This thesis studies the style of Native American portrait photographs of William S. Soule (1836-1908), John K. Hillers (1834-1925), and William E. Irwin (1871-1935), who worked in Oklahoma from 1869 to 1904. The examination of the three men's work revealed that each artist had different motivations for creating Native American portrait photographs, and a result, used a distinct style. However, despite the individual artistic styles, each artist conformed to Native American stereotypes common during the nineteenth-century. The thesis includes a discussion of the history of the area, photographer biographies, a stylistic analysis of the photographs, and how the images fit into American Indian stereotypes.

This thesis identifies and analyzes gendering in the art writing devoted to Lee Bontecou's metal and canvas sculptures made from the 1959 - 1964. Through a careful reading of reviews and articles written about Bontecou's constructions, this thesis reconstructs the context of the art world in the United States at mid-century and investigates how cultural expectations regarding gender directed the reception of Bontecou's art, beginning in 1959 and continuing through mid-1960s. Incorporating a description of the contemporaneous cultural context with description of the constructions and an analysis of examples of primary writing, the thesis chronologically follows the evolution of a tendency in art writing to associate gender-specific motivation and interpretation to one recurring feature of Bontecou's works.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the depiction of rainbows in the art of Frederic Church in relation to mid-nineteenth century scientific developments in order to determine Church's reliance on contemporary concerns with light and color. An examination of four Church paintings with rainbows, three oil sketches, and nearly a dozen pencil drawings shows that Church's rainbow art represents a response to mid-century cultural values connecting science and art. Changes within Church's rainbow depictions occurred as the artist explored the visual representations of light, synthesizing the scientific knowledge of light and color available to him, and reconciling that information with the requirements of art.

Informed by the methodology utilized in Peter Williams's Houses of God: Region, Religion, and Architecture in the United States (1997), the thesis examines Mark Lemmon's Gothic Revival design for the Highland Park Presbyterian Church (1941) with special attention to the denomination and social class of the congregation and the architectural style of the church. Beginning with the notion that Lemmon's church is more complex than an expression of the Southern cultural region defined by Williams, the thesis presents the opportunity to examine the church in the context of the unique cultural region of the city of Dallas. Church archival material supports the argument that the congregation deliberately sought to identify with both the forms and ideology of the late nineteenth-century Gothic Revival in the northeastern United States, a result of the influence of Dallas's cultural region.

Despite having produced an impressive body of work and having been well-received in his lifetime, the career of nineteenth-century American expatriate artist Walter MacEwen has received virtually no scholarly attention. Assimilating primary-source materials, this thesis provides the first serious examination of MacEwen's life and career, thereby providing insight into a forgotten episode in American art.

This thesis redresses the lack of scholarly attention paid to painted circus banners produced in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century by exploring the extent to which American folk art painting scholarship, methodologies, and objects can be used to articulate the meaning and significance of banner painting. This study expands the disciplinary treatment of banner painting by introducing domesticated art as a means of representing non-academic art produced in the U.S. The thesis also presents a model for exploring banner painting after identifying traditional American folk art painting methodologies, which fail to investigate banner painting style, format, and artistic training associated with banner work.

This thesis examines similarities in photographs made by the contemporary photographer Keith Carter and photographers active with the Farm Security Administration during the 1930s. Stylistically and in function, works by Carter and these photographers comment on social and cultural values of a region. This thesis demonstrates that many of Carter's black and white photographs continue, contribute to, and expand traditions in American documentary photography established in the 1930s. These traditions include the representation of a specific geographic place that evokes the spirit of a time and place, and the ability to communicate to a viewer certain social conditions and values related to such a place.

This thesis is an investigation of the way in which the painter May Stevens (b. 1924) synthesizes her personal experiences and political philosophy to form complex and enduring works of art. Primary data was accumulated through an extended interview with May Stevens and by examining her works on exhibit in New York and Boston. An analysis of selected works from her "Big Daddy" and "Ordinary/Extraordinary" series revealed how her personal feelings about her own family became entwined with larger political issues. As an important member of the feminist art movement that evolved during the 1970s, she celebrated this new kinship among women in paintings that also explored the contradictions in their lives. In more recent work she has explored complex social issues such as teenage prostitution, sexism, and child abuse in a variety of artistic styles and media. This study investigates how May Stevens continues to portray issues of international significance in works that consistently engage the viewer on a personal, almost visceral level.

This thesis examines images of women shopping in the art of Kenneth Hayes Miller and Reginald Marsh during the 1920s and 1930s. New York City's Fourteenth Street served Kenneth Hayes Miller and Reginald Marsh, respectively, as a location generating the inspiration to study and visually represent its contemporaneity. Of particular interest to this thesis are relationships between developments in shopping and the images of women shopping in and around Fourteenth Street that populate the paintings of Miller and Marsh. Although, as Ellen Todd Wiley has shown, the emerging notion of the New Woman helped to shape female identity at this time, what remains unstudied are dimensions that geographically specific, historical developments in shopping contributed to the construction of female identity which, this thesis argues, Marsh and Miller related to, by locating in, the department store and bargain store.

The working cowboy remains part of the contemporary culture of Texas. A visual record of him appeared early in the state's history, in daguerreotypes, followed by representations in contemporary black and white as well as color photographs, film and video. Although the way of life for the Texas cowboy has changed, it remains a thriving part of the Texas economy, society, and culture. Moreover, the image of the cowboy has permeated popular culture and fine art. This paper explores what late twentieth century popular culture and fine art images of the cowboy signify, emphasizing aspects of how they signify in relation to an existing tradition of photographic representations. Using Barthes' "Myth Today," it considers how the documentary aspect of early photographic representations of cowboys is transformed in contemporary popular culture and fine art to become mythology, for example, by the exaggeration of features of dress to connote ideals allegorically.

The purpose of this thesis is to give a concise view of stylistic, iconographical, and iconological trends in Southern genre paintings and illustrations between 1830 and 1890 by native Southern artists and artists who lived at least ten years in the South. Exploration of artworks was accomplished by compiling as many artworks as possible per decade, separating each decade by dominant trends in subject matter, and researching to determine political and/or social implications associated with and affecting each image. Historical documents and the findings of other scholars revealed that many artworks carried political overtones reflecting the dominant thought of the white ruling class during the period while the significance and interpretation of other artworks was achieved by studying dominant personal beliefs and social practices.

El Santuario de Chimayo is a small community shrine that combines both native Tewa Indian and Christian traditions. This study focuses on the interaction between traditions through analysis of the shrine's two major artworks: a crucifix devoted to El Senor de Esquipulas (Christ of Esquipulas) and a statue of the Santo Nino (Holy Child). The shrine and its two primary artworks are expressions of the dynamic interaction between native and European cultures in New Mexico at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They frame the discussion of native and Christian cultural exchange about the relationships between religious images, how they function, and how they are interpreted.

This thesis investigates how the interior of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center of Dallas accommodates the three groups which use the space: the patron, the musicians, and the administration. Following the Draft Brief of 1981 prepared by the Dallas Symphony Association's Concert Hall Building Committee, each area is discussed as to what was actually built and what concerns were met. The primary data were the symphony center and interviews with I.M. Pei, architect; Russell Johnson, acoustician of the concert hall; Charles Young, associate of Pei, Cobb, Freed & Associates, interior architect of the concert hall; Carolyn Miller, Trisha Wilson & Associates, designer of the Green Room, Richard Trimble, designer of the musicians' areas, and Joe Pereira, designer of the Administrative area.

The Universalis Ecclesiae of 1508 authorized Spanish colonization of the Americas in return for the conversion of native populations to Christianity. From its inception therefore, the Mexican nation lived an alliance between Church and State. This alliance promoted the transfer of Castilian Catholicism to American shores. Catholic practices, specifically the ex-voto tradition, visualize this intermingling of religion and politics. The ex-voto is a devotional painting that expresses gratitude to a religious figure for his/her intervention in a moment of peril. It is commissioned by the devotee as a means of direct communication to the divine. This project analyzes 40 Mexican ex-votos for their reflection of political issues in Mexico. I assert that the Mexican ex-votos engage discussions of social politics. To support this argument, visualizations of socio-political discourses such as the Virgin of Guadalupe as a national religious symbol, police action and economic disparity were examined.

This thesis analyzes technical and stylistic aspects of Mark di Suvero's nineteen sixties found-object works, and his monumental I-beam sculptures of the nineteen seventies and eighties to demonstrate their consistency despite the apparent contrasts in form, materials, and process. Primary data, sculpture of Mark di Suvero. Secondary data obtained from major art periodicals, newspapers, and exhibition catalogs. The artist was interviewed by author at the retrospective exhibition in Nice, France, Septermber, 17, 1991. Examination of primary and secondary data reveals a strong continuity by the artist in his approach to his work despite obvious external changes in materials and process.

This study examines the county courthouses of Arkansas with the purpose of discovering certain qualities which they possess as architecture. Stylistic influences are identified, as are influential architects, periods of building activity, and characteristics of age and condition. An historical overview provides information concerning nationwide trends in public architecture over the last century, allowing observations as to the effects which national and regional tastes had on Arkansas' county courthouse builders. It is concluded that Arkansas' county courthouses reflect, to some extent, the stylistic preferences and backwardness of southern and rural courthouses, respectively. The Georgian Revival is identified as the most popular style for courthouses still in use, although the most active building period is found to be the 1930s, when WPA design specifications dominated Arkansas courthouse architecture.

Over a period of two decades, Raymond D. Nasher, a Dallas-based real estate developer, and his late wife Patsy amassed a collection of significant modern sculptures. For years, pieces from the private collection--numbering over 300 as of 1990--were on display in various museums and civic institutions, and they were installed on a rotating basis at Northpark Center, a Dallas shopping mall developed by Nasher. Since the 1987 Dallas Museum of Art exhibition, the collection has been shown in several major international museums. This study documents the formative period of the collection, the Nashers' collecting and exhibiting philosophies, and four early exhibitions of the sculptures. It includes a chronology of the Nashers and major acquisitions of sculpture.

During World War II, Lee Miller was an accredited war correspondent for Vogue magazine. Miller was trained as a surrealist photographer by Man Ray, and her wartime work, both photographic and written, is indicative of a combination of journalism and surrealism. This thesis examines Lee Miller's war correspondence within the context of Vogue magazine, establishing parallels between the photographs and writing to determine how surrealism informs it stylistically and ideologically. Using surrealist techniques of juxtaposition and an unmanipulated photographic style, and the surrealist concepts of the Marvelous and Convulsive Beauty, Miller presented the war as a surreality, or a surreal reality. This study concludes by using Miller's approach to suggest a new concept of journalistic practice: surrealist journalism.

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the use of alchemy within the work of Rebecca Horn, to elucidate its presence in her work, and to illuminate its purpose as a personal philosophy and as a creative tool. The use of alchemy within Horn's work occurs as a process of revelation and transformation. Alchemy is revealed as a spiritual philosophy and as an interpretative system through the changes that occur in Horn's oeuvre. Throughout Horn's career, alchemy has developed into an interpretive system, a type of spiritual and cosmic perspective, that allows the artist to study, access, and meld diverse realities (sacred and profane) and diverse social systems (religious and scientific) into a more holistic and spiritually infused reality for herself and society-at-large. The purpose of her work is to help reinvest contemporary life with a spiritual presence by offering a model and a means of bringing the sacred into the profane.