Een stilistische analyse van de muurschilderingen van de Kayan en Kenyah Dayak, twee subgroepen van de Dayak van Borneo. Een uitvoerige beschrijving van de verschillende figuratieve motieven die...Show moreEen stilistische analyse van de muurschilderingen van de Kayan en Kenyah Dayak, twee subgroepen van de Dayak van Borneo. Een uitvoerige beschrijving van de verschillende figuratieve motieven die voorkomen in hun muurschilderingen. Daarnaast wordt ook de betekenis en de functie van de verschillende motieven behandeld. Daarnaast wordt er een context gegeven van de situatie waarin deze motieven tot stand zijn gekomen, hoe leven de volken die deze maken en hoe hebben de samenstellingen van hun samenlevingen effect gehad op het gebruik van de motieven in hun kunst en materiële cultuur.Show less
While a large part of the African art collections exhibited in French public museums originated from the former colonial empire, the evocation of this part of history is still met with difficulties...Show moreWhile a large part of the African art collections exhibited in French public museums originated from the former colonial empire, the evocation of this part of history is still met with difficulties in contemporary France, impacting the presentation and treatment of the works themselves. This thesis aims at evoking the zones of silence surrounding the displays of these collections, understood as revealing of the country’s contemporary difficulties to address its colonial past. How could the exhibition of African arts in French public museums be understood as symptomatic of the country’s contemporary difficulties encountered in the discussion of its colonial past?Show less
The aim of the present work is to present how have Dutch curators dealt with the representation of Suriname’s multiplicity in the ethnological museums of the Netherlands.Through museums’ modes of...Show moreThe aim of the present work is to present how have Dutch curators dealt with the representation of Suriname’s multiplicity in the ethnological museums of the Netherlands.Through museums’ modes of representation, particular constructions are created of image making and concepts developing. Ethnological museums are imagined as spaces that represent the life of groups of people inhabiting specific areas. The history of Suriname and the cultures of its people are a fixture in Dutch museums of ethnology, due to the historical colonial link between the two countries of Suriname and the Netherlands. How do Dutch museums of ethnology represent the ‘otherness‘ of Suriname and Surinamese people? In order to answer this question, two major museums of ethnology in the Netherlands, the Volkenkunde and Tropen museums, are investigated as case studies of how Suriname’s history, culture and various ethnic groups are today represented in the museological institutions of Suriname’s former colonizer. In the analysis of these exhibitions I will concentrate on matters regarding the authority of the museum, the presentation of decolonization, the vocalization of the narratives, the concept of exclusion, and the involvement of source communities in curatorial processes. Through this analysis, this paper seeks to determine what types of narratives dominate the representation of Suriname in Dutch museums and the vision of Suriname and Surinamers offered to the public in these exhibitions. In addition, the case studies presented will investigate which histories are unspeakable and which are not, how museums suggest their authority on the subjects they present, and the extent to which the intellectual framework to which a museum is bonded influences its displays, and which is the period we are going through nowadays and how have the museums been adjusted accordingly. In discussing these aspects of museological representation, this research hopes to add to the discussion of how museums can best produce ethical representations.Show less
Gedurende de Egyptische opstanden (vanaf 2011) werd graffiti gebruikt als middel om politieke boodschappen te communiceren. In de werken werd opvallend genoeg teruggegrepen op de eeuwenoude...Show moreGedurende de Egyptische opstanden (vanaf 2011) werd graffiti gebruikt als middel om politieke boodschappen te communiceren. In de werken werd opvallend genoeg teruggegrepen op de eeuwenoude faraonische (beeld)cultuur. Dit werkstuk gaat over de vraag waarom deze vorm van culturele toe-eigening zich tijdens de opstanden voltrok en op welke manier verwijzingen naar de Oudegyptische cultuur iets vertellen over de actuele sociaal-politieke omstandigheden in Egypte.Show less
The observation of evolutionary processes in cultural expression and art can be traced back to antiquity and has played an important role in historiography and the human sciences in general for...Show moreThe observation of evolutionary processes in cultural expression and art can be traced back to antiquity and has played an important role in historiography and the human sciences in general for centuries. However, over time the notion of directed cultural development towards a point of hypothetical perfection, as well as the corresponding belief in cultural developmental stages, came to be considered out-dated and suspect.The 20th-century abandonment of evolutionist art history is mainly due to the insight that one cannot establish what constitutes ‘improvement’ or ‘increasing complexity’ in the visual arts. Up until the Modern period a sense of directed progress was seen in the perceived improvement in mimetic quality of the artworks. The famous 20th-century art historian Ernst Gombrich in particular strongly believed in an ascending line towards ever-increasing realism. The present thesis concerns the uses of the metaphor of Darwinian evolution for the study of art history. How did evolutionism, before and after Darwin, develop in art historical writing? And how can a renewed analysis of the resemblances between biological evolution and art history resolve earlier problems with evolutionism and result in a reappraisal of the metaphor? The structure of the thesis is twofold. Firstly, we will look at the role of evolutionism in art history, both with respect to a pre-Darwinian, general sense of evolution and to a Darwinian, specifically biological sense. This historical overview will describe the general tendency to read art history as a process of gradual development towards ‘improvement’ and the role biological evolution has played in this perspective. Secondly, this thesis proposes a new role for the metaphor of biological evolution within the field of art history.Show less
BA paper on the Cultural Transfer of the 'Eight Views' theme from Song Dynasty China to Tokugawa era Japan, analyzing how this transfer affects changes in the way the theme was employed
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis analyzed the development of discourse on extra-European art in art historical surveys published between 1842 and 1900 and how this discourse was influenced by the development and...Show moreThis thesis analyzed the development of discourse on extra-European art in art historical surveys published between 1842 and 1900 and how this discourse was influenced by the development and institutionalisation of art history and by discourses on extra-European arts from other, related, scientific disciplines. It argues that the selective influence of art history as an institutionalizing discipline and other scholarly disciplines with an interest in extra- European art enlarged, changed and complicated the understanding of extra-European art as expressed in these discourses. Moreover, it substantiates that while certain dimensions of the understanding of extra-European art may have seemed to stay constant, this does not constitute a uniform understanding of this art. The findings are based on the analysis of the Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte (1842) by Franz Kugler, the Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte (1855) by Anton Springer and the Geschichte der Kunst aller Zeiten und Völker (1900) by Karl Woermann with the use of the method of Critical Discourse Analysis, which investigates not just the texts but also their scholarly environment, and an extensive close reading of the three surveys.Show less
