Art History & Archaeology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2744
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Item The Intersection Between Nationalism and Religion: The Burghers of Calais of Auguste Rodin(2009) Lee, Jung-Sil; Hargrove, June Ellen; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As a republican, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) conveyed political ideology in his public sculpture, but due to his interest in religion and spirituality, his interpretations differed from contemporary artists. He grafted national myths and symbols onto Catholicism and its rituals to facilitate the sacralization of the Republic. Yet, the tension between Catholicism and republicanism in his work persisted because of his religiosity and his adherence to secularism. Rodin's conflict and compromise between the two fields were not only his personal dilemma, but also that of the Third Republic. This dissertation focuses on how Rodin internalized republican ideology in his public sculpture, and how he appropriated Catholic ritual to promote political messages. In spite of the republican government's constant struggle to separate from Catholic domination, Catholicism was so deeply imbedded in French culture, Rodin recognized this complex paradigm which he co-opted to construct an ideological matrix for his public work. Aware of the powerful social role of religion, the First Republic tried to create a new religion based on deistic tradition, The Cult of Supreme Being, to unite all French people who were severely divided by factions, languages, and regionalism. This precedent tradition further proved the importance of religion's social reach in constructing national sentiment. Based on research in Rodin museums in Paris and Meudon in 2004 and 2006, this study examines how Rodin merged Catholic practices and contemporary social ideologies into the fiber of nationalist identity that served to reconcile political oppositions in France and to heal wounded civic pride after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Similar to the public sphere proposed by Jürgen Habermas, Rodin's public sculpture suggests ideal democratic communicative field. The Burghers of Calais is a prime example of the republican ideal of heroic martyrdom. At the same time, its overall form, figural arrangement, and poignant expressions invoke the Catholic practice of pilgrimage, drawing the audience into the scene's emotional landscape. This interpretation of The Burghers of Calais as a religious and psychological catharsis paves the way for public sculpture to function as a healing tool to rebuild personal and national subjectivity.Item The Black Exotic: Tradition and Ethnography in Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Art(2005-08-29) Childs, Adrienne Louise; Hargrove, June; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study of select works by Orientalist artists Jean-Léon Gérôme and Charles Cordier charts the trajectory of the idea of the black exotic and investigates the symbolism of black figures in Orientalist painting and sculpture. Representations of blacks in Orientalist art served a complex and nuanced function as nineteenth-century European artists fashioned the exotic. At the nexus of traditional tropes of blackness and the new science of ethnography, they were a critical tool used to construct an imagined Orient within the context of Orientalism--the phenomenal passion for the exotic in the nineteenth century. Blacks were multifaceted figures that evoked sexuality, servitude, degradation, and primitive culture while providing decorative beauty and the allure of difference. The trope of the exotic black is rooted in a tradition of representing Africans dating back to the Italian Renaissance. By the nineteenth century ethnographic approaches to race permeated Orientalist ideologies and affected a qualitative shift in how black figures operated in visual culture. Through a critical analysis of the relationship between exoticism and blackness, this study addresses the need for a more specialized interpretation of how attitudes towards race were encoded in nineteenth-century visual arts.