Alexander Kusztyk: Representations of Marble in Art from 1901 to 2023

Supervisor: Dr Frank Salmon

Research overview:

This dissertation interrogates the various modes of representing marble in art from the late nineteenth century to 2023. It begins with artists of colonial powers painting in the broad ‘western’ tradition of Europe and branches out to increasingly global perspectives, particularly those shaped through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas between Asia and the ‘west’ that have unlocked new and unique marble expressions. It emphasises conceptual approaches from the 1960s that have demonstrated the de-materialisation of marble into a material notion and considers the ways in which new media and performance have altered the representation of marble across issues including class, race, gender, sexuality, and globalisation. This dissertation ultimately argues that, following a derivative classical period in the early twentieth century, new modes of marbling in art have emerged as a de-classicised, de-colonised, and de-materialised material phenomenon.

Biography:

Alexander Kusztyk is an Art History PhD candidate at St John's College, University of Cambridge where he is supervised by Dr Frank Salmon. Alexander received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016 and MPhil from the University of Cambridge in 2018. His research interests include indeterminacy and de-materialisation, geological aesthetics, East Asian visual culture, and global perspectives and material narratives in modern art. He has published widely on Japanese conceptual art of the 1960s.