Education - Theses Register | Irish Georgian Society

Through a Glass Darkly: Ideology and Representation of the Aryan in Nazi Aesthetics

Grattan Keating
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2009
M.A.

Country: Germany
Period: 20th Century

Supervisor: Dr. Krema

Through the Eye of the Beholder

Kirstie North
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2009
M.A.

Country: UK focus, Europe
Period: 20th and 21st Century

"The Artist Who Has His Foot in a History book and an Eye on Himself Can Move, But Not Directly": Time, Memory and Metis in Robert Rauschenberg's XXXIV Drawings for Dante's Inferno

Rachel Warriner
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2010
MA

Subject: Art
Country: U.S.A
Period: 20th Century

20,000 words

Nancy Spero: Pain and Politics, 1966-1976

Rachel Warriner
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2016
PhD

Subject: Painting
Country: U.S.A
Period: 20th Century

The ten-year period that started with Nancy Spero’s War Series (1966-70) and ended with the completion of Torture of Women (1974-6) were of vital importance to the development of this key figure of feminist art. This was the moment when Spero turned her focus to politics, departing from a practice that was concerned with personal disaffection, instead focusing on profoundly social concerns. Essential to this evolution is a focus on pain. From the War Series through the Artaud Paintings (1970-71), Codex Artaud (1971-2), and Torture of Women, pain, both internal and external, was imagined in multiple forms. In Spero’s explorations of the theme, pain becomes metaphoric of the experience of women living under patriarchy, an amorphous but still profoundly disabling sensation that attacks both body and mind. This thesis explores Spero’s use of physical pain during moment of feminist art’s emergence, seeing it as a political metaphor for the way in which patriarchy invisibly controls and undermines women. Framed broadly by the question of art's relationship with politics during this turbulent period of anti-war and feminist activism, this thesis closely examines the way in which an analogy to pain figures the body in the work in complex terms, pursuing an ideological ambition through recourse to feeling.

The Modern Gallery and its Role in a Viewer's Liminal Experiencing of an Artwork

Fiona White
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2012
MA

Subject: Gallery Display
Period: 21st Century

20,000 words

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Sibyls : Virtue, Morality, and Gender

Matthew Whyte
University College Cork
Faculty of Arts and Celtics Studies' Department of History of Art
2018
MRes

Subject: Fresco, Painting
Country: Italy
Period: 16th Century

This thesis interrogates the depiction of the Sibyls as part of the schema for the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo Buonarroti, considering the role of these figures within the context of the ceiling itself as well as in the context of Renaissance Rome’s interest in the classical world. Given the tendency in the literature to treat the Sibyls as part of broader studies on the ceiling or on Michelangelo’s oeuvre more generally, this project isolates these figures, advancing the claim that the artist’s singularly masculine portrayal of these women can be understood as supporting both the role they play in the ceiling’s narrative, and the vision that Pope Julius II had for his pontificate. This project first discusses the depiction of the sibyls in renaissance art, arguing that the values of virtue and morality were prioritised in images of these women and setting up a discussion of Michelangelo’s figures by highlighting the artist’s need to emulate these values in the context of the Sistine commission. Michelangelo’s treatment of the Sibyls is then set within the context of sibylline iconography during the Renaissance, arguing that the artist’s clear deviation from the established visual language was employed as a deliberate attempt to amplify the values of virtue and morality these figures were traditionally used to depict. Finally, this thesis reintegrates the Sibyls into the wider scheme of the ceiling, arguing that the artist’s conspicuous effort to prioritise the notion of virtue through the figures’ masculinity provides a moral corrective to Eve and the Fall, interacting with the chapel’s dedication to the Virgin while appealing to Pope Julius II’s vision of his own church as rooted in the wisdom of the classical past.

Education Theses Register —University College Cork