Date of Award
Spring 5-30-2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Digital Media
First Advisor
Kelly Dobson
Second Advisor
Lane Myer
Third Advisor
Lisa Z. Morgan
Abstract
The goal of this thesis is to create a new theoretical framework to examine and understand the meaning of an art object and its relational social existence. This thesis serves as a critique on contemporary media culture and hierarchical social oppression. At the same time, it adopts a pseudoscientific way to introduce notions of art’s autonomy and its opposition to social functionality. By merging political theories on individualism, capitalism, and metaphysics with foundational structures of art creation, I am attempting to construct a new system of thinking that challenges traditional ways of understanding mediums, functions and the viewer’s relationship with art objects. My thinking links beauty with violence as a necessary attribute to the creation of art. This argument is central to my thesis and to my theoretical framework. This book is also a formula for my own art practice and for being a good human artist. It records and inspires my life long study of aesthetics and of beauty as a metaphysical object.
Recommended Citation
Chen, Mengyu, "Neoplastic therapy : on violence and aesthetics" (2015). Masters Theses. 22.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/22
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