This research essay delves into the intriguing and unexpected convergence of elements in the Master of Calamarca's painting, Archangel with Arquebus, Asiel Timor Dei, an artwork that introduces an amalgamation of guns, angels, and 18th-century fashion. Produced around 1728 in the viceroyalty of Peru, the painting challenges conventional artistic representations by depicting androgynous angels adorned in aristocratic attire and carrying harquebuses, a type of gun. The central figures, dandified angels with swan wings, lace ruffles, broad-brimmed hats, and ornate coats with gold and silver linings, are unique to Andean painting. Beyond its aesthetic magnificence, the art form served a dual purpose, it is both a theatrical expression and a persuasive instrument. The underlying motive was to induce the Indigenous population to embrace the authority of God and the king, employing a combination of religion and force to integrate them into colonial society. The research contextualizes these artistic representations within the historical framework of the viceroyalty of Peru, a Spanish colonial administrative region that spanned most of South America. It explores the broader implications of these angelic depictions, highlighting their role in the post-missionizing period when Christian clergy orders aimed to eradicate pre-Hispanic religious practices and establish Catholicism. This exploration culminates in a rich understanding of the multifaceted meanings embedded in these extraordinary depictions, shedding light on the intricate interplay between religious symbols and ideologies, cultural synthesis, and artistic expressions in the viceroyalty of Peru.

In 1937, the small Spanish town, Guernica, was bombed by a German air unit during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing gained little notoriety until artist Pablo Picasso created Guernica–a painting that vividly captured the horror and devastation of the incident. The work is composed of a multitude of symbols; however, Picasso never offered a designated meaning, leaving viewers with years of speculation. Therefore, in order to situate the importance of the painting to the Spanish audience, as well as to later contemporary audiences, the paper analyzes the various signs and symbols peppered in the work to navigate the artistic, social, and political circumstances under which Guernica was painted. The socio-political climate of Spain during the time and the fractured alliances and conflicts that provoked the Civil War played a pertinent role. The paper considers how the painting acts as part of the archive, serving as both a historical record and an initiator of political discourse to confront the devastation of war. Such a methodology nuances the motives and views at the time. For example, reoccurring motifs, such as the bull and the horse, take on new resonance in the image, just as other fractured symbols in the work, such as the sun and the broken sword, provide further contextualization and would go on to impact the larger reception of the violent image.

While scholarship around the iconic American artist Jacob Lawrence notably focuses on the painter’s series’ and individual paintings, his career-long interaction with book arts has been academically neglected. In his prolific artistic practice spanning almost the entire 20th century, Lawrence produced five book arts projects: One-Way Ticket, Harriet and The Promised Land, Aesop’s Fables, Hiroshima, and, Genesis, illustrating four supplied texts and authoring the meter in Harriet and The Promised Land. In my paper, I discuss the content and context of these works, calling upon objects-based research at the University of Washington Special Collections as well as interviews with Lawrence and secondary sources such as the 1986 Seattle Art Museum produced book, Jacob Lawrence, American Painter. I first provide an overview of Lawrence’s book projects, diving into the stylistic elements present and explaining how Lawrence guides a viewer through the text while narratively conveying his chosen story. This services my primary argument which aims to highlight how Genesis, Lawrence’s final illustrative work completed towards the last years of his career, acts as a career retrospective incorporating myriad visual and conceptual investigations that Lawrence continuously revisits and develops throughout his entire life. Genesis, through its use of motif, biographical detail, and visual style directly responds to the interests Lawrence carries with him throughout his career, and the techniques he employs distinctly recall Lawrence’s other books. Genesis is a retrospective work engaging projects that themselves act almost as retrospective works. Each book arts project Lawrence conducts directly relates to a tangible thematic interest the artist explores through multiple artworks and projects and is remarkably emblematic of the artistic era from which it emerged. For this reason, I finally argue that it is a highly valuable historical endeavor to explore and explicate Lawrence’s book arts work for the sake of better understanding Lawrence himself.

During the period following the First World War, the Weimar Government arose just as the emancipation of German women began. “The New Woman,” as she was termed, demonstrated liberation and modernity: she voted, worked for a wage, was fashionable, and had fewer children. Dada artist Hannah Höch produced a myriad of works that celebrated the New Woman, especially as she worked in an artist group dominated by men. However, in her collage, Da-Dandy (1919), Höch seemingly critiques this concept, specifically narrowing in on the bourgeois co-option of women’s newfound freedom. Da-Dandy was decidedly not working class; instead, she sported pearl necklaces, high heels, bob haircuts, and fancy dresses, all while being spared from class politics and struggles. In many ways, Da-Dandy is the demonstration and continuation of bourgeois power. This paper first addresses how upper-class women claimed movements and concepts not necessarily meant for them, particularly “The New Woman.” Höch, while known for her critique of the male gaze, focuses on a ‘female gaze’ through a class-derived analysis of the female form in Da-Dandy. Therefore, the paper articulates how her fragmented, deformed, and collaged image centers on the appropriation of the New Woman by the bourgeoisie milieu to call out a new form of fetishization of women.

Mirrors have been a contextually important part of architecture and painting since before the Renaissance, but during the Baroque and leading into the Rococo, mirrors became a central aspect to power dynamics in built environments and were utilized as a tool to control self-representations. This paper investigates the ways in which mirrors were activated in interior architecture and paintings, as well as how they underscored the “soft” power of elite women during the Rococo period by analyzing François Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour (1756) as an example of mirrors and expressions of the self and purposeful manifestations of “soft” power. I place Boucher’s painting in the context of contemporary interior spaces, such as the Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors (1678) which illustrates “hard” political power and the Salon de la Princesse room in Paris’ Hôtel de Soubise (1732) which communicates a softer power, as examples to how mirrors enforce performative power in spaces. I explain how power dynamics are reinforced through interior spaces paying special attention to use of space, decoration/motifs, and the location/orientation of the interior architecture and design and exploring Madame de Pompadour’s use of mirrors to subtly control a narrative that elevated her status in the French court.
The implications of this work recontextualize the presence of mirrors in paintings of the Rococo period and give a new view on the roots of the subtly psychological implications of mirrors within the built environment. Mirrors as a topic of specific study within aristocratic interiors lacks robust research, my work aims to fill part of this gap by seeking to understand how mirrors established themselves within architecture through power preformances and psychology.

Ford Madox Brown's 1865 painting Work depicts a group of laborers digging a sewage line on a busy London street. Widely considered the most important painting of Ford Madox Brown’s career, Work is also one of the most radical paintings of the pre-Raphaelite period. In this presentation, I will argue that the dignity afforded to manual laborers in Work establishes a pride in British identity and a push for social reform in line with Christian socialist values. I will support this argument by analyzing the painting's composition, use of symbolism, and historical context. In the painting’s composition and content, the work of William Hogarth and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood reveal themselves as influences on Brown’s art and politics. I will also discuss how other scholars have interpreted Work’s symbolism and sociopolitical context, especially the writings of John A. Walker and Jenny Plastow. Through the painting and Brown’s accompanying catalog, Work instructs the importance of education and Christian values to social reform. Work is a complex and historically significant painting that celebrates labor during a turbulent time in England’s history. This paper will strengthen understanding of Work’s political rhetoric and symbolism, and in doing so illuminate the context of its creation.