Pottery craft and culture
- Authors: Randell, Gillian
- Date: 1972
- Subjects: Pottery craft
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2452 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007559
- Description: "The idea and fact of containment have been the primary significance of pottery from the beginning, and pots of all ages and peoples, even when their ostensible function was ceremonial or symbolical, have expressed by their generous swelling volumes, the potential or holding things of vital importance to man food, liquid or the furnishings of the grave." The utilitarian value of a pot is inseparable from its aesthetic quality. "There can be no fullness of complete realization or utility without beauty, refinement and charm, for the simple reason that their absence must in the long run be intolerable to both maker and consumer... The continued production of utilities without delight in making and using is bound to produce only boredom and to end in sterility." Modern pottery, whether industrial or that of the artist potter, has each in its different way tended to separate the aesthetic and the utilitarian. This is one symptom of the cultural decline of our Western tradition since the Eighteenth Century. The making of pots has persisted from earliest times to the present day through our ever changing world. Circumstances have at times obscured the essential truths of this art.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1972
- Authors: Randell, Gillian
- Date: 1972
- Subjects: Pottery craft
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2452 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007559
- Description: "The idea and fact of containment have been the primary significance of pottery from the beginning, and pots of all ages and peoples, even when their ostensible function was ceremonial or symbolical, have expressed by their generous swelling volumes, the potential or holding things of vital importance to man food, liquid or the furnishings of the grave." The utilitarian value of a pot is inseparable from its aesthetic quality. "There can be no fullness of complete realization or utility without beauty, refinement and charm, for the simple reason that their absence must in the long run be intolerable to both maker and consumer... The continued production of utilities without delight in making and using is bound to produce only boredom and to end in sterility." Modern pottery, whether industrial or that of the artist potter, has each in its different way tended to separate the aesthetic and the utilitarian. This is one symptom of the cultural decline of our Western tradition since the Eighteenth Century. The making of pots has persisted from earliest times to the present day through our ever changing world. Circumstances have at times obscured the essential truths of this art.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1972
Violence and destruction as an important part of artistic action with reference to the two Great Wars
- Hallier, Michael Glen Thomas
- Authors: Hallier, Michael Glen Thomas
- Date: 1971-11
- Subjects: Uncatalogued
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/190329 , vital:44984
- Description: A well known fact about any work of art of any significance is its power to upset current conventions and disturb certain of our normal emotional patterns. The artist frequently achieves this by deliberately expressing emotions that are violent. There is nothing, however, new about the existence of violence in the arts, a large number of works in the history of art being painted with blood. One has only to think of the many battles, rapes, murders, martyrdoms and catastrophes that have been the subjects of many great paintings. Since the beginning of this century, and especially since the work of the Impressionists, in which violence is entirely excluded, violence has taken on a role of great importance and has been used to a greater or lesser extent by artists and group movements. It would appear initially that there are two main reasons in this century for the use of violence: one as a means of using it as a weapon against the academic and avant-garde in the arts, which in turn reflects attitudes found in society, and secondly as a direct reflection of the corrupt society in which we live. This is not to say that the twentieth century is an age in which more violence and sadism is found than in any other era of history, but never has it received so much publicity. I do not believe that man has change so much over the years, but it is my view that the apparent increase in this century is due to the vast changes in communications, it is due to the publicity it receives that violence has in recent times become a focal point, with murders, assassinations and war part of our daily lives. , Thesis (MFA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Fine Art, 1971
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1971-11
- Authors: Hallier, Michael Glen Thomas
- Date: 1971-11
- Subjects: Uncatalogued
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/190329 , vital:44984
- Description: A well known fact about any work of art of any significance is its power to upset current conventions and disturb certain of our normal emotional patterns. The artist frequently achieves this by deliberately expressing emotions that are violent. There is nothing, however, new about the existence of violence in the arts, a large number of works in the history of art being painted with blood. One has only to think of the many battles, rapes, murders, martyrdoms and catastrophes that have been the subjects of many great paintings. Since the beginning of this century, and especially since the work of the Impressionists, in which violence is entirely excluded, violence has taken on a role of great importance and has been used to a greater or lesser extent by artists and group movements. It would appear initially that there are two main reasons in this century for the use of violence: one as a means of using it as a weapon against the academic and avant-garde in the arts, which in turn reflects attitudes found in society, and secondly as a direct reflection of the corrupt society in which we live. This is not to say that the twentieth century is an age in which more violence and sadism is found than in any other era of history, but never has it received so much publicity. I do not believe that man has change so much over the years, but it is my view that the apparent increase in this century is due to the vast changes in communications, it is due to the publicity it receives that violence has in recent times become a focal point, with murders, assassinations and war part of our daily lives. , Thesis (MFA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Fine Art, 1971
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1971-11
The artistic forms of the image of war
- Authors: Graham, H J
- Date: 1968-03
- Subjects: Uncatalogued
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/191267 , vital:45077
- Description: War is a condition of this world. From man to the smallest insect, all are at strife, yet man has a "quality which makes him overlord of all; for whereas the creatures of the forest and plain kill only to eat, or to lead the herd ... man will kill for no reason at all. This makes him terrible among the creatures, for he is the very God of Destruction. And from man's pride in his weapons that give him power has grown his art." Warfare in its primeval state is a direct result of a natural phenomenon, springing from the discovery that certain grass seeds could be cultivated and that certain grass feeding animals could be domesticated. From these roots sprouted two very differently organised communities, the agricultural and the pastoral, who clashed for the first time in the third millenium B.C. , Thesis (MFA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Fine Art, 1968
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1968-03
- Authors: Graham, H J
- Date: 1968-03
- Subjects: Uncatalogued
- Language: English
- Type: Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/191267 , vital:45077
- Description: War is a condition of this world. From man to the smallest insect, all are at strife, yet man has a "quality which makes him overlord of all; for whereas the creatures of the forest and plain kill only to eat, or to lead the herd ... man will kill for no reason at all. This makes him terrible among the creatures, for he is the very God of Destruction. And from man's pride in his weapons that give him power has grown his art." Warfare in its primeval state is a direct result of a natural phenomenon, springing from the discovery that certain grass seeds could be cultivated and that certain grass feeding animals could be domesticated. From these roots sprouted two very differently organised communities, the agricultural and the pastoral, who clashed for the first time in the third millenium B.C. , Thesis (MFA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Fine Art, 1968
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1968-03
Form and symbol in ancient Egypt
- Authors: Verwey, Erdmuthe Wilhemina
- Date: 1968
- Subjects: Signs and symbols -- Egypt
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2443 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006133
- Description: From thesis: The Egyptian civilization was regarded by the ancients as the ultimate example of' a morally regulated way of life; their judicious political economy was the admiration of the Elians and both Pythagoras and Plato accepted it as ideal, the former in a small select society and the latter on a larger scale .However a society like this,which is accepted, and acted upon as a completed one, in which everything has been considered, (especially the education of and the habituation to it, to make it second nature), does not take the nature of spirit into consideration, because it is precisely that infinite impulse which acts in contemporary life, and changes its very form. This impulse expressed itself in Egypt in a peculiar way. One would expect that a society, which appears to have been so complete, so fixed in every way, could have no characteristic of its own. Religion, one would expect would have been introduced in the same calm peaceful way, in accordance with the regular order of things. Unlike the Chinese civilisation, where every change is excluded, and the fixedness of character recurs perpetually, this calm order in Egypt was threaded with a spirit full of stirring and urgent impulses. We have here the Oriental Massiveness in combination with the African element. It is a spirit which begins to emerge from the merely natural, without freeing itself from nature. It cannot reach free consciousness of being, it only produces this as a problem: the enigma of its being. One half emerges, the other half is hidden. The buildings of the Egyptians are half below the ground while half rises into the air. The whole country is divided into a Kingdom of life and a Kingdom of death. This, however, is in reality no division, but a unity. The fundamental conception of that which the Egyptians regarded as the essence of being, rested on the fixed character of the natural world - in particular the fixed physical cycle of the Nile and the Sun. These two elements, strictly connected, formed the basis of a very simple and unchanging mode of life. Unchanging, because there is a definite physical cycle which the Nile, in connection with the sun, pursued. The sun rises, reaches its culmination, and then retrogrades. So does the Nile.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1968
- Authors: Verwey, Erdmuthe Wilhemina
- Date: 1968
- Subjects: Signs and symbols -- Egypt
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2443 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006133
- Description: From thesis: The Egyptian civilization was regarded by the ancients as the ultimate example of' a morally regulated way of life; their judicious political economy was the admiration of the Elians and both Pythagoras and Plato accepted it as ideal, the former in a small select society and the latter on a larger scale .However a society like this,which is accepted, and acted upon as a completed one, in which everything has been considered, (especially the education of and the habituation to it, to make it second nature), does not take the nature of spirit into consideration, because it is precisely that infinite impulse which acts in contemporary life, and changes its very form. This impulse expressed itself in Egypt in a peculiar way. One would expect that a society, which appears to have been so complete, so fixed in every way, could have no characteristic of its own. Religion, one would expect would have been introduced in the same calm peaceful way, in accordance with the regular order of things. Unlike the Chinese civilisation, where every change is excluded, and the fixedness of character recurs perpetually, this calm order in Egypt was threaded with a spirit full of stirring and urgent impulses. We have here the Oriental Massiveness in combination with the African element. It is a spirit which begins to emerge from the merely natural, without freeing itself from nature. It cannot reach free consciousness of being, it only produces this as a problem: the enigma of its being. One half emerges, the other half is hidden. The buildings of the Egyptians are half below the ground while half rises into the air. The whole country is divided into a Kingdom of life and a Kingdom of death. This, however, is in reality no division, but a unity. The fundamental conception of that which the Egyptians regarded as the essence of being, rested on the fixed character of the natural world - in particular the fixed physical cycle of the Nile and the Sun. These two elements, strictly connected, formed the basis of a very simple and unchanging mode of life. Unchanging, because there is a definite physical cycle which the Nile, in connection with the sun, pursued. The sun rises, reaches its culmination, and then retrogrades. So does the Nile.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1968
Aspects of reality as reflected by the human form in painting
- Authors: Fourie, F T
- Date: 1966
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:21174 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/6739
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1966
- Authors: Fourie, F T
- Date: 1966
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:21174 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/6739
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1966
The imagery of night: the significance of night in artistic images and philosophies
- Authors: Matthews, Thomas
- Date: 1966
- Subjects: Night in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2455 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007616 , Night in art
- Description: Introduction: At first glance, darkness is merely the absence of light, and is therefore negative; hence the traditional equation of night with death, evil and the creatures of the underworld. But a closer study will reveal that darkness is also a positive force; examples can be cited from various cultures where darkness was thought to have given birth to light. The subterranean is the realm of fertility; the worshippers of Dionysius realised this, as did the followers of the world-wide cult of the Great Earth Mother. The realm of darkness is also the habitat of the mystic. In this essay, we will attempt to define the nature of nocturnal imagery, and to trace the various ways in which mankind has sought to reconcile himself with the powers of darkness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1966
- Authors: Matthews, Thomas
- Date: 1966
- Subjects: Night in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2455 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007616 , Night in art
- Description: Introduction: At first glance, darkness is merely the absence of light, and is therefore negative; hence the traditional equation of night with death, evil and the creatures of the underworld. But a closer study will reveal that darkness is also a positive force; examples can be cited from various cultures where darkness was thought to have given birth to light. The subterranean is the realm of fertility; the worshippers of Dionysius realised this, as did the followers of the world-wide cult of the Great Earth Mother. The realm of darkness is also the habitat of the mystic. In this essay, we will attempt to define the nature of nocturnal imagery, and to trace the various ways in which mankind has sought to reconcile himself with the powers of darkness.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1966
The emotive qualities of light as a prime factor in artistic expression
- Authors: Brooks, R B
- Date: 1965
- Subjects: Light in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2502 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014659
- Description: What we do possess to-day as 'art' a faked music, filled with exotic and showcard effects, that every ten years or so concocted out of the form-wealth of millenia some new "style'' which is no style at all since everyone does as he pleases. A lying plastic that steals from Assyria, Egypt and Mexico indifferently. Yet this and only this, the taste of the "man of the world" can be accepted as the expression and sign of the age. Everything else, everything that sticks to old ideals is for provincial consumption. This is the year 1965 - nearly fifty years since Oswald Spengler published "The decline of the West" The paragraph I have quoted by way of justification for this dissertation is in turn a justiification of the fact that Spengler is as valid today as he was in 1918.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1965
- Authors: Brooks, R B
- Date: 1965
- Subjects: Light in art
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
- Identifier: vital:2502 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1014659
- Description: What we do possess to-day as 'art' a faked music, filled with exotic and showcard effects, that every ten years or so concocted out of the form-wealth of millenia some new "style'' which is no style at all since everyone does as he pleases. A lying plastic that steals from Assyria, Egypt and Mexico indifferently. Yet this and only this, the taste of the "man of the world" can be accepted as the expression and sign of the age. Everything else, everything that sticks to old ideals is for provincial consumption. This is the year 1965 - nearly fifty years since Oswald Spengler published "The decline of the West" The paragraph I have quoted by way of justification for this dissertation is in turn a justiification of the fact that Spengler is as valid today as he was in 1918.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1965