FALL
101-6 FRESHMAN SEMINAR: A HISTORY OF THE ARTIST
TTH 9:30-11am
Prof. Claudia Swan
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
c-swan@northwestern.edu
Art history generally occupies itself with the monuments of the long history of artistic production. This course examines another, equally diverse history the history of the artist. Who is an artist? How do definitions of art, artistry, and conceptions of the role of the artist change over time? This seminar will examine this question by way of a range of case studies. To what extent and in what ways is the definition of the visual artist subject to change over time and from place to place? We will analyze aspects of the history of the artist, as defined by criticism, biography, and self-consciously constructed by artists themselves. Our analysis will be grounded in historical texts, works of art, para-artistic developments such as the development of the signature and the rise of the art museum; and we will consider the case of contemporary artists by way of interviews and gallery tours. Some of the questions we will consider are: How can we correlate contemporary definitions and conceptions of the artist with traditional, historical views and expectations? And what role does the artist play in contemporary society?
TEACHING METHOD: Discussion; scheduled debate; on-site visits to museums and galleries
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Grades will be based on the results of frequent brief writing assignments (essays and short research reports), oral presentations, scheduled debates, and general class participation. 50% of the final grade will be based on written assignments; oral presentations 25%; and class participation 25%.
NUMBER OF WRITING ASSIGNMENTS AND THEIR LENGTHS: Over the course of the quarter, students are required to submit four brief (3-4 pages each) written assignments, and one longer final paper (7 pages).
READING LIST:
Will include Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist. A Historical Experiment, Rudolf and Margot Wittkower, Born under Saturn, Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility," Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OR PERSONAL STATEMENT: I am an art historian, and my research focuses on Renaissance and Baroque European Art. I teach courses on devotional culture of the later middle ages, popular culture of the 16th century, the Golden Age in Holland, and various other related subjects. My publications are in 17th-century Dutch art and the relations, around 1600, between art and science. A freshman seminar is an ideal setting for exploring issues such as the history of the artist – that is, to take a fresh look at a commonplace and try to establish new definitions or new conceptions of it while at the same time learning fundamental research and writing techniques.
220 Introduction to African Art
Prof. John Peffer
MW 11:00-12:20
Fisk 217
This course is an introductory survey of art and architecture from the African continent during prehistoric, ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary periods. Emphasis will be made on the continuities and dissimilarities between earlier art such as San rock painting and monumental architecture such as the stone ruins at Great Zimbabwe, and 19th Century art in wood and metal. Relationships between visual art, ritual life, music, and dance will be discussed. Urban cultures of Ethiopia, Ife, Zimbabwe, and Jenne will be considered as will the works from small-scale societies in the history of the continent. Equal weight will be given to the originality of form, to the social contexts, and to the historical processes involved for the art discussed.
Prerequisites: This in an introductory class, open to all students.
Teaching method: This is a lecture class, including student participation in class discussion of images and reading topics each week. The class will visit the African collections at the Art Institute of Chicago during the term.
Method of evaluation: There will be a mid-term, a final exam, response papers to films, and a 5-7 page paper on an object or idea discussed in class. Attendance and class participation will also be evaluated.
Required readings TBA.
310-1 Ancient Art I: Greek Art and Architecture
Ann Marie Yasin
MW 11-12:30pm
Kresge 3-420 (formerly 272)
a-yasin@northwestern.edu
Between the eighth and second centuries BCE, the Greek world witnessed the emergence of independent city-states, the establishment of panhellenic athletic and dramatic competitions, the flourishing of philosophical schools and the rise of the Macedonian Empire. This course examines the artistic and architectural manifestations of these political and cultural developments from the Geometric through Hellenistic periods. We will consider the social, cultural and religious contexts of artistic production from the earliest large-scale marble sculpture and permanent sanctuaries to the widespread diffusion of Greek artists, artistic forms and cultural ideals under the successors of Alexander the Great. Class meetings each week will alternate between lecture and discussion sessions focused on key course themes such as temples and sacred space, myth and cultural identity, gender and representations of the body, the arts of the symposium, funerary commemoration, and the politics of portraiture.
Course evaluation will be based on active classroom participation, in-class quizzes, a final project and a final exam.
329 Special Topics in Medieval Art:
Art and Religion / Medieval Culture in the mirror of Medieval Art
Hans Belting
TTH 11-12:30pm
Kresge 4-425
Description: The course is meant as an introduction to the development and meaning of Medieval Art, 800 – 1500. It will also offer an understanding of modern views of the Middle Ages and the premises of its thought and art. The course will thus offer an example of the place we assign to history in our collective memory. The main purpose of the course is to develop skills for the analysis of visual phenomena, and to identify and use artifacts as primary sources for the study of a given culture. The course will emphasize the role of religion in historical societies, and therefore the relations of art and religion will be of primary importance. Because the Middle Ages are a sequence of different societies, the course will explain the origin and formation of western culture in a larger framework, including, for example, the cultures of the Near East which developed in close interaction with Medieval European culture.
Enrollment: Open to all students. The participation of students majoring in Art History, History, Languages and Religion is encouraged.
Evaluation: Mid-term exam and final exam. No papers will be required.
Readings: TBA.
339 Special Topics in Renaissance Art: Prints and Drawings
Claudia Swan
TTH 2-3:30pm
Kresge 4-425
Prints and drawings are often thought of as close but lesser cousins of the art of painting; drawings are considered to be ancillary to greater works and print culture is a developed field of study that still labors under prejudices against useful and "popular" works of art. This course studies drawings and prints in early modern Europe (ca. 1450-1700) and aims to show how varied, nuanced, and important the culture of graphic works was. We will examine the early appreciation of drawings; the invention of the printing press and its impact; the rise of popular iconography and relations between high and low culture of the Renaissance as mediated by prints; the graphic culture of the north; and studio practices throughout Europe. Artists surveyed include but are not limited to Marcantonio Raimondi; Leonard da Vinci; Michelangelo Buonarotti; Martin Schongauer; Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung Grien; Pieter Bruegel; Hendrick Goltzius; Rembrandt van Rijn. Class meetings will frequently be held in special collections of prints, drawings, and rare books on campus at the University Library and the Block Museum of Art and off campus at the Prints & Drawings Department of the Art Institute of Chicago.
390 Undergrad Seminar: Claiming the Greek Past
Ann Marie Yasin
WED 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
a-yasin@northwestern.edu
This seminar explores the recurring fascination with the cultural and artistic ideals of Classical Greece throughout European History by examining the fate of Greek art and architecture from the Roman period to the present. We will consider the place of Greek art in the cultural imagination of a variety of "presents," from first-century Italy, to Enlightenment Europe and post-Independence Greece to modern America. Central to our investigation will be questions of the relative value placed on the products of different Greek pasts (e.g. Classical vs. Bronze Age, Hellenistic or Byzantine), critiques of claims to cultural heritage and influence, and the "transferability" of Greek culture beyond the geographic borders of Greece through looting, archaeology and collecting as well as the dissemination of copies and reproductions. Specific topics include the Romans' proclivity for collecting copies of Greek sculpture, the "discovery" and representation of the classical Greek landscape by seventeenth-century travelers, the role of the classical past in shaping modern Greek national identity, and contemporary controversy over Greek cultural property. The course meets once a week and will be conducted seminar style. Individual students will be responsible for active participation in weekly discussion, a substantial in-class presentation and a final project.
460 Studies in 20th Century Art: Marxism and Art History -- Art and Imperialism from 1880 to the present.
THURS 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
s-eisenman@northwestern.edu
For many years, term "Imperialism" has been relegated to the historical scrap heap. It was said to describe a vicious, but long abandoned European and American military, economic and cultural policy toward nations and peoples of Asia, Africa and the southern hemisphere. Recently however, the term has been revived by critics, scholars and politicians of the left and right (and those in-between) in order to account for the emergent uni-polar, U.S. dominated world order. The seminar will examine the past and present significance of Imperialism, and consider the role of artworks in the creation of Imperial authority and the articulation of popular resistance to it. We will look in particular at three historical instances of Art and Imperialism:1) European Art and Imperialism in its "classic" stage -- 1880-1914, with particular emphasis upon Paul Gauguin; 2) U.S. Art and Imperialism immediately after World War II, with an emphasis upon the New York School; 3) Art and the"New" Imperialism, including the aftermath of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, with an emphasis on photography. Assigned readings may include texts by Hobson, Lenin, Hobsbawm, Sweezy, Mandel, Amin, Schapiro, Pollock, Eisenman, Golan,Kozloff, Guilbaut and Craven.
470 Studies in Modern Architecture: Space
Professor: David Van Zanten
TUES 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
d-van@northwestern.edu
It is a cliché that “architecture is space”. That cliché’s necessary extension is that, as such, architectural analysis embraces the whole environment – urban as well as rural. In their very different ways, Henri Lefebvre, Vincent Scully, and Jay Appleton have explored the implications of this that a society might be read in its spaces, both built and imagined. Hence “modernism” has been sought in its spaces (most famously by T. J. Clark studying Paris, following Lefebvre and the Situationalists). But other sites – most specifically Chicago – remain to be explored spatially in spite of such overtly spatial work as that of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe.
This seminar will examine the fabrication of modernist space in terms of: 1). Community rights upon public space; 2). professional practices in its shaping; 3). Critical techniques in its apprehension; 4). The politics of its co-option. The course will focus on a series of examples, especially the classic poles of Paris c. 1855 and Chicago c. 1900, but also the cases of the options available at the inception of industrialization in the North British mill towns and in the rebuilding of Hamburg after the Fire of 1842 and of the formulation of a normative urbanism in Germany c. 1890. It will particularly examine the practices evolved to make space graspable and the professions created to shape it – architects, engineers, city planners – together with their methods of graphic projection, contrasted to the practices of the non-professionals seeking to resist co-option and conceive a world meaningful to them.
Weekly subjects (tentative):
1). Reception of architecture and urban design.
2). Facts of the “urban explosion” c. 1840 and the rights of the community over public space.
3). The practices of planning, engineering, architecture – the “planning ethos”; resistence..
4). Bibliographic presentations.
5). Britain and Hamburg in 1842.
6). Paris I – options c. 1851.
7). Paris II – solutions c. 1855.
8). Chicago 1870-1900
9). German normative urbanism; Le Corbusier
10-11). Discussion, Papers
EVALUATION
There will be a short bibliographic paper to be presented in class during the 4th week and a research paper to be to be submitted in writing and to be presented in class during examination week.
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pierre Pinon, Atlas de Paris haussmannien
William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis
John R. Kellett, The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities
Henri Lebevre, Le droit à la ville
Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape
W. J. T. Mitchell, Landscape and Power
486 Studies in African Art: Hybridity, Multiculturalism, History
Prof. John Peffer
MON 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
One of the characteristics of African cultures historically has been their ability to incorporate foreign ideas in a dynamic fashion. Conversely, studying African visual art from the perspective of what makes it dynamic is one way to place it "in history," something denied to Africa by art scholars until recently. This course re-examines art making traditions representative of well-studied groups such as the Akan, Dogon, and Yoruba in West Africa, the Amhara of Ethiopia, the Shona and Pende in Central Africa. The idea is to attempt to go beyond the common "this-tribe-makes-that-style" method of assessing major art traditions in Africa by studying the ways in which visual and conceptual references to other groups are often central to ideas about
the self in African art. Local traditions will be examined with a view to their referencing, absorption, and reworking of the concepts of design and prestige from other cultures, African and non African, and the ways in which the art produced in these encounters tells about historically specific relations of power between men and women, insiders and outsiders.
Prerequisites:
This is a graduate-level seminar. A background in African art and culture (not necessarily through Art History) is expected as well as some fluency with post-structuralist theory. Advanced undergraduates and students with other relevant backgrounds should contact the instructor before registering.
Teaching method:
This class employs a thoroughly cross-disciplinary approach to the study of Africa-- harnessing academic theory, and the "literatures" of music, dance, religion, epic folklore, film, and travel writing to examine our object. Class meetings consist of student-run discussions of readings, and slide, film, and music presentations.
Method of evaluation:
Regular participation in class discussions. Short responses to readings and films. Students select a topic for presentation during the second half of the term. These presentations may form the foundation for the final 15-20 page term paper.
Required readings:
--Photocopied course reader.
--Johnson, J. The Epic of Son Jara Bloomington: Indiana, 1992.
WINTER
101-6 Freshman Seminar: High Culture, Counterculture, Culture Industry: The US in the 1960s
Prof. Carrie Lambert
TTH 9:30-11am
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
DESCRIPTION OF COURSE: Even for those of us a generation removed from the upheavals of the 1960s, the decade calls up powerful cultural memories. For perhaps no other period of the twentieth century has been as thoroughly mythologized in American film, television, literature, political discourse, and even advertising, than that of JFK and LBJ; the March on Washington and the Summer of Love; Freedom Riders and Merry Pranksters; The Beatles and The Dead. This course will study a range of cultural material, including art, film, music, literature, speeches, and political tracts, to explore what happened to American culture in the 1960s and what it means to us now. It will be weighted toward art history (examining Pop Art, Minimalism, and the politicization of the avant-garde) but will be an interdisciplinary look at cultural production and cultural change in the 1960s, with focus on topics such as the Civil Rights movement, the New Left, and representations of the war in Vietnam. Throughout, we will keep an eye on the question of similarities and differences between the experiences of young people in the 1960s and their counterparts forty years later (in other words, you!).
TEACHING METHOD: Seminar discussion
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Graded assignments leading to paper, paper, written responses to reading (graded check, check-plus, etc), participation grade.
NUMBER OF WRITING ASSIGNMENTS AND THEIR LENGTHS: short (2-parag) personal responses to readings, to be turned in every week; assignments including statement of research question, annotated bibliography, and abstract, leading to completion of 10-page paper at end of the quarter.
READING LIST: List (subject to change) includes The Port Huron Statement; POP! The Philosophy of Andy Warhol; Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test; essays from Michael Arlen’s The Living Room War; The Autobiography of Malcolm X; proceedings of the Art Worker’s Coalition Open Hearing; Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book. There will also be 3-4 film screenings outside of class.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OR PERSONAL STATEMENT: I teach the history of American art. I did my graduate work at Stanford and received my Ph.D. in 2002. Before joining the faculty at Northwestern I lived in New York and was Managing Editor of October magazine and a critical studies fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. My research interests focus on North America in the 1960s and 70s, and include the relation of performance and photography; the avant-garde in the context of spectacle and media culture; the emergence of video and the alternative media movement of the 1970s; theory of spectatorship; and the histories of vision and attention.INSTRUCTOR CONTACT INFO: c-lambert@northwestern.edu
228-0 Introduction to Pre-Columbian Art
Prof. Mary Weismantel (Anthropology)
MW 11-12:30pm
Fisk 217
This course surveys the major artistic traditions of the Americas in the millennia before Columbus, including the Aztec, Maya, and Inca. In addition to introducing students to these art styles, the focus of the course is on the relationship between art and other facets of intellectual and social life, including science and the management of the environment; mathematics and calendrics; gender and social inequality; religion and cosmology; politics and empire.
250-0 Introduction to European Art
Prof. Stephen Eisenman
TTH 11-12:30pm
Fisk 217
The course will survey European Art from the Middle Ages to the present. Emphasis will be given to major monuments of architecture, sculpture and painting, and to their role in the dissemination of ruling ideas and the propagation of power. Lectures will also consider exemplary instances in which artists and artworks were set in opposition to dominant class and political authority.
367-0 Special Topics in American Art: Civil War Photography
Prof. Chris Bell
TTH 9 :30-11am (sect. 21)
Kresge 4-425
The Civil War was actually America's first "living room war," the earliest instance in the United States where the relatively new medium of photography mediated between the home- and battlefronts. What role did photography play in waging the War between the States? What kinds of images did noncombatants actually have access to during the war years? How did viewers of the time respond to images that were sometimes highly disturbing, bringing the "mutilated remains" of combat to their doorsteps for the first time in history? To date, there is a fascinating literature cataloguing the style and subjects of Civil War photographs (which this course will review), but still very little scholarship on audience reception of this medium. One aim of this course is to begin to reconstruct this history. We will also use this primal instance of war photography to pose larger questions about photography and memory; the role of this technology on the formation of a "modern" sensibility; and the relationship between the press and the photographic image--questions that already preoccupied observers of the Civil War.
Teaching Method: lecture/discussion.
Course Requirements: Two exams. Leading one class discussion on assigned reading.
A group research project.
Preliminary Listing of Course texts:
William A. Frassanito, Gettysburg: A Journey in Time (Gettysburg: Thomas
Publications, 1975).
Alexander Gardner, Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War (New York:
Dover Publications, Inc., 1959, 1866).
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (Noonday Press, 1982).
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Strauss and
Giroux, 2003).
A packet of required readings.
Other texts TBA.
369 Special Topics in 20th-century Art: Modern African and Diasporan Art
Prof. John Peffer
MW 12:30-2pm
Kresge 4-425
email j-peffer@northwestern.edu
This course will examine film, popular, tourist, and gallery-oriented art since 1900 in Africa and its Diaspora. Readings include debates over the nature of representation in the postcolonial world, critiques of the place of African art in the symbolic and monetary economies of the Western metropolis, catalogues of recent international exhibitions of contemporary art, and studies of the new contexts of so-called ethnographic objects. The emphasis in this course will be on honing visual observational skills as well as techniques of theoretical analysis.
Prerequisites: Previous course work in art, Africa, or permission of the instructor.
Teaching method: Colloquium type, with weekly slide lectures and student discussion of readings.
Evaluation: Individual students will be responsible for introducing readings and leading the class discussion. Course grades will be based on 3-page response papers to films and readings, on class discussion, and on a 10-page research paper due at the end of term. Students choose a contemporary gallery artist or issue for class presentation during the second half of the term. These presentations are to be developed into the research paper.
Readings: TBA
386-1 Art of Africa: African Civilizations
Prof. John Peffer
MW 9:30-11am
Kresge 4-425
email j-peffer@northwestern.edu
This course is intended as a primer for African studies, a cross-disciplinary and intertextual introduction to the problems of interpretation of the African past. We begin by querying the notion of a "world civilization" as it relates to Africa. We then look at the art, literature, philosophy, and archeological record for three African civilizations with great historical depth: in Ethiopia, Mali, and Zimbabwe. The second half of the course examines readings by African authors, which critically engage with colonial and post-colonial intellectual and artistic traditions and challenge Western-oriented views of history in our present "globalized" era. Throughout, the class will stress the relation of visual art to other historical "literatures," or formal recordings of human culture, whether written, oral, and architectural.
Prerequisites: This course is open to all students after their first year of coursework, or by permission.
Teaching method: Teaching method: Colloquium type, with slide lectures and student discussion of readings.
Evaluation: Individual students will be responsible for introducing readings and leading the class discussion. Course grades will be based on 3-page response papers to films and readings, on class participation, and on a 10-page research paper due at the end of term. Students choose a topic related to the course areas for the research paper.
Readings: TBA
390-0 Undergraduate Seminar
Prof. Stephen Eisenman
WED 2-5pm
Kresge 3-420 (formerly 272) or Crowe Hall 4-425
The seminar will examine the relationship of art and politics in England and France in the 19th Century. Emphasis will be placed upon 4 exemplary movements: French Realism and Impressionism, and English Pre-Raphaelitism and the Arts and Crafts Movement.
401-1Methods/Historiography
Prof. Claudia Swan
Wednesday 2-5 PM
Kresge Hall 3-430
Office telephone: 491 8031
This course is the required introductory graduate seminar in Methods and Historiography in the History of Art. It offers a selective survey of the ways and means of art history, with equal emphasis on the genealogy of art history as field of intellectual inquiry and on the analytical priorities and vocabularies that characterize the discipline as it is practiced today. The course is organized around five central art historical hermeneutic intersections, each of which opens on to a variety of modes of investigation: (1) the art object, its production and meanings (2) the artist (3) the beholder and reception (4) context/social history (5) the language of art history. Modes of analyzing art, artists, and representation developed both within and outside the field of art history, from classical antiquity to the present day, will be studied under these five headings. Attention will also be paid throughout the seminar to the practical methods of art historical research and writing. This course offers students the opportunity to explore methods by appropriating them in the course of individual research projects. Course materials range from texts to discussions with professionals in the field and will include a trip, en classe, to Seattle for the College Art Association conference in early spring. Course requirements include frequent presentations of reading and research, and the completion of two major written assignments.
402-0 Studies In Representation: Feminist and Gender Theory
Prof. Lyle Massey
TH 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
Focusing primarily on the development of psychoanalytic theory (mostly Freud and Lacan), this course will examine terms and concepts that have been of most interest to art historians, i.e., the Gaze and the Imaginary. But we will also examine primary terms that define the field of psychoanalysis itself and have been of critical importance for feminist and gender theory ,i.e., the Phallus and the Unconscious. Throughout the quarter we will also be looking briefly at how psychoanalytic theory borrowed from and intersected with other critical philosophical currents in the twentieth century such as phenomenology, semiotics and Foucauldianism. The primary goal of the course however, is to examine how psychoanalysis has been appropriated by feminist art history as an explanatory paradigm and how gender theory has complicated this appropriation by revealing the myriad theoretical problems associated with "vision" and the "visible" as such. While following a course of reading (both primary and secondary) that charts the history of psychoanalysis, the seminar will be punctuated by case studies from within art history in which psychoanalysis is employed to bolster a feminist and/or gendered form of inquiry. The course will end with a discussion of Judith Butler and attendance at a conference to be held March 5-6 at Northwestern at which Butler will be speaking. Books to be read will include (but not be limited to) 1) Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Seminar 11), 2) Jacqueline Rose, Sexuality in the Field of Vision, and 3) Judith Butler, Gender Trouble. There will also be a course packet.
402-0 Studies in Representation: Studies in Spectatorship
Prof. Carrie Lambert (sect. 21)
MON 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430 (formerly 276)
Unavailable.
420-0 Studies in Medieval Art: Late Medieval Manuscripts and Early Printed Books – A Workshop
Prof. Sandra Hindman
TUE 2-5pm
Held at Newberry Library
Drawing on the rich resources of Special Collections in the Newberry Library, this course will investigate primary evidence on the conditions of making, illustrating, and reading books produced from about 1350 to 1550.
Each week is divided between a lecture on a special topic, in which books from Special Collections serve to illustrate points raised in the lecture, and a workshop, in which each student works under the supervision of the professor on a research topic focusing on a book, or group of books, from the collections. Topics of the lectures include: an overview of problems of late medieval illuminated manuscripts, followed by an overview of problems of early printing, codicology and methods of description, Books of Hours and the laity, music manuscripts and the Church liturgy, medieval universities and book production and use, Renaissance calligraphy manuals, single leaves and cuttings, Gutenberg and early Mainz imprints, and bindings. The course will provide participants with the unique evidence that can be gleaned from each book when it is studied as a social and cultural artifact.
This course is most suitable for graduate students working at the pre-dissertation stage, for it should give them both an acquaintance with tools of manuscript and incunabula research and an opportunity to define a long-term research project.
SPRING
232-0 Introduction to the History of Architecture (100 max)
Prof. David Van Zanten
MWF 11-12pm
Fisk 217
tel: 847-491-8024
d-van@northwestern.edu
Recently we have come to see our built environment very variously. We have inherited a tradition of analysis in the West that has treated building styles like plants or animal species, evolving along axes of constructional technique – the Greek stone temple, the Roman concrete vault, the Gothic cut-stone cathedral, the modern metal- or concrete-framed skyscraper. Increasingly, however, we have come to understand the social nature of space – both external, in terms of how a building fits in its landscape and its cityscape, and internal in terms of how it encloses the social functions that brought it into being. At the same time we have further come to appreciate the symbolic resonance of our environment – for example, in Maya Lin’s Viet Nam War Memorial or the projects being framed right now for the World Trade Center site.
We have also come to understand that the way in which we map our architecture reflects how we grasp our world and how we act upon it. It is the objective of this introductory course to use architecture – before and after the Industrial Revolution; in the West and in elsewhere – to explore how we map and construct the world around us.
We are lucky to be in Chicago, controlled by a relentless land-grid at the center of a continent intensely inhabited both by native Americans (with their ceremonial center at Cahokia) and by European immigrants. At least four minds of world importance have projected shapings of Chicago’s built environment: Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. There will be an analytical paper to use the immediate environment as our primary, concrete example.
EVALUATION There will be a midterm examination (25% of grade, during class), a final examination (50%) as scheduled, and a paper (5-7 pages, 25%) due Monday of examination week. The paper will be an analytical assignment in which the student is asked to select a space or building in Chicago or the North Shore area (from a list to be distributed at the midterm exam) and to explain its shape using the several critical approaches presented in the course lectures.
TEXTS Basic: Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (3rd edition)
David MacCauley, Mosque
Sally Chappell, Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos
Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone
240-0 Introduction to Asian Art (120 max)
Prof. Sarah Fraser
TTH 9:30-11am
Pick-Laudati Auditorium / Block Museum
Survey of major monuments in South, Southeast, and East Asia concentrating on Buddhist and Hindu ritual spaces, necropoli of emperors and kings, calligraphy and brush painting, urban pictorial arts and architecture. Objects considered date from 2nd millennium BCE to the 18th century. We will track closely the transmission of Buddhism from India to China and Japan focusing the relationship between pivotal sites in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Recent destruction of those sites in Afghanistan will be covered in lecture. Class lectures supplemented by required discussion sections on specific themes and reading.
Method of Evaluation: Two short papers (4-5 pages); discussion sections; mid-term and final.
Requirements: Introductory course. Previous training in either Art History or Asian Studies desirable.
Readings and Course material: Text books: Vinograd & Thorp, Arts of China, Stanley-Baker, Arts of Japan, and Dehejia, Arts of India. Other materials include a Reader and a web page with course images and id’s.
310-2 Ancient Art
Prof. Ann Marie Yasin
TTH 11-12:30pm
Kresge 4-425
This course examines the art and architectural production of the Roman world from its entrance on the cosmopolitan stage of the Hellenistic period, to its transformation and eventual Christianization in late antiquity. We will be following chronological shifts in the forms of Roman visual culture while simultaneously stressing the social functions and contexts of individual monuments. Class meetings each week will alternate between lecture and discussion sessions focused on specific issues which have broad significance to the way in which we understand the artistic production of the Roman world such as portraiture and status, imperial ideology, monuments and memory, social functions of domestic space and representing history.
Prerequisites: Previous enrollment in Introduction to Ancient Art (Art Hist 224), Introduction to European Art (Art Hist 250), Greek Art and Architecture (Art Hist 310-1), or Roman Civilization (Classics 212) is strongly recommended.
Course evaluation will be based on regular reaction papers, midterm and final examinations, and an 8-page research project.
339-0 Special Topics in Renaissance Art: Reading Dante (sect. 20)
Hans Belting
Tuesday 3-6 pm
Kresge 3-430
This course is addressed to graduate and advanced undergraduate students from several fields. The joined reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy (lectura Dantis) which was inaugurated by Bocccaccio in 1372, pursues the goal of discussing several topics in Dante’s thinking such as his image theory, his body conception and his imagination in conceiving a virtual journey to the other world. Dante’s work, which, in the words of Borges, is the greatest in world literature, is reflected in modern art and film such as in Rauschenberg, Greenaway and Godard whose contributions shall be introduced in the same course. Papers will be required by the end of the course.
339-0 Special Topics in Renaissance Art: Gender, Science and Anatomy: Imagining the Early Modern Body (sect. 21)
CROSSLIST : HUM 395-0 Gender, Science and Anatomy: Imagining the Early Modern Body
Prof. Lyle Massey (Lane Professor)
TUE 2-5pm
Humanities seminar room (2010 Sheridan Rd.)
Issues of gender and sexuality are central to the development of anatomical science in early modern Europe. From the 1543 publication of Vesalius' celebrated Fabrica, to William Hunter's equally celebrated Gravid Uterus of 1774, the female body in particular underwent a radical re-visualization. Visual images of this sort both reflected and influenced the scientific and biological construction of sexual difference. This course will focus on visual representations of anatomy and the way in which these images produced gendered, epistemological understandings of the body. Issues that will be explored will include: the cross-fertilization of erotic and anatomical prints in the Renaissance; the persistence of moralizing sexual distinctions based on the prototypes of Adam and Eve; and the changes in imagery associated with human reproduction and pregnancy. We will look at published treatises, medical handbooks, flap sheets, broadsheets, and wax, wood and ivory models, as well as representations that seem to fit more securely within the domain of high art. Texts for the course will include Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex and Sander Gilman's Sexuality: A History as well as a course reader.
Teaching method: Discussion
Requirements: Midterm, final paper, in-class presentation
Prerequisites: None
349-0 Special Topics in Baroque Art: Rembrandt
Prof. Claudia Swan
MW 11-12:30pm
Pick-Laudati Auditorium / Block Museum
In conjunction with the exhibition at the Art Institute (Rembrandt's Journey: Painter, Draftsman, Etcher) this course offers students an intensive and research-oriented introduction to the works, life, and critical legacy of the seventeenth-century master. Topics to be addressed include but are not limited to: Rembrandt Storyteller; early modern self-portraiture; Rembrandt experimental printmaker; Rembrandt and the Dutch landscape; the representation of the passions; Rembrandt and classical antiquity; early, mature, and late style; Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt (connoisseurship and attribution); the functions of the early modern sketch; sight and blindness; Rembrandt and film; and Rembrandt collector. Throughout the course of the quarter, students will conduct individual, directed research. This course will involve frequent visits to the AIC, where on-site research on objects will be conducted.
Prerequisites
Permission of the Instructor required. This course is open to graduate students as well as advanced undergraduates with a background in art history.
367-0 Special Topics in American Art: The 1960s
Prof. Carrie Lambert
MW 2-3:30pm
Kresge 4-425
This course will examine the transformation in American art during the 1960s, as Pop art, Minimalism, Conceptual art, performance, and artists’ film and video expanded and irrevocably altered the strategies available to contemporary artists. We will explore the New York City setting of this artistic revolution, considering the “art world” in at least two registers: 1) the social networks of artists and critics within which aesthetic concepts emerged; and 2) the new economic realities in the 1960s of a burgeoning market for contemporary art and an increasingly spectacular “art scene” tied to fashion and mass media.
369 Special Topics in 20th Century Art: Photography Outside Photography
Prof. Carrie Lambert & Lane Relyea
TTH 11-12:30pm
Kresge 3-365
This class will study the role of photography in art since 1960. Rather than focusing on art photography, we will look at the ways in which photography has come to be a primary tool for artists who consider themselves painters, conceptual artists, or performance artists, and at how the modes of photography--framing, indexicality, reproducibility--have been
used in art that is not itself photographic. Why did photography become a central mode in contemporary art? What are its different uses? What is the difference between art photography and photography in art? How has the coming of the digital image affected photography outside art photography? This course is team taught by Carrie Lambert (Art History) & Lane Relyea (Art Theory & Practice) and is crosslisted with ART 390 Undergrad Seminar: Photography Outside Photography.
389-0 Special Topics in Non-Euro-American Art: Censorship and Iconoclasm (sect. 20)
Prof. John Peffer
MW 12:30-2pm
Kresge 3-430
What definitions of power and the image are at stake when US soldiers assist a small crowd of Iraqi citizens to topple a statue in front of television cameras? How is one who throws acid on old master paintings also a believer in the power of art? How has the myth of aniconism been used to portray the peoples of Africa and the pan-Muslim world as uncivilized? This course is a reading group focused on the history and interpretation of image breaking, image blocking, politically potent image making, and the relations between these three. We will consider several diverse world historical object- and period-based case studies of image breaking: from Egypt, Byzantium, and the Reformation, to Mexica religious architecture, the Modernist avant gardes, and the semantic overturning of monuments during the fall of the Soviet and apartheid ideologies in Russia and South Africa. We will compare these events and objects from ancient and modern Africa, the Americas, the Muslim and Christian worlds, and our own 21st Century media-saturated world. We will also read classic theoretical texts on the question of iconoclasm, and examine the connections between a number of categories of the "image" that often share image breaking as one of their important aspects: propaganda, pornography, avant garde art, and censorship.
Prerequisites: Previous course work in ancient, modern, Pre-Columbian, or African art, or in the history of Africa, Islam, or Medieval Christianity-- or permission of the instructor.
Teaching method: Colloquium type, with slide lectures and emphasis on student discussion of readings.
Evaluation: Individual students will be responsible for introducing readings and initiating class discussion. Course grades will be based on short response papers to films and readings, on class participation, and on a 10-page research paper due at the end of term. Students choose a topic related to the course areas for in-class presentation during the second half of the term.
Readings: TBA
389-0 Special Topics in Non-Euro-American Art: The Art of Black Ink Calligraphy / Sumi-e (sect. 21)
Shozo Sato
TTH 9-12pm
Kresge 3-380
The Art of Black Ink or Sumi-e Calligraphy is a two dimensional art where the students must learn to focus “on the moment”. Concepts such as “active empty space” and terms learn focus “dominant”, “subdominant” and subordinate” elements will be introduced. These concepts should help students to develop a new dimension in understanding and rediscovering oneself. In addition to the technical aspects of using a brush, the course will consist of slide lectures and discussions of ancient Asian philosophies and their influence on the contemporary American way of life.
389-0 Special Topics in Non-Euro-American Art: The Art of Flower Arranging / Ikebana (sect. 22)
Shozo Sato
TTH 1-4pm
Kresge 3-380
Ikebana, or the Art of Flower Arranging has a long history which extends back to the 7th Century with the simple offering of flowers at the Buddhist altar. Eventually it became a secular form of sculptural art with the use of plant materials. Ikebana reflects the importance of human emotions in relationship to nature. Concepts such as “active empty space and “dominant”, sub dominant and subordinate” play a vital role in an arrangement. These concepts can also be applied to our social structure in contemporary life. Slide-lectures will be used to introduce ancient masterpieces, with an analysis of their philosophy in the creative process. First students will be introduced to classic composition and the foundations for composition. Ikebana is purely a Japanese art form but the underlying philosophy of impermanence is a part of all Asian traditions which have had a Buddhist influence. All students whether they have an American Asian heritage or otherwise will find these concepts valuable as they develop their own creativity.
390-0 Undergrad Seminar: Artemisia Gentileschi, Woman Painter of the Baroque
Prof. Lyle Massey
THURS 1-4pm
Kresge 4-425
Women painters were rare in Italy during the Renaissance and the Baroque, although they did exist. This class focuses on the life and work of one such painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. Raised in Rome during the early 17th century, Artemisia was trained by her own father, Orazio Gentileschi. She eventually went on to have a remarkable career as a painter. Her early life, however, was marked by a singular and important event: she and her father accused a painter in her father's studio of rape, and they subsequently brought these accusations to trial in Rome. Artemisia's life and work have thus become a flashpoint for feminist art historians. This class will examine her life and work from a variety of perspectives. We will review the trial and talk about the ways in which certain historical evidence can and cannot be used to bolster interpretations of artworks themselves. In addition, we will discuss the problems associated with treating women artists within the strictures of the canon of Renaissance art history. Issues of genius, invention and rhetorical power are all elements that inform the interpretation of Artemisia's work, but they are often quite complex. We will look at the way in which Artemisia's life and work have been treated in the last two centuries. Thus, in this class we will engage in both a historical investigation of Artemisia's life and work, and a historiographical analysis of the way in which her life and work have been interpreted within the field of art history.
Teaching method: Disussion
Requirements: Historiographic paper, final research paper, in-class presentation
401-2 Methods in the History of Art: Monuments and Cultural Memory
Prof. Ann Marie Yasin
TH 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430
This seminar explores recent theoretical models for understanding cultural memory—the ways in which a society constructs a shared past. In particular, we will investigate how these tools of inquiry, which stem primarily from the disciplines of sociology, history and anthropology, help us think about the cultural impulses for, functions of, and responses to monuments and memorials. We will wrestle with questions such as, what does it mean for a culture to "remember"? How might such "memories" be expressed in pictorial or architectural terms? What are the mechanisms through which monuments perpetuate a community's shared notion of a past? And how does a culture's changing relationship to its past transform the meanings and functions of its monuments? While our reading will invoke monuments from a variety of cultures and historical periods, the ancient world will provide the primary examples on which we pin our theoretical discussion of cultural memory.
Select readings include:
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory. trans. Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1992.
Pierre Nora, ed. Realms of Memory. Rethinking the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Columbia Univ. Pr, 1996-1998. (selections)
J. R. Gillis, ed. Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 1994. (selections)
Françoise Choay, The Invention of the Historic Monument. trans. Lauren M. O'Connell. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2001.
James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale Univ. Pr., 1993.
Robert S. Nelson and Margaret Olin, eds. Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2003. (selections)
460 Studies in 20th Century Art: Selected works of modern art in the Art Institute of Chicago
Hans Belting
Mon 2-5 pm
Kresge 3-430
Both graduate and advanced undergraduate students are welcome in a project which has been developed in cooperation with the Art Institute of Chicago. The goal is to select individual works of modern art in that museum and to prepare a research paper dedicated to the specific problems inherent in that work. The course will provide opportunities for visiting the collection and, above all, for discussing the progress and the purpose of the individual paper in the seminar room. Successful papers will eventually be presented to the museum for publication.
480-0 Studies in Asian Art: Aesthetic Theory in the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, 11th-13th c.
Prof. Sarah Fraser
WED 2-5pm
Kresge 3-430
"Realism," or "true" painting [zhenhua]) in the words of the ninth century Chinese art historian Zhang Yanyuan, is culturally bound and contextually specific. In the Dutch still-life tradition light source and illumination executed with precise brushwork are considered appropriate means for revealing a object. By way of contrast, shading and illumination were little if ever used in Chinese painting . And yet during the Northern and Southern Song dynasties (960-1368) not only did artists approach realism through alternative means but they engaged in lively debates and experiments about "true" or "natural" painting. The problem of representation was addressed in theoretical writing, how-to-manuals, in the court academy, the family workshop, and in the avant-garde work of scholar-officials. Our focus will be the shifting and competing notions of realism during the Song dynasties arguably the most exciting and robust period of Chinese painting.
Landscape is a promising arena for addressing the goals of realism in the Chinese context; as the critic and calligrapher, Mi Fu wrote, it was better than figure painting as a vehicle for true expression. Conceptions of space differed in pictorial traditions; during late fourteenth-fifteenth century Italy, mathematical precision and one-point perspective were understood as the vehicles for realizing objects in two-dimensional space. On the other hand, in the landscape genre during the Song, at which Chinese artists excelled, one-point perspective was never used; usually three points of perspectives were deployed simultaneously in the same painting to increase its efficacy and trueness. Italian Renaissance standards for naturalism in the body featuring the robust, anatomically correct, and muscular physique contrast with Chinese approaches to the body during this period. The nude body was never of interest when expressing the real or true physique. The virtual absence of the nude in Chinese art does not mean, however, that artists were not interested in depicting the physique but rather conveyed the body in an equally symbolic language through textiles and other signifiers of health, physical balance, and robustness. Memories of the self could further take the form of calligraphy and personal seals could be added directly to almost any type of painting surface. Avant-garde artists experimented with these conceptions of 'physical realism' during the N. Song. We will endeavor to identify the problems associated with verisimilitude in the Chinese context and also dramatic shifts in perceptions of nature during this period.
Contemporary theoretical texts to be read (in the original or in translation): Guo Ruxu, Guo Xi, Han Zhuo, Mi Fu, Su Shi, Zhang Yanyuan, Zhao Xigu, Zhu Jingxuan, etc. No language background in Chinese necessary (although desirable).
Method of evaluation: Preliminary and final papers both presented in oral presentations; weekly discussions based on assigned readings.
