Bard College Catalogue 2009-2010
2009-2010

Art History

http://arthistory.bard.edu

Faculty

Laurie Dahlberg (director), Susan Aberth, Noah Chasin, Jean M. French, Patricia Karetzky, Susan Merriam, Diana Minsky, Julia Rosenbaum, Tom Wolf

Overview

Requirements

Course requirements for graduation include (in addition to Art History 101 or 102): one course in studio arts, film, or photography; Art Criticism and Methodology (Art History 385, typically taken in the junior year); one non–Western civilization art history course; one course covering the ancient to 1400 c.e. period; one course covering the 1400 to 1800 c.e. period; one course covering the period from 1800 to the present; and at least two 300-level art history seminars (in addition to Art History 385). (Note: One course may satisfy both the seminar and period requirements, but no course may satisfy more than two requirements.) Before undertaking the Senior Project—a major thesis that examines an original art historical issue—the student is encouraged to demonstrate reading knowledge of a language other than English. Each May, seniors give a short presentation of their topics in an informal colloquium.

Recent Senior Projects in Art History

• “Nineteenth-Century Native American Souvenir Art: Cultural Exchange at Niagara Falls”
• “Paper Bullets: World War I Posters and America’s Visual Language of War”
• “Refiguring Desire: Kehinde Wiley’s Subversion of the Decorative Body”
• “The Brilliant Locus: An Exploration of Philosophical Illumination in Sir John Soane’s Museum”

Perspectives in World Art I, II
Art History 101, 102
cross-listed: africana studies
This two-semester course examines painting, sculpture, architecture, and other cultural artifacts from the Paleolithic period through the present. Works from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas are studied chronologically, in order to provide a more integrated historical context for their production.

Art and Nation Building
Art History 112
cross-listed: american studies
This course explores the contribution of the visual arts to the conceptualization of an American national identity. How should leadership be portrayed? National character? Topics include the role of visual culture in constructing meanings of race, class, and gender; the importance of various genres of painting to national politics and culture; the emergence of American artistic institutions; and the relationship of American art making to European traditions.

History of Photography
Art History 113 / Photography 113
This survey of photography, from its earliest manifestations to the 1970s, considers the medium’s applications as art, science, historical record, and document.

History of Design and the Decorative Arts
Art History 114
A survey of the decorative arts from the rococo period to postmodernism. Students explore the evolution of historical styles as they appear in furniture, interiors, fashion, ceramics, metalwork, and graphic and industrial design. Objects are evaluated in their historical contexts, and formal, technical, and aesthetic questions are also considered.

Survey of African Art
Art History 122
cross-listed: africana studies, lais
This introductory course surveys the vast array of art forms created on the African continent from the prehistoric era to the present, as well as arts of the diaspora in Brazil, the Americas, Haiti, and elsewhere. In addition to sculpture, masks, architecture, and metalwork, students examine beadwork, textiles, jewelry, house painting, pottery, and other decorative arts.

Japanese Arts of the Edo Period
Art History 124
From 1615 to 1868, Japan and its capital at Edo, the modern Tokyo, underwent a number of dramatic changes that are apparent in the art and architecture. This course examines the painting styles of the period, including native, Western-influenced, Zen, genre, and aristocratic, as well the development of printmaking as represented by Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige.

Modern Architecture: 1850 to 1950
Art History 125
A survey of modern architecture from its emergence in Western Europe during the 19th century through the end of World War II. Particular attention is paid to the ways architects have responded to formal and aesthetic developments in other arts as well as to broader technological, economic, and sociopolitical transformations.

Architecture since 1945
Art History 126
A survey of the major transformations in architectural practice and debate since the end of World War II, with a focus on challenges aimed at the modernist discourses of the early 20th century. These challenges begin with New Brutalism and encompass regionalism, neo-rationalism, corporate modernism, and various permutations of these models.

Introduction to Visual Culture
Art History 130
An introduction to the discipline of art history and to visual artifacts more broadly defined. Participants learn ways to look at, think about, and describe art through writing assignments based on observation of works at museums and galleries. This course is designed for anyone with an interest, but no formal course work, in art history.

Vermeer
Art History 131
A thematic examination of the 17th-century Dutch painter; topics discussed include the Delft School, domestic space, optics, sexuality, belief, and Vermeer’s reception. Enrollment is limited to 14, by permission of the instructor.

Medieval Manuscript Painting
Art History 135 A survey of Western and Byzantine painting through manuscript illumination, from the late classical tradition of the Vatican Virgil to the courtly elegance of the Très Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry. The course concludes with an examination of the early printed books of the 15th century, block books such as the Biblia Pauperum, and the spread of movable type.

Survey of Islamic Art
Art History 140
cross-listed: africana studies
A survey of Islamic art in Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, North Africa, Spain, China, India, Indonesia, and other regions, from the death of Muhammad in 632 c.e. until the present. Architectural monuments (their structural features and decoration) are studied as well as the decorative arts—pottery, metalwork, textile and carpet weaving, glass, jewelry, calligraphy, book illumination, and painting.

Survey of Latin American Art
Art History 160
cross-listed: lais, sre
A broad overview of art and cultural production in Latin America. A survey of major pre-Columbian monuments is followed by an examination of the contact between Europe and the Americas during the colonial period, 19th-century Eurocentrism, and the reaffirmation of national identity in the modern era.

Chinese Religious Art
Art History 176
cross-listed: lais, sre
A study of religious art and architecture in China through its various dynasties. Topics include the mystical arts of ancient Sichuan, the cosmological symbolism of the Ming Tang (Hall of Enlightenment), ancient Buddhist cave temples, the evolution of Confucianism into an institutional religion, and contemporary popular religion, among others.

Arts of Japan
Art History 193
cross-listed: asian studies
This course begins with a study of the Neolithic period and its cord-impressed pottery, circa 2000 b.c.e. Next, the great wave of Chinese influence is considered, including its impact on art, government, religion, and architecture. Subsequent periods of indigenous art—e.g., narrative scroll painting, medieval screen painting, Zen art, and ukiyo-e prints—are examined within the broader context of the social, artistic, and historical development of Japan.

Arts of India
Art History 194
cross-listed: asian studies, religion
The evolution of India’s philosophical and religious thought is traced through its expression in the arts, including the culture’s exploitation of the sensuous as a metaphor for divinity. India’s iconic tradition is studied, as are its architectural forms, narrative painting, and sculpture.

Monuments of Asian Art
Art History 195
cross-listed: asian studies
An introduction to the great cultures of India, China, and Japan. The major artistic monuments, paintings, and sculptures are discussed in terms of their unique characteristics. Religious traditions include Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam in India; Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism in China; and Shinto and Buddhism in Japan. Secular artistic traditions—pictorial and literary—are also studied.

Greek Art and Architecture
Art History 201
cross-listed: classical studies
The development of Greek sculpture, vase painting, and architecture is traced from the geometric period through the Hellenistic age. Topics include the development of the freestanding, life-size nude from Egyptian sources; the depiction of myths and daily life in painting; and the political alliances and institutions that shaped Greek architecture.

Roman Art and Architecture
Art History 210
cross-listed: classical studies
This course traces the development of Roman art and architecture from the founding of the city in 753 b.c.e. to the transfer of the capital to the east by Constantine in 330 c.e. Lectures explore how Rome incorporated and synthesized the styles and achievements of conquered peoples (Etruscans, Greeks, Egyptians) to produce something entirely new that not only communicated the nature of the empire but also established a common artistic vocabulary throughout the Mediterranean basin.

Sightseeing: Vision and the Image in the Early Modern Period
Art History 211
cross-listed: sts
This course examines the complex relationship between theories of vision and the production and reception of images in European art and culture of the early modern period (1500–1750). Areas of study include optical devices such as the camera obscura, telescope, and “peepbox”; perspective systems and their distortion; visions of the divine; the ways in which vision and imagery were associated with desire; evidentiary theory; and the representation of sight.

The Handmaiden’s Tale: 19th-Century Photography and Fine Art
Art History 212
cross-listed: sts
The semester begins with the debate over realism in art that forms the “back story” for the complicated reception of photography and then works forward to the pictorialist movement at the end of the 19th century. Along the way, students address such topics as “passing” (how to make photographs that look like art); photography and art pedagogy; photography’s role in the “liberation” of painting; and the 20th-century repudiation of 19th-century photography’s art aspirations.

Leonardo’s Last Supper and the Reception of Renaissance Iconography
Art History 216
cross-listed: italian studies, sts
This seminar situates Leonardo’s recently restored Last Supper within the Renaissance tradition of “Last Suppers” and depictions of the life of Christ. Various interpretations of the painting are studied, including Leo Steinberg’s Leonardo’s Incessant Last Supper and his controversial Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

20th-Century Sculpture
Art History 218
A survey of modern sculpture, beginning with Rodin in the late 19th century and ending with installation art in the late 20th. The class examines the various media, styles, and subjects investigated by Picasso, Brancusi, Giacometti, David Smith, the minimalists, and other major sculptors.

Art of the Northern Renaissance
Art History 219
A survey of painting in Flanders, the Netherlands, and Germany during the 15th and 16th centuries. The course first examines the innovations of Flemish and Dutch artists working abroad, then shifts to the emergence, in the north, of new forms of painting in the work of Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Jan van Eyck, and Rogier van der Weyden.

Early Medieval Art and Architecture
Art History 220
cross-listed: classical studies, medieval studies
An examination of art from the age of Constantine to 1000 c.e., including catacomb painting, the early Christian basilica and martyrium, the domed churches of the East, and Byzantine mosaics and icons. The class explores the contrasting aesthetic of the migrations, the “animal style” in art, the Sutton Hoo and Viking ship burials, the golden age of Irish art, the Carolingian “renaissance,” treasures of the Ottonian empire, and the art of the millennium.

Romanesque and Gothic Art
Art History 221
cross-listed: french studies, medieval studies
This course examines 500 years of art and architecture, from the terrors of the year 1000 through the waning of the Middle Ages, paying particular attention to the great monasteries, cathedrals, and castles of Europe. Topics studied include monasticism, the pilgrimage routes and the cult of relics, the Crusades, the rise of urbanism and the university, technological innovations, and the role played by patrons.

Picturing Nature in Early Modern Northern Europe
Art History 223
cross-listed: eus
Early modern artists, scientists, adventurers, and amateurs created a compelling visual record of the natural world. These artists and observers benefited from new technologies, including the microscope and telescope, and recording methods (printmaking). This course focuses primarily on images and environments from Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Contested Images and Iconoclastic Acts: A History of Image Destruction
Art History 225
cross-listed: human rights, religion
Iconoclastic acts have frequently originated in beliefs about the right of human beings to represent and worship divinity in visual form, but such acts are also frequently politically motivated. This course looks at important instances of iconoclasm, including those in Byzantium, Reformation Europe, revolutionary France, and more recently, by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Roman Urbanism from Romulus (753 b.c.e.) to Rutelli (2000 c.e.)
Art History 227
cross-listed: classical studies, italian studies
Politicians and popes, from the Emperor Augustus to the current Italian government, have crafted Rome into a capital that suits their ideological aims. This course focuses on the commissioning of large-scale representational architecture, the creation of public space, the orchestration of streets, and the continuing dialogue between past and present in the city of Rome.

Imperial Spain: Art and Architecture in Spain, Naples, and the Americas
Art History 228
From 1400 to 1600, an informal trade alliance in the Mediterranean, anchored by the House of Aragon, expanded into a worldwide empire. This course considers how architecture, art, and urban form responded to and shaped this geopolitical phenomenon. Issues addressed include: How did art and architecture serve as a vehicle for the dissemination of Catholicism in the early modern world? What is the relationship between architecture and cultural identity in the Spanish world?

Contemporary Latin American Art
Art History 229
cross-listed: lais
This course presents an overview of the artistic practices and intellectual discourses relevant to contemporary art production in Latin America. Painting, sculpture, photography, video, glass, ceramics, textiles, performance, and installation art are examined, along with the theoretical issues that inform them. Topics include the history of abstraction in Latin America, national identities, the legacy of muralism, religious syncretism, and border issues, among others.

The Early Renaissance
Art History 230
cross-listed: italian studies
A survey of Italian painting and sculpture of the 14th and 15th centuries. Major trends from Giotto and Duccio through Piero della Francesca and Botticelli are analyzed within a wider cultural context. Consideration is given to the evolution of form, style, technique, and iconography; contemporary artistic theory; and the changing role of the artist in society.

The High Renaissance
Art History 231
cross-listed: italian studies
A study of major painters and sculptors of the High Renaissance in Florence and Rome, focusing on the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. The class considers the origin and development of a monumental style in Italian art and concludes with an examination of the work of selected mannerist artists.

Italian Renaissance Architecture
Art History 232
cross-listed: italian studies
This course traces the development of architecture and urbanism in Italy from the beginning of the 15th century through the 16th century. The class situates the architecture and ideas of Brunelleschi, Alberti, Leonardo, Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Palladio within their political and theological contexts.

A Tale of Two Cities
Art History 235
This course addresses basic issues of architecture and urbanism through a comparative analysis of the most culturally significant urban centers of Russia and the United States. Through readings, visual analyses of buildings, cartographic documents, and films, students discuss fundamental questions about what comprises an urban identity. The class meets twice a week, once via videoconference with students at Smolny College in St. Petersburg.

Surrealism in Latin American Literature and Art
Art History 239 / Spanish 239
cross-listed: lais
Surrealist journals and artists extolled “primitive” mythologies and were captivated by such “exotic” artists as Frida Kahlo and Wifredo Lam. This course explores surrealism in the literature and art of Latin America and the European surrealist’s fascination with non-Western culture. Also studied are the ways in which surrealism and its influences survive in contemporary cultural production.

Photography 1950 – Present
Art History 247 / Photography 247
See Photography 247 for course description.

Roma in Situ
Art History 248
cross-listed: classical studies
This course consists of two weeks of walking, looking, and learning in Rome, followed by class meetings to discuss secondary scholarship and present student research. In Rome, the first week focuses on the ancient city, while the second week focuses on postantique (Early Christian, Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary) art and architecture. Prerequisite: completion of one of the following courses: Art History 210, Art History 227, Classics 103, Classics 333, or Latin 101, 201, or 301.

19th-Century British Art
Art History 252
A survey of 18th- and 19th-century art in England, with a focus on major figures such as Blake, Constable, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Beardsley. Victorian genre painting is also considered. The semester concludes with a study of the British Arts and Crafts movement, as inspired by John Ruskin and William Morris.

The Art of the 1980s
Art History 256
While iconic documents of the 1980s (Dallas, Miami Vice, Wall Street, the Brat Pack) dependably reemerge in the realm of popular culture, the serious art practices from this decade are less well known. The class looks at work by seminal painters, sculptors, and collectives—e.g., Schnabel, Sherman, Gonzalez-Torres, Polke, Leirner, Watts, Group Material—through the multivalent lenses of such intellectual movements as postmodernism, appropriation, deconstruction, and liberation theology.

Art in the Age of Revolution: European Painting, 1760–1860
Art History 257
Major topics include changing definitions of neoclassicism and Romanticism; the impact of the revolutions of 1789, 1830, and 1848; the Napoleonic presence abroad; the shift from history painting to scenes of everyday life; landscape painting as an autonomous art form; and attitudes toward race and sexuality. Emphasis is placed on French artists such as Corot, Courbet, David, Delacroix, Géricault, Greuze, Ingres, and Vigée-Lebrun; Constable, Friedrich, Goya, and Turner are also considered.

Realism and Impressionism
Art History 261
French painting in the mid-19th century is often considered one of the high points in the history of European art, and many trace the origins of modern art to that place and time. This course surveys two of the movements central to that period. The realists were led by Gustave Courbet and Jean-François Millet. They were followed in the 1860s by the impressionists, among them Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, and Claude Monet. The careers of these artists are examined as they reacted to the art of the major painters who preceded them and responded to political and cultural conditions.

20th-Century Northern European Art
Art History 262
The emphasis is on art from Austria and Germany—from Jugendstil through expressionism, dadaism, Neue Sachlichkeit, Nazi and concentration camp art, and the post–World War II era—with brief forays into Scandinavian art. Artists studied include Wassily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, and Egon Schiele. The course also looks at more recent artists, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter.

Dada and Surrealism
Art History 265
A survey of the two major artistic movements in post–World War I Europe. Lectures on earlier modernist movements in Paris, particularly cubism, are followed by a study of the iconoclastic art of dadaists such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Hans Arp. The course concludes with the surrealist group, including Joan Miró, André Masson, Max Ernst, and René Magritte.

Shantytowns, Bidonvilles, Favelas
Art History 268
cross-listed: human rights, sre, studio arts
The shantytown, the slum, and the favela are communities that arise in the in-between spaces, between urban and rural, shop and street. These self-organizing communities rely on political collaboration, recycling of materials, and an informal architecture based on contingency and necessity. Students look into the ways these communities’ informal architecture, improvised city planning, and use of recycled materials are influencing projects by urban planners, architects, and artists. Prerequisites: at least one Level II studio course and permission of the instructor.

Revolution, Social Change, and Art in Latin America
Art History 269
cross-listed: human rights, lais
This course examines the role that Christian iconography played in the conquests of the 16th century and the radical new meanings that same iconography took as time went on. It also reviews the visual strategies employed in the presentation of the “heroes” of independence (Simón Bolivar, Miguel Hidalgo) and the ways art has contributed to the formation of national identities.

The European Baroque
Art History 272
cross-listed: french studies, italian studies
A survey of 17th-century European art, with an emphasis on major figures such as Bernini, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velázquez, and Vermeer. Topics include the baroque as a pan-European sensibility; artistic negotiation of personal style, princely prerogative, papal authority, and the demands of the market; collecting; the rise of academies; studio practice; and illusionistic painting and architecture.

Religious Imagery in Latin America
Art History 273
cross-listed: africana studies, lais, sre This course explores the varied visual manifestations of religious expression in Latin America after the Spanish Conquest. In addition to churches, statuary, and paintings, the class examines folk art traditions, African diasporic religions, and contemporary art and practices.

The Dutch “Golden Age”
Art History 277
This course examines the extraordinarily rich visual culture that emerged in 17th-century Holland, the first bourgeois capitalist state. The class studies the art of Rembrandt and Vermeer, among others, as it expressed the daily life, desires, and identity of this new society. The course is taught thematically, addressing artistic practice, aesthetics, and social concerns.

Winslow Homer to Jackson Pollock: The Rise of Modernism in America
Art History 278
cross-listed: american studies
This course concentrates on early 20th-century artists and art movements in the United States. Topics include modernity and nationalism; the roles and representation of technology in art; exhibitions and cultural propaganda; artistic identity and gender roles; and public art, murals, and social activism.

Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art
Art History 283
The course begins with a survey of the socially concerned painters and sculptors of the Depression years and concludes with a study of minimal art and other later developments. Artists emphasized include Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol.

El Greco to Goya: Spanish Art and Architecture
Art History 286
cross-listed: lais
This course surveys the complex visual culture of early modern Spain, with particular attention given to El Greco, Goya, Murillo, Velázquez, and Zurbarán. The class examines the formation of a distinct Spanish style within the context of European art and considers how Spanish artistic identity was a kind of hybrid, complicated both by Spain’s importation of foreign artists (Rubens, Titian) and by its relationship to the art and architecture of the colonies.

Rights and the Image
Art History 289
cross-listed: human rights
This course examines the relationship between visual culture and human rights, using case studies that range in time from the early modern period (marking the body to register criminality, for example) to the present day (images from Abu Ghraib). Subjects addressed include evidence, disaster photography, advocacy images, censorship, and visibility and invisibility.

Arts in China
Art History 290
cross-listed: asian studies
This course begins with Neolithic painted pottery, the earliest expression of the Chinese aesthetic. Next, the early culture of the Bronze Age is reviewed, followed by the unification of China under the first emperor, the owner of 60,000 life-size clay figurines. In the fifth century, Buddhist art achieved expression in colossal sculptures carved from living rock and in paintings of paradise. Confucian and Taoist philosophy, literature, and popular culture are examined through the paintings of the later dynasties.

From Ming to Post-Mao: Modern Chinese Art
Art History 292
This course examines the origins of modern Chinese art in the Ming Dynasty (16th to 20th century) in order to appreciate the challenge faced by modern Chinese artists in addressing their traditional artistic heritage, and to understand contemporary artistic currents.

The History of the Museum
Art History 298
This course traces the transformation of early collecting and display practices into the first modern “survey” museum and considers the emergence of alternatives to this model. Topics include problems in contemporary museum practice (such as contested provenance); the museum as memory and memorial; collections as sites for producing knowledge; artists’ intervention in the museum; the virtual collection; and the logic and politics of display.

Photography and the Human Condition
Art History 313 / Photography 313
This course focuses on documentary photography, which is aimed at exposing social conditions with the implicit or explicit hope of effecting social change or otherwise raising viewer consciousness. Magazines, news media, books, and exhibition spaces are studied, in order to understand the relationship of documentary photography to institutional power.

The Body and Its Image
Art History 314
cross-listed: photography
This seminar examines the West’s historical ambivalence toward the body and its representation, as expressed in art of the modern period (1780–2000). Beginning with the neoclassical heroic nude, the course examines depictions of the body that reflect the preoccupations and obsessions of their cultural moments. Topics may include Manet’s Olympia, pornography and early photography, physical abjection in symbolism and German expressionism, the “oriental” body in 19th-century art, and body art of the 1960s and 1970s.

Celtic Art from Its Beginnings through Viking Invasions
Art History 320
cross-listed: ics, medieval studies
This course explores the origin and identity of the Celts, the rich variety of their material way of life, their institutions, and their attitudes toward the supernatural. Students become familiar with chariot graves and their princely goods; sanctuaries devoted to the “cult of the head”; and swords, helmets, cauldrons, torques, and bracelets—all decorated with the intricate patterns of the Celtic imagination. Also studied are the migration of the Celts to Ireland and Britain, prehistoric passage graves, dwellings, sacred sites, and mysterious stones.

The “Animal Style” in Art
Art History 321
cross-listed: ics, medieval studies
This seminar explores the character and diffusion of the “animal style”—a nonfigural, essentially abstract, and highly decorative art that displays a genius for pattern and fantasy. It reviews the art of the Scythians and Sarmatians, who roamed the steppes of Central Eurasia; manifestations of this style in the La Tène civilization and among Germanic tribes; the treasures of Celtic Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England (among them, the Sutton Hoo ship burial); and the art and influence of Viking culture in areas as widespread as Ireland and Russia.

Crossroads of Civilization: The Art of Medieval Spain
Art History 323
cross-listed: laid, medieval studies
The major focus of this course is on Visigothic art; Al-Andalus, the Islamic art of Spain; Asturian and Mozarabic art; and Romanesque art of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. Students investigate the patterns of exchange, appropriation, assimilation, and tension among Islamic, Judaic, and Christian traditions, and attempt to assess the effects of this cross-fertilization of cultures on the visual arts.

Italian Renaissance Sculpture
Art History 330
cross-listed: italian studies
An examination of the ideas that inspired sculptors and the patrons who footed the bills; the relationship between artists, poets, and philosophers of the Renaissance; and the degree of influence exerted by patrons and their associates on the selection of content and the establishment of stylistic trends. The major sculptors of the Renaissance are studied, with an emphasis on Donatello, Ghiberti, Michelangelo, and Jacopo della Quercia.

Venetian Painting of the Renaissance
Art History 331
An introduction to the major painters of the Venetian School: Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Tintoretto, Titian, and Veronese. Students investigate the development of independent easel painting, the poetic landscapes of Giorgione, the enigmatic Venuses of Titian and Veronese, the pageantry of Venetian narrative cycles, and the special character of Venetian patronage and of the city itself.

Villas of the Hudson Valley
Art History 332
The villa or country house, as opposed to a working farm, embodies a city dweller’s idyllic interpretation of country life. Built more to embody an idea than fulfill a function, it encourages innovation in expressing the patron’s or architect’s views on the relationship between man and nature. The architecture of the Hudson Valley played a critical role in the development of the country house and landscape garden in the United States. This seminar studies local developments within the larger context of the history of villa architecture.

David Smith: Life and Work in Sculpture
Art History 336
David Smith is widely regarded as America’s greatest sculptor. In 1932, after an early career in painting, Smith encountered the sculpture of Picasso and Julio González and decided that steel would be his material and sculpture his calling. Over the next 30 years, until his death in 1965, he produced a mythic body of sculpture informed by modernism and magic and what he called “identity.” This seminar examines many facets of Smith’s art and life, including his critical reception and his writings.

Berlin: Architecture and National Identity
Art History 338
cross-listed: german studies
This course traces Berlin’s urban development through the Weimar era and into the 21st century, as well as the larger issue of architecture’s role in the formation and expression of national identity. Lectures address the political, economic, and social backdrop against which particular projects were designed and/or built. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

Seminar in Contemporary Art
Art History 340
A consideration of the history of recent art, beginning with a survey of the minimalism of the 1960s and then focusing on artistic developments in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The class meets in New York City every fourth week to view current exhibitions.

Rome, Paris, London: Urbanism and Architecture in Europe, 1600–1800
Art History 342
In Principles of Art History (1915), Heinrich Wölfflin devised five criteria of opposition (linear to painterly, plane to recession, closed to open form, multiplicity to unity, and absolute to relative clarity) for understanding the changes in painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Wölfflin’s criteria provide a starting point for understanding architectural form in the 17th and 18th centuries. This seminar addresses the form and function of architecture in cities during this period.

Vernacular Photography
Art History 343 / Photography 343
See Photography 343 for full course description.

Michelangelo: The Man, the Masterpieces, and the Myth
Art History 345
cross-listed: italian studies
A study of the achievements of Michelangelo in sculpture, painting, architecture, and poetry in the context of the biographies of Vasari (1550, 1568) and Condivi (1553). Discussion also analyzes Michelangelo’s role in shaping his public image and creating the modern idea of the artist as isolated genius.

Encounters: Indigenous Arts, Peoples, and Identities
Art History 347
cross-listed: american studies
Conquests of the New World set the stage for centuries-long cultural encounters between Europeans and native peoples. Focusing on North America, South America, and Australia, this course explores indigenous arts in the context of those encounters. The class examines cross-cultural notions of creativity and aesthetic value; networks of art production; collecting; institutional representations of indigenous art; and art repatriation.

Asian American Artists Seminar
Art History 348
cross-listed: asian studies
In recent years there has been increasing interest in artists of Asian ancestry who have worked in the United States. The relationship between the artistic traditions of their native lands and their subsequent immersion in American culture provides material for fascinating inquiries concerning biography, style, subject matter, and politics. Artists studied include Isamu Noguchi, Yayoi Kusama, and Mariko Mori, among others.

Women Artists of the Surrealist Movement
Art History 349
This course examines the use of female sexuality in surrealist imagery and then juxtaposes it to the writing and work of Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini, Dora Maar, Lee Miller, Meret Oppenheim, Dorothea Tanning, Toyen, Remedios Varo, and others. Issues explored include female subjectivity, cultural identity, occultism, mythology, dream imagery, artistic collaboration, and the methodologies employed to interpret surrealism in general. Prerequisite: permission of the instructor.

Documentary Photography
Art History 357
cross-listed: human rights
Photography may not always tell the truth, but a photograph can’t help but give away certain truths about the time it records. This course traces the evolution of documentary photography from 1839 to the present, including photojournalism, travel and exploration photography, evidentiary photography, street photography, and the subjective hybrids practiced by artists such as Robert Frank and Diane Arbus.

Manet to Matisse
Art History 359
cross-listed: french studies
A social history of French painting from 1860 to 1900, beginning with the origins of modernism in the work of Manet. Topics include the rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III, changing attitudes toward city and country in impressionist and symbolist art, and the prominent place of women in representations of modern life. The course addresses vanguard movements such as impressionism and postimpressionism and the styles of individual artists associated with them, as well as the work of academic painters.

Feminism and Art in the United States
Art History 367
cross-listed: gss
This seminar looks at the intertwined relationship between women’s liberation and art in the United States during the 20th century. It considers the role of women in the Arts and Crafts movement, the art and artists associated with the suffragist movement, and “Second Wave” feminism of the 1970s.

Mexican Muralism
Art History 375
cross-listed: lais
This course examines the muralism movement’s philosophical origins in the decades following the Mexican Revolution; the murals of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, the Tres Grandes (“The Three Great Ones”); and the work of lesser known Mexican muralists. Also considered is the muralism movement’s wide-ranging impact on murals executed under the WPA in the United States throughout the 1930s, in Nicaragua during the 1970s, and in urban Chicano communities. Prerequisite: Art History 101-102 or 160 or permission of the instructor.

Art Criticism and Methodology
Art History 385
This seminar, designed primarily for art history majors, helps students develop the ability to think critically about a range of different approaches to the field of art history. Students read and discuss a variety of texts in order to become familiar with the discipline’s development. Methodologies such as connoisseurship, cultural history, Marxism, feminism, and postmodernism are analyzed.