Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/733
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Item Mary Cassatt (1844-1926): advising against convention(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2022) Hanger, Paige McCarthy; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Melissa RagainAmerican artist, Mary Cassatt became an advisor when she joined the Impressionists and by the 1890s, she as a celebrated advisor, who worked with elite Gilded Age collectors like the Havemeyer's of New York, the Palmers of Chicago, the Sears of Boston, and others. Anchored in market-based and epistolary research, this thesis will examine Cassatt's advising career and her graphic work. Cassatt taught her clients to value artworks that included both stylistic elements comfortable to American taste and unfamiliar modernist tropes. As an advisor, Cassatt educated her clients to acquire works which were hybrid in nature and borrowed stylistic qualities from accepted artwork and from modernist esthetics. The addition of these in-between works to American collections primed American taste to incrementally accept modernism, realism, and the avant-garde into Gilded Age collections. Cassatt's impact on her clients' collections shaped American collecting habits and the collections of American national museums.Item Strength in fragility(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2023) Ahn, Myung; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Jeremy HatchCeramic vessels often have humanlike aspects to them. People are drawn to these anthropomorphic qualities because they live in a human body. Clay contains both a strength and a fragility that correlates to the physical and psychological experiences people have as human beings. Physically, bodies came from the earth/clay, and if thoughts and emotions emerged out of matter, the clay form and the human form share both origin and experience. Psychologically, people redefine what is considered failure, and turn a perceived broken experience into a great gift. My ceramic work is mostly made out of paper clay that appears to be fragile, but is very resilient. The idea of success and failure as a visual art is explored in this paper. Collapses, warpages, accidents, and fusions that occur in the kiln are rearranged and reevaluated by the artist to challenge the audience's preconceived notion of beauty and success. These expected and unexpected changes in the process of making directly reflect what we face in life that is full of surprises. Accepting 'what is' in life and the outcome in the kiln helps me to be present and develop skills to see things from various angles and find beauty in it.Item Hybrid objects(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2021) Figueroa, Casey Curran; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Jim Zimpel and Walter Fleming (co-chair)What follows is an exploration of praxis in Studio Art informed by research and application of methodologies and paradigms found within Indigenous culture. By examining the roles of Relationality, Sovereignty, and Positionality found in Native American Studies, and applied in conjunction with the methods found in Contemporary Art, insight can be gained into how art and culture responds to contemporary circumstances and future changes, as well as how this can provide value to the fields of Native American Studies and contemporary art.Item The wild hunt for Norway: Peter Nicolai Arbo and artistic hybridity in the nineteenth century(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2018) Huvaere, Dani Kathleen Barrett; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Todd LarkinNorwegian artist and historian Peter Nicolai Arbo created Asgardsreien or The Wild Hunt of Odin in 1872, while on a sabbatical in Paris, France, under the influence of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Before his travel to Paris, Arbo attended the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, Germany, which proved to be an influential presence in his artwork. The Wild Hunt is not only a painting of the mythological story, but a metaphor for a hunt for national representation of his home country of Norway in the late nineteenth-century. The histories, pedagogies, and artistic trends emanating from these institutions will be detailed, which will reveal continental European tastes in art, established and progressive forms of education, and sets the stage for how Arbo's artwork changed and developed during the course of his education and travel. Although his themes never changed, his composition, color palate, and hardness of line changed in accordance to the styles he was exposed to in Dusseldorf and Paris. Asgardsreien was an attempt at creating a national identity for Norway, which was during a period of rising nationalism as Norway was on the verge of gaining its independence from Sweden. Arbo combined his training, observation, and heritage to create his master history painting; the success of this is questionable, according to critics in his contemporary. Asgardsreien stands as a hybrid between earlier genres of painting and realism, and is an example of a transitional work of art in an era of rapid modernism.Item Redefining la ofrenda: evolving conceptual elements in public institutions(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2017) Cottingham, Katrin Eril; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Todd LarkinLa Ofrenda, or the offering, is deeply embedded in Latino-American culture and is closely associated with Dias de Muertos, the Days of the Dead, a joyous celebration to commemorate the deceased. This thesis explores the history of La Ofrenda from its roots in ancient Mesoamerica to its subsequent merging with Spanish religious beliefs during the colonial Mexican period. Symbolic and ritualistic elements of La Ofrenda are examined to reflect the syncretic nature of the altar showing how it incorporates elements of both cultures. The thesis then analyzes the placement of La Ofrenda in the context of public institutions across the United States of America to discern if authentic characteristics remain when the altar is featured public venues. Each chapter addresses a different set of contrasting elements with the first chapter examining traditional aspects and materials vs. contemporary installations. Second, will consider the distinction between private and sacred displays and those featured in a public secular venue. Next, an effect on La Ofrenda by the very institutions that are trying to preserve the practice is examined with a look at contemporary artists who create highly conceptual Ofrendas reflecting the ever-changing aspects of Modern art, using a wide variety of nontraditional techniques such as computer technology, video and performance. These new methods of artistic representation are challenging and changing not only La Ofrenda, but what can be perceived as an Ofrenda. The question of the future of the display of La Ofrenda in a public setting is examined through these nontraditional altar representations and addresses the ramifications they present to the authenticity of La Ofrenda in conceptual installations.Item The emergence of modernism in Montana(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 2017) Corriel, Michele; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Todd LarkinModernist art burst onto New York City's art scene with the Armory Show in 1913. However, it took nearly forty years for Modernism to take hold in Montana. Using Montana State College (now Montana State University-Bozeman) as my case study, I intend to examine the type of climate that allows a new art movement to develop as well as the impediments that prevented Modernism from taking root. In examining other factors contributing to Modernism outside of major urban cities I found two of these factors missing from the Intermountain West, and particularly in Montana. The factors missing were wealthy art patrons to encourage experimentation and/or art colonies to create a safe environment for artists. Digging further, I found an economic and cultural resistance to Modernism in Montana, which threatened the economic foundation of a burgeoning tourism industry. After World War II, with the G.I. Bill opening up higher education to a new kind of student body, pupils began requesting a serious academic art program. At the same time the expansion of Land Grant Universities enlarged their small art departments, creating both the monetary security an art patron might present, as well as the collegial and teaching community of an artist colony. At Montana State College, beginning in the mid-1940s three artists pioneered the Modernist movement in Montana: Frances Senska, Jessie Wilber and Robert DeWeese. Working together they created a sustained art movement able to overcome the cultural resistance to Modernism in the state. My goal is to give these artists a profile commensurate with other great Modernist artists by formal examination of their work, and applications of various art historical methodologies.Item A book and myth(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1973) Stifft, Barbara EileenMy ideas are evoked by landscapes, combinations of what I . see, feel, know consciously and subconsciously. I learned logic and rationality as one learns a foreign language. My native tongue is. intuitive emotional inner-feeling. These drawings come from both. I see objects, extensions of objects, their skelectal essence, their connections, growth, history and movement. Each is an aspect of reality, combinations of several evoke reality. Art is never reality, perhaps ones responses are.Item Wooden it be nice(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1977) Call, Clinton RossItem An investigation of differentiated and undifferentiated modes of making(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1978) Burke, Michael JosephItem Gifts/Commemoratives(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Arts & Architecture, 1975) Newton, Dorothy Ann