'Not so much 'after landscape' as 'before landscape'': Figurative Experimentation in the Works of Claudia Rankine and Mary McIntyre

Abstract

This thesis argues that the place of the self and the figure in the works of poet Claudia Rankine and visual artist Mary McIntyre is integral to their formal innovation and shared attention to the ethics of visual representation. Weighing problematic historical comparisons of African American and Northern Irish communities and cultures, this thesis posits a critical approach balancing an attention to historical trauma with formal, aesthetic analysis. Bracha L. Ettinger and Griselda Pollock's feminist visual theory offers a joint place from which to consider Rankine's PLOT (2001) and McIntyre's A Contemporary Sublime (2013) and The Path to the Distribution Point of Light (2015) without enacting a comparative critique. The juxtaposition of their works ultimately reveals two artists working to envision news ways to represent the self, maternity, suffering, and objectification.