| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ART HIS 40B | HISTORY OF WESTERN ART: MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE | BLAIR DAVIS | The history of Western Art is a year-long introduction to art and visual culture in the West from prehistory to the present. In Winter Quarter, the course focuses on the long period that extends from the end of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Less a survey than a series of case studies of specific issues, monuments, and artists, the course will examine the emergence of Christian visual culture, its dialogue with other cultures, its questioning of the nature and validity of representation, and its eclipse by the modern “work of art” in the Renaissance. |
| ART HIS 42B | HIST OF ASIAN ART | WOLFGRAM, J. | The second course of the year-long series “History of Asian Art” will be focused primarily on the development of Chinese art from the Period of Disunity through the 20th century. It will focus on classic Chinese painting, including bird-and-flower painting, figure painting, and landscape painting, but will also highlight the great tradition of Chinese ceramics, as these artworks reflect the changing political and religious reins that governed Chinese social ideology for over 1500 years. Two exams, one visual analysis writing assignment, quizzes and short assignments on information literacy, and class participation. No prerequisite. |
| ART HIS 103 | ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT GREECE | KENNEDY-QUIGLEY | This course will survey the art and architecture of the Greek civilization from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Period, with particular attention to how religion, politics, and historical events inform visual culture. Organized chronologically, this examination of art in context will trace the development and evolution of style, iconography, the human figure, visual narrative, propaganda in art, and viewer response. Prior exposure to the Classical tradition is helpful, but not required or presumed. Course requirements include participation in class discussions relative to required readings, a research paper, and midterm and final examinations. |
| ART HIS 120 | THE GRAND TOUR: ART AND TRAVEL IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ITALY | BLAIR DAVIS | To eighteenth-century European elites, a sojourn through the artistic and historic landscape of Italy was viewed as essential to a well- rounded education. These “Grand Tourists” arrived seeking the great works of the past, but soon discovered a flourishing contemporary art scene led by such masters as Tiepolo, Piranesi and Canova. This course will examine the multifaceted experience of the Grand Tour in Italy, focusing especially on contemporary painting and sculpture, important building programs, and the establishment of some of the first public museums in Europe. |
| ART HIS 125 | BAROQUE ART | MASSEY, L. | This course covers the art and architecture of Catholic Europe after the Reformation and during the period referred to as the Baroque. During this period, the late sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries (roughly 1543-1700), the power of the Catholic Church was renewed and Rome became the seat of a new, grandiose cultural revival. Church architecture and decoration proliferated, exhibiting an exuberance and expansiveness that surpassed that of the High Renaissance (which peaked one hundred years earlier). In the seventeenth century, patrons decorated chapels, palaces and villas with the painted and sculpted works of a new generation of artists whose talents were fostered in the competitive and highly intellectualized environment of Pope Urban VIII's Rome. In other parts of Europe, particularly France and Spain, Catholic monarchs built similarly lavish courts filled with art dedicated to the propaganda of absolutism, as well as monuments to Roman Christianity. This class will explore the political, social and culture ramifications of these and other centers of the Catholic Baroque in Europe. |
| ART HIS 134E | ART AND POLITICS BETWEEN WORLD WAR I AND II | WHITING, C. | Examining the political role of art in France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the United States between the world wars, this course will consider movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Neue Sachlichkeit, German Expressionism, and Russian Constructivism. Topics covered will include: art's function as political critique, the relationship between abstraction and the machine age, neo-classicism and social harmony. |
| ART HIS 140B | MODERNISM 1940-59 | WOODS, N. | This lecture course is an exploratory survey of the major artistic trends and debates of the 1940s-50s in the context and aftermath of World War II. The first half of the class will concentrate on the emergence of Abstract Expressionism as the dominant avant-garde movement of the period and explore its foundational themes and formal values, as well as the ideological effects of its ascendance on the international cultural stage (which coincided with the rise of the United States as the world’s strongest political and economic power). The second half of the class will address issues in sculpture and photography, and will consider the intellectual and aesthetic developments of European artists as they responded to violence, trauma, and war. Students will develop a critical language of modernism and lectures will emphasize formal analysis, as well as social context. Readings will include critical theories and artists’ writings. |
| ART HIS 140C | GENDER &PERFORMANCE | WOODS, N. | This lecture course will consider the cultural implications of performance art as it emerged around shifting notions of gender and sexuality in the postwar period. It will examine the historical precedents of “live-art” practice in Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and Action painting, and it will explore new forms of social and political expression in Happenings and Fluxus, feminism and institutional critique, as well as experimental theater, music, and dance. Accordingly, the class will look at a range of central issues that have framed the debate around performance and the body, including: the gendering of artwork and reception; the ethics of audience participation; the reliance on ‘indexical’ media (photography, film, video); the structure of language and desire; the rhetorical use of autobiography; the relationship between violence and ritual; and the limits of public/private spheres. Lectures will emphasize formal analysis, as well as social context. Readings will include critical theories (especially feminist, psychoanalytic, post-structuralist), and artists’ writings. |
| ART HIS 150 | ART & GLOBALIZATION | WINTHER, D. | This course applies recent globalization theory to developments of modern and contemporary art in India, Japan, and Mexico from the sixteenth century to the present day. Art is seen as a cause and expression of an increasing density of contacts between cultures. Topics to be considered include the regionalization of the European medium of oil painting; indigenizing art movements; the symbolism and function of national capitol architecture; the diffusion of modernist painting; the embodiment of national culture by women artists; and the global career itineraries of contemporary artists. These topics will be studied comparativistically in Indian, Japanese, and Mexican contexts. Students will be responsible for a midterm exam, written assignment, and final exam. |
| ART HIS 150 | KOREAN ART | WOLFGRAM, J. | This one-quarter survey will explore the arts of Korea, covering the major monuments of the peninsular nation from its inception to the present time. The lectures will not only investigate the various artistic traditions that developed, but it will also address issues of methodology, patronage, ideology, symbolism, nationalism, and popular aesthetics. Each lecture will introduce artistic developments in relation to the greater context of East Asian art. The field of Korean art history is relatively new in the West, and therefore this course will also serve as an exploratory essay into the discipline's resources and content. Some knowledge of Asian art recommended, but not required. |
| ART HIS 164A | AFAM ART:1619-1929 | COOKS CUMBO, B. | This course is part one of a two part investigation of the history and aesthetics of African American art with a particular focus on the politics of African American representation. Beginning chronologically with the arrival of Africans to the British colonies in 1619 and ending with the cultural phenomenon of the New Negro Movement, students will study African American cultural environments, and the objects of material culture (i.e. slave houses, jugs, quilts, furniture) and artworks created by African Americans. Course readings and class discussions are the primary means of investigating the topics discussed. |
| ART HIS 190W | PRACTCUM FOR MAJORS | MASSEY, L. | The Practicum for Majors is a writing-intensive seminar required for art history majors. The course is intended to improve students' writing skills while also introducing them to a range of different approaches and methodologies in the study of art history. Reading different approaches and writing in different modes will help students develop a better understanding of the intellectual and ideological stakes of the field of art history. |