Undergraduate Theses

ABSTRACT: In the latter period of his career, Dalí departed from some of the surrealist paradigms and imagery of the interwar period, and the politics that increasingly determined the group’s direction and identity. Instead, this new era is characterized by his theory and artistic application of "Nuclear Mysticism" (the relating of quantum physics to the conscious mind), Christian imagery, and engagement with the exemplum of Old Masters. This is especially present in his oil painting from 1954 Corpus Hypercubus (Crucifixion). Here, Christ’s cross is replaced with a polyhedron net of a tesseract, while Gala poses as Mary Magdalene within an ambiguous landscape. After exploring the implications of Dali’s post-war creative practice and activities, and his explicit references through primary source-led visual analysis; this thesis will ultimately explore how Dalí locates iconic images of religious figures into the Surreal subconscious. Ultimately reworking his own Surrealist paradigms into the aim for a “New Renaissance”, reveals a strategic and forceful synthesis of theories and references that are nonetheless complimentary to his earlier practice.

ABSTRACT: Benito Mussolini changed Rome drastically during the Fascist Regime from 1922 to 1943. His ambitions included wide scale architectural projects, the most ambitious of these urbanistic projects was the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR). There nested amongst the fascist architecture we find the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana. The Palazzo, also referred to more colloquially as the square coliseum was built to celebrate Italy’s colonization of Ethiopia, and therein to welcome art exhibitions that celebrated and promoted Italian-ness. With its multiple styles, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana and the E42 as a whole emphasize many other aspects of Mussolini’s propaganda, above all the war in Ethiopia, the concepts of Expansion, Colonization and Civilization. As the art historian Kirk discusses, these three important concepts were incorporated in the EUR project especially in the Palazzo Della Civiltà Italiana- and are the keys with which we can understand Mussolini’s propaganda. Moreover, Mussolini had many other secondary aims in his ambitious EUR project, for example the aims to expand Rome to the sea to attain control of the Mediterranean. Another reason why he built the EUR was to give Rome a new more modern city centre that could be viewed as the continuation of the New Italian Empire from that of Augustus. As a consequence of these elements, it is possible to understand why Mussolini considered the E42 complex as the beacon for his fascist ambitions and colonial expansion. Therefore, how did the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana become the public image of colonization, an articulation of fascism, and seek to reinforce the Italian sense of cultural identity? In addition, how does this architectural complex represent the ideologies of the war in Ethiopia?

ABSTRACT: Sarcophagi function not only as a resting place for the deceased, but also as a material trace of funerary rites, conceptions of death and the afterlife. This thesis will focus on the iconographical function and cultural hybridity found in the Sidamara Sarcophagus from the third century CE in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). This elaborate object combines Roman and Asiatic motifs and themes, suggesting an active fusion of cultural expression surrounding visual representation and artistic agency. This thesis focuses on the socio-cultural implications utilized through the global visual language of the Mediterranean as seen in the iconographic and decorative motifs of the Sidamara Sarcophagus. After careful consideration of the extant critical literature on the Sidamara Sarcophagus, this thesis suggests that iconographical analyses and its implications have not been consistent thus far, and thus turns to investigate the object by combining an iconographical approach with that of the modes of cultural expressions, viewership, and object agency of the second and third centuries CE. A comparative analysis of other sarcophagi from Asia Minor and Greco-Roman sites situates the Sidamara Sarcophagus’ iconography as being the result of a proactive fusion of cultures. This thesis extends beyond original iconographical analyses to query the function of viewership, space, and collective memory as it pertains to this funerary object arguing that, here, the Asiatic tradition of high relief ornamental sculpture impacts its standardized Roman iconography, demonstrating a visual language characteristic of the global Mediterranean.

ABSTRACT: This thesis will investigate how the Spanish Catholic Church reshaped the image of the Aztec Goddess Tonantzin into a Catholic icon, the Virgin of Guadalupe. I will analyze how Nicolás Enríquez’s (1704–1790) painting of the Virgen de Guadalupe con Los Cuatro Apariciones (The Virgin of Guadalupe with the Four Apparitions) was designed, diffused, and received in the context of syncretism to convert the belief systems of the indigenous populations of New Spain to align with the ideologies of Spanish colonization. How is the use, reception, and dissemination of the image used to enact a transformation from the indigenous Aztec belief-system to that of Castilian Catholic faith in 18th-century New Spain? I will also focus my thesis on what remains of Tonatzin in this Hispanicized Virgin by looking at Church edicts, contemporary critical responses regarding the image, and its reproductive success. I will explain how the use, reception, and dissemination of the Virgin’s image was used to further inculcate new Spanish cultural values. This is an example of a larger intention of the Spanish conquistadors to overwrite the traditions and beliefs of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. With the hope, through this syncretism, their devotion will be transferred from Tonantzin to that of the Virgin of Guadalupe.