| This dissertation is an art historical analysis of Nancy Spero's (b. 1926) wall painting installations in museums and alternative spaces. The text takes the form of a monograph, examining the genesis of Spero's wall paintings (1987–2001) in relation to her earlier paintings and scroll works (1948–1987). The aim of the dissertation is to document and analyze Spero's installations by employing a variety of methodological models for an examination of her site-specific strategies, themes, iconography, formats, and techniques. I interweave a range of methodologies as frameworks for interpretation, including the following: formal, visual analysis and examination of technical processes and materials; biographical elements informing specific projects and themes; critical reception and studio practices; cultural contexts, such as the “performative” aspects of installation; feminist psychoanalytical theory; poetic and epic structuring of the work.; I posit that Spero's wall paintings, as orchestrated and dialogic, are contingent for their meanings on the architectural elements and functions of the site, a condition which implies open-ended viewer participation. Further, I emphasize Spero's consistent formal enlivening of socially engaged art, her valuing of subtext and layering, and of political meanings manifest in an aesthetic commitment to re-presenting, remembering, and recounting within public spaces. I show that Spero enters into an affective, phenomenological, and formal dialogic relationships with architectural space and its meanings, anchored in corporeal experience as an aspect of intellectual cognition. By these means, Spero transcribes solitary questioning within broader communities of judgment, embodying a humanist, critical, and self-reflexive stance.; Chapter One, “Biographical Elements as Narrative, 1926–1987,” employs biographical and art historical analyses of Spero's early works as a student, a young artist, and a mature artist. Chapter Two, “The First Wall Painting Installations, 1988–1989,” focuses on the crucial years of Spero's development of wall painting strategies, themes, and iconography. Chapter Three, “Fragmentation and Recreation, 1990–1994,” analyzes Spero's formal and technical means, her expansion of thematic and iconographic materials within the museum framework, and her oscillation between political, historical, and mythic idioms within the practice of installation. Chapter Four, “Wall Paintings in Museums and Elsewhere, 1995–2001,” employs multiple methodologies to examine Spero's conceptual, formal, and technical extensions of installation. |
