Themes flaky after Hardy

[reader4]

Just upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy twice: once using the online installer and once using an installation CD. My /home is on a separate partition so user preferences were unaffected. When I log into Hardy now, my theme is completely wrong. For example, I am using the generic "Human" theme. Note the square grey boxes:
http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=67824&stc=1&d=1209413294

If I click on another theme, then back to "Human" everything looks fine:
http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=67825&stc=1&d=1209413294

and continues to look fine when I open Nautilus:
http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=67826&stc=1&d=1209413294

However, as soon as I open something else (a PDF) everything breaks and I am back to where my message started.
http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=67827&stc=1&d=1209413294

I have removed my .gconf*, .gnome* directories but without luck. Perhaps this is related to the GNOME naming business, but presumably fresh installs do not have this problem - right? So, how do I go about fixing this? Seems like something too fundamental to let slide into a final release...

[reader4]

Edit: the problem seems only to persist with Human themes... I can use the same components of those themes, change colors to match and everything works fine. ???

[flightless bird]

The same thing has happened to me in xfce4. It seems to have cropped up in development as well (see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4715182) but I can't seem to find a good answer. This is quite a disappointing development