UTSA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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This collection contains electronic UTSA theses and dissertations (ETDs), primarily from 2005 to present. The collection is not comprehensive; search the UTSA Library Catalog for a complete list of UTSA theses and dissertations.
Since 2023, the UTSA Graduate School has required all theses and dissertations to be made publicly available in Runner Research Press. However, authors are able to request an embargo. Embargoed ETDs will not be downloadable until after their embargo expires.
Authors of these ETDs have retained their copyright while granting UTSA Libraries the non-exclusive right to reproduce and distribute their works.
There are two collections of Master’s and Doctoral ETDs. One is available only to currently enrolled UTSA students, faculty or staff. To be able to download an ETD that is UTSA access only, navigate to “Log In” on the top right-hand corner of this screen, then select “Log in with my UTSA ID.”
Open Access ETDs are those which the author has granted permission for their work to be available to the general public.
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Browsing UTSA Electronic Theses and Dissertations by Department "Art and Art History"
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Item Athletes, street thugs, and men at war: the art of Vincent Valdez(2014) Aquino, MarcoThis thesis examines the work of artist Vincent Valdez in the decade between 2004 and 2014. Valdez's three major series of work are examined beginning with Stations (2004), Excerpts for John (2008) and The Strangest Fruit (2014). Each of these series centers on a specific male type--the soldier, the boxer and the urban "street youth." In the three series examined Valdez's young men may be interpreted as facing major obstacles in society as they attempt to demonstrate their masculinity. Valdez's young males are presented as sacrificial figures. Central to my thesis is the exploration of Valdez's incorporation of Christian themes and iconography. In his construction of masculinity, Valdez adapts the Christian concept of self-sacrifice. Valdez's use of the martyr concept within his work mirrors the strategy incorporated by the authors of the early Christian martyr texts. By presenting his male figures as martyrs, Valdez acknowledges historic and present struggles, preserves the dignity of his subjects, and suggests they are active participants in the shaping of their identities, rather than portraying them as victims of a dominant Anglo culture and society. Through his work Valdez illustrates the Mexican American male experience in the United States while exploring issues of race, class and gender.Item Beauty and the street: the photographs and films of William Klein(2014) Langton, Vanessa RyanWilliam Klein's interest in the grittiness of urban life laid the groundwork for his career as a street photographer, fashion photographer for Vogue magazine, and as an avant-garde filmmaker. Klein's body of work addressed the mass media's role in postwar society with his depiction of ordinary people in compositions that blurred distinctions between everyday life and "high" culture aesthetics. Each genre that Klein utilizes, the photobook, fashion photography, avant-garde film, share and develop ideas concerning contemporary consumer society. This thesis explores Klein's confrontational acknowledgment of mass media ideologies and its powerful methods that penetrate daily life.Item Body doubles: An exploration of representation in Lagunillas Style E figurines from West Mexico(2012) Norwood, Lauren E. WilsonThis thesis explores ideas of portraiture in West Mexican ceramic figurines. In the scholarship on West Mexican figurines Lagunillas Style E figurines have been casually described as portraits. This thesis sets out to argue this point, validating the claims made by previous scholars. I propose that Lagunillas Style E figurines are represent a highly stylized from of portraiture in which the representation of physical likeness was negligible. Instead the artists communicated the identity though the depiction of adornment such as tattoos, and body paint relying largely on the memory of the viewer. Body paint and tattoos not only convey the identity of the subject they also communicate the social identity, and the status of that individual. The placement of figurines in shaft tombs, likely tombs that contained the individual they represent, relates to their use in ancestor ritual. I propose that Lagunillas Style E figurines were use as a vehicle for the continued communication with the ancestors. The stylized aesthetic of the faces and bodies, and the depiction of adornment that identifies social status relates to the afterlife where social identity is the focus, not individual personality.Item Casta paintings revisited: The case for single-panel analysis and artist agency(2012) Coates, Alana JeanThe objective of this thesis is to question the dominant theory that casta paintings depict a social hierarchy in which Spanish superiority is emphasized. Comparing the recent scholarship in the field to a single-panel casta painting by Ignacio María Barreda, I explore the possibility of communal unification rather than social degeneration of the castas class. Formal analysis of the visual elements in this single-panel casta painting suggests that previous scholarship has given inequitable weight to the labels of miscegenation, an analytical approach that has resulted in narrow interpretations of casta paintings. This investigation into casta paintings places priority on the visual aspects first, and explores the linguistic history of the associated text second. Why does negative and demeaning nomenclature in these paintings not correlate with the visuals? It is my contention that because the painters of this genre exercised artistic agency and because they were of Native and African ancestry themselves, it is unlikely that they would have intentionally portrayed a detrimental self-image of the castas class, as has been the prevailing theory. This analysis further examines seventeenth century Dutch visual traditions to include genre paintings, prints and civic descriptions, cartography and costume illustration in relation to casta paintings; the former sources lend support to my thesis that casta paintings emphasize casta pride, a sense of community, and even humor, over Spanish superiority.Item Challenge and formal construction in the works of Catherine Opie(2009) Moore, Carolee CeciliaCatherine Opie, American photographer, uses a diverse range of precedents to engage her wide-ranging subject matter. She references sixteenth century portraiture, social documentary approaches from the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, and formalist photographic discourse to portray members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and transsexual community. The legacy of these disparate traditions presents conceptual challenges, but Opie engages with their significance and ultimately produces work that refuses layers of stylized distancing in historical portraiture, the objective distancing in social documentary, and the aestheticized distancing in formalist work. While respecting these histories, Opie nevertheless organizes much of her critique through a formalist vocabulary because of its stranglehold on much of twentieth century art. Opie's choice of formalism, her use of color, her use of beauty, and her use of art historical references is in keeping with a contemporary feminism that does not limit choice in framing images, even if it carries the artist into contested territory.Item Confronting Francis Bacon: A Modest Proposal(2023) Taylor, Kent G.In this thesis I intend to examine Francis Bacon's works based on contemporary theories of carnal aesthetics and the trauma of abjection, which have opened new channels for understanding Bacon's work. At the same time, this new understanding forces one to reconsider the theoretical iconic treatments by sociologists and historians, Gilles Deleuze, Kent Brintnall, and Georges Bataille, which have been overextended for clarifying Bacon's work. Close and explicit interpretations of Bacon's art itself will suggest alternative and unorthodox ways Bacon transcended his traditional triptych format while bringing perspective to the death of George Dyer in 1971. It also reveals an appreciation of the mystical in Bacon's work, as informed by concepts of abjection and the atomization of social structure introduced by Julia Kristeva.Item Contesting categories of the 'fantastic' and 'surreal': a visual reading of Tilsa Tsuchiya's and Francisco Toledo's multidimensional and complex artistic visions(2016) Del Toro, MarissaThis thesis provides a critical analysis of artworks from the Peruvian Japanese artist, Tilsa Tsuchiya (1932-1984), and the Mexican Zapotec artist, Francisco Toledo (b. 1940), during the peak of their respective careers in the 1970s. Both of these artists were included in the 1988 exhibition, Art of the Fantastic: Latin America 1927-1987, which categorized them as a second generation of “fantastic” artists who “invented worlds…[as a] psychological or symbolic reflection of external conditions.” Although this exhibit was laden with reductive terminology about these and other artists, it raised important questions: What defines an “invented world?” Did these artists indeed create “invented worlds?” What external conditions did they respond to? And through what visual imagery did they establish their identities to define themselves? Tsuchiya painted her figures in a utopia of fabricated environments based on Andean and Peruvian mountain landscapes. Her series comments on the psychosocial mode of indigenous Andean culture influenced by her cultural and nationalist background as a Peruvian, but also as a depoliticized response to the social and political upheaval of the 1968’s military coup in Peru. Toledo’s works of insects, reptiles, and other creatures swarm around human figures, which morph into anthropomorphic figures – as a means to reassert the cultural iconographies of Southwestern Mexican and Zapotec identity as a sign of animation and transformation. His artworks are a symbolic reference to existentialist views but also his strong Zapotec heritage. Although through different styles and artistic strains, both Tsuchiya’s and Toledo’s artworks activate and animate the contemporary issues of sexuality and gender from a broad base of cultural signifiers within an international language of abstraction and neo-figuration. This thesis argues that Tsuchiya’s and Toledo’s work incorporated indigenous myths, the natural landscape, animism, and anthropomorphism as an attempt to illuminate the multidimensionality and complexity of their contemporary lives and realities shaped in part by their cultural roots, heritage, and both regional and cosmopolitan milieus.Item Dismantling cultural hierarchies: a prefiguration of Mexican postmodernism in Enrique Guzmán's paintings(2014) Scott, Gabriella BoschiThis thesis argues that Mexican painter Enrique Guzmán is a central figure in the transition between the Ruptura movement and postmodernism. Construed by many as a surrealist artist, Guzmán employs idiosyncratic imagery not to probe inner realities, but to explore themes such as abjection and the fragmentation of self into commodity images. Inhabiting the chasm between an oppressive ultra-conservative provincial culture and the turbulent revolutionary ideology of Mexico City of the sixties and seventies, Guzmán articulates, by fusing aesthetic categories such as, among others, the grotesque, the campy and the advertising cliché and exploring language, paradox and gaze, a deconstruction of cultural and political codes by satirizing their interlocking systems of signs and simulacra, initiating a critique of national and personal identity that will later be developed by the Neo-Mexicanists (Neomexicanistas) into a bold denouncement of sexual, socioeconomic and national marginalization.Item Emotive Text: The Arabic & Latin Inscriptions of King Pedro's Alcazar Palace(2013) Riginio, LinaThis paper will focus on the inscriptions, both Latin and Arabic, found on the exterior façade, the Patio de las Doncellas, and the Salón de Embajadores of King Pedro's palace located within the Real Alcázar of Seville. These inscriptions, created during the reign of King Pedro I when renovations were being made at his palace, evoked different reactions from the different visitors during his reign. The inscriptions have proven to be more than just ornamental design. The addition of these inscriptions to the royal construction resulted in the architecture demanding interaction from its spectators. It is fact that inscriptions existed on the walls of the Real Alcázar long before as well as after King Pedro's inhabitance at the complex. However, given the political and religious movements during this monarch's reign, and most importantly, the flourishing of a cultural style known as Mudéjar, there is no better time period to examine how this architectural text could have demanded different interactions from the select audiences who regularly visited King Pedro's palace. The three inscribed areas of King Pedro's palace that have been selected for examination were chosen because they were and are still today, three of the most well known areas of the palace and the most likely to be visited or seen at the time of King Pedro. This thesis will concentrate on the Alcázar's audiences consisting of King Pedro, residents of the palace during his reign, and the King's elite Muslim and Christian visitors, as well as the Muslim artisans who created the inscriptions. How these audiences approached the palace's demand of interaction, and how these audiences interpreted the structure's messages as conveyed by them, is its primary focus.Item (En) countering gender violence and impunity: The art of Teresa Margolles and Regina Jose Galindo(2012) Miramontes Olivas, AdrianaIn the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century both Mexico and Guatemala witnessed unprecedented statistics of attacks against women. Numerous young girls and middle aged women suffered under conditions of domestic violence and many more women disappeared from their communities. Some of their bodies were found and many remain to be discovered. Evidence shows these women had a tragic end. Several bodies were mutilated, raped, and many more tortured. It is within a context of misogyny, patriarchal, and machista societies that corruption has allowed perpetrators to attack women with impunity. This thesis underscores the importance of political art in the 21st century. Teresa Margolles's "Cimbra" (Formwork) (2006) and Regina José Galindo's "No perdemos nada con nacer" (We lose nothing in being born) (2000) demonstrate the potential of art to consider, change, and reflect upon women's lives. Margolles's and Galindo's pieces further constitute a protest against their governments and the communities that have suffered the series of crimes. By creating "Cimbra" and "No perdemos nada con nacer," the artists unite their voices with the women who protest on the streets fighting for justice for their disappeared and murdered daughters and sisters. This thesis argues that with "Cimbra" Teresa Margolles creates a memorial to victims of gender violence by using found and collected objects, and in "No perdemos nada con nacer," Regina José Galindo engages viewers in a provocative performance where she forces them to witness and acknowledge gender violence.Item Evolution and revolution: El Greco's Byzantine roots in his Spanish painting(2011) Edwards, Jacqueline A.El Greco's earliest known works are three icons he completed in Crete in the traditional late-Byzantine style; aesthetic characteristics of which were carried into the execution of many of his later commissioned paintings as a famed artist in Toledo. It is the intention of this thesis to illustrate specifically which elements of El Greco's icons were carried into his later works by comparing each authenticated icon to a number of his Spanish paintings that contain particularly Byzantine traits in spirituality, theme, and style.Item Francis Alys, Cuauhtémoc Medina and late twentieth-century art from Mexico City(2010) Hayes, Edward Reed, Jr.The 1990s in Mexico City are a critical point of reference for a time when contemporary art from Mexico is on the platform of Western culture's epicenters of contemporary art--the 52nd and 53rd Venice Biennials represent Mexico's first official appearances (2007, 2009), and, from December 2009 - March 2010, Mexican born Gabriel Orozco was given a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Similarly, Mexico City-based artist Francis Alÿs has become a familiar name in the global exhibition circuit. This thesis underscores Alÿs's early projects in Mexico City and his correspondence with curator, critic, historian, and collaborator, Cuauhtémoc Medina as formative influences during Alÿs's development as an artist. Early projects such as Fabiola (1994) and The Rotulista Workshop (1993-1997), among other local urban engagements that document Alÿs's transition from immigrant to an established Mexico City-based artist--inform subsequent projects made outside of Mexico such as When Faith Moves Mountains (Lima, 2002) and the retrospective, "Francis Alÿs: Politics of Rehearsal" at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2007-08). This thesis argues that Alÿs and Medina have forged paths that bridge the contemporary exhibition culture with a critique of modernity as experienced in Latin America, linking relational artistic practices to a dialogue of sociopolitical transformations in late twentieth-century Mexico City.Item From National Heritage to Transnational Trauma: Tradition, Globalization, and Refugees in the Art of Ai Weiwei(2019) Patrias, JordynActivist artist Ai Weiwei (born 1957) focuses attention on the conceptual construction of different histories in a period of global exchange. In his installations, Ai examines personal, national, and international relationships through reflections of self, society, and the human condition. This thesis considers one project and two exhibitions, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), Soleil Levant (June 20-October 1, 2017), and Ai Weiwei: Life Cycle (September 28, 2018-March 3, 2019), for the purpose of exploring Ai's use of tradition, and subsequently, his transformation of that tradition to create an image of power that speaks to a global audience. This thesis investigates Ai's appreciation for Chinese and Western art historical and socio-cultural histories as he explores themes of identity, representation, and cross-cultural exchange.Item Gesture, the body, and theatricality in the works of Egon Schiele(2011) Roberts, Diana LynThis thesis looks closely at the figurative work of the Austrian Expressionist, Egon Schiele, and his use of dramatic physical gesture in the context of fin-de-siècle Vienna's culturally pervasive and historically vibrant performance culture. Exploring visual and conceptual correlations between Schiele's work and contemporary performance practice, it presents a more culturally contextual than individual psychological reading of Schiele's art and argues that, when viewed in the context of Vienna as a hotspot for the emerging modern dance, cinema, and above all, theater, Schiele's use of dramatically exaggerated gesture was part of a broader aesthetic shift towards a more radical, modern mode of physical expression. Visual analysis across art forms reveals similarities in formal and stylistic approaches to the expressive body. An exploration of the underlying philosophies reveals a shared preoccupation with the body, and an interest in abstract, direct, physical expression over intellectualized verbal or narrative explication. Focusing on such diverse cultural preoccupations as physical pathology, the Viennese language crisis, mysticism, and the myriad manifestations of body culture, this study examines how Schiele and his contemporaries in the performing arts incorporated these ideas formally and conceptually into their artistic practice. Focusing on Vienna's integrated performing and visual arts milieu, this study argues that Schiele constructed a potent, expressive and performative mode of physical gesture and dramatic presentation that suited his personality, the dynamic aesthetic of the time, and the theatrical Viennese sensibility.Item History Painting and Historical Memory: The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain(2017) Sandoval, KiraPere Oromig’s Embarco de los moriscos en el Grau de Valencia, a seventeenth-century history painting, is part of a series of six paintings by four artists on historical moments from the 1609 expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. These paintings record the historical events surrounding the expulsion and present a powerful visual representation of these moments. Pere Oromig’s paintings function as much more than a simple illustration. In this thesis, I demonstrate the ways in which the painting functioned as a visual record of Spanish sentiment toward the exiles after the completion of the events. I present evidence of how that history was constructed, explained, and justified for the viewers of the inner circles of the king—the politicians, the patricians and the court visitors who would have had access to the paintings in the king’s collection. These paintings, the first to depict the 1609 expulsion of the Moriscos, also created a precedent for the format of Spanish history painting during the Golden Age of Spain under Philip III and Philip IV’s rule.Item Lineage and gender: Gesture, accoutrement and cross-cultural elements in West Mexican sculpture(2012) Johnson, William MichaelI believe that the ceramic sculpture of ancient West Mexico are a direct cultural expression of societal dynamics; my particular focus in this study will be the social, familial and political position of women, how their roles were dictated, and how the figurative sculpture relays this information. I will trace these expressions through the analysis of common iconography within these effigies. The wide-spread symbols I will analyze include poses, gestures, adornments and domestic items that all point to a vocabulary of social and familial position and lineage in the cultures surrounding the advanced Formative cultures of ancient West Mexico. The methods with which I analyze these symbols include the formal analysis of ceramic figures, art historical comparisons of the figures with those of other cultures, and ethnographic comparison. The roles that the women of ancient West Mexico filled can be seen through the figures they left behind, and I use the evidence to tease out aspects of West Mexican women's lives through issues of domesticity, social standing and lineage.Item Made by Artists: 26 Years of Sala Diaz(2023) Whitby, ChinaThe history of the development and expansion of San Antonio's alternative art scene is vast. However, academic-based literature that centers on San Antonio's alternative art spaces has yet to catch up to the volume of creative artwork currently being done in the community by these venues and the individuals and groups that run them. Therefore, this paper aims to contribute to the scholarly literature gap by documenting the history and development of the Sala Diaz Gallery. In order to provide a holistic scope of Sala Diaz as an institution in the past and present, this project was broken into four sections. Section One introduces readers to the historical events, individuals, and groups that led to or inspired the creation of Sala Diaz and its gradual growth. Section Two covers the gallery's present organization as an alternative space by documenting specific events that Sala Diaz participated in during my six-month internship. Section Three, serves as an introduction to the Sala Diaz Archive and offers a descriptive overview of the gallery's material history, which include objects (newspaper, exhibition summaries, flyers, letters, photographs) that date from 1995 until 2013. Section Four complies data taken from the Sala Diaz archive into a set of graphs that aim to visually and numerically understand the opportunities Sala Diaz affords artists in terms of diversity, yearly exhibitions output, and gender equality. The finding were then compared to the statistics compiled from mainstream cultural museums and for-profit galleries.Item Madeline O'Connor minimalism, spiritualism, and particularity(2012) Carey, Katharine E.Positioned between abstraction and representation and between painting and sculpture, Madeline O'Connor utilized simple geometric forms to create contemplative minimalist sculptures that employ repetition, saturated hues, and carefully measured negative spaces. Although the appearance of her work aligns with simple geometric forms popularized in the 1960s by Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Frank Stella, and others, O'Connor's work differs from the founders of Minimalism in both references and fabrication. O'Connor's lifelong exposure to the coastal prairies of south Texas, particularly the bird and plant life, informs much of her work visually and in the title, and she fabricated her sculpted canvases by hand instead of employing industrial fabricators like so many earlier minimalist artists. This paper begins with a formalist exploration of O'Connor's work with references to discourses on modernism and minimalism followed by a discussion of Spiritualism as it relates to both Russian abstractionists and American modernists. The final chapter compares O'Connor's work with the contemporary artist Mona Hatoum and includes an argument for particularity in the work of both artists. Concluding remarks emphasize O'Connor's work in connection to issues of subjectivity and fabrication explored by fellow post-minimalist women artists and briefly revisits issues of minimalist discourse, spirituality, and particularity.Item Myer Myers: Colonial New Yorker, Silversmith, Jew(2011) Mauze, Amelie M.This thesis examines Myer Myers as the first formally trained Jewish Silversmith in Great Britain. It looks at the colonial New York world in which he lived, the religious silver he created for both Christian and Jewish congregations and consider what effect, if any, his cultural and religious heritage had on his career and on the objects he created. It explores his biography and looks at his secular works to answer the questions: Is the ornament on the religious items Myers created different from his secular items? Should Myers be remembered for the secular and sacred items he created or for the cultural and religious obstacles that he overcame? With the completion of this work it is determined that Myers religious objects are both in keeping with tradition and with the changing styles of the time. His use of similar techniques and ornament on both secular and sacred objects forces the conclusion that the embellishment found on his religious items is simply decorative, even though scholars have attempted to prove a different conclusion. It is also determined that Myers should be remembered for both his innovative place in history, as the first formally trained Jewish silversmith who broke many of the barriers that previously restricted Jews from the trade, as well as for his body of work. It is determined that while he is noteworthy for being the first Jew, the product he produced in both quantity and quality rivals any of his contemporaries and his legacy can stand alone, without the qualifier of "Jew.".Item Neglected notions: Theatricality, humor and time compression in the works of Arman(2009) Endresen, Lisa C.Arman's art expresses a desperate need to respond to the excesses of a consumerist society while simultaneously harboring a desire to collect objects. His methods of entombing collections of everyday objects provide an opportunity to view manufactured objects within and separate from their original contexts, encouraging viewers to consider customary functions in new contexts with graceful and often disturbing structures. This thesis considers the layers of theatricality, humor, and time compression that animate Arman's constructions. It looks at his process, but its main focus is on the final work and its effect on the viewer.