Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis investigates various self-portraits by women artists that stand in relation to the structures of the art historical canon: Autoritratto (1969), a book posing as a self-portrait,...Show moreThis thesis investigates various self-portraits by women artists that stand in relation to the structures of the art historical canon: Autoritratto (1969), a book posing as a self-portrait, composed by art critic and radical feminist Carla Lonzi (1931-1982); the painting Self-portrait as Tahitian (1937), made by Indian-Hungarian artist Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941) in Paris, and the photograph Lady in Moonlight (2004) by contemporary Indian artist Pushpamala N. (b. 1956) in collaboration with British photographer Clare Arni (b. 1962); and the interpretations and translations of self-portraits of Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) or “mythic Frida”. These case studies occupy different places on the axes of art historical canonicity: ranging from how a self-portrait attempts to deconstruct canonical structures (Autoritratto), to how citations can show the stage of production of the canonical (Self-portrait as Tahitian and Lady in Moonlight), to how canonical structures approach the most famous self-portraits by a woman artist (mythic Frida). I stage a conversation between these diverging practices of self-portraiture and the dynamics of canonisation they elucidate, and ask how positionings of Self and Other, inside and outside, guide this relationship. Ultimately I argue that the shifting positions of Self and Other are emphasised and mobilised to shape the relations between these self-portraits by women artists and the canon. These positions are assembled in order to reach varying effects: 1) to deconstruct hierarchical art discourse by shaping the Self through Others in order to generate horizontality, and by positioning the art critic inside to attempt a move outside of the canon (Autoritratto); 2) to bodily perform the canon’s gendered structures through a double bind position in which the artist is placed simultaneously in- and out-side the canon, and positing not only the Self as Other, inherent to any self-portraiture, but also the Other as Self (Self-portrait as Tahitian and Lady in Moonlight); 3) to prevent ‘Others’ to the canon from becoming canonical in a universal sense, as when self-portraits by a woman artist enter inside the canon the Self and the private sphere are overemphasised (mythic Frida).Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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The colossal statue of Fridtjov the Bold, donated to the Norwegian people by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1913, can be described as excessive in many ways - from an art historical perspective, because of...Show moreThe colossal statue of Fridtjov the Bold, donated to the Norwegian people by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1913, can be described as excessive in many ways - from an art historical perspective, because of its melodramatic stance, and from the perspective of anthropology because of its transgression of gifting norms. The statue also raises the question of the power of the German discourse of the North, which, I claim, had similarities with the Foucaultian discourse described by Said in Orientalism. In this thesis all these forms of excess are explored and an answer is attempted at the question why the Kaiser created the statue.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis investigates the art movement Arte Povera through the lens of the Grotesque as an approach to openness. The Arte Povera movement is scrutinized first by a close-reading of the texts and...Show moreThis thesis investigates the art movement Arte Povera through the lens of the Grotesque as an approach to openness. The Arte Povera movement is scrutinized first by a close-reading of the texts and exhibitions by art critic and founding father of the movement Germano Celant, after which the thesis turns to the Grotesque as analytical tool to understand Arte Povera’s inherent contradictions as a form of social anarchy. The Grotesque is proposed as a way to openness, a notion taken from Umberto Eco’s study Opera Aperta. As such, this thesis presents new readings of Arte Povera; of the artworks and actions as well as the critical and curatorial endeavors of Celant that have informed these.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis explores how a portable DNA lab (Bento Lab) can affect social ties between humans and objects. How do we perceive DNA research outside of the institutional realm? With script analysis...Show moreThis thesis explores how a portable DNA lab (Bento Lab) can affect social ties between humans and objects. How do we perceive DNA research outside of the institutional realm? With script analysis as the research method, I study the inscribed, subscribed and exhibited capacities of the Bento Lab and how each of these contexts affects the social. The social being the people and objects that are gathered in the momentum in which DNA research is used, or discussed. Throughout the study, it becomes clear that one object can have a large impact on how we, as humans, perceive DNA research and all of its ethical implications.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
open access
At the beginning of the early twentieth century, various photographic societies were established such as the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in England and de Nederlandse Club voor FotoKunst in the...Show moreAt the beginning of the early twentieth century, various photographic societies were established such as the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring in England and de Nederlandse Club voor FotoKunst in the Netherlands, who profiled themselves as artists and promoted photography as a fine art. It is often argued that they solely produced images to evoke emotions or atmosphere, and that they exclusively looked back at painting styles to reach for the ultimate goal of including photography as a fine art. Moreover, the photographs are mainly described on the basis of art historical categories, techniques, or the biographies of the photographers. I argue that these perspectives neglect the crucial fact that the photographs are photographs, and that new perspectives are needed. Therefore, this research will take a more theoretical approach, by focussing on early Dutch photography from 1913-1927, the medium of photography, and the photo-theoretical concepts of light, straight and composed photography, and time. In this research, the focus will specifically be on two seemingly different photographs: a photograph which looks like a seventeenth-century genre painting by Richard Polak and a cameraless photogram by Henri Berssenbrugge. In this analysis, the attention will be aimed on the fact that these photographs are photographs, by moving to the heart of the medium, and eventually highlighting that within this core, the boundaries are blurred. By combining the earliest theories of photography, with more modern and contemporary arguments considering the medium, new perspectives on the two photographs will be provided, which gives revived attention to the neglected or forgotten early Dutch photography. By taking a different perspective, it is shown that the photographs are more than the reproduction of paintings, or more than just another painterly technique for creating figurative and abstract painting.Show less
