UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2008 - 200912010 - 20151

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    Love-cheek, Azteca
    (2015) Hamami, Aydin; Klank, Richard; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The act of painting is one of a physical, visceral nature, in which the intangible is made tangible, removed from our world in such a way as you allow us an abstract viewership, and intimately tied to our own physicality. The mind of the painter is one that must be simultaneously present and absent from the world of the moment. The following is a recounting of events that have led to the understanding of studio practice that my work exemplifies today, and a dissection of the significance of the actions of the artist within the studio space as well as in relation to the art object at its end.
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    Modalities of the Idea: Stylistic Change and L'Idea della Bellezza in Early Modern Italy
    (2008-04-08) Hutson, James Lee; Colantuono, Anthony; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the careers of many prominent seventeenth-century painters such as Annibale Carracci, Guercino, Domenichino and even Caravaggio there is a familiar stylistic progression: each began their careers with a chiaroscuro manner rooted in Venetian and Emilian naturalism and then later shift to a markedly classicizing manner characterized by a brightening or lightening of the palette, a tendency to idealize the human form, and an insistence on composing in a series of parallel planes. The art-theoretical concept known as L'Idea della bellezza was the touchstone in cases where this stylistic phenomenon manifested itself. Developed and modified in antiquity to maintain its relevance to art theory, the Platonic Idea went through many variations and interpretative models until it was reintroduced to art theory in the Renaissance. At the same time, expectations of artists increased as the arti di disegno sought to be included among the liberal arts. Artists' primary and secondary phases of education ensured a reading knowledge of Latin and equipped them with the ability to engage with the theoretical material of their day. This intellectual interest was reinforced by the foundations of the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, and later the Bolognese Accademia degl'Incamminati. As the number of publications by artists seemingly dwindled in the period following Mannerism, it was assumed that artists were increasingly disinterested with the complex theoretical discourse taken up by a growing number of critics and theorists. However, artists of the early modern period did participate in the debates of their day, which in turn reveals their sensibilities. A number of treatises and writings on art have survived from Pietro Testa, Orfeo Boselli and Nicholas Poussin that demonstrate a sustained interest in theory. Within these writings we find that art-theoretical concepts such as L'Idea elucidate each artist's conceptual process and metaphysical understanding of art. In the Seicento the dominant position taken by artists and theorists alike was the reemerging Nominalist formulation for art production, which explains the move from a carefully observed naturalism in an artist's early career to a more abstracted later style.