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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

The Mood of Nothing: Depictions of Extraordinary Banality

Kang, Sso-Rha
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7913-9309
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459440057

Abstract Details

2016, MA, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History.
This thesis seeks to demonstrate modes of nothingness encountered in contemporary art. Nothingness has a concrete history that begins with abstraction and a formless aesthetic experience that derives from Modernism. Although contemporary art can be classified as a continuation of the anti-aesthetic properties of the Post-Modernist agenda, this thesis posits that nothingness continues to be reimagined and re-represented in contemporary art practices. This study offers two differentiating yet strikingly similar displays of nothingness in the works of James Turrell’s (b. 1943) Live Oak Friends Meeting House (2010) and Uta Barth’s (b.1958) ...and in time (2007-2008). Turrell’s Quaker meetinghouse exhibits spiritual dimensions of nothingness, which deviates from the nihilistic renderings of nothingness found in Barth’s photographic representations of the everyday. However, the works are united in their resounding moods–the essence of nothing characterized by emptiness, plainness, banality, and absence. These seemingly unextraordinary characteristics are paradoxically capable of extraordinary beauty. It is the inherent plainness of the works that creates an erasure of imposed meanings, allowing works to be universally open to interpretation yet predicated on a singular aesthetic experience, which is highly invested in the act of looking. The invitational austerity of nothingness beckons viewers to explore and project meaning into the impending absence, delving into the ambiguous territory of feeling and how emotions are created, molded, and felt.
Morgan Thomas, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Grace Epstein, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Stephanie Sadre-Orafai, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
50 p.
Art History
Nothing; Mood; Banality; Uta Barth; James Turrell; Quotidian

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kang, S.-R. (2016). The Mood of Nothing: Depictions of Extraordinary Banality [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459440057

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kang, Sso-Rha. The Mood of Nothing: Depictions of Extraordinary Banality. 2016. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459440057.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kang, Sso-Rha. "The Mood of Nothing: Depictions of Extraordinary Banality." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1459440057

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1459440057
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© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.