Paintings by numbers : applications of bivariate correlation and descriptive statistics to Russian avant-garde artwork

Abstract

In this thesis artwork is defined, through analogy with quantum mechanics, as the conjoining of the nonsimultaneously measurable momentum (waves) of artwork-text (words within the primary sources and exhibition catalogues) with the position (particles) of artwork-objects (artist- productivity/exhibition-quantities). Such a proposition allows for the changes within the artwork of the Russian avant-garde to be charted, as such artwork-objects are juxtaposed with different artwork-texts from 1902 to 2009. The artwork of an initial period from 1902 to 1934 is examined using primary-source artwork-text produced by Russian artists and critics in relation to the contemporaneous production-levels of various types of Russian-avant-garde artwork-objects. The primary sources in this dataset are those reproduced in the artwork-text produced by the 62 exhibitions described below, and those published in John E. Bowlt’s 1991 edition of Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism. The production of artwork in the latter period from 1935 to 2009 is examined through consecutive exhibitions, and the relationship between the artwork-text produced by these exhibitions and the artwork-objects exhibited at them. The exhibitions examined within this thesis are 62 containing Russian avant-garde artwork, held in Britain from 1935 to 2009. Content analysis, using an indices-and-symptom analytical construct, functions to convert the textual, unstructured data of the artwork-text words to numerical, structured data of recording-unit weighted percentages. Whilst artist-productivity and exhibition-quantities of types of artwork-object convert the individual artwork-objects to structured data. Bivariate correlation, descriptive statistics, graphs and charts are used to define and compare relationships between: The recording units of the artwork-texts; the artist-productivity/ exhibition-quantities of types of artwork-objects; the structured artwork-text data and structured artwork-object data. These various correlations between structured artwork-text data and structured artwork-object data are calculated in relationship to time (Years) to chart the changes within these relationships. The changes within these relationships are synonymous with changes within Russian avant-garde artwork as presented from 1902 to 1934 and within the 62 British exhibitions from 1935 to 2009. Bivariate correlations between structured artwork-texts data and structured artwork-objects data express numerically (quantitatively) the ineffable relationships formed over time by large sets of unstructured data in the continued (re)creation of artwork.