School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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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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ItemSwirls of shouts and rivers of shapes: futurism's crowd( 2016)This thesis sheds new light on the representation of crowds in paintings, drawings and illustrations by Italian futurist artists produced between 1900 and 1915. By focusing on the aesthetic and emotional responses of the Italian avant-gardist group to the urban multitudes, it proposes a new interpretation of how the Futurists conceived of the relationship between artist and crowd. Contrary to a tendency in recent scholarly literature to read Futurism's depictions of the crowd as constructing a political collective to be moulded in a manner akin to a proto-fascist vision of society, this thesis shows how in its early years the Italian artistic avant-garde elaborated a view of the crowd which resists such politically instrumental interpretations. Between 1910 and 1912 the Futurists artists, drawing upon attitudes to the crowd they had developed prior to joining the avant-garde movement, interpreted the spontaneous gatherings of the urban multitude as a startling visual phenomenon and as an expanded collective subject endowed with emotion. In such works, the futurist artists demonstrated their intention to implicate the viewer not in a collective action directed towards specific political goals, but rather in an intensely emotional, aesthetic experience. In 1914 and 1915, the Futurists turned their attention to mass gatherings associated with patriotic and interventionist campaigns in which the artists themselves were directly involved. In spite of their more explicitly political subject matter, in the artworks made during this period the Futurists were primarily concerned with depicting the crowd as a dynamic, heterogeneous context with which the artist was to merge and into which he disappeared. In both periods, this thesis argues, the Futurists did not envision the crowd in their visual works as a mouldable mass to be dominated and controlled by a political or artistic leader, but rather as an uncontrollable, immersive event in which the artist and viewer participated to the point of self-annulment and dispersion. Despite the rallying cries in the founding manifesto of 1909 and the various political views of the artists themselves in the period under analysis, futurist artistic depictions of the crowd between 1910 and 1915 were alternative to a proto-fascist imagery of political exhortation.
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ItemThe decorative works of Sir Edward Poynter and their critical reception( 1999)This thesis examines the decorative works of the nineteenth century British artist Sir Edward Poynter (1836-1919). His achievements as a decorative designer received considerable recognition during his lifetime but in more recent years have been overshadowed by his reputation as an academic painter. The neglect of this important component of Poynter's oeuvre by twentieth century scholarship is partly due to the destruction or dismantling of several of his major decorative commissions. Other schemes which were the focus of extensive public debate during the Victorian era — such as Poynter's designs for the Central Hall of the Palace of Westminster, the Lecture Theatre apse at the South Kensington Museum and the decoration of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral — were either not realised or only partially completed. This thesis aims to establish the extent and significance of Poynter's decorative career by a comprehensive analysis of the individual commissions and their historical context. These works encompass a variety of media, including painted furniture, stained glass, mosaics, ceramic tiles and frescoes. The accompanying catalogue and illustrations document the commissions with particular reference to their design and the stages of their execution. The thesis also locates Poynter's decorative schemes in the context of the wider debate regarding the nature and role of mural decoration during the second half of the nineteenth century. It elucidates, in particular, the crucial role played by materials and techniques in the contemporary reception of decorative works. Another important issue that arises from this study is the previously unrecognised importance of the Gothic Revival movement for the development of Poynter's career. Its influence is apparent in his belief in the role of architecture as a unifier of the arts, and in the emphasis in his decorative designs upon eclecticism and craftsmanship. Poynter's extensive involvement with the South Kensington Museum also had a major impact upon his decorative aesthetic. The strong Renaissance orientation of his mature work, which focusses on pictorial and narrative values, was directly reinforced by that institution. Poynter emerges from this study as an important but neglected figure in the history of nineteenth century British art, whose career illuminates both the positive and negative attitudes to mural decoration that characterise this period.