M.A. - Art History

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https://hdl.handle.net/10125/20024

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 29
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    Past to Present: Performance Art by Shimada Yoshiko and Ito Tari, on Imperial Military Sexual Violence
    (2024) Yonebayashi, Koharu; Hamilton Faris, Jaimey; Art History
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    Carving Kingship: Political and Religious Identity in Nāyaka Art
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2022) George, Marina; Lavy, Paul A.; Art History
    "Carving Kingship: Political and Religious Identity in Nāyaka Art" is an inquiry into notions of kingship and the visual associations made by Nāyaka dynasties in Tamil Nadu, India nearly a century after the downfall of the Vijayanagara Empire, in order to identify their priorities, and recognize patterns of intent in their art.
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    Hand fans of Micronesia
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1986) Le Geyt, Linda M.; Asian and Pacific Art History
    This study concerns itself with the visual exploration of one type of artifact in Micronesia, the fiber fan, as an expression and reflection of the aesthetic traditions and cultural preferences over time and among divers societies within Micronesia. It wi
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    The Masks Of Kyōgen: A Study Of Morphology, Taxonomy, And Personae
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Marvin, Stephen E.; Szostak, John; Art History
    ABSTRACT Kyōgen is the oldest continuously performed comedy in the world and introduced masking to performances more than a century earlier than the commedia dell’arte of Italy. The masks in use today remain essentially unchanged from at least the 17th century. My thesis explores the origins, evolution, conformations, and personae of Kyōgen masks. Existing scholarship focuses on mask usage in Honkyōgen, the genre of independent comedy performance, but masked Kyōgen actors also enact important roles in Sarugaku-Nō plays and the sacred ritual of Shikisanban. Knowledge of the roles represented by Kyōgen masks in these two branches of Nōgaku is vital to understanding the development of important mask types and properly interpreting their personae. Given the dearth of historical documentation of Kyōgen masks and the paucity of modern research, my thesis draws heavily on formal analysis of Kyōgen masks made prior to the Meiji period. For this purpose, I present photographs of nearly 400 different masks, the largest and most comprehensive archive, by far, ever published.
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    The Soft Power of Rimpa: Tracing a Fluid Creative Practice Across Space and Time
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Enomoto, Erika; Szostak, John; Art History
    This expository thesis builds on current knowledge of the 17th century Japanese painting school known as Rimpa. Revisiting its multifaceted history leading up to 2015, there are three pivotal moments in its 400-year-old history that shape our understanding of Rimpa as a cultural soft power. Additionally, I highlight celebratory events in 2015 as continued efforts of the repeated cooption of Rimpa’s soft power to influence public perception and inform local identity. I posit that the longevity and relevancy of Rimpa, as a creative practice, is attributed to its fluid qualities that afford it longevity, relevancy, and the ability to be repeatedly reconfigured and adapted to the visual language and concerns of the zeitgeist.
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    Sound, Embodiment and Displacement: Listening to Borders in the Art of Samson Young
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Twadelle, Taylor; Hamilton Faris, Jaimey; Art History
    Borders today are commonly perceived as sites of tension and conflict. Whether conceptualized as territorial borders that purport to physically separate nations or social, political and cultural borders that ideologically split individuals, the idea of a border as impenetrable and divisive boundary obscures what can pass through. Sound, as a force capable of moving through objects and individuals, demonstrates that borders are in fact permeable, especially to that which is invisible to the eye. This paper seeks to offer an alternative conceptualization of the border through a sound-based methodology, drawing on the works of sound studies scholars like Brandon LaBelle (Sonic Agency, 2019) and writing on modernity and the self such as Steven Connor’s “The Modern Auditory I” (1997). By examining three works by the Hong Kong-based multimedia artist Samson Young — Liquid Borders (2012-2014), For Whom the Bell Tolls (2015), and Nocturne (2015) — which combine sound and visual imagery, I suggest that Young’s use of sound and image in these works allows a unique experience of embodied displacement that both grounds the audience in their own embodied subjectivity while simultaneously displacing them in order to imagine the experiences of others. Ultimately, through an analysis of Young’s works focusing on national borders, I hope to demonstrate how sound can not only disrupt common conceptualizations of borders but also present an alternative framework for understanding and being in the world that, when paired with vision, can offer an embodied method of capturing the experience of subjectivity as being both a part of and apart from the world.
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    Ki‘i Lā‘au in Transit and Transition: A Diachronic Analysis of Meaning in Four Pacific Objects
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Parker, Nathan D.; Art History
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    Re-Presenting Micronesia in Long Beach: Memories of a Tourist Collection
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2018-05) Flores, Ashley I.; Art History
    This thesis explores the biography of 18 objects created on the island of Yap in the 1990s at the Ethnic Art Institute of Micronesia (EAIM), an open workshop space in which Micronesians were employed to make objects for sale to tourists. The institute employed the local Micronesian community, mostly men from the main island, to recreate cultural objects recorded in the Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910 journals. Eighteen of the types of objects produced by EAIM are featured on display at the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (PIEAM) located in Long Beach, California, and have been since it opened in October 2010. PIEAM has a wider focus on the arts of the Pacific, including Polynesia and Melanesia, but clearly emphasizes Micronesia and the objects made at the EAIM. Both the museum and EAIM were projects spearheaded by Dr. Gumbiner. This thesis explores how the cultural objects, which are produced at the EAIM and displayed at the PIEAM in Long Beach, California, can be seen as representing and perpetuating a postcolonial situation.
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    Fragments and Empire: Cambodian Art from the Angkor Period
    (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-05) Remington, Kristin M. Y.; Art History
    The John Young collection of Khmer art, once owned by John Chin Young (1909-1997), is divided today between two museums, the John Young Museum of Art (JYMA) on the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa campus and the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA, formerly the HMA or HAA) in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. Both museum collections contain several of Young’s Angkor period artworks that have yet to be the subject of thorough art historical research. Five sandstone reliefs in JYMA and two reliefs from HoMA collection provide a valuable opportunity to engage with the Angkor period regarding both stylistic developments and shifts in Angkor’s political power. This thesis examines the sandstone reliefs from the John Young collection and the significant questions they pose when considering the distribution of Khmer artistic traditions outside of the Angkorian capital and into territorial margins, specifically, northeastern Thailand. My research is the first comprehensive art historical study of the John Young collection of Khmer art. This thesis includes a secondary exhibition component. In addition to the written thesis, I curated the exhibition, Fragments & Empire: Cambodian Art from the Angkor Period, which opened at the John Young Museum of Art on March 6, 2016 and closed on May 6, 2016. Fragments & Empire exhibited all the Khmer artwork from JYMA’s collection and incorporated ten digital loans of Khmer art from HoMA in a single exhibition space.