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This paper critically examines Le Corbusier’s use of natural forms in Notre-Dame du Haut. Ronchamp chapel was designed at a time when modern architecture was criticized for dehumanization and standardization. Le Corbusier tried to overcome this criticism by reinforcing the plasticity of architecture, and based the crab-shaped roof of the chapel on a natural object. He called this ‘synthesis of the arts.’ Natural objects such as seashells, pebbles, and crab shells were at the center of his artistic practice. Le Corbusier sketched natural objects found on the beach and applied their forms to architecture. The ‘chance image’ created by nature was used in his design. He believed that the abundant forms of natural objects, which are difficult to define clearly, would give architecture poetic potential, and he successfully showed the artistic and aesthetic ‘molting’ of architecture in Ronchamp. Le Corbusier fulfilled modern aesthetic demands and simultaneously incorporated architecture into a new practice that could not be dealt with in the Platonic view of the world.

In this paper I read Mark Quinn’s Self series (1991–2011) is from an aesthetic perspective on the materiality of things. This series, which critically considers the problem of the self (Ego), is linked to ontological questions of abjection such as otherness, objectivity, and the emotion of disgust. In particular, the use of blood and its materiality deconstructs dichotomies such as life/subject and matter/object, and expresses conditions of subjectification from the inevitable dependence on others. The works represent Quin’s own Ego through a frozen head of blood. The works are embodied in typical forms of sculpture, creating an atmosphere different from that of the abject—art which appeals to strong intension of disgust. The Self elicits a vague feeling of ‘weak’ disgust and so suggests a new interpretation of the ‘vagueness of existence’. This representation by blood is ultimately possible only from a continuous reliance on abjective matter, the materiality of the extracted blood, the freezing systems, cooling silicon material, and so on. For the reason of this dependence from a ‘relational ontology’, Quin expresses his variable self-identity rather than as a solid entity. In the Self series, we come to understand the fluid co-existed life, not the solidified, isolated life. In the relational-ontological horizon, our lives meet the faces of many things that inevitably are connected with ourselves.

This thesis investigates the ways in which the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) has been represented by two Lebanese artists, Walid Raad (1967~) and Akram Zaatari (1966~). First, I problematize the ongoing censorship surrounding documenting and writing the histories of the civil war. (In Lebanon, complicated relationships among different religious and ethnic groups make it hard to agree on how to historicize the war.) Then, I analyze two different types of the artists’ archive—The Atlas Group Archive (1989-2004) by Raad is fictional, and the Arab Image Foundation(AIF, 1997~) where Zaatari was president, is real. Through analysis of the archives, I discuss how the artists have been intervening in writing history of war by questioning the power and authenticity of the archive itself. I then turn to the AIF and Zaatari’s uses of the archival materials. I argue that Zaatari employs Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods of history by examining the artist’s film and installation Letter to a Refusing Pilot(2013). Finally, I claim that Zaatari’s representation of the civil war, which is based on his experiences rather than objective data, delivers truer narratives than any other, by crossing the borders of faction and fact.

This study investigates anti-gentrification activism in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles through focusing on the concept of ‘artwashing’. This activism has raised controversy due to aggressive attacks on art galleries. First, I analyze the relationship between art galleries and artwashing, and then discuss the effects, limits and artistic, political and social implications of Boyle Heights’s activism. The attacks on galleries in Boyle Heights imply public antagonism toward ‘artwashing’—the disguising of negative aspects of gentrification associated with race and class through positive images of art. By attacking galleries rather than the fundamental political and economic structure, this activism failed to prevent gentrification. However, it provoked diverse debates surrounding gentrification, art, the city, and society by gaining media and academic attention with its antagonistic strategies. From the perspective of city planning, it revealed the exclusiveness of official urban development and demanded policy changes that consider the housing rights of minorities. Led by artists including Ultra-red, this act of resistance suggested an experimental form of anti-gentrification art activism that takes political practices as an art. Fighting for the community’s housing rights as well as housing justice, this resistance also showed the ‘art of resistance’ and the role of artists in ‘place guarding’. This case has implications for critical reflections concerning art’s social role by disclosing the problematic collaboration between art and gentrification.

This study analyzes the exhibition Les Immatériaux, held at the Pompidou Center in 1985, and the recent exhibition Immaterial/Re-material: A Brief History of Computing Art (2020-2021), dealing with immaterial and material art. The study explores whether we can interpret rematerialized art beyond the usual distinction of material vs. immaterial, but rather in terms of a new material transformation. Les Immatériaux tried not only to recognize the new materiality, like telecommunication technology, but also to understand the relationship between humans and their desire to become masters of material in order to prove that a material originates from an immaterial. The later exhibition Immaterial/Re-material: A Brief History of Computing Art adopted the word “re-material” to describe the process of expressing the “immaterial” in order to interpret the origin of what exists in material form in visual art through immaterial information. In order to make a more in-depth analysis of this (im)materiality, this paper analyzes the work of Casey Reas (b. 1972) to explore how the immateriality used in computing art is rematerialized into material form.

The Anthropocene refers to the fact that mankind has ended the Holocene and started a new geological age. It is a combination of the Greek “human”(anthropos, άνθρωπος ) and the expression meaning ‘new age’ cene (καινός). Using the word ‘anthropos’ emphasizes that humans are clearly responsible for the changes in Earth’s systems including climate. However, different names for the Anthropocene came from different views of ‘anthropos’. In this study, I examine how the discourse of Anthropocene has influenced ecological art. Ecological arts in the era of the Anthropocene maintain their existing methods, from criticizing the causes of environmental destruction to social practice, discovery of ecological aesthetics, and ecological activism, but they seek a more specifically sustainable ecological future. As examples of ecological art representing the Anthropocene, I study Tara Donovan and Justin Bryce Guaglia, who show the aesthetics of post-nature using plastic; Pina Yoldas, who imagines post-natural lives as no longer natural; Usla Viman and Paulo Tavares, who introduced the activist ecological practices of Ecuadorian indigenous peoples; and Lilian Ball, who executed an ecological art project as a suggestion for a solution. I also examine the work of Soyo Lee, who considers ‘third nature’ through the princess or empress tree(Paulownia tomentosa Steudel).

With the rise of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century, the Chinese art world began to explore the diverse styles of Western modern art. The Chinese reception of Picasso and his Cubist art was part of China's various experiments with European modern artistic movements in broad contexts. Based on a close examination of contemporary artistic and cultural materials from 1917 to 1930, this paper demonstrates that at least thirty-two Chinese articles and writings introduced Picasso's Cubism, with more than sixteen of his works illustrated in Chinese periodicals and books. It also deals with the ongoing pros and cons of Picasso's avant-garde style as well as European modern art among representative artists and theorists in China of the period. The Chinese interest in Picasso reached its pinnacle after 1944, when the news of Picasso joining the Communist party in France became widespread, eventually leading even the Chinese government to utilize the artist's “peace of dove" paintings on national postal stamps between 1950-1953. Although China's response to Picasso initially developed as an ardent interest in modernist artistic ideas and styles, it later became more focused on the artist’s political ideology, evoking strong social and cultural reactions and bringing profound effects to the Chinese art world.

This paper offers a close reading and a ‘deep’ contextualization of Woman Sculpture of the World (sic), a photographic compendium authored by Lee Seung-taek and published by Yeolhwadang in 1976. Best known for his subversive experimentation with traditional materiality and the concept of sculpture, known as ‘non-sculpture’, critical studies on Lee’s artistic practice continue to grow, yet remain fragmented: his non-sculptures have variously appeared in the contexts of Korean avant-garde art, conceptual art, and postmodernism, among others. Futhermore, they have repeatedly undermined the significance and relevance of Woman Sculpture of the World , a magnum opus which contains carefully selected, edited and arranged black-and-white photographic plates of sculptures from different historic periods and cultures. Revisiting this hitherto overlooked publication, this paper examines its objectives, editorial composition, and the ways in which Lee sought to situate his own practice by ‘re-worlding’ the history of sculpture. This paper thus argues that the publication takes part in Lee’s experimentation with sculpture, which arises from bracketing the conventional notion of the genre with that which it is not.