Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Austria Sculpture'

This paper analyses and contextualises the artist’s exploration of self-portraiture through the sculptural bust format. Conventionally, the portrait bust epitomises an antiquated view of the human subject as fixed, finite and knowable. The classicistic allusion of the form seems the perfect embodiment of a pre-modern and hopelessly idealised view of subjectivity and its capacity to be represented. This paper will show how, despite these impressions, the portrait bust is in fact a highly volatile sculptural form in which presence and absence are brought into question. When used as a vehicle for self-portraiture the bust yields a spectrum of instability, both literal and metaphoric, that calls into question the clarity of notions of subject and object and challenges the ideas of authority and representation more broadly. By providing an historical overview of the role of the portrait bust, this paper will map the field of content inherent to the portrait bust and discuss its application in contemporary self-portraiture. As the work of Mike Parr, Janine Antoni and Marc Quinn demonstrates, the classical certainty that permeates the bust format can indeed heighten the capacity of the form to represent uncertainty: an ambiguity that makes it a highly potent form for sustained studio investigation and experimentation. This paper will provide an overview of this experimental scope and application, by discussing the author’s process of sculptural self-portraiture in relation to aspects of ‘likeness’, expression, truncation and reproduction that occur in the form.

The ritualistic aspect of Walter Pichler's work greatly problematizes the traditional view of the art object as the locus of aesthetic contemplation. Yet how are we to approach such art in our secularized world? For it to maintain its meaningfulness, does not ritual require a shared symbolic system?
Indirectly guided by Pichler's work, this thesis is an exploration of the contemporary status of the work of art. An investigation into the myth of Prometheus reveals that art and ritual share the same origin. Further inquiries into early Greek sculpture, as well as the concepts of techne and mimesis, expand this origin into the relationship between the art object and the viewer, shifting the customary focus away from the resemblance between the model and the copy. In this space of looking , art no longer presents itself as an aestheticized object---presence and absence, the visible and the invisible, recognition and anamnesis come into play as possible ways of participation in the work of art.

Dissertation The research undertaken examines the functions and role of narrative in society, looks at examples of narrative in ceramic art and describes the use of narrative in a series of ceramic sculptures created by the author during 2007, 2008 and 2009. Changes in ceramic form historically are also described, with reference to Greek, Chinese and contemporary ceramic artists including Grayson Perry, Betty Woodman, Rudy Autio and Antje Scharfe. Critic Garth Clark’s concept of the ‘pot as drawing’ is also discussed. Two traditional fairy tales, Hansel and Gretel and Bluebeard are discussed and analyzed for their narrative content, as well as from a Jungian psychological perspective. Theorists Julius Heuscher, Bruno Bettelheim, Sheldon Cashdan, Max Luthi, Marina Warner and Clarissa Pinkola Estes are cited for their insights into the structure of these stories. How these two stories can be usefully understood in contemporary society is also discussed; including the issues raised of commodity and consumer culture, childhood play, containment and captivity and secrecy in institutions and medical settings. These concerns are discussed through the ideas of Jean Baudrillard, John Evans and Jon Goss. Studio Work The studio work consists of a series of ceramic sculptures rethinking the narratives of Hansel and Gretel and Bluebeard in a contemporary world. The three-dimensional clay and mixed media objects examine the ideas of containment, cages, materialism, barriers, and secrecy. My intent was to find metaphoric ways of expressing these complex ideas in a physical form. The objects have been created using the ceramic methods of throwing and slab-building. Research was undertaken into using print-making technologies in ceramic work, with IX new applications of screen-printing technologies on glazed surfaces, porcelain slabs, solar-plate technology and digital decals. The work also explored the development of the ceramic form; the interaction between the use of cut-out figures and the underlying form, the idea of a ‘pot as drawing’ and its further extension as installation.

This exegesis examines the theoretical concept of contemporary kitsch within a creative practice that incorporates sculptural and installation art. Kitsch is a distinct aesthetic style. Once designated to the rubbish bin of culture, kitsch was considered to be low class, bad taste cheap fakes and copies (Greenberg, 1961; Adorno & Horkheimer, 1991; Calinescu, 1987; Dorfles, 1969). I argue, however, that this is no longer the case. This research critically examines the way in which contemporary kitsch now plays a vital and positive role in social and individual aesthetic life. Although there are conflicting points of view and distinct variations between recent cultural commentators (Olalquiaga, 1992; Binkley, 2000; Attfield, 2006) on what kitsch is, there is a common sentiment that “the repetitive qualities of kitsch address . . . a general problem of modernity” (Binkley, p. 131). The research aligns the repetitive qualities to what sociologist Anthony Giddens (1991) refers to as “dissembeddedness” (1991) or “the undermining of personal horizons of social and cosmic security” (Binkley, 1991, p.131). The research investigates: how the sensory affect of sentimentality imbued in the kitsch experiences, possessions and material objects people covet and collect, offer a way of the individual moving from disembeddedness to a state of being re-embedded; and locates the ways in which the artist can facilitate the re-embedding experience. Through this lens it is demonstrated that kitsch has become firmly rooted in our “lifeworlds” (Habermas, 1971), as an aesthetic that reveals “how people make sense of the world through artefacts” (Attfield, 2006, p. 201) and everyday objects; that the sensory affect of sentimentality on connections to possessions and material objects that contemporary kitsch offers is shared across cultures and societies

The significance of the Mildura Sculpture Triennials from 1961 to 1978 lies in their role as critical nodal points in an expanding and increasingly complex system of institutions and agents that emerge, expand and interact within the Australian art world. These triennial events provide a valuable case-study of the developments in sculptural practice in Australia and offer a close reading of the genesis of an autonomous field of visual art practice; a genesis dependent upon the expansion of the new tertiary education policies for universities and colleges of advanced education that arose in response to the generational pressure created by the post war baby boom. Given that there was virtually no market for modern sculpture in Australia at the inauguration of these triennials in the 1960s, the extent of the impact of the pressures and expectations of a burgeoning young population upon tertiary education, specifically the art schools, art history departments and art teacher training and, the expanding desire for cultural fulfilment and rapid developments in the cultural institution sector, is delineated at these triennial events. The expansion of the education system and the consequent expanded employment opportunities this offered to young sculptors in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, posited the first real challenge and alternative economy to the existing heterogeneous market economy for artistic works. In order to reinscribe the Mildura Sculpture Triennials into recent Australian art history as an important contributor to the institutional development of Australian contemporary art practice, I have drawn upon the reflexive methodological framework of French cultural theorist and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and his explanation of the factors necessary for the genesis and development of autonomous fields of cultural production. Bourdieu's method provides an interpretative framework with which to identify these components necessary to the development of an institutional identity - the visual arts profession. This autonomous field parallels, conflicts with and at times connects with the heterogeneous art market economy, depending on the strength of its relative autonomy from the field of economic and political power. However, this is beyond the scope of this thesis. Mildura's significance lies in the way that the triennial gatherings provide a view into the disparate components that would connect to and eventually create an autonomous field of artistic production, that of the visual arts profession. However, the evolution of each of the components, which were the bedrock of Mildura, was driven by its own needs and necessities and not by the needs of the larger field of which they would eventually become a part. Bourdieu's understanding of the ontologic complicitiy between dispositions and the development of an autonomous field offers a non-teleological approach to the significance of Mildura as a site to map these rapid changes and also Mildura's subsequent displacement from the historical record.

This research is an investigation into a visual language as my response and reading of the narrative related to a sense of place in an altered landscape: a space where humans have carved their autobiography into the earth. Robert Smithson, in the 1960s characterised regions like these as the edges of post-industrialism or Nonspaces. They also exist as communities, holding onto an identity forged by their definitive history and cultural influences. Incorporated in the research is the exploration of ordinary or everyday landscapes within the context of Cultural Landscape studies. In focussing on the 'shaping' of the town and environs of Zeehan, a once burgeoning mining settlement on the West Coast mining strip of Tasmania, history, industrial archaeology and the impact on the natural environment are taken into account. Zeehan is a shadow of its dynamic past, a boom and bust story that is now enshrined in a local museum, and evident in the relics adorning the main street and surrounding countryside. It is a place of hidden history inextricably linked to the development of Tasmania. However in the new millennium the underground continues to be the lifeblood of this former silver boomtown. Seeking an appropriate format of presentation of this cultural landscape resulted in the development of installation-based artwork: an intersection between digital media, large-scale drawing and sculptural concepts. Re-interpreting and re-presenting the spirit of nature and technological interaction in the so-called Nonspace incorporates the exploration of a phenomenological approach as well as more formal methodologies. The research also examined the concept of the Nonsite. According to Smithson, the Nonsite was a representation or interpretation of a particular site: an abstract three-dimensional logical picture. With its integration of diverse media, the project relates to a field of artists and filmmakers working within the themes of Cultural Landscape (Jan Senbergs, Susan Norrie and Jem Cohen), Museum Strategy/Archaeology as Myth (Mark Dion, Alan McCollum), and The Grand Narrative (Joan Jonas, Kutlag Ataman and Bill Viola). I discuss their works in relation to matters concerning landscape and human intervention, historical discourse, fragmentation of time, the blurring of boundaries and the overlapping of genres. My original contribution to the field is to extend the presentation of the documentary film/video genre from an ostensibly two-dimensional medium to an installation based artwork within an art gallery space utilising the seemingly incongruent mediums of large-scale drawings and sculptural elements. Within this context the resulting narrative creates an environment, which both immerses the viewer and provides contemplation, presenting a re-interpretation of the Nonsite as reading of the Nonspace.