Spring 2008 | Courses | Art History and Archaeology

ARTH320 Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Century Northern European Art (Professor Martinez)
TuTh 12:30-1:45 (ASY 3215)

ARTH321 Sixteenth-Century Northern European Painting (Professor Martinez)
TuTh 3:30-4:45 (ASY 3215)

ARTH345 Nineteenth-Century Art to 1850 (Professor Hargrove)
TuTh 11-12:15 (ASY 3211)

ARTH360 History of American Art to 1876 (Professor Woodville)
TuTh 12:30-1:45 (ASY 3211)

ARTH370 Latin American Art and Archaeology before 1500 (Professor Bernier)
TuTh 2-3:15 (ASY 3211)

ARTH 389E: Special Topics in Art History and Archaeology: Post-Narrative Post-Modern Post-Hong Kong Film (Professor Metcalf)
Wednesday 3:30-7 (Arranged)
This course meets in Hornbake Non-Print Media Services Room J.
A consideration of feature film as modern and post-modern art from a variety of theoretical perspectives. The course will follow the shift in feature film from traditional narrative to one influenced by graphic novels, internet and video. More broadly, there will be attention to the confluence of different national post-New Wave cinemas and Hollywood and the general shift from the film screen to the television screen. Issues of self-referentiality and irony, shifting definitions of realism and distance, will be considered.

ARTH462 Twentieth-Century Black American Art (Professor Childs)
TuTh 9:30-10:45 (ASY 3215)

ARTH488E Colloquium in Art History: Expressionism (Professor Mansbach)
TuTh 12:30-1:45 (ASY 4306)

ARTH488F Colloquium in Art History: Contemporary Chinese Visual Culture and Film (Professor Kuo)
TuTh 12:30-1:45 (HBK 0302J)

ARTH489F Special Topics in Art History: Modern Chinese Visual Culture and FIlm (Professor Kuo)
TuTh 11-12:15 (HBK 0302J)

ARTH496 Methods of Art History and Archaeology (Professor Georgievska-Shine)
M 3-5:30 (ASY 3217)

ARTH499 (PermReq) Honors Thesis
TBD

Graduate Courses

ARTH 638: Studies in Seventeenth-Century European Art
New Approaches to 17th-Century Patronage and Contextual Interpretation
Professor Anthony Colantuono
Wednesday 6-8:40 (ASY 4304)
Since the publication of Francis Haskell's monumental study titled Patrons and Painters (1963), historians of seventeenth-century Italian art have tended to adopt, somewhat uncritically, Haskell's 1950s Marxist interpretative terms. Highly sophisticated though those terms may have been, they now appear hackneyed and no longer capable of producing new insights. This seminar is devoted to the identification and development of new models involving the fusion of Haskells socio-economic approach to art patronage with humanistic and post-structuralist interpretative technologies. The seminar also features a series of lectures, readings and discussions introducing the norms of seventeenth-century art patronage as presently understood.

ARTH 658: Studies in American Art: Studies in American Art History
Homer, Eakins, Bellows and American Realism
Professor Frank Kelly
Thursday 3-5:40 (ASY 4304)
This seminar will consider the work of three of the greatest painters of late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. All three have been the subject of extensive—and often conflicting and contradictory—scholarship in recent decades, and students will be expected to provide critical assessments of books and articles that will be assigned for reading. Students will also make seminar presentations that will in turn serve as the basis for final papers that will contribute to the scholarship on these artists.

ARTH 708: Seminar in Ancient Art and Archaeology
The Afterlives of Ancient Things
Professor Elizabeth Marlowe
Tuesday 12-2:40 (ASY 4304)
This course will examine the reception or “cultural biography” of a handful of artworks, sites and monuments produced in the ancient Mediterranean. We will begin with some broad, theoretical readings on concepts such as reception, appropriation and sites of memory, in search of critical tools with which to analyze a range of case studies. These may include phenomena such as Iron Age tomb cult; the Roman collecting, copying and adapting of Greek statuary; late antique and early Christian practices of spoliation; Mussolini's use of ancient monuments; and the controversies surrounding the so-called Elgin Marbles and the modern antiquities market. Students will present and write on a case study involving the reuse or reimaging of ancient objects either in antiquity or from their own area of expertise. A background in ancient art will be helpful but is not required.

ARTH 739: Seminar in Seventeen-Century Northern European Art
Jan Lievens (1607-1674)
Professor Arthur Wheelock
Monday 3-5:40 (ASY 4304)
Jan Lievens (1607-1674) remains one of the most fascinating and enigmatic Dutch artists of the seventeenth century. Daring and innovative as a painter, draughtsman and printmaker in his early career in Leiden as a colleague and friendly rival of Rembrandt, Lievens went on to have an enormously successful career in London and Antwerp before moving back to Holland to work in Amsterdam and The Hague. He created a number of memorable character studies, genre scenes, landscapes, formal portraits, and religious and allegorical images that were widely praised and highly valued during his lifetime. Nevertheless, his posthumous reputation has never risen to a level commensurate with the quality of his individual works, and his contemporary fame has largely been forgotten.

This seminar, which is being offered in conjunction with an upcoming exhibition on the artist at the National Gallery, will examine Lievens' relationship to Rembrandt and Van Dyck, his search for an “international” style that would allow him to receive princely commissions, and issues related to the changing fortune of the artist's reputation.

ARTH 749:Seminar in Nineteen-Century European Art
Paul Gauguin and the changing nature of Symbolism
Professor June Hargrove
Tuesday 3-5:40 (4304)
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was one of the most gifted and enigmatic artists of the nineteenth century. Painting, sculpture, graphics, and decorative arts were all within his purview. Moreover, he authored hundreds of letters, essays, meditations, and several book-length manuscripts on his experiences, philosophy, religious beliefs, the art world, and his aesthetic principles. He was a prolific artist whose lack of formal training left him free to explore a wide range of materials and techniques without any academic constraints to shed. His radical approach to ceramics, for example, had a profound impact on his painting and sculpture. The audacity with which he transposed his innovations across media is matched by his astonishing eclecticism, embracing cultures around the globe, from antiquity to his own day. His theosophical faith encouraged him to combine the subjects and iconography of different religions, from Christian and Islam to Hindu and Maori, which he leavened with a dose of the occult. The friend of poets and musicians, he integrated their ideas into his creative process, redefining and transforming the nature of symbolism along the way.

His tumultuous life is inseparable from his creative endeavors–the autobiographical mingles with the mythic, and his artistic credo reflects the syncretic nature of his spiritual beliefs. He was, in many ways, the man you love to hate–egocentric, male chauvinist, colonialist–any number of pejorative adjectives can be applied. He could also be a devoted friend, sensitive listener, and advocate for the vulnerable. His sentimental side is almost incredible given his irascible persona. But he was an inventive and thoughtful artist who made significant contributions that led beyond Symbolism into the abstract and deeply subjective art of the twentieth century.

This seminar will investigate the length of his career, examining not only his art and that of his Symbolist milieu, but also exploring his extensive writing from various theoretical perspectives–such as theosophy and spiritualism, exoticism, gender issues, post-colonial, and revisionist. The importance of music and poetry on his symbolism is an important theme. You will be expected to participate in weekly reading discussions in a variety of approaches, as well as to prepare an oral presentation on a topic of your choosing. A research paper will be due near the end of the semester, presumably–but not obligatorily–stemming from the oral report.

ARTH 759: Seminar in Twentieth-Century Art
Photography since 1989
Professor Joshua Shannon
Thursday 12-2:40 (ASY 4304)
In this seminar, we will consider the boom in art photography since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Major interests in the art we will study include the globalizing landscape, the human body, time and “the everyday,” and the relationship between art and documentary. We will devote special attention to the question of what seems to constitute a credible realism in the postmodern context. We will look closely at work by Olivo Barbieri, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Catherine Opie, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Thomas Struth, Sam Taylor-Wood, Sze Tsung Leong, Massimo Vitali, Jeff Wall, and others.

ARTH 779: Seminar in Japanese Art
Modern Art in Japan
Professor Alicia Volk
Monday 12-2:40 (ASY 4304)
As the notion of a “global art history” has gained ground in recent years, research on modernism in contexts outside of Europe and America has become a pressing objective for the discipline. This seminar will focus on the case of Japan, which consciously reshaped itself as a new, modern nation in the late nineteenth century. The formation of the very concept of art ( bijutsu ) was a crucial part of this process. Ever since, the definition, scope, and objectives of modern art have been subjects for intense debate. This course will closely investigate key moments in this history from the beginning of the Meiji period onwards. Of particular interest will be the polarity between Western-style and Japanese-style painting ( yôga and nihonga ); the creation of an artistic tradition and neo-traditionalism; Japanese involvement in international movements pre- and post-World World II, such as Impressionism, Dada and Surrealism, the School of Paris, and Abstract Expressionism; avant-garde calligraphy and groups such as Gutai and Mono-ha; and the current participation of artists such as Takeshi Murakami in the global art market.

ARTH789: Selected Topics in Art History
Seminar: Arts of Southern Africa
Professor Shannen Hill
Wednesday 3-5:40 (ASY 4304)
This seminar examines issues of representation in Southern African visual culture from the mid-17th century to today. The nation of South Africa is emphasized, as is the 20 th century, but students may elect to study art from other periods and Southern African nations. Material considered includes domestic, kingship, and body arts of African origin; Dutch, English, and French studies of maritime development and of landscape (flora and fauna of the region is perhaps the most diverse worldwide), and pseudo-scientific studies of race; and the visual culture of political rhetoric around nation, tribal, racial, and gender identity. Representation as such is approached as an activity, a process, a set of relationships, one that bares certain personal and ethical responsibilities that necessarily bare upon post-colonial studies. The arts considered are broadly defined (e.g. ephemeral, plastic, time-based mediums, documentary, museum display). The seminar is highly interactive; consider it a type of round-table wherein particular lines of inquiry will be discussed and debated.