This dissertation, "Frames, Flows, Feminist Aesthetics: Paintings by Judy Watson, Cai Jin and Marlene Dumas" by Carol, Archer, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "Frames, Flows, Feminist Aesthetics: Paintings by Judy Watson, Cai Jin and Marlene Dumas" Submitted by Carol Archer for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, at The University of Hong Kong in June 2006 This dissertation offers readings of paintings by the Aboriginal Australian artist Judy Watson, the Chinese artist Cai Jin, and the Netherlands-based artist Marlene Dumas. It also presents a reading of the representation of the field of painting in a literary work, Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. The central thesis is that these works of art are, in different ways, ambivalent, and that this ambivalence is constructive. It is the basis of the political, and specifically feminist, aesthetics that are claimed for the paintings in question. The interaction between frames and flows is argued to be crucial to those differing feminist aesthetics. The paintings by Judy Watson, Cai Jin and Marlene Dumas all reference flows that relate to the body and/or the environment, employing pigments in ways that underline their fluid and viscous qualities. It is demonstrated that these works are also fluid in the less concrete sense elucidated in the discussion of the representation of painting in The Trial. The content of the paintings in question, and likewise the readings and emotional responses that they invite, is indeterminate, often to the point of radical contradiction. The claim is that this fluidity undermines frames, categories and oppositions implicit in the contexts evoked by the works in question. Close attention to the content, style and material specificity of works is therefore balanced with a nuanced account of pertinent contexts. The contexts important to the contemporary paintings discussed in this thesis are global as well as localised and culturally- specific. The methodology is characterised by a commitment to adequately historicize the works, since it is only in relation to relevant contexts that the presence of a political aesthetic can be established. The use of the plural term, feminist aesthetics, is deliberate and reflects a desire to take difference properly into account. At the same time, the methodology of the project is eclectic, drawing on the philosophical, aesthetic, feminist and art historical literature pertinent to contemporary painting, and more particularly, to a thematics of frame and flow. In addition, work from the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology and educational philosophy plays a crucial role in the readings presented in these pages. The thesis contends that certain works by Judy Watson, Cai Jin and Marlene Dumas highlight frames of one kind or another, only to reveal their porosity. If these works foreground the masculinist and otherwise dominative presumptions implicit in the relevant contexts, they also destabilize them. The dizzying closeness of Titorelli's attic studio alerts Joseph K. to both the fixity of the window and the gaps in the walls. Similarly, the paintings by Judy Watson, Cai Jin and Marlene Dumas discussed in this thesis posit the untenability of frames so familiar that they frequently escape notice. Yet these works also raise the possibility of new, fluid and relational models of painting, place and identity. DOI: 10.5353/th_b3690787 Subjects: Painting, Modern - 20th centuryFeminism and the artAesthetics