Doctoral theses

A social history of socialist realism imagery in the former East Germany.

Uses and Utopias – The Exhibition in the Pre-Revolutionary Russian Avant-Garde: an essay on the exhibition practice in Russia in the years 1910-1920, and in particular on the relationship between exhibition and public space in the projects of the historical avant-gardes.

An epistemology of historical socialism (politics, natural sciences, humanities and religion in the early XIXth century).

A genealogy of cut-up: the history and development of a radical and pioneering literary technique, in Europe and the US, in the twentieth century (readings from William S. Burroughs).

Improvisation as musical and political experimentation (essay).

A history of film in contemporary art (a witty critical history of artist's films and their inscription into the broader history of art, as well as their impact on their social contexts).

A study of social utopias (of European origin, mainly French) in Latin America in the 19th century: a contribution to the defense of utopia as a driving force of human progress, against all forms of utilitarianism and pragmatism.

A historical and theoretical reflection, on the border between aesthetics and politics, on the decisive role of the images and the power and limits of representation, in the context of the last genocide of the twentieth century.

Jean-Luc Godard and art (a return on Godard's controversial project at the Centre Pompidou in 2006).

Social and political dimension of the emergence of a culture of the image carried by the amateur practice of photography in Germany at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Function of visual arts in France during the First World War.

An introduction to Minsky's seminal theory on financial instability.

The law after the dematerialization of the artwork: a legal perspective on contemporary art.

A study of the production and reception of art in the USSR in the years 1920-1930 through the analysis of the work of the Society of Easel Painters (OST)'s members.

An investigation into the uses of “sound document” in music, since the beginning of phonography.

The Nouveau Réalisme between Paris and West Germany in the 1960's.

An introduction to the “work of resistance” of East German dramatist, poet, writer and essayist Heiner Müller.

The resurgence of Dada in the U.S. (a genealogy of American post-war experimental art).

A study of political and ideological stakes of Beuys' oeuvre and its myth in Germany.

The story of the surrealists' radical anticolonialism: a political, aesthetic and poetic avant-garde.

A visual anthropology study on the Wagenburgs and the Berliner punk community.

An essay on Jean Genet and the gender performance.

Commentary on Walter Benjamin's theses: On the concept of history.

First publication in French on a major figure of British Pop Art, this essay analyses notably the questioning of the contemporary appearances in Richard Hamilton's works.

An innovative analysis of Dalí's work which focuses on the cultural History during the 1920's, showing that the Surrealist revolution went hand in hand with radical changes in society.

A new approach on the Situationist International and its paradoxical myths.

How, in the course of their American exile, the surrealist artists (Duchamp, Tanguy, Masson, Ernst, Lam, Carrigton ...) were influenced by the literary and artistic context. Also a specific study on the perpetual renewal of Surrealism after war, linked with the importance of esoterism, the Amerindian civilizations, and Charles Fourier.

An elucidation of the myths and the political fantasies that surrounded Gustave Courbet's work and life under the second Empire.

J. Donguy introduces the visual and sound experimentations of concrete poetry, from 1953 (Gomringer and de Campos) to the current movements ("digital area"). The anthology, followed by an international bibliography, offers the first overview of this art, with 300 illustrations.

Hans Hartung always gave a lot of attention to the filing of his works. This essay on the abstract painter is linked with a specific web site where one will find a rich iconography and documentation.

An essay on the birth of artistic manifestos in the 19th century, from Jacques Louis David to Gustave Courbet.

The first major study of the Japanese avant-garde collective emblematic of the post-war artistic revival, bringing together composers, visual artists, musicians, poets, critics and technicians who in the 1950s explored various forms of interdisciplinary collaboration, questioning the classical frameworks of artistic presentation, the relationships between sound and image, time and space.

The history of NHK electronic music studio and the making of an international "center" for contemporary music: a wide-ranging, totally unprecedented study of the role and position of a Japanese avant-garde music institution founded in 1955 within international production until the late 1960s, based on first-hand documentation.

Drawing on a material, cultural and social history of art, Hugo Daniel proposes to understand the recognition and redefinition of drawing by the avant-garde in the 1950s and 1960s, between the questioning of artists, the evolution of critics and the projects of gallery owners and curators, to show how drawing is understood as a complex reality, in act.