DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/82RM-KE83
Defense Date
2021
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Painting and Printmaking
First Advisor
Holly Morrison
Second Advisor
Hilary Wilder
Third Advisor
Caitlin Cherry
Abstract
The sublime as a concept has a fraught and racist history. However, it remains the single most helpful idea in describing the deeply felt state of being when one comes across something ineffably powerful. From an art-making perspective, this thesis, and the accompanying exhibition of installations and paintings, proposes an alternative construction of the concept of the sublime. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis as a conceptual point of departure, a painter can manipulate the relationship of the viewer and paintings to create paradoxical moments of simultaneous intimacy and distance, which interact to create an alternative path towards the sublime. Through descriptions of these mechanisms of interactions, this project proposes a sublime that is melancholic and vulnerable instead of violent and terrifying—a sublime that is derived through a process of difficulty and eventual reckoning with failure.
Rights
© Hao Ding (Damien)
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
5-7-2021
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, Art Practice Commons, Comparative Philosophy Commons, Continental Philosophy Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, Interdisciplinary Arts and Media Commons, Painting Commons, Theory and Philosophy Commons