| ART HIS 40C | HISTORY OF WESTERN ART | STUBBLEFIELD, T. | As the final installment of the three-part series, this course will highlight select movements and figures within the history of Western art from the mid-17th century to the contemporary. Rather than constructing a definitive, continuous narrative, we will approach this dense history through a series of discrete moments or “case studies” -- art and the reign of Louis XIV, the English landscape of the 18th century, Impressionism and the city of Paris and Pop Art and consumerism to name a few. In the course of this project, we will attempt to understand the relation between works of art and their socio-political context by asking how painting, sculpture and architecture both reflect and participate in the contexts in which they operate and under what conditions meaning is produced and to what end.
Enroll through UCI Summer Session. |
| ART HIS 183C | HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY | BALASCHAK, C. | A history of photography is a history of its contexts. Given the context in which a photograph is seen, its meaning changes. Through a series of topical studies, from the invention of photography in 1839 to present day critical practices, this course will engage a history of photography that takes into consideration the breadth of photography’s cultural and social contexts. The course will ask a series of fundamental questions: What are the roles of photography in modern culture? Is photography influential in those roles, or is it photography that is influenced? From fine art to science, from amateur hobby to photojournalism, the history of photography presented here aims to consider the variability and complexity of this pervasive medium, and the insistent malleability of its meaning.
The course is aimed at upper-level undergraduate students who wish to develop a fundamental knowledge of the history of photography and its role in visual culture throughout the 19th and 20th century. The course is structured by a series of topics, progressing chronologically from photography’s invention in 1839 to the present day.
These topics are reinforced by a selection of readings drawn from historical surveys, significant books from the field, and critical essays. There are three assignments in the course – regular blog posts about the readings, a presentation about one reading, and a take-home final exam essay that asks you to engage a critical topic from the course. The goal of these readings and assignments is to encourage discussion about the historical, social, and critical aspects of photography.
In our 10 meetings, we will address the following topics:
• Photography’s Place in Culture: Invention as Science, as Art
• Photography and Archival Space: The American West
• Photography and Archival Space: The Criminal
• The Photographic Soap Box, from Jacob Riis to Al Gore
• The Myth of Art Photography
• Amateurs and Professionals
• Photography and its Socialism
• The Photo-Weekly and the Fine Artist
• Context Made Visible: Photography’s Conceptual Turn
• Digital Photography and the Question of the Index
Enroll through UCI Summer Session. |