Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: Surrealism
- All Subjects: Patricia Nelson Limerick
- Creators: Toon, Richard
- Status: Published
Description
The display methods of the gallery, "Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision," makes the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, unique among modern art institutions in the United States. It is also an anomaly within the Menil Collection itself. The "Witnesses" room is located near the back of the wing that houses the museum's large Surrealism collection. Both objects that the Surrealists owned and objects similar to those they collected are showcased in the gallery by means of an array of eclectically displayed ethnographic objects and other curiosities. Curated by anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, this single-room exhibition seems to recreate a surrealist collection. "Witnesses" is a permanent exhibition within the Menil's Surrealism collection and not an independent wing or gallery. All of the objects contained in "Witnesses" belonged either to the curator Edmund Carpenter or to the de Menils, whose larger collection of ethnographic objects are displayed in separate African, Oceanic, and Pacific Northwest Coast galleries within the museum. The Surrealists often utilized a heterogeneous style of both collecting and display, which the de Menils also took up. They mixed surrealist art freely with ethnographic and other types of found objects. This style of collecting and display contrasts sharply with the modern display methods that are standard to American art museums, and which are dictated by a hierarchy based on the cultural provenance of each object as high art. This thesis examines Carpenter's "Witnesses" exhibition in the Menil Collection to establish its display as a legacy of surrealist collecting--a close connection which is not seen in the permanent collections of any other art museum in the United States. Thus, by noting and annotating the Surrealists' collecting and display methods that can be located in Carpenter's installation of "Witnesses," I argue that Carpenter challenges many of the formal qualities typical of museum institutional practices and radically expands its very definition of what constitutes art, even in our own time.
ContributorsStrange, Kristen (Author) / Mesch, Ulrike (Thesis advisor) / Swensen, Thomas (Committee member) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
In the 1930s, several key fashion photographers were practicing Surrealists: Man Ray, Georges Hoyningen-Huené, Horst P. Horst, Cecil Beaton, and Erwin Blumenfeld. Each photographer explored surrealist-influenced fashion photography and drastically changed the way fashion was seen in the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue magazine. While scholars believe the assimilation of surrealist aesthetic devices in fashion photography commercialized Surrealism during the thirties, such photographic output has yet to be assessed in relation to surrealist thought and practice. This thesis argues that Ray, Hoyningen-Huené, Horst, Beaton, and Blumenfeld did not photograph fashion in the surrealist style to promote desire for the commercial product. Instead, they created new pictures that penetrated, radicalized, and even destroyed conventions of mass culture from inside the illustrated fashion magazine.
ContributorsXepoleas, Lynda May (Author) / Mesch, Claudia U. (Thesis advisor) / Toon, Richard (Committee member) / Hoy, Meredith (Committee member) / Sewell, Dennita (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This study examines history museums in Arizona and New Mexico to determine whether New Western History themes are prevalent, twenty years after the term was conceived. Patricia Limerick is credited with using the expression in the 1980s, but she had to promote the concept frequently and for many years. There was resistance to changing from the Frederick Jackson Turner thesis of looking at the frontier as an expansion from the East, even while others were already writing more current historiography.
Limerick’s four “Cs”—continuity, convergence, conquest, and complexity—took a view of the West from the West, worthy of a separate perspective. These themes also allowed historians to reflect on what was happening locally, how and why various people were interacting, how there was less of a benevolent imbuing of European culture on Native Americans than there was a conquest of indigenous people, and how resource extraction created complex situations for all living things. While scholarly works were changing to provide relevant material based on these themes, museums were receiving thousands of visitors every year and may have been providing the Anglo-centric view of events or creating more inclusive displays. Label texts could have been either clarifying or confusing to a history loving audience.
Three types of museums were visited to determine whether there was a difference in display based on governing body. National Park Service sites, state sponsored institutions, and local city-based museums served as the study material. The age of the existing long-term exhibits ranged from brand new to fifty-one years extant. As important to the use of New Western History themes as the term of the current exhibit was the type of governing body.
Monographs, essays, and museum exhibits are all important to the dissemination of history. How they relate and how current they are to each other creates an opportunity for both academic and museum professional historians to reflect on the delivery systems used to enlighten a history-loving public.
Limerick’s four “Cs”—continuity, convergence, conquest, and complexity—took a view of the West from the West, worthy of a separate perspective. These themes also allowed historians to reflect on what was happening locally, how and why various people were interacting, how there was less of a benevolent imbuing of European culture on Native Americans than there was a conquest of indigenous people, and how resource extraction created complex situations for all living things. While scholarly works were changing to provide relevant material based on these themes, museums were receiving thousands of visitors every year and may have been providing the Anglo-centric view of events or creating more inclusive displays. Label texts could have been either clarifying or confusing to a history loving audience.
Three types of museums were visited to determine whether there was a difference in display based on governing body. National Park Service sites, state sponsored institutions, and local city-based museums served as the study material. The age of the existing long-term exhibits ranged from brand new to fifty-one years extant. As important to the use of New Western History themes as the term of the current exhibit was the type of governing body.
Monographs, essays, and museum exhibits are all important to the dissemination of history. How they relate and how current they are to each other creates an opportunity for both academic and museum professional historians to reflect on the delivery systems used to enlighten a history-loving public.
ContributorsWalsh, Thomas Kevin (Author) / Pagan, Eduardo (Thesis advisor) / Toon, Richard (Thesis advisor) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015