‘Busy working with materials’: transposing form, re-exposing Medardo Rosso

Thesis

This thesis examines how making extends artists' thoughts beyond their conceptions. Central to this is consideration of how an artist's statements and their work relate: this thesis argues that the relationship is neither of identity nor contradiction, but of a productive tension from which emerges a richer understanding of thought. A similar approach underscores this doctorate's relationship of studio and written components, both of which desire self-sufficiency. The studio work consists of discrete yet mutually informing series, all engaged with the specificity of a moment of exposure, whether here and now or recording a past moment. The notion of 'documentation' underscores these works, which include large chemical photographs, high-definition video, cyanotypes and extensive exploration of casting to reveal latent images. The written component is a thorough study of the various instances of Medardo Rosso's sculpture Ecce Puer, offering art-historical and theoretical grounding of hands-on making as a way pressing cultural issues inhere in a work at a more fundamental level than understood by its contemporaries or maker. The first chapter locates Rosso in his historical milieu. Chapter 2 assesses the elements constituting Ecce Puer; it argues that no definitions of a 'work' adequately encompass these, and coins the term 'complex work' to designate artworks indivisibly singular and plural, concrete and abstract. Chapter 3 offers phenomenological interpretation of Rosso's confused writings, illuminating them through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's late philosophy but understanding Rosso's thought as inadequate to the complexity of his work. Chapter 4 examines Rosso's photography, specifically his photography of photographs, connecting what this achieves to his phenomenology. Chapter 5 introduces a key notion of 'friendship' to understand how the connections between instances of Ecce Puer became 'meaningful'. Having offered a fundamentally new interpretation of Rosso's project, chapter 6 extends Michael Fried's history of French painting to relocate Rosso within early twentieth-century art.

Authors: Taylor, D

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-2a4qr60ag
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Medardo Rosso; Reproductive technologies; Ontologies of art; Practice-led research; Phenomenology of art; Rephotography; Photography of sculpture; C. S. Lewis
• Subjects: Fine Art; History of Art