School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemLooking back: contemporary feminist art in Australia and New Zealand( 2016)This thesis sets out to examine the ways in which feminism manifests itself in contemporary art, focusing in particular on Australia and New Zealand. Interviews were conducted with practicing contemporary artists Kelly Doley, FANTASING (Bek Coogan, Claire Harris, Sarah-Jane Parton, Gemma Syme), Deborah Kelly, Jill Orr and Hannah Raisin. During these interviews, a number of key themes emerged which form the integral structure of the thesis. A combination of information drawn from interviews, close reading of art works, and key theoretical texts is used to position contemporary feminist art in relation to its recent history. I will argue that the continuation of feminist practices and devices in contemporary practice points to a circular pattern of repetition in feminist art, which resists a linear teleology of art historical progress. The relationship between feminism and contemporary art lies in the way that current practices revisit crucial issues which continue to cycle through the lived experience of femininity, such as the relationship to the body, to labour and capital, to the environment, and to structures of power. By acknowledging that these issues are not tied to a specific historical period, I argue that feminist art does not constitute a short moment of prolific production in the last few decades of the twentieth century, but is a sustained movement which continually adapts and shifts in order to remain abreast of contemporary issues.
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ItemFranz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873): portraiture in the age of social change( 2016)For nearly four decades, from the early 1830s to the early 1870s, Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73) was one of the most popular and renowned elite portrait specialists, who enjoyed the patronage of royalty, aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. The thesis aims to demonstrate that, firstly, the artist’s success and popularity among the highest echelons of society were contingent upon his professional abilities and bold innovations in portraiture which distinguished the artist among the portrait painters of his era. Secondly, the thesis reassesses Winterhalter’s portraits as visual documents in order to argue that their iconographic narratives encapsulate social changes of the nineteenth century.
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ItemAnatomy of a workshop: the Procaccini family in Milan( 2016)Contextualized in Milan between the end of the 16th and the start of the 17th century, this study investigates the artistic trajectory of the three Procaccini brothers: Camillo (1561-1629), Carlo Antonio (1571-1631) and Giulio Cesare (1574-1625), one of the most important families of painters of the early Italian Seicento. Descending from an Emilian background, the Procaccini influenced the evolution of Lombard art, establishing a famous workshop in Milan and playing a fundamental role in the artistic renovation of the Borromean era, one of the most fascinating periods in Milanese art history. Procaccini’s work is here analysed under the reciprocal perspective of the family workshop, inter-connecting their individual careers and understanding their success as the combination of mutual artistic choices, high level of specialization and precise business organization. In doing so this study revises and updates the modern scholarly literature, which has generally focused on the Procaccini’s individual careers, underestimating both their connections as family members and the importance of their workshop as the key locus of artistic growth and stylistic innovation. Predicated on a micro-sociological approach aimed at understanding the social and eco-nomic conditions under which Procaccini’s art was created, the study is organized according to a chronological framework that retraces the conceptualization, establishment and evolution of their family workshop. Starting from Camillo, Carlo Antonio and Giulio Cesare’s biographies as drawn in 1678 by the Bolognese art historian Carlo Cesare Malvasia, it unravels the Procaccini’s business strategy, highlighting their mutual effort in becoming the most important family of painters working in Milan at the beginning of the 17th century. Dealing with macro-areas of analysis such as family workshops, artists’ training, aristocratic patronage and art market, the study looks at archival evidence of the Procaccini’s social and professional lives, proposing attributions based on documentary, stylistic and technical evidence. The result is a comprehensive analysis that, for the very first time, emphasizes the Procaccini’s role as a family of painters, providing an innovative approach for the study of their celebrated artistic careers.
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ItemArt collectors in colonial Victoria 1854-1892: an analysis of taste and patronage( 1976)My examination of the holdings of private art collections in Victoria before 1892 is confined to British and European art. It was to Britain that taste was oriented, and the emerging group of Australian painters made little impact upon those patrons and collectors recognized as being the cultural leaders of the community. It would have been difficult to incorporate my research on collectors of Australian art in an essay of this length. I have therefore confined myself to a number of general observations set out in Appendix E. These may be useful in better understanding a part of the background against which British and European art was collected. I have limited my discussion to the dates 1854 to 1892. The former date was chosen because it was in that year that private collectors first publicly exhibited pictures in their possession. I have chosen the latter date because by 1892 the recession had taken a firm hold, and it can be confidently said that the first period of wealth had passed. By 1892 art and its market had all but ceased to be a topic of discussion in the Melbourne journals. I will concentrate on the 1880's; my Chapter on the period before 1880 is meant to be no more than a preface. The topic has been approached from two points of view. Chapters I to III concentrate on individual collectors, and attempt to establish, and then clarify, the various currents of taste which prevailed. My first concern was to identify the principal collectors, and then establish the extent of their holdings. The three broad groups that I have defined are discussed in Chapter III, and I have devoted Appendix A to summarizing this essential background information, while at the same time extending the number of collectors discussed. I will be searching both for evidence of motives for collecting, and for the way in which qualitative standards were established, though the results are generally disappointing. I have then approached the topic from an entirely different angle. I felt it important to take a broad approach and examine in more general terms the various influences which worked upon collectors. This has extended to the role of Melbourne's International Exhibitions, to the receptiveness of the community at large to foreign art and, perhaps most importantly, to the state and role of the art market in Melbourne in the 1880's. In doing this I was compelled to leave out detailed discussion of a number of collectors whose pictures might seem to merit a more considered treatment. It would have been possible to devote the entire essay to the first process of identification, and of compilation of holdings. Considering the exploratory nature of the essay, I decided it would be more useful to sketch in a wider background which could then be used as a basis for further research. I will argue that in general Melbourne collectors in the 1880's, while becoming increasingly receptive to foreign art, clung tightly to a wellentrenched, traditional taste for landscape. I will be exploring the background to a fairly wide resistance to modern figurative art, especially "Olympian". Although the 1880's represented the period of Melbourne's greatest wealth collectors did not, in fact, reassess their attitudes to the notion of "high" art. I will argue that from the market's point of view particularly the period was one of unfulfilled expectations. There have been limitations upon my ability to accurately assess the state and holdings of private Melbourne collections. Very few have remained intact - the crash of the 90's saw to that. For this reason I have had to rely almost exclusively on contemporary documents, and as my work progressed it became increasingly clear that the various catalogues and press reports were fraught with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Thus, great care should be taken in accepting attributions. Contemporary scholarship in the field of Victorian art seems to be in a state of flux, and no clearly defined, commonly accepted critical terminology has yet emerged. In describing the various genres and types I have not imposed a strictly uniform system, but have preferred to use a variety of terms which might better help to describe the pictures, many of which I have been unable to illustrate. Because of the limits imposed on an essay like this I have decided not to include a discussion of the development of British aesthetic theory through the nineteenth century, of changing attitudes to landscape and such. I have used the word "taste" in its broadest sense. Ruskin, for example, early recognized the inherent "freedom" of the concept, and argued in Modern Painters "that taste was an instinctive preferring, not a reasoned act of choice". In fact, the publication of Richard Payne Knight's treatise on taste in 1805 marked the final demise of the eighteenth century concept of taste as an intellectual perception governed by reason When the term was used by authors and journalists in Melbourne in the 1880's it was invariably conceived in this broad Ruskinian sense. The problems that I will be identifying and discussing relate principally to questions of motive, and not the establishment of qualitative criteria.
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ItemAustralian animal painting and the human-animal bond in art( 2014)Animal painting is a critically important part of Australian art history, yet it has been afforded scant–if any–scholarly attention. Additionally, as the genre reached an apotheosis in the nineteenth century, animal painting represents a window into Australian society during a phase of rapid development. Domestic animals were a key part of society during this period, as cherished companions and as a driving force behind the expansion of Australian agricultural interests. This thesis begins the task of establishing animal painting within the annals of Australia’s art history. Commencing with an overview of animal painting in different cultures since the birth of art, the thesis then moves to consider the human-animal bond and its impact on the visual representation of animals. The human connection with other species has been represented artistically from Palaeolithic times to the present, yet the portrayal of animals in art is often dismissed as symbolic. By examining the science of the human-animal bond, the thesis explores why humans like to create and look at images of animals. It postulates that a connection with animals affects the way people view paintings when animals are part of the picture. In the same way, artists who specialise in animal painting not only exhibit a strong affinity with animals, they are able to capture the sentience and intelligence of their non-human subjects with greater veracity. Turning to Australian art of the nineteenth century, discussion focusses on the role of domestic animals in colonial society and on the artistic legacy of animal painters. Several artists are singled out for closer scrutiny, in particular, Harold Septimus Power. Septimus Power can be considered an archetypal animal painter: he evinced a strong connection with animals, was highly successful throughout his career and is largely overlooked and underrated since his demise. The intensity of the bond shared between mounted soldiers and their horses was played out in paintings portraying the Australian Light Horse in action during World War I. That Australian animal painters were on the spot to record these events meant their art contributed significantly to the horse-soldier bond forever being entwined with the legend of Anzac. By confirming the importance of animal painting in Australian art, this thesis suggests new avenues of research, both in regard to art and to the human-animal bond. Further exploration of the way animals have been represented in the art of different cultures, and into the significance of the animal gaze in art are just two of the ways in which the study of animal painting can facilitate greater understanding of the role animals play in human life.
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Item'Parafeminism' and parody in contemporary art( 2014)Humour is a pleasurable and productive strategy for feminist artists; however, its role within feminist practice has received limited scholarly attention in the last two decades. The most recent study on the role of humour in feminist art is Jo Anna Isaak’s book Feminism and Contemporary Art: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Laughter (1996, Routledge), which frames feminist subversive laughter through the carnivalesque. Arguing that Isaak’s theory does not account for subsequent paradigm shifts in practice and ideology, this thesis aims to develop a conceptual framework that can explicate the forms and effects of humour currently emerging in contemporary feminist art. To develop this conceptual framework I draw upon art theorist Amelia Jones’ concept of ‘parafeminism,’ which suggests that contemporary feminist art is engaging in a revision of second wave methodologies: assessing and building upon earlier strategies by rejecting coalitional identity politics and reworking feminist visual politics of ‘the gaze.’ I interpret Jones’ theory by returning to Linda Hutcheon’s notion of parody, in order to frame three significant shifts in feminist practice: intimate corporeal preoccupations, phallocentric modes of spectatorship, and historical re-appropriation. To give focus to the influence of these changes in artists’ practice over the last three decades, I apply my framework of parafeminist parody to two major Euro-American case studies: an early Pipilotti Rist video, entitled Pickelporno (1992), and a more recent example, Mika Rottenberg’s video installation Mary’s Cherries (2004), as well as to a selection of works that traverse both video and performative modes of practice by three Australian artists (and collectives): Brown Council, Catherine Bell and the Hotham Street Ladies. Drawing upon writings from Freud, affect theory and corporeal semiotics, I extend Jones’ theory to this wider range of artworks thereby identifying ‘parafeminism’ as a greater phenomenon than previously proposed. To summarise, I aim to identify and develop a theoretical approach that will enable deeper understanding of humorous elements in contemporary feminist art.
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ItemThe art school and the university: research, knowledge, and creative practices( 2011)This thesis tracks changes in ‘research’ and ‘knowledge’ emerging from the incorporation of the art school into the university through the end of the 20th century. Identifying the need for historicised accounts of these contemporary institutions, the thesis synthesises the historical transformation of i) the modern university; ii) the art academy; and iii) the genre of the Ph.D. thesis that holds disciplinary knowledge in the arts and sciences through the 19th and 20th centuries. A key finding of this investigation is that these institutional forms have been revised according to different philosophical bases at different times, which is particularly evident in the substitution of science and natural philosophy for theology as the secular organising principle for the modern university. This displacement, which is also a repetition of its Christian heritage, begins in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, finally dominating higher research study by the 20th century. The investigation also finds that while studio art education has aspired to the status of liberal knowledge since at least the 15th century, its role as a university discipline remains conflicted, lacking a widely-held shared rationale for its modes of research that are nevertheless spreading rapidly through the provision of practice-based doctorates. The thesis argues that as with other new disciplines to the university, it will be through elaboration of a discipline-specific discourse drawn from the field itself that sustains its institutional acceptance, rather than the simple borrowing of other research definitions from other knowledge paradigms. Based on these findings, the final chapters of the thesis use scholarship in the history and philosophy of science to critique the Protestant-dominated moral economies embedded in scientific research paradigms that influence academic justifications for practice based research, with attention to postcolonial and feminist analyses of constitutive subjectivities underpinning these paradigms. The thesis then uses the work of Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler on archives of knowledge to elaborate a process of performative individuation in relation to material ‘bodies of knowledge’, arguing that such a process differs from idealist scientific relationships to constative knowledge, and that this offers a more appropriate paradigm for considering the contributions to knowledge of the visual arts. Drawing upon Derrida’s account of the ‘university without condition’ (2002) and Spivak’s account of humanities learning, the thesis argues that the critical culture of ‘singularisation’ customary to the visual arts can productively address current transformations in the mission and operations of the university. A short postscript considers the implications of this argument for academic policies governing practice-led doctoral qualifications.
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ItemArt at auction: price formation and the creation of superstars in the Australian art auction market( 2008)This thesis shows that prices generated by the art auction system can be anything but mysterious despite the common perception that art, as a commodity, somehow falls outside the norm compared with other economic systems. Far from being the by-product of an enigmatic process, auction prices evolve directly from the mechanisms that shape the market and the human agents and institutions that dominate the system. Using the non-Indigenous Australian art market as a case study, this thesis offers a new, cross-disciplinary model that draws on economic and art-historical methodologies as a means of examining and explaining price formation within the art auction market. The research presented shows that the Australian auction market is dominated by a very small number of artists who are responsible for generating the lion’s share of revenue. Referencing cultural economic theory, I describe these artists as ‘superstars’. I discuss the superstar effect as it is defined in economic terms and show how it manifests in the art auction record. I map the existence of a superstar class of artists at the high-end of the Australian art auction market and consider the implications of this for art’s investment potential. Most market commentaries focus on the top-end of the market. This study uses as its starting-point a dataset of over 2,500 artists active at all levels of the secondary-market compiled from auction records covering the period 1972-2004, including artists who registered just a single auction appearance. This presents a broad overview of the market that offers new insights into the relationship between levels of professional accomplishment and auction price. Artists’ auction records and biographies are examined in detail in addition to agglomerate data for the market as a whole. This examination presents a picture of the key events, agents and institutions that shaped the auction market in Australia during the ‘boom’ period that commenced in the late 1990s. The premise of the ‘superstar’ artist is perpetuated and enshrined by the way these factors interact with the art auction system and place upward pressure on prices. The model of the art auction market presented in this thesis suggests that the prices it generates can be formed by activities that have little if anything to do with genuine competitive forces. As I will show, this can have implications for the efficiency and sustainability of the market.
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ItemBeyond the femme fatale: the mythical Pandora as cathartic, transformational force in selected Lulu, Lola and Pandora texts( 2009)The Pandora myth lies at the very heart of our cultural self-definition. The phrase 'Pandora's box' is commonly used to denote any form of multiple/uncontrolled disaster, continually reinscribing, at least at the unconscious level, the idea of femininity—and of female sexuality in particular—as alluring and desirable, but also dangerous, irrational, uncontrolled and chaotic, the source of all the world's ills. Of the myriad of textual and artistic manifestations of Pandora since her inception, those that portray her as femme fatale have received the most attention; that Pandora also offers Hope has largely been neglected. This project explores an idea of Pandora which is much more complex and multi-faceted than her traditional casting as early femme fatale. Taking as general background Julia Kristeva's notion of intertextuality and Judith Butler's concept of identity and gender as performatively constructed, multiple and even 'contradictory', this intertextual study interrogates a cluster of interconnected works that incorporate major aspects of the Pandora myth. The investigation demonstrates that Pandora's 'chaos', resisting all attempts to box and frame it, can be read as a cathartic, transformative force which is not always destructive, but may also be productive, generative and even redemptive. The works examined are drawn mainly from the cinema and span the twentieth century. All of these texts feature either a Lulu or related Lola character, or Pandora herself, as female protagonist. Because of the wealth of attention already devoted to the figure of the femme fatale, my primary focus is the texts of the Lulu/Lola/Pandora selection that portray Pandora as Redeemer. A detailed study of these texts in terms of the Pandora myth explores aspects of Pandora that exceed the boundaries of her traditional framing as harbinger of disaster. This broader perspective on Pandora not only enhances the overall conception of the myth and of the Redeemer works, but also adds resonance to the femme fatale texts themselves.
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ItemAntipodean gothic( 1984)Introduction: The work of craftsmen who furnished Australian churches has been largely neglected and this has prompted me to seek out and research their art workmanship. It is proposed to discuss some British architects who were working during the Gothic Revival movement in England and who had some influence on the architecture in Australia. These architects forged links with the Pugin circle and craftsmen. Other British architects came to Australia and designed Gothic Revival churches and cathedrals. In order to simplify discussion the local architects have been divided into Roman Catholic and Protestant, even though in few cases was the work of an architect restricted to one particular denomination. English suppliers and craftsmen worked to designs supplied by English architects and their Australian counterparts. At first most of the Australian architects tended to employ many of the same craftsmen as their English colleagues, but it was not long before local craftsmen and suppliers were producing work comparable in quality to that of their overseas competitors. It was gradually realized that local craftsmen, like local materials, had their own particular advantages for Australian churches, and were by no means necessarily inferior to those from overseas sources. As well, architects were better able to control work done under their direct supervision, more quickly and more cheaply. Even working to an architect’s detailed plan, overseas craftsmen did not always meet the high expectations of the Australian architect. When one wanders around a church or cathedral, it is often impossible to find out who was responsible for a pulpit or font, an altar, mural decorations, a lectern or some other item of church furnishing, because so few Victorian craftsmen signed their works. It is almost as difficult to discover the name of the architects as church records are frequently non-existent. In some instances only one surviving example of an artist’s work has been found, as some church officials and clergymen apparently were not interested in the craftsmanship of the Victorian era and were quite happy to see this work removed. But others were just as reluctant to see the old treasures disappear, as evidenced in the comments of a parish priest: ….the murals were painted on canvas….and were taken down, and to my horror burned, despite a plea from someone in the parish….that they be preserved. The brassware is no longer part of the church furnishings and so I presume they along with the very beautiful pipe organ were given away or sold…..The church has been repainted…. but lacks character….unfortunately….those in charge were of a definite practical bent….with little concern for aesthetics. This must be a common complaint these days…. It is , and clearly highlights the constant difficulty in tracing the work of nineteenth century craftsmen, because so much has been thoughtlessly destroyed, given away or sold. Nevertheless, with the assistance gained in conversation with curates and other interested people, as well as from the surviving records, I have been able to piece together information on the craftsmen. The main aim of this thesis has been to build up information on the craftsmen, wherever possible, to locate extant examples of their work, and to discuss other works known to have been made for a particular church, but which has since been dismantled, given away or destroyed. This study is concerned with the work of craftsmen in seven separate categories: the wood carvers; decorators and gilders; stone carvers and masons; tillers; gold and silversmiths; art metal workers; and stained glass artists. The aim is not so much a detailed stylistic analysis of this great body of material, as a survey of the output of the major craftsmen in the colony, and some of their more important works elsewhere. The mass of data has been summarized in the extensive tables at the end of the thesis.