All the rest is merely exploitation and perseverance : the poster art of Frank Kozik

"The history of poster art tends to focus on the art of Henri Toulouse-Latrec, Jules Cheret, and Alfonse Mucha, while leaving out or barely mentioning the work of artists such as Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, and Alton Kelley. The aim of this thesis is to widen the gaze of poster art by centering on a contemporary rock poster artist: Frank Kozik. By focusing on formal and sociological analysis ofa number of Kozik's posters, I illustrate how he not only fits in with the arc of poster art development, but also influences it into the next century"

Closer to life : the work of sari dienes

Like many of her female contemporaries, artist Sari Dienes’s contributions to the art historical dialogue have been largely overlooked in favor of her male counterparts. Often seen as a mentor and mother figure to neo-Dada artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Dienes was an active member of the New York avant-garde circle surrounding composer/choreographer duo John Cage and Merce Cunningham in the 1950s and 1960s. These social relationships are central to the existing discourse on Sari Dienes, while her work remains little discussed. The fact that her dynamic, ever-changing style lacked aesthetic consistency was commonly lamented by notable figures such as Betty Parsons, however, I argue that Dienes’s diverse oeuvre is unified by her philosophies on art and life. The unification of art and life, denoted clearly by Dienes’s use of the found object, experimentation and chance happenings, and sensory experience, marks her as an innovator and catalyst in the neo-Dada movement as well as in other experimental art endeavors that took place in the aftermath of Abstract Expressionism.

Perpetual motion; comprising a history of the efforts to attain self-motive mechanism, with a classified, illustrated, collection and explanation of the devices whereby it has been sought and why they failed, and comprising also a revision and re-arrangement of the information afforded by "Search for self-motive power during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries," London, 1861, and "A history of the search for self-motive power from the 13th to the 19th century," London, 1870, by Henry Dircks ...

Mode of access: Internet.

HOG CHAINS AND MARK TWAINS: A STUDY OF LABOR HISTORY, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND INDUSTRIAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE STEAMBOAT ERA OF THE MONONGAHELA VALLEY 1811-1950

This dissertation examines a unique working class in the United States, the men and women who worked on the steamboats from the Industrial Revolution until the demise of steam-powered boats in the mid-20th century. The steamboat was the beginning of a technological system that was developed in America and used in such great numbers that it made the rapid population of the Trans-Appalachian West possible. The steamboat was forever romanticized by images of the antebellum South or the quick wit of Samuel Clemens and his sentimental book, Life on the Mississippi. The imagination swirls with thoughts of boats, bleach white, slowly churning the calm waters of some Spanish moss covered river. The reality of the boats and the experience of those who worked on them has been lost in this nostalgic vision. This research details the history of the western steamboat in the Monongahela Valley, the birthplace of the commercial steamboat industry. The first part of this dissertation examines the literature of authors in the field of labor history and Industrial Archaeology to place this work into the larger context of published literature. The second builds a framework for understanding the various eras that the steamboat went through both in terms of technological change, but also the change the workers experienced as their identity as a working class was being shaped. The third part details the excavations of two steamboat captains houses, those of Captain James Gormley and Captain Michael A. Cox. Both men represented a time in which the steamboat was in an era of transition. Excavations at their homes yield clues to their class status and how integrated they were in the local community. The fourth part of this study documents the oral histories of steamboat workers, both men and women, and their experience on the boats and on the river. Their rapidly declining population of those who lived and worked on the boats gives urgency for their lives to be documented. Finally, this study concludes with a synthesis of how worker identity solidified in the face of technological, socio-economic, and ideological change especially during their push for unionization and the introduction of the diesel towboat.

Experimental creative practices

From the earliest human creative expressions there has been a relationship between art, technology and science. In Western history this relationship is often seen as drawing from the advances in both art and science that occurred during the Renaissance, and as captured in the polymath figure of da Vinci. The 20th century development of computer technology, and the more recent emergence of creative practice-led research as a recognised methodology, has lead to a renewed appreciation of the relationship between art, science and technology. This chapter focuses on transdisciplinary practices that bring together arts, science and technology in imaginative ways. Showing how such combinations have led to changes in both practice and forms of creative expression for artists and their partners across disciplines. The aim of this chapter is to sketch an outline of the types of transdisiplinary creative research projects that currently signify best practice in the field, which is done in reference to key literature and exemplars drawn from the Australian context.

Writing and the disappearance of architecture theory

One of the first architects to write a book was Vitruvius, the Roman architect who published De Architectura in the 1st century BC, a book that would become the foundation for Western Architectural Thought. When I was an undergraduate, the history of architecture was taught via a series of books by architects that were at least, if not more significant than the buildings. From De Architectura to Alberti’s rejoinder De re aedificatoria (On the Art of Building) in the fifteenth century, Palladio’s Quattro Libri (The Four Books of Architecture) 1570, and Laugier’s Essai sur l'Architecture 1753. In the 1990s, we treasured the heroic architecture books of the 20th century from Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, to Aldo Rossi’s the Architecture of the City, Rem Koolhaas’s Delirious New York, and of course Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas which for me was the very starting point for the postmodern movement.

Landscape Architecture History Seminar Notes 2015

These notes cover landscape design from ancient times to the early 20th century and were compiled from seminars delivered by the author for the DEB202 Introducing Design History unit at QUT.