Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Art

This dissertation considers the proliferation of mirrors and reflective materials in art since the 1960s through four case studies. By analyzing the mirrored and reflective work of Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Dan Graham and Robert Smithson within the context of the artists' larger oeuvre and also the theoretical and self-reflective writing that surrounds each artist's work, the relationship between the wide use of industrially-produced materials and the French theory that dominated artistic discourse for the past thirty years becomes clear. Chapter 2 examines the work of Robert Rauschenberg, noting his early interest in engaging the viewer's body in his work – a practice that became standard with the rise of Minimalism and after. Additionally, the theoretical writing of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides insight into the link between art as a mirroring practice and physically engaged viewer. Chapter 3 considers the questions of medium and genre as they arose in the wake of Minimalism, using the mirrors and photo-based paintings of Gerhard Richter as its focus. It also addresses the particular way that Richter weaves the motifs and concerns of traditional painting into a rhetoric of the death of painting which strongly implicates the mirror, ultimately opening up Richter's career to a psychoanalytic reading drawing its force from Jacques Lacan's writing on the formation of the subject. Chapter 4 extends these considerations to address the role of the viewer and the question of time and history through an analysis of the work and writing of Dan Graham, which draw both on Merleau-Ponty's and Lacan's theories of vision. And finally, Chapter 5 focuses on the work, writings and aesthetic theory of Robert Smithson, addressing the way that Smithson explicitly put his art and writing into an interdependent relationship, insisting that art is ultimately displaced into writing. Taken together, the case studies describe the way reflection, both (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephen Melville (Advisor) Subjects: Art History; Philosophy

MFA, Kent State University, 2021, College of the Arts / School of Art

"What Comes After the Blues" is an art installation by Matt Kurtz that uses found objects, video and performance art to reclaim identity in the ruins of industry and faith. The videos and projections exhibit dualities through site-specificity and personal narrative. Spiritual objects are reimagined while abandoned materials are sanctified. Oftentimes the objects in this installation serve as material memory for past experiences and expand on the concepts of the videos they interact with. Viewers are given the opportunity to participate in the installation through sound performance and meditative play. In his artwork, Kurtz enters the sacred voids of his past and considers local mythology, musical familiarity and the evangelical conditions of his background to convey his experience.

Committee: Eli Kessler (Advisor) Subjects: American History; Art History; Fine Arts; Folklore; Music; Religion

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, History of Art

In 1970, artist Robert Smithson created Partially Buried Woodshed on the campus of Kent State University, covering an abandoned woodshed with soil until its central beam cracked. Unsettling traditional notions of landscape and environmental art, Smithson's project also addressed a connection to Ohio's indigenous earthworks, many of which were destroyed—or willfully overlooked—by white settlers during the Frontier Era. In the decades since, artists have continued to approach Ohio's landscape as a site and a subject, challenging the conventional representations of the state's history and cultural legacy. Gathering works from a diverse group of artists, the exhibition Partially Buried: Land-Based Art in Ohio, 1970 to Now grapples with the state's history as a former frontier territory, confronting unanswered questions around land use, interpretation, preservation, and representation.

Committee: Kristina Paulsen (Advisor); Daniel Marcus (Committee Member); Lisa Florman (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History; Museum Studies; Museums

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, History of Art

Falling from the Grip of Grace is an analysis of the exhibition as a critical form of art with special consideration to the role of the spectator. It charts a history of exhibitions from 1968 to the present to explore how we arrived at a moment when critical art faces many challenges, not least of which is competing with the art institutions that give it voice. It is the first sustained study to critically analyze connections between late-Modernist artistic strategies engaged with the exhibition form and subsequent dispersal of those strategies into curatorial practices at major institutions and biennials. Artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Asher and Group Material initially expanded the spectator's involvement in art to encompass the spatial and temporal contexts of the exhibition. This change signaled a definitive fall from the modernist aesthetic regime of pure visuality, or state of “grace” to use Michael Fried's term, by placing greater emphasis on integrating engagements between art, spectator and institution. This dissertation interweaves the legacy of work by these artists and that of curator Harald Szeemann to examine contemporary art, institutions and biennials that involve the spectator in exhibition-making processes. New Institutionalism, a critically reflexive mode of curatorial activity, emerged in the 1990s out of a combination of these approaches and in conversation with the relational art promoted by curator Nicolas Bourriaud. New Institutionalism and relational aesthetics were originally interested in reconfiguring and expanding the exhibition of art into something more active, democratic, open and egalitarian, something other than standardized exhibition methods of displaying objects. A release from the influence of modernist aesthetic criteria did not, however, alleviate the need to hold art accountable for its fertile position for rethinking how things can be and function differently. My analyses draw on the theoretical project of Jacque (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Aron Vinegar Dr. (Advisor); Lisa Florman Dr. (Committee Member); Ron Green Dr. (Committee Member); Bill Horrigan Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Art History