http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7633 Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:24:45 GMT 2013-06-18T23:24:45Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79183 Spectacles Plastiques : reconstruction and the debates on the "Synthesis of the Arts" in France, 1944-1962 Pezolet, Nicola My dissertation examines the collaborative efforts of different individuals and groups - such as Le Corbusier, the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Groupe Espace, and the Internationale Situationniste - which advocated a "synthesis of the arts" in the time period that corresponds to the Liberation until the beginning of the Fifth Republic. I consider a wide range of archival sources and projects, from the collective decoration of permanent buildings to temporary installations in galleries by way of outdoors art exhibitions and theatrical performances, many of which were sponsored by Eugene Claudius-Petit and the newly founded French Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism. The "synthesis of the arts" discourse was more than a faint humanist echo of the Wagnerian model of the Gesamtkuntwerk, or "total work of art": it was one of the primary routes along which the cultural and political conflicts of French modernization and governmentality were discussed. My study locates the "synthesis of the arts" amidst the effort to renovate a universalizing discourse linked to modernist art, on the one hand, and a nascent welfare state notion of public space (and its correlative rhetoric of beauty, hygiene, functionality, and accessibility), on the other. As such, the postwar synthesis discourse not only reflected but directly participated in the development and expansion of the French "cultural state". Rather than showing this discourse as unitary, the dissertation explores its complex and sometimes contradictory dimensions by analyzing the political and social connotations of three different categories: a heroic model, associated with the figure of Le Corbusier; a bureaucratic model, developed by Groupe Espace (1951-1956); and an oppositional model, deployed by AsgerJorn, Pinot-Gallizio, and others who became associated with the Situationists (1954-1962). Case studies include Le Corbusier's Usine Claude et Duval in Saint-Dié and Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, Bernard Zehrfuss and Felix Del Marle's Regie Nationale Renault factory complex in Flins, Michel Ragon and Jacques Polieri's first Festival d'Art d'Avant-Garde, and Cobra and Situationists enviroments such as the Architects' House and the Cavern of Anti-Matter. Thesis (Ph. D. in Architecture: History and Theory of Art)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "February 2013."; Includes bibliographical references (p. 311-332). Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79183 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79182 Ornament after the orders : Percier, Fontaine and the rise of the architectural interior in post-revolutionary France Moon, Iris (Iris Jee) This dissertation explores the collaborative work in interior decoration undertaken by the French architects Charles Percier (1764-1838) and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine (1762- 1853), in order to argue that their shared aesthetic positioned the interior at the crux of a modem architectural discourse no longer dependent upon a Vitruvian theory of the orders. Percier and Fontaine's influential decoration book, the Recueil de décorations intérieures (1801-1812) serves as my point of departure for investigating their idea of interior decoration and its engagement with the complex cultural milieu of France, circa 1800, from the end of the ancien régime to the rise of a militarized empire under Napoleon Bonaparte. Approaching Percier and Fontaine's interior decoration partnership from different thematic angles, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates their vital role in shaping the unexpected contours of modem architectural thought. Against the widespread revolutionary destruction of monuments, ornament, rather than the orders, ensured architecture's survival. Percier and Fontaine's vision of the interior signaled a movement away from an architecture of monumentality towards one of mobility, a shift precipitated by the violence of political events, the disciplinary pressure of engineering and the emergence of new conceptions of history. Scholars have argued that the utilitarian techniques of engineering constituted the primary impetus behind the formation of a post-Vitruvian building culture in France. By contrast, Percier and Fontaine reaffirmed architecture's alliance with sculpture, painting and engraving, harnessing these artistic forms to new ends in their design practice. Through the Recueil, Percier and Fontaine claimed the interior-untouched by the spatial symbolics of the revolution-as architectural theory's proper terrain. Yet their publication simultaneously presented a fragile discourse of fragments, in which architecture was subject to the vagaries of fashion, commerce and history. Percier and Fontaine turned to their experiences designing theater sets in order to construct settings that would legitimize Napoleon's military conquests, beginning with the bellicose motifs at the château de Malmaison. Although the architects sought to colonize the interior as a site of Napoleonic power, it proved to be a porous and itinerant site of meaning that could not be claimed as the central domain of imperial force-or architecture alone. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. "February 2013."; Includes bibliographical references (p. 269-290). Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79182 2013-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78076 Ways of arrangement : the basic operations of form-making Wang, Minghong Making forms is essentially a matter of arranging things, and arranging things is essentially to establish spatial relations among selected elements. The thesis provides a minimal set of basic operations believed to be sufficient for constructing any given configuration. These basic operations can aggregate to make compound operations handy to designers. Both the basic and the compound operations are called 'arrangement moves'. Two kinds of basic moves are distinguished: the generic moves, which construct only generic relations such as 'connection', 'separation', etc.; and the ordering moves, which are characterized by using virtual 'lines' as references in establishing spatial relations. A physical design is viewed as finding a correct arrangement that satisfies given constraints. Ordering moves are viewed as an operational foundation that makes such exploration of formal arrangement possible. The thesis demonstrates that arrangement moves can describe any individual form by reconstructing it; arrangement moves can also describe any family of forms by formulating rules governing the form family. It is further demonstrated that the basic arrangement moves have inherent properties capable of constructing inference rules for perceiving spatial relations. Based on the fact that arrangement moves can sufficiently construct forms, representing rules of forms, and perceiving spatial relations, it is of particular interest to the development of a computational design system that can do arrangements, know form rules, and can check arrangements against rules. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, February 1987.; MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH.; Includes bibliographies. Thu, 01 Jan 1987 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78076 1987-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77871 Admonition and the academy : installation, video, and performance art in Reform Era China Oen, Karin Grace China's Reform Era (1978-present) has seen the reinvigoration of academic, and artistic practice, and a rapprochement between the Chinese Communist Party and the intellectual elite. At its beginnings in the early- to mid-1980s the new availability of foreign texts and media led to Culture Fever, a widespread phenomenon throughout the intellectual and artistic spheres characterized by enthusiasm for the philosophy, literature, and art of the West and pre-Communist China and the simultaneous uptake of discrete Western and Confucian philosophies. These discussions often addressed modernity and modernism in China, a crucial homology to early twentieth century Chinese negotiations in literature and the arts and the development of an amalgamated "Chinese modernism" comprised of elements of both Confucian and Western philosophy and aesthetics. As this dissertation argues, key early experimental works of the Reform Era by Zhang Peili, Wu Shanzhuan, and Zhang Huan reveal a proclivity for subtle and indirect admonitory messages about China's socio-political climate - a contemporary inhabitation of the traditional elite scholar-artist and his obligation to criticize immoral or unjust policies or actions. This admonitory practice was built by artists educated in elite academies (specifically, the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing and the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou) yet utilized completely new and non-academic media. What this thesis terms as an "art of admonition" utilized traditional tropes, including direct remonstrations of officials, withdrawal from official life in protest, and the concept of the "middle hermit" - a scholar who admonishes official policy subtly and indirectly. The experimental practices of artists after their graduation from elite academies stemmed from the extra-curricular resources made available to them, especially the schools' libraries. The connection of these unofficial works to the official academies, their validation by art market success, and the subsequent official endorsement accorded to these and other artists in the later Reform Era blurs the distinctions between official and unofficial artistic practice in China, suggesting a strong endorsement of the dissident artist's role as "middle hermit." Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-214). Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77871 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z