Description: This paper discusses research on the recruitment of women via the medium of posters during World War Two (1941-1945). The purpose of the paper is to illuminate predominant practices by poster artists and argues that poster artists recruited women by creating two types of poster imagery, Static and Active. The article is informed by a comprehensive review of literature, including primary and secondary sources and several visual analyses conducted by the author. The article concludes that poster artwork shares visual traits with commercial and illustrational artwork created for female viewers prior to the war.

Description: This paper discusses research on Man Ray's 'Noire et blanche'. Abstract: Man Ray's photographic series, 'Noire et blanche', 1926, consists of more than twenty photographs of a pale-faced, female model holding a darkly stained African mask. Most of the photographs draw our attention to similarities in the shape of the model's face and that of the mask, as well as contrasts between the model's paleness and the mask's darkness. Although the first photograph from the series was published in 'Vogue' and 'Variétés' during the 1920s, the series did not gain attention in the art world until the 1980s when scholarly and critical interest in primitive art redeveloped within the contexts of postmodernism and post-colonialism. This paper advances beyond the too often superficially noted formal similarities and contrasts between the representations of the woman and the mask to identify cultural connections between the representations of the woman and the mask to identify cultural connections between them involving sexual and racial "Otherness". Establishing the connections involves a consideration of why modern artists often used African art or the female figure in their work. Importantly, by analyzing how the photographs foster formal similarities rendering the model and mask alike, the author is able ...

Description: This paper discusses research on the use of photography in colonial India. The thesis of the paper is that British photographers, through their choice of subjects and editing of their works, created a romanticized image of India as the British wished to see it. More recent photography has focused on the reality of the lives of the Indian people. Thus photography has moved from functioning as an agent of colonial domination and political propaganda to a tool used to bring aid and compassion to those in need.

Description: This presentation discusses research on the political rhetoric of American quilts. This research examines the validity of women's participation in American social politics.

Description: This paper discusses research on the performance art of Alexander Brener. The author states that we should expand our understanding of contemporary art by considering it from ideological perspectives other than those of the West. The author will show the significance that certain established conventions of Western art criticism and history have for the Russian performance artist Alexander Brener. Western art critics perceive Brener's performances as destructive and perverse, which indicates the existence of accepted conventions and a tacit agreement concerning what is considered art. Art history also excludes Brener, not only because his work is so contemporary, but also because prevailing approaches to understanding art in the West require categorizing art movements and corresponding labeling of artists, which is difficult to achieve in Brener's case. Consequently, the author asks, how was Brener emphasized the importance of understanding art as an entity that has culturally specific features? The author considers Brener's use of the phrase "third world artist" in relation to the prevailing Western art critical terms "East" and "West." Finally, the author examines Brener's controversial performance at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in relation to the Western art world as a system consisting of artists, critics, historians, and patrons.