Author

Jack Micoli

Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Anderson, Kim

Area of Concentration

Art

Abstract

The temporality of our experience prompts anxiety and unrest. We fear the inevitable absence that follows presence, but ultimately this fear is what gets us out of bed in the morning – life continues in spite of death. In this study of pastoral painting, a mode which expresses longing for an origin, or nostalgia, I demonstrate that harmony is often constituted by a combination of familiarity and distance. My display of pastoral as a conflicted pursuit of an origin is supplemented by the theoretical work of Susan Stewart and Gaston Bachelard, who explore the relationship between description and its referent, where the referent is invented anew in its description. The artwork I created for this project is a testament to a hopeful perspective of the inaccessibility of memory: that the past is invented in our remembrance of it.

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