Essays
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New essays are added to the top as they are completed.
Religious Pornography
(Master’s Dissertation)
In my dissertation I explore the themes of pleasure and pain throughout seicento art of martyrdom and ecstasy. By creating a widespread visual language of pleasurable pain, religious officials and their artists suggest that God will deliver you orgasmic pleasure in life and through death. What better motivation to live piously?
Ethical and Legal Schisms in Restitution Procedures
This critical analysis of museum and art market practices opens discussion about ethical ownership and due diligence. This paper heavily focuses on the ethics of ownership in war spoils - particularly that of Nazi Germany.
Shroud of Turin
In considering the most enigmatic and well researched artifact of human history - thought to be Jesus’s burial shroud - I question not its authenticity but rather what the authenticity of the shroud might mean for its future as a relic. This is done through the research of other passion relics - both authentic and inauthentic - to tell the story of the shroud’s future.
Architecture and Pilgrimage
on the Gough Map
Here we will consider the first road map of England and a path along the southern coast, never before considered to be a pilgrimage path - until now. Through establishing the non-traditional pilgrim and considering architectural development along this path, we will understand what this pilgrimage from Southampton to Canterbury might’ve looked like when the map was created.
Hercules Flawed and Fixed
(Undergraduate Honors Thesis)
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics will inform us of the interpretation of heroism in cinquecento Florence as it is applied to the visual arts. Through the analysis of body language, literature, and Medici politics, we will come to understand how Hercules became the face of the Medici family to a fault. Although a face of fortitude and strength, Hercules is the antithesis of Aristotle’s ‘hero,’ and so too became the Medicis for the people of Florence.
This paper was published in the University of Oregon Archives in 2019.
Image Copyright of One Step To The World
A Coward’s Exit
Andrew Stewart boldly claims in Art and the Hellenistic World that the Ludovisi Gauls group from the Pergamon Altar is representative of what the Greeks would consider “A Coward’s Exit” (that of suicide). In this paper I consider the opposite view - that this group is demonstrative of the respect and honor given to the Gauls by Attalos I after their loss in the war.
Between the Dots
Through the analysis of technique in Roy Lichtenstein’s Like New, a new interpretation is offered suggesting the artist is making a statement on planned obsolescence and capitalistic gains. This is done by analyzing the Ben Day dots along with political statements made in other works to establish intentionality in the flaws of his technique.
Vandalism or High Art?
The viewership of graffiti and the graffiti-esque is drastically motivated and altered by the context in which it is viewed and the embodied experience of the viewer. By commodifying graffiti, the art world has demonstrated its misunderstanding of the function and aesthetics of graffiti, ultimately misrepresenting it to viewers for capitalistic gains.
Pilgrims & Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela - now one of the world’s most popular pilgrimage sites - was not always so glamorous. First by reviewing the history of Saint James and the analysis of pilgrimage patterns, we will consider the cathedral through the scope of its architectural development to see how pilgrimage and commerce have saved this church from dissolution more than once.
Angelic Iconography
In this paper, we will consider the act of ‘Biblical Persiflage,’ or more accurately, the mockery of the Bible’s specificity. The reduction in the iconography of the angel (from Nine Orders to a putto) is inaccurate, undignified, and demeaning, ultimately mocking these Heavenly bodies.
DISCLAIMER: The essay below this message, although packed with original and interesting arguments, has multiple mistakes in the formatting of the footnotes due to it being my first footnoted essay in my academia. For a similar but more refined essay, see Hercules: Flawed and Fixed - which gained inspiration from this paper below.
Visualizing Heroism
Based on the concepts of power dynamics, body language, and the three distinctive categories of heroism found in Ari Kohen’s Untangling Heroism, the argument will be made that heroism is much more than visual cues - it requires context. This will be demonstrated through the lens of sculpture in the Italian Renaissance and beyond, specifically in the categories of martyred saints, pagan and biblical legends, and historical figures.