, the taste of the "man of the world" can be accepted as the expression and sign of the age. Everything else, everything that sticks to old ideals is for provincial consumption. This is the year 1965 - nearly fifty years since Oswald Spengler published "The decline of the West" The paragraph I have quoted by way of justification for this dissertation is in turn a justiification of the fact that Spengler is as valid today as he was in 1918.
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- Date Issued: 1965
The eyes of the wall : space, narrative and perspective
- Authors: Baasch, Rachel Mary
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Installations (Art) , Frames (Sociology) , Architecture, Domestic, in art , Narrative art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2388 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001578
- Description: The Eyes of the Wall and Other Short Stories is concerned with dialectics of seeing and perceiving as they pertain directly to a corporal understanding of interiority and exteriority, architectural framing and notions of dislocation in relation to place. This practical submission is a site-specific installation that engages in a reciprocal dialogue with its environment. The individual sculptural works which demarcate the parameters of the installation are hybrids of domestic architectural forms, (namely the wall, the window and the door) and internal furnishings such as the curtain and the bed. These hybridised metal and resin constructions frame the interior of a site, a tennis court located within my immediate Grahamstown environment. The placement of familiar objects generally associated with the home and notions of security and privacy, within the open, exposed and permeable enclosure of the tennis court evoke a sense of displacement within the viewer. This supporting document, The Eyes of the Wall: Space, Narrative and Perspective, considers the key conceptual concerns informing my installation. In this mini-thesis I address the relationship between domestic architecture and the body, examining the notion of framing as fundamental to the individual comprehension of space. I position my work in relation to that of Mona Hatoum drawing on the similarities that exist between her practice and my own. In the first chapter of this paper: My House/Your House: Walls, Windows, Doors and Skins I address the relationship between domestic architecture, framing and the body, and ‘contamination’. Within Chapter Two: Narratives of Division I engage with the idea of multiple ‘short stories’—personal and collective narratives—and their connection to issues of division and dislocation. Chapter Three: Seeing Blindness discusses the possibility that perspective, or at least one potential approach to perspective is concerned with that which one cannot see, an acknowledgment of the implicit relationship between seeing and not-seeing. Each of the three core concerns expressed in the title of this mini-thesis, The Eyes of The Wall: Space, Narrative and Perspective intersect within the site of The Eyes of The Wall and Other Short Stories. It is at this intersection that the shadows of stories within stories within stories insert themselves, like phantom limbs into the gaps and tensions framed by the forms of the installation.
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- Date Issued: 2013
The forensic aesthetic in art
- Authors: Spargo, Natascha
- Date: 2006
- Subjects: Violence in art Psychic trauma -- Pictorial works Aesthetics Human figure in art Smith, Kathryn, 1975-
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2435 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004624
- Description: From Introduction: The 'forensic aesthetic' presents the viewer with traces and debris - the residue that haunts sites of transgression, violence and death. In his book Scene of the Crime, art critic and curator Ralph Rugoff (1997:62) defines the forensic aesthetic as follows: "Inextricably linked to an unseen history, this type of art embodies a fractured relationship to time. Like a piece of evidence, its present appearance is haunted by an indeterminate past, which we confront in the alienated form of fossilized and fragmented remnants." Through its play on seemingly insignificant detail&, clues and traces, the forensic aesthetic suggests that meaning is dispersed, fragmentary and uncertain. According to Rugoff (1997:17), the forensic aesthetic "aims to engage the viewer in a process of mental reconstruction". It compels the viewer to adopt a 'forensic gaze' : to sift through broken narratives and fragments of information, reading the artwork as one might read a sample of evidence. Rugoff (1997:62) argues that: "[S]uch art insists that 'content is something that can't be seen' ... it requires that the viewer arrive at an interpretation by examining traces and marks and reading them as clues. In addition, it is marked by a strong sense of aftermath. ... Taken as a whole, this art puts us in a position akin to that of [the] forensic anthropologist or scientist, forcing us to speculatively piece together histories that remain largely invisible to the eye." One might argue that some of the earliest known examples of the forensic aesthetic in art presented themselves in the Renaissance period in the form of the pseudo-forensic anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. In his Studies of the Hand (fig. 1), for example, Da Vinci methodically represents the underlying structures of the human hand in a series of drawings that are scattered intermittently across the page. The remainder of the page is covered with hand-written notations. In this work, the artist approaches the human body with a scientific, almost forensic, gaze. Here the body is presented in fragments, rather than as a whole. According to Rugoff (1997:86&88), the forensic aesthetic addresses the body "not as a coherent whole but as a site of prior actions ... as a dispersed territory of clues and traces". When read in terms of the mode of the forensic aesthetic, Da Vinci's Studies of the Hand may be said to look at the human body as forensic object. In this way, this work may be said to speak of the manner in which the forensic gaze operates in the context of the artwork. Throughout the following essay, I discuss the various ways in which the forensic aesthetic manifests itself in art. I have necessarily been selective in the artworks that I have chosen for discussion, as this topic is very broad indeed. In Chapter One, I explore the tradition of the forensic aesthetic in art by way of a select number of artworks. This chapter focuses on investigating the way in which these works, whether consciously or unconsciously, speak of associations between violence and representation through the mode of the forensic aesthetic. The contents of Chapter Two concentrate on the work of South African artist Kathryn Smith. Smith's work may be said to possess a forensic quality, in that it references forensic practices and techniques. Her work has not been the topic of a lengthy monograph, but it has been considered in various exhibition catalogues, reviews and articles. For example, an essay by Colin Richards entitled 'Dead Certainties' (2004) investigates the forensic quality of Smith's imagery in terms of its play on notions of the trace. Similarly, an article by Maureen de Jager, entitled 'Evidence and Artifice' (2004), examines the manner in which Smith's work transgresses the boundaries between 'forensics and fantasy'. In her book, Through the Looking Glass (2004), Brenda Schmahmann addresses Smith's Still Life series (figs. 9, 10, 11) in relation to the issue of self-representation, exploring the relationship between the 'self' and the body as 'other'. Lastly, a review by James Sey, which was published in Art/South Africa (2004), considers Smith's work in terms of its aesthetic appeal, which serves as a framing device for the uncomfortable subject matter that informs the bulk of her imagery. My reading of Kathryn Smith's work departs from and expands on the available literature in that it focuses on the manner in which her images comment self-critically on the act of representation. I have chosen to focus on Smith's work in particular, as it uses the mode of the forensic aesthetic to speak of the field of artistic practice - a motif that runs throughout my own body of work as well. Moreover, Smith's work, like my own work, may be said to engage with the forensic aesthetic in a South African context. In Chapter Two, I compare a number of Smith's works to the artworks discussed in Chapter One, and examine the manner in which they speak of the links between art and crime. Chapter Three concentrates on outlining the ways in which my own work reads off the conventions of forensic investigation. In this chapter I discuss the manner in which my work, by way of a forensic approach, draws parallels between the medium of photography and the mechanisms of trauma. I focus on works that have been included in my Master's exhibition, Vigil (2005). The following essay is a study in representations of violence in art. In the course of this essay, I contextualize the forensic aesthetic as a mode of representation, as well as address the manner in which the forensic aesthetic seems to allow for, even facilitate, self-conscious reflection on the practices of representation itself.
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- Date Issued: 2006
The Grahamstown Fine Art Association
- Authors: Cook, J C W
- Date: 1974
- Subjects: Grahamstown Fine Art Association Rhodes University -- History Artists -- South Africa Painters -- South Africa Rhodes University -- School of Art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2476 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1010601
- Description: When he opened the 24th annual exhibition of students' work on the 1st July, 1927, Professor F.W. Armstrong gave the following account of the beginnings of the Grahamstown School of Art: ... The appointment of a master was the responsibility of Sir Langham Dale, the Superintendent General of Education in the Cape Colony. His choice for the first art master of the Grahamstown School of Art was Mr.W. H. Simpson. Simpson had studied at the South Kensington Museum then at the Royal Academy. During the 1870's he had exhibited in the Royal Academy, at other exhibitions in London, and in the provinces. Intro. p. 1.
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- Date Issued: 1974
The Hasidic spirit as the foundation of the art of Marc Chagall
- Authors: Bagraim, Abigail Sarah
- Date: 1987
- Subjects: Chagall, Marc, 1887-1985 Criticism and interpretation
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2393 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002189
- Description: In considering Chagall's art the observer is immediately struck by the constancy of his almost obsessive repetition of certain symbols and themes. In this way Chagall has created his own fantasy world, one with which the observer soon becomes acquainted and grows to love and understand.
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- Date Issued: 1987
The historical collection, King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth
- Authors: Forster-Towne, Rosemary
- Date: 1984
- Subjects: Art collections and art museums Fine arts and History of art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2463 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008567
- Description: From Conclusion: For the sake of posterity and historical research, our need for secure origins and our appreciation of and pleasure in fine craftsmanship and art, it is important that any Art Collection, particularly an Historical one, be fully documented. All data pertaining to the pictures should be recorded from an artistic, historical and even scientific point of view and photographs should be taken of the pictures. An organized classification system, the correct registering and labeling of each picture and its accessioning and cataloguing as part of the contents of the Gallery and for visitors information, should be constantly 53 maintained and where necessary and in as many ways as possible, cross-references made so that the stored information be usable. To this end and with the growth and increasing importance being placed on Art Museums and Galleries in the community it would probably be of value to cross-reference with other similar institutions and in the respect and day and age, it is not unrealistic to propose that the King George VI Art Gallery consider a computer cataloguing system to facilitate research and complement a more simplified version for the use and guide of the general viewing public . The significance of a picture is not only its value as such, but also the information relating to it. The importance of the Historical Collection as Africana and works of art, expressive of the places, events, people and even attitudes, and as cultural and historic items, goes without saying. Without the Historical Collection of the King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth, the Eastern Cape community and South Africa too, would be the poorer. The pictures have their role to play .
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- Date Issued: 1984
The life and work of Robert Paul
- Authors: Johnson, Christopher Charles Bonsall
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Paul, Robert, 1906-1980 , Artists -- Zimbabwe
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2510 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018631
- Description: [From Introduction] When Robert Paul died in 1980, his daughter Colette Wiles gave her father's art materials to an artist who was very close to both Robert and his wife in their last years - Dian Wright. The materials consisted of five different pigments and brushes cut into different shapes to suit the artist. This is remarkable when one considers his proficiency in a variety of media and his accurate portrayal in the far reaching studies he executed of the Zimbabwean landscape. Yet, it is characteristic of his resourcefulness that Paul could make 'something out of nothing'. Paul welcomed the opportunity of new landscape when he arrived in Rhodesia in 1927. Against the backdrop of a chosen isolation from the British Isles, Paul developed his own personal tracks in spite of any early influence through John Piper with the English Southern Landscape idioms of the 1920s. This was a fruitful isolation where the creation of his art retained influences but were manipulated according to his needs and unleashed with a proficiency sometimes equal to his peers, who later found fame under the term 'Neo-Romantics'. Paul remained an individual in Africa. My intention in this essay is three-fold; first, to illustrate the effects and influences of 'chosen' and 'enforced ' isolation on his work. Secondly, I wish to determine the extent of the influence that Piper and the Neo-Romantics had on Paul and to illustrate mostly with anecdotes his life and life-style. He was no mean character. His life-long obsessions with art, alcohol and women were played out with a flair and dry humour which few emulated in his era. Although a strictly academic approach can be applied to the assessment of his work, his life followed thoroughly unorthodox lines. As Bradshaw noted when he wrote the forward to the Catalogue of Paul's Retrospective in 1976, he (Paul) had no historical interests in the accepted sense of the word. , ABBYY FineReader 12
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- Date Issued: 1986
The machine and painting: an investigation into the interrelationship(s) between technology and painting since 1945
- Authors: Hennig, Sybille
- Date: 1986
- Subjects: Art and technology Art, Modern -- 20th century -- History
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2468 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009435
- Description: Introduction: We, i.e. contemporary Western man, live in a society which has increasingly embraced Science and Technology as the ultimum bonum. The Machine, i.e. Science and Technology, has come to be seen as an impersonal force, a New God - omniscient, omnipotent: to be worshipped and, alas, also to be feared. This mythologem has come to pervade almost every sphere of our lives in a paradigmatic way to the extent where it is hardly ever recognized for what it is and hence fails to arouse the concern it merits. While some of the more perceptive minds - such as Erich Fromm, Rufino Tamayo, Carl Gustav Jung, Konrad Lorenz and Arthur Koestler, to mention but a few - have started ringing the alarm bells, the vast majority of our species seem to plunge ahead with their blinkers firmly in place (more or less contented as long as they can persude themselves that these blinkers were manufactured according to latest technological and scientific specifications). Man’s uniquely human powers - his creative intuition, his feelings, his moral and ethical potential, have become sadly neglected and mistrusted. Homo sapiens – “homo maniacus” as Koestler suggests? - is now at a crossroads: he has reached a point where the next step could be the last step and result in the annihilation of man as a species. Alternately, avoiding that, there is the outwardly less drastic but essentially equally alarming possibility of men becoming robots, while a third alternative has yet to be found. While it does appear as if a lot of young people, noticeably among students, have started reacting against the over mechanization of life, these reactions often tend to follow the swing-of-the-pendulum principle and veer towards the other extreme, throwing out the baby with the bathwater and falling prey to freak-out cults in a kind of mass-irrationalism, rejecting science and technology altogether. Artists who by their very nature perhaps are particularly sensitive - in a kind of seismographic way - to the currents and undercurrents of their age, have become aware of the effects of science and technology on our way of living, and many of them have in one way or another taken a stand in relation to the position of man in our highly technological world. Looking at the art produced over the last four decades, it is truly astonishing to what extent our changed world reflects in our art - a world and a Weltbild very different from that of our ancestors even just a few generations ago. The purpose of the present study is to survey some of the observations and commentaries that painters and certain kindred spirits from the sciences over the last few decades have offered, in the hope of, if not answering, at least defining and posing anew some of the questions that confront us with ever-increasing urgency.
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- Date Issued: 1986
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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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