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Sonia Delaunay: from Muse, Designer, Wife to Artist Sara Stern
No full textThesis (B.A. in Art History)--John Cabot University, Fall 2020.The reception of Sonia Delaunay’s work has been distorted and undervalued due to her social position as the wife of a famous artist, her ethnicity, her gender, and her choice of media. The primary literature documenting her life and practice presents a male perspective on her art: first, that of her husband, then of the male representatives of the Parisian bohème, and then of male art critics and scholars. As a result, Sonia Delaunay was not the author of her own history. Instead, her history was written for her by her male colleagues in the art world, resulting in numerous misinterpretations and depreciative stereotypes. Thus, the historiography that established our current perception of Sonia Delaunay’s work is overloaded with biases both in the academic literature and in the curatorial practices of exhibiting her work. This thesis aims to analyze the origins of these recurring patterns and to provide solutions to overcome the dead-ends in historiography and museum practices. Using a post-modernist and post-feminist methodology, this research attempts to revise the existing literature from the 1910s to the 2020s to provide a new reading of Sonia Delaunay’s work, free of biases, stereotypes, and distortions. The main goal was to secure Sonia Delaunay’s proper place in art history. The research resulted in rethinking her complex artistic cooperation with her husband, the use of her ethnicity as a way of integrating French society and concealing her Jewish origins, and her prescient reservations about being relegated to the essentialist category of ‘female artist.
Olympus Vs. Equality: Feminism Rewritings in Classical Mythology
No full textThesis (B.A. in Enlgish Literature, Minor in Creative Writing)--John Cabot University, Spring 2020.Madeline Miller’s Circe, Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy, and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad are written from a feminist perspective. This paper investigates how, along with why these modern rewritings are feminist. Western culture is looked at regarding the #metoo movement and virginity testing. Penelope, Ianthee and Circe’s voices are vital because women are still being mistreated. This paper deals with sexuality, rape, and motherhood in present day compared to ancient Greek. Myth is an important tool for storytelling. Myth is able to teach morals and values in the twenty-first century through these three modern rewritings of classical myths, such as The Odyssey and Ovid’s Metamorphoses
The Language of Red in Latin Literature
No full textThesis (B.A. in Classical Studies)--John Cabot University, Fall 2020.What red was to ancient Roman authors and how is it conveyed in the literature in the absence of abstract color expression? This thesis analyzes some of the convoluted ways that the ancient Romans responded to this challenge in expressions of the color red in Latin literature. One response is that the ancient Romans name shades of red after their origins, either material object or geographical location. In turn, this means that certain shades of red take on the associated connotations of their origins. Another response, as revealed through a close-text literary analysis of the adjectives sanguineus, subrufus, and rubens, is that the Romans relied on the syntax of their language to express distinct shades of red. Both patterns occur on simultaneously linguistic and material levels, particularly when looking at the origins and function of the pigment, cinnabar. As one of the main material sources of red in Roman antiquity, cinnabar was used in wall paintings and political inscriptions in Pompeii. Cinnabar also played a key role in triumphal processions. The pigment was painted onto the cheeks of the statue of Jupiter, as well as onto the bodies of victorious participants. It is then revealed that some of the ancient practices involving material red gave rise to some of the modern symbolic associations that we have of red today, such as wealth, power, victory, and vitality. In understanding the symbolism of red, the association and representation of blood is examined in the etymological origins of the pigment, cinnabar. Some meaning might have slipped through the cracks as Latin adopted Greek terminology, creating ambiguous expressions of red in the literature. The conclusion is that the ancient Romans nevertheless overcame the challenge of conceptualizing color, ultimately giving red an agency like no other
Fascist pre-war Universalism (1919-1935): a form of unrestrained fascism
No full textThesis (B.A. in History and International Affairs)--John Cabot University, Fall 2020.We will speak to the whole world. We will introduce Italy (...) to all other countries. We will use the radio, the theatre, the cinema. And, of course, we will use the press. But, above all, we will use men.” — Galeazzo Ciano, 1934.1 As Fascism became the hot topic of discussion amongst foreign right winged intellectuals of the 1920s, the Italian Fascists were starting to see that their ideology did not have a solely Italian nature. The Fasci Italiani All’Estero were the first tool to export Fascism outside Italian borders but the youth and totalitarian leadership-centered, xenophobic (later racially-wise), anti-liberal, anti-communist and corporativist nature of Italian Fascism started to be exported independently of the Fascist Regime’s efforts. Realizing such, the latter eventually recognized its international appeal also due to the general decadence of the liberal democracies following the Wall Street Crisis. The Italian Fascists went through the inter-war years concerned by how much vagueness to allow when defining fascism as a universal phenomenon. For them, vagueness would play both in favor and against the cultural imperialist aims that drove the entire attempt to marshal the internationalization of Fascism; remaining vague in setting clear ideological boundaries to allow penetration in national realities different from Italy’s while never doing without the stress on the Italian origins of the traits adapted elsewhere. With the rise of like-minded states like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy found it difficult to share the podium of those admired by foreigners and eventually proved that disunity induced by ideological differences did not only plague left-winged organizations around the world but was something that affected the right as wel
Pulling Back the Curtain: Exploring the Artistic Motif of Cloth as Depicted in Ancient Roman Wall Paintings
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2020.Along the Bay of Naples, sit a few towns covered by the ash and rubble of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The wall paintings from these domestic residences form the body of imagery that this thesis examines, focused on one particular motif: depictions of woven cloth when draped or hanging from architectural elements. It purposefully excludes instances of painted cloth when used to depict clothing or household items, such as those transparent pieces of cloth draped over produce. Similarly, this paper only includes those images that can be found in the Roman domus and villa, ignoring those examples which might be found in distinctly public buildings, in order to create a sufficiently specific topic. Primarily working with and from this body of 49 images, this thesis also relies on ancient textual sources and more recent developments in art historical methodology to synthesize and explore the relationship between the domus and Roman society, and to understand how that relationship might affect the choice of decoration. This thesis attempts to ascertain the function of the painted fictive woven cloth attached to architectural elements in wall paintings from the 1st century BC and 1st century AD in the Bay of Naples. It proposes three reasons to answer why this particular motif was chosen, how it functioned within the decoration of the wall, and how this motif would have interacted with the room as a whole
Bella Gaia and the Pedagogical Power of the Overview Effect: An Interview with Kenji Williams
No full textBella Gaia (Beautiful Earth) is a performance that combines a world-music inspired soundtrack with projected graphics, animations and video to educate about climate change. A hybrid of art and science, the nonlinear performance is an example of an emerging form of ecomedia in which remote sensing media are used to transform audiences to experience Earth as an organic, living organism. Bella Gaia’s creative director and creator, Kenji Williams, discusses this new form of educational experience. The violinist, composer and filmmaker incorporates a neuro-science driven methodology to create “immersive live theater, mixed reality, and interactive data visualization.
The Portrait Looking Back: The Game of the Gaze in Witkacy’s Portraits
No full textThesis (B.A. in Art History and Communications)--John Cabot University, Fall 2020.Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), better known by the pseudonym Witkacy, was a Polish painter, photographer, playwright, novelist, philosopher, and art theoretician. This thesis focuses on one phase of Witkacy’s career, the portraiture he made starting in 1925. In that year, Witkacy set up the “S. I. Witkiewicz Portrait Firm,” which produced only pastel portraits. The Portrait Firm became Witkacy’s major occupation and source of income. Besides calling his one-artist studio a “firm,” Witkacy whimsically took on the nomenclature of corporate business and sold portraits as if they were commercial products. Witkacy put out a menulike “Rulebook,” which functioned as a ‘contract’ between Witkacy and his ‘client’/sitter, and from which sitters could order portrait types. This thesis analyzes how central to Witkacy’s Firm was the game with the portrait’s and viewer’s gaze. This first chapter analyzes Witkacy’s portraits in terms of how he handles the gaze of the portrait itself as well as the gaze of the viewer. Looking at four of Witkacy’s portraits, this chapter argues that the artist rejects the traditional practice of making the sitter the primary object of scrutiny. Witkacy introduces a challenging and reciprocal gaze to his portraits. This chapter also analyzes Witkacy’s annotations, which he included on the surfaces of his portraits. On a formal level, the annotations function as ‘spacing’ of vision and as a disturbance in the perpetual field. As writing, the annotations seem to float above the figures in the portrait, as if they were explanatory mediators between the viewer and the image. The second chapter focuses on annotations and signatures which appear on Witkacy’s portraits in comparison to the practices of Marcel Duchamp, looking at how both artists humorously and ironically included written language in their works. The chapter examines how they both use their signature as a complex trope and as a ‘shifter’ to indicate and question the presence and the role of the artist in a work of art, as well as to question the basic assumptions of authorship and signature as a commodity. The last chapter analyzes Witkacy’s Portrait Firm in light of the recurring themes of the standardization of art under the bourgeoise. It also discusses how Witkacy’s strategy in his Portrait Firm, combined with the issue of the gaze and his understanding of art, might suggest a different answer to avant-garde debates on ‘the end of art,’ in particular to Duchamp’s and Dada’s approaches to this question
European Integration as a Path Towards Regional Peace in Kosovo and Serbia
No full textThesis (B.A. in Political Science, Minor in Communications)--John Cabot University, Spring 2020.The objective of this thesis is to determine whether European integration and negotiations facilitated by the EU led to regional peace and cooperation of Kosovo and Serbia. The analysis demonstrates the two theoretical approaches, Neo functionalism and Intergovernmentalism, that could apply to the strategy of negotiations mediated by the EU. Then the history of Serbia and Kosovo conflicts is examined in order to demonstrate why the EU negotiations occurred. The methodology is then conducted of the EU negotiations and what agreements have been made and implemented, to show whether EU mediation achieved its objective. The analysis will determine which theoretical approach was used by the EU in the dialogue. The final chapter will conclude whether European integration led to regional peace and what solutions could be made
The Political Value of the Lancellotti Discobolus
No full textThesis (B.A. in Art History and International Affairs)--John Cabot University, Spring 2020.The Lancellotti Discobolus is the best-preserved marble Roman copy of the lost Greek bronze by Myron. Its beauty and formal perfection have made the statue one of the most famous artworks from classical antiquity, and it has been widely examined from an artistic point of view. However, a complete study of the history of the statue has unveiled a component that has been often neglected and underestimated; its political value. The Lancellotti Discobolus was indeed the very first artwork that was illegally acquired by Hitler in 1937, and that opened the way to the Nazi plunder throughout Italy. This copy of Myron’s Discobolus played a significant role in the alliance between Hitler and Mussolini and, after their defeat and its own repatriation in 1948, the statue became the symbol of post-war Italy. Furthermore, analysis of the Italian and German mass media, before and after the war, allows the understanding of people’s perception of the statue, and, consequently, the successful outcome of its political role. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to examine, through a complementary study of artistic, legal, historical and political sources, how the Lancellotti Discobolus was represented by Nazi Germany and post-war Italy, and how its political value changed accordingly