Phd
Bennett, Johanna Katherine
‘The Iconography of the Virtues and Vices in Fourteenth-Century Tuscany’.
PhD, La Trobe University, Art History Program, 2002. (Nigel Morgan, Joan Barclay-Lloyd.)
The thesis examines the iconography and context of the virtues and vices in Tuscan art of the fourteenth century. It is divided into three parts. The first part examines the philosophical, theological and literary texts on virtues and vices, from ancient writers to those of the fourteenth century. The origins of the four Cardinal Virtues, the three Theological Virtues, the Vices and the theme of the Virtues Triumphing over Vice are explained and discussed. These literary concepts provided the fundamental iconographic sources for artists in Trecento Italy.
The second part of the thesis focuses on the pictorial tradition. It begins with a consideration of English, French and Italian antecedents to the fourteenth-century Tuscan examples. The iconography of each Virtue and Vice depicted in Tuscan Trecento art is examined and linked to literary and visual sources. The third part examines the works in their social, ritual, and sepulchral contexts.
A catalogue of works of art that contain images of Virtue and Vice complements the text. Fourteenth-century Italian depictions of Virtue and Vice outside Tuscany are tabulated in an appendix.
Betka, Ursula Lucille
‘Marian Images and Laudesi Devotion in Late Medieval Italy, c.1260—1350’.
PhD, University of Melbourne, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology. (Margaret Manion.)
This thesis examines certain Marian themes and images in the context of early laudesi devotional practices with special reference to Florence and Siena, c.1260—1350. The Marian laudesi were a popular type of lay confraternity, the name of which derives from one of their distinguishing characteristics, the singing of vernacular songs called laude. A group of Marian panels which appear in the second half of the Duecento are studied for their functional and contextual role in laudesi worship, since it was before these images that the evening laude service was performed. The thesis demonstrates the importance of visual and literary elements in laudesi worship and the ways in which imagination and memory functioned in devotion.
The Marian paintings which are linked with early forms of laudesi worship manifest similarities in both iconographical form and monumentality, and they consistently refer to the ancient and efficacious icons of the Virgin that stress her role as the Mother of God. It is argued that through their affiliation with the mendicant orders, the laudesi were well instructed in orthodoxy, and had a sound understanding of the devotional and theological traditions associated with Marian images. At the same time their mendicant-inspired spirituality was characterised by a personal and affective quality which sought to identify with the human feelings and experience of Christ, Mary and the saints.
In this regard, the celebration of feasts throughout the Church year, in both liturgical and devotional ways, was an integral part of laudesi worship. Moreover, the range of laude selected for analysis demonstrates not only Mary’s pervasive presence in the Christological cycle of feasts, but also her more personal role as model and advocate for her devotees.
Three extant illuminated laudarii from Trecento Florence are the basis for the study of these Marian laude. The themes studied reflect the emphases in the laudarii themselves, and include the celebration of major Marian feasts, her role in the Incarnation, and her participation in the Passion and death of Christ. Mary’s aid is also invoked at death and judgement; and in her glorified state as Queen of Heaven, she is hailed as the laudesi’s merciful protector and intercessor.
The illustrations that accompany the laude are shown to reflect the broader visual context of lay piety. Together with the Marian panels, they also demonstrate the interaction between the visual, literary and musical dimensions in laudesi worship.
Birch, Graeme
‘The Iconographic Development of Florentine Altarpieces, c.1350—c.1415’.
PhD, La Trobe University, Art History Program, 2002. (Nigel Morgan, Joan Barclay-Lloyd.)
In this thesis Florentine altarpieces c.1350—c.1415 have been investigated to determine the range, frequency of use, and meaning of their iconography. Part One examines three altarpieces still in their original chapels. It suggests a new reading of Orcagna’s Strozzi altarpiece by applying an iconography-specific methodology; it shows how the dominant figure of the Madonna in Giovanni del Biondo’s Rinuccini altarpiece is iconographically supplanted by the Child; and it defines the structural interrelationship between figures in Lorenzo Monaco’s Bartolini Salimbeni altarpiece.
Part Two examines iconographic development according to the image in the centre panel. The Madonna half-length is examined in relation to the transmission of the iconographic program to the viewer; the Madonna Enthroned is analysed to propose that certain gestures now read as indicating human nature can also be read as indicating the divine; and devices used in the Coronation are identified as newly introduced to vary the emphasis on standardised iconographic elements. Altarpieces showing the Trinity, Christ, Mary and the Saints are considered in terms of their social, liturgical and theological contexts.
Part Three examines scenes in subsidiary parts of the altarpiece and demonstrates how these contribute to overall iconographic themes.
This thesis demonstrates that there was a standardisation of iconographic motifs, but the sum of complex symbolisms used means that each altarpiece must be examined individually to find its iconographic meanings. The thesis suggests a methodology to be used to determine this meaning, as well as providing new knowledge of their iconographic development as a group.
Challis, Kate
‘"Things of Inestimable Value": Deluxe Manuscript Production and the Marketing of Devotion in Late Southern Netherlandish Illumination’.
PhD, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Margaret Manion.)
This thesis investigates a group of thirty-five manuscripts attributed to Gerard Horenbout (c.1465—1540), who was active mostly in the southern Netherlands and, towards the end of his life, at the court of Henry VIII. Most of the manuscripts are liturgical or devotional in character and are catalogued in detail here for the first time. While considerable scholarly attention has been paid to aspects of attribution in late southern Netherlandish illumination, this study demonstrates the importance of approaching the works produced in this period from a variety of interrelated perspectives. As well as attribution, these include the relationship between text and illustration, the contemporary cultural and religious context, changing methods of manuscript production, types of patronage and developments in the art market in the Netherlands at the time. The thesis analyses the elaborate pictorial programmes of these manuscripts in light of these issues. As well as evaluating the problems associated with the oeuvre attributed to Gerard Horenbout, it articulates some of the distinctive characteristics of late southern Netherlandish illumination with special reference to the Book of Hours and the Breviary.
Phd
O’Brien, Alana Aithna
‘San Filippo Benizi, "Honour of the Servi and Florence": His Cycle and Cult at SS. Annunziata, 1460—1621'.
PhD, La Trobe University, Art History Program, 2002. (Robert Gaston.)
This thesis examines how the fresco cycle depicting the life and miracles of S. Filippo Benizi in the forecourt of SS. Annunziata, Florence, painted by Cosimo Rosselli (c.1475) and Andrea del Sarto (1509—10), was perceived and interpreted by its historical beholders. The first section explores the social and liturgical functions of the cycle and investigates its potential spectators and what they knew about Benizi. This thesis make the first in-depth iconographical study of the images, examining the surviving textual lives of S. Filippo up to c.1527, and considers their relationship to the frescos. Its analysis of the narratives reconstructs the historical and intellectual ambience of the cycle.
The second section investigates the origins of the Servite Order (the patron of the cycle) and S. Filippo’s significance for them. A reconstruction of the physical, liturgical and devotional environment of the frescos serves to elucidate who went to SS. Annunziata and for what purposes.
The third section examines official aspects of Benizi’s cult, his canonisation, the development of his liturgy, the manifestations of his Florentine cult, and its relationship with others at SS. Annunziata. The first chapter of the final section investigates what worshippers knew about Benizi, and through which media. It clarifies which factors made them more sensitive to Benizi and his cult, and thus be more likely to engage in dialogue with the cycle. Particular emphasis is given to evidence gleaned from the inquisitorial hearings for the canonisation of Benizi held in 1619—21 which throw unexpected light on the issue of spectator reception of the frescos.
MA by Research
Cahill, Joanne Lawrie
‘Parmigianino’s Representation of Women and his Female Patrons, 1503—1540'.
Master of Arts, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Jaynie Anderson.)
The thesis examines Parmigianino’s interpretation of the myth of Diana and Actaeon in a frescoed room at Fontanellato. An examination of the relationship between Parmigianino’s painted version and the text of Ovid’s Metamorphoses shows how an ekphrastic relationship between painting and poetry was established. It is argued that the patrons are included in the guise of mythological characters, and that the function of the room where the fresco cycle was located was that of a boudoir. The nature of Parmigianino’s influence upon Titian is also examined, as is the scientific process of the conservation of the fresco. The thesis also analyses the critical reception, iconography, and socio-historical aspects of Parmigianino’s Madonna dal Collo Lungo. It is argued that both the Fontanellato fresco cycle and the Madonna dal Collo Lungo had particular meanings for the female patrons who commissioned these works.
Hudson, Hugh
‘Re-Examining Van Eyck: a New Analysis of the Ince Hall Virgin and Child’.
MA, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Jaynie Anderson.)
The Ince Hall Virgin and Child was attributed to Jan van Eyck by historians of early Netherlandish art from 1854 to 1956. Between 1956 and 1959 the work was subject to a technical and art-historical analysis in Europe, resulting in the reclassification of the work as a copy by a follower of Van Eyck, or possibly a forgery. Subsequently, a number of art historians have suggested that not even the composition is by van Eyck and that the work is a pastiche. Nevertheless, some scholars continue to support an attribution to Van Eyck. This thesis makes a critical reappraisal of the scientific and art historical evidence relating to this issue.
The first chapter examines the provenance of the work. The second examines published and unpublished documents relating to the technical analysis in Melbourne, Brussels, London and Amsterdam. It interprets infrared reflectographs of the painting that were made for this thesis. It is argued that, contrary to the 1950s analysis, there is no technical impediment to an attribution of the work to van Eyck. Furthermore, technical analysis reveals numerous correspondences with van Eyck’s works in the pigments, paint layer structures, underdrawing style and pentimenti. In the third chapter it is argued that the execution, composition and iconography are closely related to those of van Eyck’s securely attributed works. In the fourth chapter the attribution of the work is discussed. It is concluded that the evidence suggests that the attribution of the work to Van Eyck or his studio is justifiable. The possibility that the work is a free copy is not excluded, but it is argued that the case for this is undermined by numerous correspondences in materials and technique to works by van Eyck, and by its relationship to versions of the composition by other artists.
MA by Research
Nicholls, Edwin Stafford
‘The Art of Charity: Regent Group Portraits in Seventeenth-Century Holland’.
MA, La Trobe University, Art History Program, 2003. (Frank Heckes.)
This thesis focuses on the development of the regent group portrait in seventeenth-century Holland. These paintings were mainly commissioned at the request of townspeople who wished to celebrate their service to the community in their roles as regents, or directors, of charitable institutions. Regent group portraits form only one branch of the broader subject of Dutch group portraiture, which includes paintings of a wide variety of sitters, from craft guild directors and regents to surgeons and civic guards. Together, these group portraits formed a new category of painting which was unique to the Netherlands.
Since the publication of Alois Riegl’s Das Holländische Gruppenporträt in 1902 few studies of these regent group portraits have emerged. This thesis shows that this category of group portraiture was singularly important. As well as demonstrating the technical skills of a particular artist, group portraits commemorate the distinctive role of the regent and the charitable institution in the Dutch Republic during its Golden Age.
MA by Research
Wright-Gryst, Jane Goodwin Morrison
‘Death Personified: An Examination of the Visual Image in Victorian England’.
MA by Advanced Studies and Shorter Thesis, thesis 66%, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classics and Archaeology, 2002. (Alison Inglis.)
For centuries humans have given visual form to the coming of death. This thesis investigates the survival of the medieval image of Death–personified as a living skeleton–in nineteenth-century English art. It argues that the traditional iconography continued to be employed, especially in graphic media, and demonstrates that Victorian artists were ready to depict the subject of Death in new ways. The thesis is divided into four chapters, commencing with an historical overview of the iconography of Death including such themes as the Dance of Death and the apocalyptic image of Death on a Pale Horse. It is shown that the original didactic and religious intent of the image as admonitory homily is lost as the image becomes used for satire and social comment. The second chapter examines a range of images related to the theme of death as it appeared in Victorian genre painting. It shows that the traditional figure of Death personified was reworked in modern terms and presented in a contemporary setting. The image of Death was often covertly expressed, but the themes of Death and the Maiden and the Grim Reaper can still be discerned. The third chapter presents an analysis of new representations of Death, including the concept of Death as a consolatory figure. The work of G. F. Watts is surveyed, focussing on his innovative vision of Death as a woman. The final chapter examines the strong continuation of the medieval, skeletal image of Death in the graphic arts, particularly in the work of Sandys, Burne-Jones, Legros and Strang.
PhD
Adamson, Natalie Ann
‘The Identity of the École de Paris in Painting and Criticism 1939—1964’.
PhD, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Roger Benjamin.)
This thesis reconstructs and analyses the history of the group of painters presented in exhibitions and discussed in the contemporary press as the ‘École de Paris’, a ‘phantom’ school which had neither enrolled students nor official teachers. Through a close analysis of the art criticism which sought to establish and define the identity of the school, this thesis shows that the École de Paris dominated the production and reception of painting in postwar France. It argues that the resuscitation of the École de Paris following the liberation of the city in 1944 was driven by the urge to reconstruct a harmonious artistic community and a powerful national tradition in the wake of the war. The École de Paris became the most important site for the debates over the validity of foreign contributions to the national tradition of painting, the resurgence of the avant-garde, the role of abstract painting in comparison to traditional realism, and the imbrication of Cold War politics with culture. It was a complex and contradictory discourse involving art critics, painters, curators, and art dealers, each of whom fought to establish a different version of the École de Paris.
Charting the critical arguments and the mutations of the painting style which constitutes the École de Paris reveals that the school performed a dual role: it was both the motor for a new avant-garde in the form of lyrical abstraction, and a reactionary force, fighting for figuration as the foundation of an unchanging national tradition. This thesis establishes that the style known as Non-Figuration became the preferred strategy of mediation in the École de Paris painting. Non-Figuration sought to reconcile the extremes of modernity and tradition, abstraction and realism.
This thesis traces the history of the postwar École de Paris through to the early 1960s, by which time reconciliation was no longer an option and the primacy of painting was being challenged. The hegemony of École de Paris painting came to an end as the tensions between the emphasis on individual originality and the conservative desire to reconstitute a collectivity fragmented it beyond repair. The conflicts which swirled around the paintings, artists and critical writing of the École de Paris provide exemplary representations of the crisis between nationalism and cosmopolitanism in French postwar history.
Tosaki, Eiichi
‘Squared Grooves–Prelude to Visualised Rhythm in the Work of Piet Mondrian’.
PhD, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Roger Benjamin, Graeme Marshall.)
This dissertation examines the experience of visual rhythm in the context of Piet Mondrian’s conception of ‘rhythm as stasis’ through analyses of Mondrian’s early mature Neoplastic compositions (1922—27). Its aim is to recast questions concerning signification in non-representational art, and to propose that the signification of visual rhythm can occur outside the semantic field. Wittgenstein’s ‘seeing-aspects’ arguments provides the model for seeing rhythm in Mondrian’s Neoplastic painting.
Art historians and theoreticians have not hitherto considered rhythm to be a central theme in Mondrian’s work. Rhythm has been treated dismissively or discussed in terms of stylistic development, and his somewhat formalistic theorisation of Neoplastic rhythm seems at odds with the flamboyance of jazz and dancing with which he is associated. In spite of these inconsistences, it can be argued that there is a coherent notion of rhythm to be found in Mondrian’s writings, which operate as an important undercurrent throughout his Neoplastic career (1917—44).
Phd
Aykut, Susan N.
‘The Turkish Bath: A Window to the World of the Ottoman Turks’.
PhD, La Trobe University, Art History Program, 2002. (Robert Gaston, Adrian Jones.)
This thesis considers the historical and social importance of the Turkish bath (hamam) in Ottoman culture. This cultural history of the bath attempts a broad survey of the world of the hamam in Istanbul since 1453. Using published sources in Turkish, French and English, from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries, it examines the Ottoman culture of bathing. This thesis also explores the many Western representations of, and discourses about, the Turkish bath, generated by artists, ambassadors and travellers.
The study of the bath offers a microcosm of Ottoman life and history. Examining attitudes toward bathing and cleanliness reveal key notions of the body, ritual and space in Ottoman society. The bath was the only institution in the Ottoman world to which men and women, rich and poor, Muslim and infidel, had access. Almost every rite of passage of the individual can be charted through ceremonies marked in some way in the hamam. The bath was the only legitimate place for the Ottoman citizen to celebrate their sensual, spiritual, symbolic and social being. For students of comparative culture the bath offers important contrasts between Islamic-Ottoman and Christian-European attitudes.
PhD
Neale, Anne
‘Illuminating Nature: The Art and Design of E.L. Bateman 1816—1897’.
PhD, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Ann Galbally).
Edward La Trobe Bateman (1816—97) was an English artist and designer who lived and worked in Victoria from 1852 to 1869. He came from an extraordinary family and was a close associate of the young artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and worked with the influential design reformer, Owen Jones.
Bateman’s talents in art and design were applied across a wide range of media. His work in Australia and Britain is examined under the headings of Illumination, Chromolithography and Book Design; Drawing and Painting; Landscape Design; and Decorative Art and Architecture (including interior design, textile design and pattern design). In each field his work is identified, described and analysed, often for the first time, and an attempt is made to evaluate the significance of Bateman’s contribution to nineteenth-century developments in that area.
The consistent theme uniting Bateman’s work in disparate fields is that of ‘illuminating Nature’. This applies both literally and metaphorically. In his art and design Bateman shed light upon the exquisite beauties of Nature, not simply for its own sake, but with an awareness that a heightened perception of such subjects might also be a path to spiritual enlightenment. Bateman’s sensitivity to ‘illuminating Nature’, and his exceptional capacity for illuminating Nature for the benefit of others, resulted in a unique body of work, the extent and significance of which has not previously been recognised.
MA by ResearchPace, Jane
‘William Strutt’s Black Thursday and Bushrangers: Two Australian History Paintings and Their French Antecedents’.
Master of Arts, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Ann Galbally.
The subject of this thesis is the English artist William Strutt (1825—1915), who, after gaining his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, travelled to Australia in 1850. He stayed in Victoria for a period of approximately eleven years punctuated by a year spent in New Zealand. This thesis focuses on the analysis of two of his history paintings: Black Thursday February 6th 18511864) and Bushrangers, Victoria, Australia 1852 (1887). The subjects of these paintings were derived from actual events that occurred while Strutt resided in Victoria, although the paintings were completed upon his return to England. It is argued that Strutt was deeply indebted to the French artists Horace Vernet (1789—1863) and Paul Delaroche (1797—1856) for the complex multi-layered treatment of contemporary history painting he made his own.PhD
Roberts, Julie
‘Painting the Landscape into Place: The Interwar Landscape Painting of Australia and New Zealand and its Colonial Antecedents’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. (Leigh Astbury.)
This thesis explores the ways in which the landscape art of the former British colonies of Australia and New Zealand responded to the physical constituents of the land, as well as the psychic needs of the European occupier of the land. Using a comparative method, the thesis reveals the complex nexus of reality, desire and art practices in creating culturally-valued images of place. Six primary themes are explored: colonial responses to place; the quest for the genius loci and the development of regionalism; identification of a distinctive and metaphysically significant local light; the native tree as an icon of place and embodiment of national myth; the significance of the representation of human life in predominantly empty lands; and the confrontation of the modernist vision with the land and the landscape tradition. This thesis argues that antipodean landscape painting, rather than being a blank canvas upon which an artist could create the scene that he or she desired, should be understood to be part of a dynamic dialogue with place.
Sarmiala-Berger, Kirsti
‘Images of Self-Transformation: Occult and Mystical Influences in Australian Art 1890s—1950s’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. (Gary Bouwma (Sociology), Leigh Astbury (Visual Culture).)
The aim of this thesis is to show that the mystico-occult was a crucial influencing factor in Australian art between the 1890s and 1950s. To this end, an outline of four esoteric movements, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Witchcraft and the Golden Dawn, is presented, together with a discussion of the extent of their presence in Australia. The ideas, personal histories, socio-cultural contexts, and selected works of four Australian artists–Charles Douglas Richardson, Christian Waller, Roy de Maistre and Rosaleen Norton–are discussed. It is found that each of these artists was decisively influenced by the mystico-occult. Like the fin de siècle Symbolists, these four Australians saw art as a medium for the revelation of revelation of transcendent truths, and an instrument in the process of self-transformation. A number of previously undiscovered documentary associations are presented, such as the influence of Beatrice Irwin’s New Science of Colour on Roy de Maistre’s theories of colour and form.
Williams, Kristina Eleanor
‘Her Self Portrayed: Australian Women’s Self-Portraits between the Wars 1918—1939'.
PhD, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classics and Archaeology. (Ruth Zubans.)
The subject of this dissertation is female self-portraits in Australia of the interwar years, 1918 to 1939, and its primary concern is to consider self-portraiture as a conceptual process. Self-portrayal can be understood as an act of cultural invention rather than as a means of unmediated access to an essential self.
This thesis examines the challenges faced by Australian inter-war women in using an aesthetic convention designed to champion ‘the artist’, a masculinist paradigm. The misogynist values encoded in traditional self-portrait iconography mediated the process of self-imagining for women. Thus in seeking to portray the ‘self’, women were forced to devise strategies to deal with the exclusions integral to self-portrait traditions.
This thesis argues that the exclusions formalised through self-portrait iconography provided a microcosm of the broader historical marginalisation of women in the 1920s and 1930s. Seen in this way, Australian inter-war female self-portraiture is a register of the wider struggle by women to work for equal pay, to accommodate new forms of femininity and to exercise their rights as citizens.
MA by Research
Pont, Margaret
‘Representations of Saint Francis by Arthur Boyd’.
MA, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classics and Archaeology, 2002. (Christopher Marshall.)
This thesis examines works by Arthur Boyd dealing with the theme of St Francis, the importance of which, both in Boyd’s oeuvre and for Franciscan iconography, has not hitherto been recognised. Issues examined include the influence of Boyd’s uncle Martin Boyd and his commission for the Grange frescoes, Boyd’s involvement in the Blake Prize, and his travels to Europe and collaboration with the medievalist Tom Boase. The personal significance of the St Francis story for Boyd is explored in an examination of his St Francis with Potter Holding a Butterfly, which was conceived as a tribute to his father, Merric Boyd. All traceable works on the theme of St Francis by Boyd are catalogued.
Willoughby, Emma
‘"Woman Making an Exhibition of Herself": History and Art at the Women’s Work Exhibition, 1907'.
MA, thesis 66%, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2001. (Leigh Astbury.)
This thesis examines the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work, held in 1907 in the Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne. It investigates the political aims of the exhibition and examines the key issues of how the term ‘work’ was constructed in relation to women, the conflict between constructions of ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ and the gendered nature of these terms, and the various ways in which women engaged with nationalist discourse in the exhibition. Finally, this thesis considers the various political positions of art historians in relation to the exhibition, and suggests that attempts which have not challenged the structures of canon-creation in terms of gender are easily forgotten in the historical imagination.
Masters by CourseworkSchaper, Sarah
‘Of Love and Unknown Seas: Norman Lindsay’s Visualization of Classical Mythology’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2003. (Alison Inglis.)
This thesis examines the sources of the imagery of Norman Lindsay’s erotic classical subjects, arguing that he transformed well-known classical myths and art into a distinctively Lindsayan celebration of life.
Smith, Damian
‘Sidney Nolan: The Kelly Myth’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5%, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Jaynie Anderson.)
This thesis examines the themes of Sidney Nolan’s many Kelly paintings in order to test the validity of his claim to have lost faith in modernism, leaving him in a position of being ‘at variance with most Western art’.
Australian Architecture and Design, 20th CenturyPhD
Carter, Nanette
‘Modernist Furniture and Interior Design in Melbourne 1930—1939: A Critical Evaluation’.
PhD, The University of Melbourne, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Chris McAuliffe.)
Masters by Research
Logan, Cameron
‘Building Stories: Architecture and the Making of Melbourne’s History’.
MA, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2003. (Conrad Hamann.)
This thesis focuses on the discursive production of Melbourne’s history and the privileged role of the architecture of the central city within that process. This is approached first as a mode of cultural production in the present that is characterised by its relationship to tourism. The influence of a dominant historiography on this mode of cultural production and exhibition is then examined, followed by an historical analysis of the way the city has been produced as an historic place. This involves looking at Melbourne in the period leading up to and during the 1880s, when the city experienced a building boom, and looking at the city in the 1950s, when it experienced its next period of sustained building activity. The thesis also examines the origins of the preservation movement that accompanied the period of expansion. It is argued that the production of Melbourne’s history needs itself to be historicised in order to understand the way the city envisages itself and its past in the present.
Lovitt, Carolyn
‘Aboriginal Art as Decor: The Politics of Assimilation in White Australian Homes 1930—1970’.
MA, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, The University of Melbourne, 2001. (Roger Benjamin, Fiona Nicoll, Chris McAuliffe.)
This thesis examines the White Australian home between 1930 and 1970, during the formation and implementation of policies of assimilation. The home is considered as one of the primary sites for the display and negotiation of Aboriginal culture. The incorporation of Aboriginal-style décor within the White Australian home provided a powerful metaphor for the way Aboriginal people might relate to the Australian state under the policy of assimilation.
In the 1930s, the adaptation of Aboriginal art to home décor represented a determined effort to recontextualise Aboriginal culture and assert its relevance in contemporary Australian life at a time when this was far from being a given. The public campaigns and the private correspondence of A.P Elkin and Frederick McCarthy are examined in order to show how anthropologists influenced artists, and how the pedagogical environment of the museum met with the commercial, ideological and increasingly political sphere of the domestic.
In the postwar period enormous claims were made for the role of décor in Australian homes as commerce, politics, and modernity all intersected at a domestic level. Through examining the work of artist Byram Mansell it is argued that the metaphors of Aboriginal-style décor extended beyond the home into home-like spheres elsewhere, particularly the railways. The railways offered a theatrical experience of modernity in which Aboriginal art would help Australia come to terms with the new world and the old at the same time.
Pidoto, Helen
‘Imaging Nature: Towards an Architectural Genre of the Late Twentieth Century’.
MA, thesis 66%, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2001. (Conrad Hamann.)
This thesis sets out to examine the emergence of an architecture with a strong inherent feeling for nature, from the English Freestyle movement (1850—1920), through to the most recent fin de siècle. The emphasis is on the most recent period: 1970—2000. Two major narratives are explored. First is the emergence of a ‘green architecture’ movement from an original accord between nature and industrialisation in nineteenth-century architecture. Second is a concern that although green issues are now widely and conspicuously acknowledged in art, architecture and environmentalism, there are few precedents that the artist or architect can turn to as an aid in putting green concepts of design into motion.
Spencer, Melissa
‘Australian Furniture Design, 1945-1960: Modernism, Gender and Professionalism’.
Master of Arts, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Ann Galbally.)
This thesis assesses modernist furniture design in the period following the Second World War, focusing on Melbourne designers with a commitment to mass production techniques or contemporary materials. It considers modernist design in an Australian context, identifying the terms in which modernist designers and their supporters defined their work, and the social, industrial and formal objectives they sought to achieve. It asks whether the rhetorical claims made for design during this period–especially its purported ability to affect social, economic and cultural change–were realised.
Although it has been claimed that modernist design was both egalitarian and a way of overcoming post-war furniture shortages, this thesis shows that modernist furniture continued to circulate within a privileged social milieu, was relatively expensive, and did little to overcome furniture shortages. And although modernist designers claimed that their designs were stylistically neutral, this thesis shows that in reality they were wedded to an International-style aesthetic, and produced a limited range of forms strongly influenced by European, British and American modernist designers.
The repeated distinctions drawn between modernist and Moderne styles can be read as an attempt to distance the work of post-war designers from certain negative connotations associated with earlier designers who worked in moderne styles. Inter-war designers were regarded as feminine, fashionable and commercial, and post-war designers went to great lengths to promote their own work as ‘masculine’, objectively valid, and rational. The gendered nature of the differentiation of modernist and moderne design, and the physical and psychological scrutiny experienced by some women in the face of sleek, uncluttered furniture and interiors, belies the claim that modernist design would benefit women.
Phd
Elliott, Lucy
‘Performing Gender: Tracing the Body from Classical Texts and Images to Contemporary Images and Contexts’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2001. (Annette van den Bosch.)
Through the work of post-structuralists Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Elizabeth Grosz and Judith Butler, women’s corporeality has come to be interpreted as variable and mutating, transgressing the limits of a femininity inscribed by male discourse. Using feminist and post-structuralist critiques of classical texts, aesthetic theory and art history, combined with a study of classical, modern and contemporary art, this thesis argues for the re-negotiation of the body as politicised in relation to social, cultural, sexual and gendered difference. This thesis investigates through original artistic, scientific, medical and philosophical texts, male ideologies of femininity that have constructed female corporeality as ideally reproductive, passive and beautiful. Contemporary theoretical feminist investigations into body, gender, aesthetic discourse and art history are also explored, with an emphasis on how the female body has been structured in relation to a prejudiced account of sexual difference.
Foster, Julie Roswarne
‘Materpieces: The Representation of Maternal Subjectivity in the Art of Seven Late Modern Women Artists’
PhD, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Jeanette Hoorn.)
This thesis investigates the representation of maternal subjectivity in the art of seven woman artists. It argues that existing accounts of the maternal subject are inadequate for understanding these works of art and propose new interpretations based on recent theories by psychoanalytic feminist scholars. This is explored through the four parts of the thesis: Absence, Fantasy, Loss and Abjection, themes central to the discussion of maternity in feminist psychoanalytic theory. It is contended that these maternal themes are already encoded in the individual expression of the artists.
As no term exists, a new word, ‘materpieces’, is coined to describe works of art produced by female artists which represent maternal subjectivity. These works typically express a range of meanings that have been impugned or repressed. It is argued that maternal subjectivity is ambiguous and more complex than the existing range of interpretations allows. The metaphoric representation of the mother in the works examined extends the meaning beyond religious or sentimental versions of maternity.
Representation of the mother in the writing of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Melanie Kline, Nancy Chodorow, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray are reviewed. Following the work of these theorists, which challenges Freud’s notion of the ‘oedipal unconscious’ and the negation of the mother, it is proposed that repressed memories of the maternal body and the pre-oedipal phase are central to representations of maternity that assume the unity and harmony of the mother-child bond. Such works reveal the mother to be ambivalent and anxious. The maternal body, birth, pregnancy, and the mother-daughter relationship are crucial motifs that traditionally have been denied in patriarchal representation. It is demonstrated that contemporary artistic criticism of such works tends to dismiss, or to entirely overlook, the importance of maternal subjectivity.
Jaslowski, Zygmunt
‘Contemporary Art in Poland, 1989—2003: History, Theory, Practice, Art Market’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2003. (Conrad Hamann.)
The thesis explores continuities and change in Poland’s art and art market. The primary focus is on Poland since the end of its communist government, but the study also considers the antecedents and sources of the present condition before 1989. Linkages between Postmodernism and Social Realism are also explored.
Parr, Adrian
‘Creative Production: From da Vinci to Deleuze’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. (John Gregory.)
This thesis explores the work of Leonardo da Vinci within the context of contemporary philosophical thought and art, with the aim of developing a concept of creative production. It argues that the conditions of a truly creative practice require an imaginative reworking of the real so that new and unforeseen realities can emerge. Studying Leonardo’s notebooks and sketches, where a cross-pollination of theory and practice abounds, this thesis demonstrates that creativity is a critical power that operates between the real and ideal. It employs an understanding of power in terms of an enabling and productive capacity taken from Deleuze and Nietzsche’s work in this area. It realigns Leonardo within a contemporary setting for two reasons: to theoretically and visually transform the privileged status of Leonardo; and to overcome the historical monumentality of the past as being contained, and closed-off from reinvention.
Presa, Elizabeth
‘The Poetics of the Book in Sculpture’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2003. (John Gregory (Visual Culture), Chris Worth (Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies).)
This thesis examines ways in which themes of textuality can be developed and expounded through sculptural practice. It examines the work of three writers, Edmond Jabès, Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida, and from a number of their texts identifies metaphors and images that can be considered foundational to addressing themes connected with the poetics of the book, and to reading and writing. These themes include interpretations of the text as a living, breathing organism; as a textile; and as a habitation. In using these themes as my rationale I produced seven sculptural installations and a performance. Sets of gestures or choreographies of scrolling, folding, binding and basting were devised for each successive work. Through framing my sculptural practice within specific poetic and philosophical concerns I was able to generate and examine new visualisations of the poetics of the text, insisting throughout on the centrality of metaphor and embodiment to theoretical and philosophical accounts of the book, reading and writing.
Toffoletti, Kim
‘Transformations: Feminism and the Posthuman’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. (Anne Marsh.)
This thesis argues that posthuman figurations create productive possibilities for feminist formulations of subjectivity. It critically considers the ways in which posthuman figurations enable a new feminist exploration of subjectivity in the techno-age. Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulation provides the framework through which are assessed posthuman images circulating in the popular sphere in order to offer a new politics for the subject. Configurations of subjectivity, identity and the body that are located in a myth of the original or natural are contested in favor of articulating selfhood in terms of transformation.
MA by ResearchBullock, Natasha
‘The Abject in Contemporary Photo-works: Borderline States of Corporeal Affect’.
MA, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. (Anne Marsh.)
This thesis interprets aspects of Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. It illustrates how Kristeva’s explication of abjection is democratic and does not support a strategy of political transformation. Throughout her theory a tension is expressed between key terms such as maternal/paternal, semiotic/symbolic, refusal/sublimation, fascination/horror and subject/object. This thesis shows how these terms can be understood as borderline states of corporeal affect. Using an abstract framework based upon the notion of skin as a border between the outside and inside, as both a dead and a living surface, the contemporary photo-works of Cindy Sherman, Bill Henson, Dennis del Favero and Warren Breninger are theorised in relation to Kristeva’s ideas.
Evans, Kirri
‘Commodified Bodies: Sport, Image and Gender’.
MA, thesis 66%, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. (John Gregory.)
This thesis examines the images presented by athletes in professional sport. Preferences for various aesthetic traits are explored, as well as the expectations placed upon women in contemporary society to meet these standards. The marketing of women’s beauty also forms a significant part of the discussion. While comparisons are made with the marketing of men’s images, the primary focus remains the sexual objectification of sportswomen. Case studies are discussed to illustrate the methods of image construction. The implications of such imagery for sport and broader society are examined in depth. The thesis concludes by discussing several examples of athletes who are resisting current modes of objectification.
Forster, Susan
‘Constructing Australian Childhood: Power, Discourse and Desire in Australian Visual Culture’.
MA, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2001. (John Gregory.)
Gardner, Anthony
‘Virtualisation: The Convergence of Virtuality and Digitality in Contemporary Australian Art and Architectural Representation’.
MA, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Charles Green.)
This thesis critically examines the terms ‘the virtual’ and ‘virtualisation’ as they was used in Australian visual culture and its discourse between 1997 and 2001. It focuses on Melbourne’s Federation Square project and its representations during the period of the Square’s construction, including non-digital works by Mathieu Gallois and Callum Morton.
Virtualisation, it is argued, is located at the convergence of two concepts: ‘digitality’ and ‘virtuality’. Rather than confuse the two, as does much digital theory and practice, this thesis reflects upon and separates the two discourses. It then attempts to analyse the ways they converge in recent Australian art. Working from writings by Brian Massumi, Anna Munster and especially Pierre Lévy, it argues that virtualisation represents a key aesthetic in Australian visual culture in the late 1990s. Virtualisation is complicated by socio-cultural factors. This thesis considers Australian cultural policies and artists’ theories of relational aesthetics in the 1990s. It argues that virtualisation amounts to a commercial aesthetic. Federation Square is a ‘realisation’ of architectural and commercial determinations of self, rather than a ‘virtualisation’ of the self.
This thesis concludes by doubting whether virtuality is possible in a period of hyper-commercialisation and highly-determined cultural experience.
Hallows, Charlotte
‘Fashion and the Visual: On Appearances without Essences’.
MA, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2002. (John Gregory.)
This thesis considers the production of fashion as a significant influence in contemporary cultural practices and systems of thought. It begins with an explanation of materiality and materialism. The space of the garment, the body and architecture are related to ‘alterity’, a state of difference in physicality and thought that has been explored by the philosopher Mark C. Taylor. The first chapter investigates the phantasmic effects of retail architecture and the tattoo. The second chapter considers the imaginary affects of the fashion designers, Miguel Adrover, Rei Kawakubo, Hussein Chalayan and Junya Watanabe. Fashion design and photography are considered in terms of Gilles Delueze’s work on the philosophers Leibniz and Spinoza. The final chapter considers the camouflage pattern in a modernist genealogy as a fashionable signifier of trauma and banality in the present.
Hunt, Pennie
‘The Mirror and the Microscope: Blood in the Art of Gordon Bennett and Peter Robinson’.
MA, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Paul Paffen.)
This thesis charts the legacy of blood in notions of ‘race’ or ethnicity as represented in the art of Gordon Bennett and Peter Robinson. It interrogates, and reflects upon, the structures of the Enlightenment, and magnifies the lingering consequences of this regime for indigenous inhabitants. Faced with the manifestations of blood in the works of the two artists, one is made aware of the ‘fluid’ connection between the past and the present, linking historical interpretations of blood with those in currency today. This visceral link, in which blood is metaphorised as a pathway, provides a connection between the works of Bennett and Robinson.
Jury, Anne-Marie
‘Whirligigs in the Expanded Field: An Exploration of the Spatial Sensibility of Women’s Installation Art’.
MA, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2003. (Anne Marsh.)
Rosalind Krauss’ ‘expanded field’ has been exhausted since its formulation more than twenty years ago. Its continued invocation as an interpretive framework for installation art in Australia performs an historicism that it was itself formulated to thwart, and consigns the practice to the past. As installation art has itself expanded since its emergence in the 1970s, so too should its interpretive framework. The expansion, in this instance, takes the form of the application of a feminist spatial model, as proposed by Luce Irigaray, to the work of Australian women installation artists for the exploration of what appears to be a convergence between installation art and feminism.
Teck Cheng, June Yap
‘Tattoo Art/Taboo Art’.
Master of Arts, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Chris McAuliffe.)
This thesis explores the contemporary tattoo and its interpretation. It argues that an understanding of the contemporary tattoo involves more than arguments concerning its legitimacy as art or its relegation to a craft practised by historic cultures. The fact that there is neither a straightforward explanation for the increasingly visibility and popularity of the contemporary tattoo, nor a simple way of understanding the changes the tattooed body undergoes, suggests that the tattoo should be situated within the larger framework of a study of bodily decorations that focuses on the interplay of historical, anthropological, and aesthetic texts. The complexity of the interactions that constitute the discourse of the tattoo suggests that the tattoo should be understood in terms of the ‘excessive body’. Tattoo art is an envisaging of excess: excess of the body, excess of meaning, excess of sensation, excess of desire, and excess of aversion.
PhD
Browne, Pamela
‘Latvian Photography from 1956 to the Late 1970s: An Historical and Critical Study’.
PhD, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2003. (John Gregory.)
This thesis is concerned with Latvian photography from 1956 until the late 1970s. In an attempt to locate, frame and evaluate photographic practice of this period, historiography, visual culture, literature and contemporary critical theory are considered in a discursive approach to interpreting photographic representations. While the unofficial art photography of this period has been widely documented, this study addresses official salon photographic practice that has been neglected or recognised only for its supposed failings and inferiority. Through an investigation of the representation of the female nude in Latvian salon photography, this study reveals the influence of German philosopher Ernst Bloch’s principle of hope and the utopian function of art and literature. The study also addresses issues of Latvian national identity and social consciousness, which photographers intentionally obscured under layers of symbolism, allegory and metaphor.
Ebury, Francis
‘Making Pictures: Australian Pictorial Photography as Art 1897—1957’.
PhD, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Chris McAuliffe.)
Pictorialism was the dominant international photographic style from the 1890s until the late 1930s. This thesis examines the history of the movement in Australia from its beginnings in 1897 until the late 1950s when it finally faded away. Nineteenth century photographers used the camera to portray ‘reality’ or ‘truth’. Pictorial photographers, who first appeared in Europe in the 1890s, aspired to be known as artists who sought beauty rather than ‘truth’ in their imagery. However, as an artistic instrument the camera had limitations. The most important of these was the fact that a negative is simply a record of what is in front of the lens; how then could a photographic print be art? Another drawback was the perception, as cheap cameras became widely available at the end of the century, that taking a photograph required little or no talent: ‘anyone’ could do it. Many Pictorialists therefore aimed to make images that resembled photographs as little as possible. To this end various manipulative devices were employed.
The aim of this thesis is to supplement the reasonably well-known story of Australian Pictorialists noted for this kind of manipulation, who produced soft-focus ‘impressionist’ hand work, with an account of the achievement of others, working in a ‘natural’ style, whose history has been neglected. It is also concerned to reclaim the reputations of Pictorialists, both men and women, from the reproach that they were only concerned to imitate the works of other media, notably nineteenth-century painting. This has involved an exploration of who took photographs, what their motives were, and what their images signified, paying particular attention to the contextual, institutional, historical and discursive parameters of Pictorialism.
Marsh, Anne
‘The Darkroom: Photography and the Theatre of Desire’.
PhD, The University of Melbourne, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2000. (Roger Benjamin, Chris McAuliffe.)
This thesis investigates the history of photography in order to demonstrate that photography is a medium of representation that reflects certain psychological processes. It is argued that photography is intricately bound within a nexus of desire, performance and memory. Moments from photography’s histories from c.1839 to the present are examined in order to establish that photography is a performative medium, one which inscribes the desire of the photographer and the subject being photographed. This thesis reads out of the surveillance paradigm of photography, where the camera is interpreted as a weapon used to police societies, and insists that photography is always engaged in a theatrical event, one in which desire is inscribed.
The aim of the thesis is to read against or away from a determinist interpretation that describes the power relationships within the photographic process in terms of a dominant agent of overseer capturing or inscribing a less powerful or unaware other. Although the surveillance model of interpretation is compelling, it does not account for all photography. This is especially evident when one considers the archival projects driven by ethnology, anthropology, the legal and medical systems and various State powers.
The thesis analyses the ways in which photography has been conceived and imagined; what is has been used to symbolise and how its negative/positive process was, and is, used as a metaphor for the workings of the conscious and unconscious mind. It explores how photography has been used as a conjuring device, a theatrical apparatus for staged events and imagined phantasms, and how these aspects of photography have been manipulated by photographers, both professionals and amateurs, to inscribe narratives and document performances that destabilise the scopic regimes of modernity.
Masters by CourseworkRhodes, Kate
‘Shock! Horror! Contemporary Photography and the Cinematic’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Charles Green.)
This thesis argues that the photographs of Gregory Crewdson, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Jeff Wall and Charlie White were consciously produced to simulate and enact statements within a cinematic language system.
PhD
Message, Kylie Rachel
‘Exhibiting Visual Culture: Narrative, Perception and the New Museum’.
PhD, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology (Chris McAuliffe.)
This thesis examines a recent shift in museological discourse when the discourses of narrative, cinema and museums came together visibly and publicly in museum buildings. In Australia, this shift began in 1995 with the Museum of Sydney, continued in 1998 with plans for the development of the Melbourne Museum, Federation Square, and the National Museum of Australia, and was fully realised in 2001 with the opening of the National Museum of Australia.
The exhibitions associated with this new museological discourse present the experience of the visitor as something new, in that it is both immersive and postmodern. This thesis closely examines these signifiers of ‘newness’, asking why they are privileged by museums, and whether this trope of newness has historical precedents. It argues that the ‘new’ museum presents itself as an interdisciplinary institution concerned with replicating and developing connections across disciplinary fields (rather than according to a historical chronology) and that the primary historical allegiance of this approach is with early modernism.
MA by ResearchOsmolovskaya, Julia
‘Oral History in Australian Museums: Issues and Practice’.
MA, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Christopher Marshall.)
The term oral history is used by historians and museum professionals to signify both the body of knowledge contained in human memory, and the method of gathering new information and generating of new documents. The awareness of the distinction between these two different definitions is crucial in museum work because each of the definitions has different methodologies of application. In both of these guises oral history can be applied in almost all areas of museum work, from the investigation of new topics and collection research to its incorporation in exhibitions. This thesis examines oral history initiatives in Australian museums and proposes new methods in their application.
The most underutilised area of application of oral history remains the incorporation of oral history into exhibitions. This thesis proposes that this area, in fact, offers the most effective means of applying oral history because it enhances the possibilities of communication with visitors, communication being the key function of a museum. The dialogic relationship of the oral history interview provides a particularly strong basis for the creation of new meanings when oral histories are used together with objects. It enables exhibitions to explore how people assign different meanings to objects through the process of using these objects.
Tagliabue, Trevor
‘The Development of Culture, Taste and the Ideal through the Establishment of Provincial Galleries: A Study of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and the Bendigo Art Gallery, c.1884-c.1939’.
MA, Monash University, Visual Culture Section, School of Literary, Visual and Performance Studies, 2001. (Leigh Astbury.)
Bailey, Rebecca C.
‘The History and Use of the Photographic Collection at the State Library of Victoria’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002 (Alison Inglis)
This thesis examines the history of the photographic collection of the State Library of Victoria, focusing on he photographs acquired under the influence of Redmond Barry, and argues that these photographs served as cheap methods of obtaining ‘true’ art, and as records of the successes of colonial life in Victoria.
Keys, Melissa
‘Lasting Impressions: The Shifting Role of the Curator/Director during Thirty Years of Recurrent Exhibitions in Australia’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Alison Inglis.)
This thesis examines a number of recurrent exhibitions, including the Mildura Sculpture Triennial, the Biennale of Sydney, Australian Perspecta, and the Asia Pacific Triennial, and argues that recurrent exhibitions have constantly remodelled their curatorial ways and approaches in order to accommodate rapidly changing artistic and national identities.
Mathews, Hannah
‘In Search of a National Identity: The Australian National Gallery’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002 (Christopher Marshall)
This thesis argues that, despite the intentions of the Australian federal government, and in particular the actions of Prime Minister John Gorton, the Australian National Gallery was not realised as a building with a distinct Australian identity.
Meckes, Vanessa
‘Alive and Dangerous: A Study of Ann Hamilton’s Work and its Relationship to the Museum’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2001. (Christopher Marshall.)
This study of selected works by American installation artist Ann Hamilton (born 1956) investigates the underlying museological critique that runs throughout her work.
Skene, Charlotte
‘"Australian Art beyond the Colonies": A Critical Analysis of the 1898 London Exhibition of Australian Art’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Paul Paffen.)
This thesis argues that the staging of the 1898 Exhibition of Australian Art, held at the Grafton Galleries in London, was inextricably bound up with the patriotic and nationalistic ferment that preceded Federation in Australia.
Tallarida, Maria
‘Droit de suite: The Implications of a Resale Royalty in Australia’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2003. (Alison Inglis.)
This thesis argues that the imbalance between the record prices for Aboriginal art on the secondary market, and the disadvantaged position of the artists who produced them and their communities, is a persuasive argument for establishing droit de suite (a form of intellectual property legislation that entitles an artist to be paid a royalty on the resale of his or her works) in Australia.
Walsh, Katherine Frances
‘The Death of the Slide Collection: Three Case Studies in Melbourne’.
Master of Art Curatorship, thesis 37.5 %, Melbourne University, School of Fine Arts, Classical Studies and Archaeology, 2002. (Alison Inglis.)
This thesis examines the development, growth and future directions of slide collections within public art organizations in Melbourne.