| This dissertation explores the connotations of the brushstroke image as it appears in contemporary commercial contexts. It describes the historical process by which the brushstroke has accrued these connotations, emphasizing the development of oil painting, the expansion of art markets, the emergence of avant-gardes, the growth of a formalist aesthetic, and the appropriative practices concomitant with artistic Orientalism. In this exploration, it references examples of brushwork in fine oil paintings as well as print ads, packaging, and logos—cultural products both elite and popular—to highlight affinities, semantic correspondences, and instances of decontextualization and appropriation across art worlds. It augments these exhibits with commentary from artists, critics, art historians and graphic design professionals.; Findings indicate that, in addition to associations with speed, artisanship, prestige, and individuality, the brushstroke bears connotations of the natural, the primitive, the sensual, and the transcendent. To account for the manner in which the brushstroke has accrued these diverse connotations, this dissertation first focuses on the meanings attributed to dramatic brushwork in the evolution of oil painting. Then it examines the tradition of artistic appropriation from Oriental sources, asserting that, resonant with the Romantic conflation of the savage and the sage, this tradition eventually influenced the formal appropriation of Zen calligraphy by American avant-garde painters of the mid-twentieth century. It contends that the confluence of Western oil and Eastern ink in Abstract Expressionism facilitated the emergence of the brushstroke as an emic unit and a freestanding image of iconic stature.; This dissertation concludes that, to counter the technological mediation, alienation and secularization of the late twentieth century, graphic designers are exploiting the archaic, therapeutic, and visionary connotations of the brushstroke employing it as an icon of authenticity to harness displaced desire and stimulate consumption. In this manner, the mechanisms of corporate capitalism speed the decontextualization of visual images. Further, with globalization, the accelerating appropriation of culturally significant imagery for commercial ends is rapidly diluting the meaning of such imagery and producing a visual environment that is symbolically incoherent and psychologically disorientating. |
