It is a pleasure to announce that the estate of the late Marilyn Ehdahl Ravicz has granted permission to release and circulate her 1974 doctoral dissertation — Aesthetic Anthropology. I’ve uploaded it to a special section of my Academia page at:
https://www.academia.edu/103470189/Ravicz_1974_Aesthetic_Anthropology
Anthropologist Marilyn Ekdahl Ravicz took her PhD in 1974 at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her thesis was titled Aesthetic Anthropology: Theory and Analysis of Pop and Conceptual Art in America. This was the first doctoral dissertation written on Fluxus. It was also one of the first PhD theses on conceptual art and one of the first on intermedia. Ravicz presents a brilliant, wide-ranging discussion of pioneering artists at a time when few art historians focused their work. It was also a time when only a few critics and curators found it interesting. This groundbreaking doctoral dissertation pointed to conceptual and scholarly issues that have become significant in the decades since Ravicz did her work. Today, there is renewed and growing attention to Fluxus and intermedia, as well as to conceptual art. This thesis also discussed the art that Nicolas Bourriaud would later call relational art, as well as identifying artistic issues that are now subject to inquiry in philosophy, musicology, theatre studies, performance studies, theology, and artistic research.
You are free to download a copy of this extraordinary work and share it as widely as you wish.
Best regards,
Ken
Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier
