Matching Items (5)
Description
The Constructivists were a prominent group of Avant Garde artists that began to work in the years preceding the Bolshevik revolution and continued to work prominently until Stalin came to power. As other Avant Garde movements became prevalent throughout Europe, Constructivism became the Modernist movement that encapsulated Russia’s Socialist future. Constructivist artist-workers embraced the idea that objects of art must be useful in the daily life of a Soviet worker as well as representative of the future for which communists were working. As such, they aligned with the new national ideals aesthetically by illustrating national and political goals in a functional way. Constructivists wanted to create objects that would signify and enable future Soviet life through their usefulness and their ideological intensity. This thesis argues that Constructivist objects served a third purpose as productive agents of community.
Each chapter of this thesis closely studies a different object of a different medium to trace relationships between Constructivist objects and Soviet community. El Lissitzky’s PROUN Manifesto illuminates the creation of an artistic community. Alexander Rodchenko’s print Propaganda communicates between a state and its people. Varvara Stepanova’s Sportswear designs facilitate a society of workers. Alexandra Exter’s Marionettes combine common everyday objects and children’s theater. Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, envisions the ideal Soviet society as place in which socialists could convene. And Liubov Popova’s Painterly Architectonics relates the functional and aesthetic goals of Constructivism from Russia to the international art world. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social, and Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction each provide the framework for discussing the intersections of art objects and community. Anderson explores nationhood through the lens of language and print media, Latour studies how social interaction on an individual basis might rely upon the physical objects around them, whereas Bourdieu addresses hierarchies in distinguishing objects of art in class-based societies by outlining the conflicts between cultural capital and tastemaking in the analysis of objects.
Through the exploration of each Constructivist object, this thesis explores individual, national, and international communities while considering their changing political, social contexts.
Each chapter of this thesis closely studies a different object of a different medium to trace relationships between Constructivist objects and Soviet community. El Lissitzky’s PROUN Manifesto illuminates the creation of an artistic community. Alexander Rodchenko’s print Propaganda communicates between a state and its people. Varvara Stepanova’s Sportswear designs facilitate a society of workers. Alexandra Exter’s Marionettes combine common everyday objects and children’s theater. Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, envisions the ideal Soviet society as place in which socialists could convene. And Liubov Popova’s Painterly Architectonics relates the functional and aesthetic goals of Constructivism from Russia to the international art world. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social, and Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction each provide the framework for discussing the intersections of art objects and community. Anderson explores nationhood through the lens of language and print media, Latour studies how social interaction on an individual basis might rely upon the physical objects around them, whereas Bourdieu addresses hierarchies in distinguishing objects of art in class-based societies by outlining the conflicts between cultural capital and tastemaking in the analysis of objects.
Through the exploration of each Constructivist object, this thesis explores individual, national, and international communities while considering their changing political, social contexts.
ContributorsBrown, Theodora Circe (Author) / Hoogenboom, Hilde (Thesis director) / Hedberg Olenina, Ana (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
I am AZ is the beginning of a personal book project which explores six small town museums around the state of Arizona. They include: Cave Creek Museum (Cave Creek), Rim Country Museum (Payson), Navajo Country Historical Society (Holbrook), Superstition County Museum (Apache Junction), Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum (Bisbee), and The Powell Museum (Page). The document highlights these institutions as valuable assets to the community and state as they preserve the stories and artifacts pertaining to both state and local history. This document includes photos of the institutions, local history stories, and interviews with the directors from each of these museums. There are also descriptions of products that came as a result of this project including: postcards as a mode of relaying information about these places, a digital Arizona museum map to highlight the museums I did visit and keep a list of those I have yet to visit, and the accompanying pop-up exhibition that summarizes each place through photos and stories.
ContributorsSimpson, Jessica Mary (Author) / Sweeney, Gray (Thesis director) / Freeman, Stacey (Committee member) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
This thesis project focuses on the rhetoric of dress reform in The Sibyl, the official journal of the National Dress Reform Association from 1856 to 1864. The American Dress Reform Movement grew out of the women’s rights and health reform movements during the Second Great Awakening. Dress reformers viewed women’s fashionable dress as both a symbol of and reason for their political and economic oppression. They believed that by modifying women’s everyday dress, women’s health (and in turn, the health of their descendants) would improve and they would have more opportunities outside of the home. Close reading of The Sibyl reveals that dress reformers gravitated towards the rhetoric of slavery, comparisons to non-Christian nations, and the characterization of women as weak to advocate for their cause. I argue that this rhetoric disempowers women and promotes racist and xenophobic ideas, which ultimately undermines the movement’s goals.
ContributorsWise, Catherine (Author) / Soares, Rebecca (Thesis director) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
Public Art bears an important role in the perpetuation of public narratives in a community. In the wake of the recent anti-racist, decolonization movements, public memorials and monuments are rightly being reconsidered. Historians, artists, politicians, and activists alike are now bringing to light the social and cultural issues that come with commemorating colonizers and white supremacists in controversial public artworks. In my thesis, I will investigate and analyze three different monuments that have been, or currently, are controversial in the eyes of the community. The three monuments that I have chosen to research and analyze are the Captain Cook “Discovery” Statue in Hyde Park in Sydney, Australia, the Cecil Rhodes statue that was central to the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa, and the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Park, which was vandalized last year in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Each of these monuments plays an impactful role in the communities they inhabit but has or currently is facing a wave of controversy. I will analyze the varying reactions by the public and the controversies surrounding these three individual monuments. My aim is to find that there is a common theme between reactions to colonizer monuments across the world. If there is a common thread between how people everywhere think colonizer monuments should be dealt with, this may lead to more being taken down.
ContributorsArneson, Aundria (Author) / Langille, Timothy (Thesis director) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Black American art and artists have dramatically impacted U.S. and world history and culture. This is a creative and historical project for Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. I have virtually curated works from Black American artists throughout the 17th and 21st centuries that show the emergence of Black history and the art that expressed it. The project is a timeline of various media, such as sculpture, painting, and poetry. This text comes with a Squarespace site where these works are displayed with introductory information that resembles those of a didactic label at a museum. Growing up as a little kid, I was always intrigued by history and the arts, but I barely learned about the art Black Americans created in school. With this project, I hope to share this research with a broader audience to learn more about the rich historical context of black art and to feel represented. Seeing yourself in an artwork that moves you inspires the artist within you; it did for me.
Link to the website: https://grasshopper-pike-6cd5.squarespace.com/contact-me
ContributorsLee, Brielle (Author) / Haines, Chelsea (Thesis director) / Stancliff, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor)
Created2024-05