| 1. |
- Steorn, Patrik, 1971-
(författare)
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Nakna män : Maskulinitet och kreativitet i svensk bildkultur 1900-1915
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- At the turn of the 20th century, there was a notion in Europe that urbanisation and industrialisation had drained the human race of spiritual and physical energy. A particular concern was that men were being emasculated. An image of naked, athletic men was created, which was perceived to depict a form of unadulterated masculinity in touch with nature.The aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate that “the image of the male nude” was a complex and multifaceted performance that depicted contradictory ideas of gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. In addition, it aims at demonstrating the extensiveness of this motif in early 1900’s Sweden, not only in art but also in mass-produced images. Another aim is to show that images of naked men were used for different purposes by different groups of viewers.The dissertation consists of three overall sections: Context, Image Culture, and Subject. Section I deals with the doctrines on mechanism and vitalism and with the discussions on homosexuality, gender differences, the working class, and nationalism in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Section II traces images of male bodies within the framework of sport cultures and bathing culture. Section III analyses the image of the male nude in the subject areas of antiquity, old Norse motifs, biblical motifs, allegorical personifications and symbolistic depictions.Sports magazines depicted muscular men as examples of activity; health journals and medical books used them as visualisations of health; in the art world they symbolized an artistic reawakening, while the images were objects of desire in male homosexual circles. A masculine, athletic, heterosexual, short-cropped, bourgeois Swedish man with a moustache became a nationalistic figurehead. Hardness and physical inaccessibility were accentuated, at the same time as the nudity enticed the viewer to see, in the very same bodies, physical accessibility and tactile gentleness.
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| 2. |
- Uggla, Karolina, 1976-
(författare)
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Konst och kartläggning kring 1970 : Modell, diagram och karta i konstens landskap
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The years around 1970 saw the emergence of an artistic fascination with maps and mapping. In the present thesis this fascination is conceptualised as a mapping impulse, acknowledging how the discourses of art and mapping, respectively, intertwine and merge. The aim of the study is to analyse this mapping impulse and to identify recurring themes and concepts in artworks and texts on art where maps and mapping processes are used as a visual expression and method. In order to demonstrate how the scope of the thesis is shaped by later interpretations of art from around 1970, three exhibition publications from three decades are examined to illustrate how boundaries between the discourses of art and of mapping are renegotiated from the late 1960s up until the 2010s.The representing line of the map is analysed via the concepts of diagrams, maps, and models, such as the re-appearance of Claude Shannon’s and Warren Weaver’s Communication Model in the Swedish late 1960s, Öyvind Fahlström’s World Map (1972), and Sten Eklund’s paintings on glass from 1968 where he transfers ideas from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus into visual representations.The procedural aspects of encounters between the discourses of art and of mapping from around 1970 are analysed in Hans Haacke’s Gallery-Goers’ Birthplace and Residence Profile Pt. 1 and Sten Eklund’s Kullahusets hemlighet (The Secret of Kullahuset). The latter work is interpreted in the light of the role of the mapping, surveying individual, and in a figurative sense, the individual in the system. Here, the concept of alienation is used, as the work delineates the mapping subject who itself is being subject to mapping. In this thesis the mapping impulse is identified as a way to deal with territory and truth in Western art around 1970. The map as a sign system and a practice is representative of a recent stage where art in various ways deal with a world undergoing rapid change. The mapping impulse circa 1970 can be identified as a visual regime of cartographic reason, characterized by legibility, clarity and lucidity. This also suggests alternative interpretations of the impact of the linguistic turn in the art of the 1960s and early 1970s, revealing a more ambiguous relationship between text and image.
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| 3. |
- Åkestam, Mia, 1954-
(författare)
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Bebådelsebilder : Om bildbruk under medeltiden
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates the Annunciation motif and the use of images in a medieval socio-cultural context. There are almost 400 medieval images of the Annunciation from the period 1150–1550 in Sweden today. It is found in murals, baptismal fonts, paintings, wooden sculpture, stone reliefs, liturgical vessels, textile works and altarpieces. The aim of the thesis is to present this rich and varied material, and also to relate the images to the milieus where they were used and viewed as objects of cult, and to elucidate the historical situation in which they were used for communicative purposes. It is argued that an “image-culture” perspective and a long-term investigation can reveal other aspects than a specific study, and that it is fruitful to equally emphasize the rhetoric of the image, the beholders part and the historical context. Hence the picture analysis is based on semiotics and rhetoric analysis of pictures and reception theory. With this point of departure the thesis addresses iconographic problems and shows that text as a source and explanation of historical image can be insufficient. The study shows that the figures’ gestures and body language, their contenace, is crucial for our understanding, and remains the most important mark of identification. The motif can be identified even with an angel without wings. The meaning of this universal picture could then be enlarged with specific attributes and symbols with a purpose to emphasize specific ideas. In context this elucidates bishopric, monastic as well as worldly use of imagery. The image context includes motifs from classical antiquity, references to the pious Christian worshiper, as well as symbolic staging of the Gospels and Christian faith. More expected is the biblical history. The motif can also be displayed alone, and thus it can be regarded as a sign. An important outcome is that the Annunciation not is used in legendary suites or in narratives of the Virgin Mary. Hence, the relationship between image and text is not uncomplicated. The thesis shows that people in the Middle Ages were fully aware of the use of pictures and skilfully used the rhetoric of the image.
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