| Course | Title | Instructor | Description |
|---|
| ART HIS 40B | HISTORY OF WESTERN ART | POWELL, A. | 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 42D | ARTS OF ISLAM | PATEL, A. | This course examines the past and present of Islam through its art and architecture, spanning 1500 years and encompassing the Americas through Indonesia. The course emphasizes that, since its emergence on the Arabian peninsula in the early 7th century, Islam has been a force for connecting different world regions and their people in commercial, ideological, artistic and religious dialogues – globalization, in the modern sense. At the same time that we examine what is “Islamic” about objects labeled as such, we will also address their regional specificities, confronting and redefining the very idea of what is “Islamic” in the process. One pre-exam, mid-term examination, one fieldwork assignment (2 pp.), quizzes in discussion sections, final examination. No prerequisite. |
| ART HIS 103 | ANCIENT GREEK ART | KENNEDY-QUIGLEY, S. | 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 134E | AVANTE-GARDE WOMEN | WOODS, N. | This upper-division course examines the contributions of artistic avant-gardism from the late-19th to the mid-20th century as practiced by women artists in Western Europe. In doing so we will explore the historical formation of the avant-garde (in Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constuctivism, Dada, and Surrealism); revisit the limited accessibility of women artists to traditional structures and institutions of art; study critiques of avant-gardism from feminist points of view; examine questions of autobiography and the archive; and dissect theories of difference and the gendered/classed/sexed body. Artists studied include: Berthe Morisot, Sophie Taueber-Arp, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, Suzanne Duchamp, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Mina Loy, Claude Cahun, Meret Oppenheim, Sonia Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Dora Maar, Louise Bourgeois, among others. |
| ART HIS 140A | AMERICAN ART 1945–1989 | NISBET, J. | A topical and chronological survey of the major themes, artists, and critical terms of visual art in the United States from 1945 to 1989, this course begins with the rise of New York as an international art center following the Second World War and then proceeds to examine the claims of artistic production across the continent to the developing structures of globalization, from commodity culture to networks of new media. Class sessions will be organized around a series of central artists, such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Hans Haacke, Eleanor Antin, and Barbara Kruger. Rather than privileging these individuals, this format will consider the range of aesthetic practices through which each artist’s work operates, including theories of abstraction, performance, feminism, and identity politics. Course readings will be drawn principally from primary sources, including art criticism and artists’ writings. |
| ART HIS 151B | LATER IMPERIAL CHINA | WUE, R. | This course is an exploration of art and visual culture in early modern dynastic China from the Song through the Qing dynasties (1000-1900 CE). The course will proceed chronologically through this time period, while approaching art as historical and social documents that explore and explicate how art was used and practiced at court, by the elite, in the city and by a popular audience. [Different themes that will be discussed in this course include art as an instrument of power and propaganda, as a tool for social and religious ritual, as an expression of social status and prestige, as a medium for social protest and as a product for the marketplace. Beginning with landscape and genre painting for the Song court, topics covered include literati painting under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, the urban arts of the Ming including women’s painting and printed books, and the multi-ethnic court arts and commercial painting under China’s last dynasty, the Manchu Qing dynasty.] |
| ART HIS 156 | ART & GLOBALIZATION | WINTHER, D. | AH 156. Art & Globalization: Japan, Mexico, & India This course focuses on globalization and modern art in Japan, Mexico, and India. The comparison of these three regions demonstrates how globalization impacted the character of art in the modern world. Topics of study include aesthetic embodiment by Frida Kahlo and other women artists; symbolic national architecture in Tokyo, Mexico City, and New Delhi; the transplantation of European art; neo-traditional painting; international exhibitions and biennials; and the transnational avant-garde.
Previously taught as AH 150. |
| ART HIS 165D | AMERICAN MODERNISM: 1900-1950 | WOODS, N. | This upper-division course takes as its focus the emergence of a definitively modernist visual culture in the United States between 1900-1950. Lectures will take both a thematic and chronological direction, and in doing so, we will examine the reception of European modernism by New York artists in the first half of the century, especially the group of writers, artists, critics, and patrons who gathered around the photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery “291”; the fall-out from the Armory Show in 1913; the conscious search for identity by artists exploring what it means to be an American and a modernist; the embracing of machine culture in a newly industrialized landscape; the redefinition of art in the form of ‘readymades’; and the careful study of abstraction and realism in painting, sculpture, photography, and film. Artists and writers studied include: Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Sheeler, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Hart Crane, Edward Steichen, Beatrice Abbott, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Arshile Gorky, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Joseph Cornell, among others. |
| ART HIS 167 | CONQUISTADORS | BAUER, D. | The course explores fundamental European notions concerning the nature and use of images as they manifested themselves during the colonization of Latin America. Europeans involved in the colonization of Latin America had certain expectations as to what images should look like as well as how images should function. However, in the New World, they encountered a set of visual cultures different than their own. The tensions produced by this encounter led many colonizers such as Columbus, Ramón Pané, and Peter Martyr to reflect and write about images. Later on, colonizers not only wrote about images but also drew up and executed strict policies regarding the authorization, production, and use of images. The corpus of writings thus produced together with actions pertaining to images betray an array of beliefs, convictions, opinions, and feelings about images that were rooted more in medieval, rather than Renaissance, practices. ** Same as ART HIS (F11) 167 LAT AMER ART 15C |
| ART HIS 190W | PRACTICUM FOR MAJORS | WUE, R. | This seminar offers an overview of the major approaches and methodologies in art history; it is also a writing-intensive course that seeks to improve students’ writing skills as they relate to looking at, analyzing and researching visual works of art. [We will examine various approaches in art history; by reading, discussing and writing about a selection of art historical essays, students will come to a fuller understanding of the tools used by art historians to investigate the art work. Students are expected to make use of these tools in their own writings on art, and through the process of writing, editing and revising, reflect on their own approaches to the art work.] This course is a requirement for art history majors. |