Undergraduate Level Courses 

Art History 220-0
Introduction to African Art   
Winter 2005
Prof. John Peffer
MW 11:00 - 12:30 Swift 107

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. 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.

 

Art History 224-0
Introduction to Ancient Art
Winter 2005
Prof. Ann Marie Yasin
TTh 12:30 – 1:50 Harris 107
 
This course will examine the artistic production of the ancient world, from Egypt and the Ancient Near East to the civilizations of Greece and Rome .  It is intended as an introduction both to the major monuments of the diverse cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and to the principles and methods of art historical study.  We will stress the cultural contexts and social functions of ancient art and architecture from palaces and tombs to images of gods and imperial portraits.  In sections each week we will focus on a critical issue related to the interpretation of ancient art such as the role of the viewer, the representation of narrative and the construction of urban landscapes.  Students will gain first-hand experience studying ancient art in a project related to the antiquities collection of one of the Chicago-area museums.  Textbook readings will be supplemented with a series of culturally and historically specific case studies as a means of providing exposure to a wide variety of material within a critical framework.

European Studies 301-2
Winter 2005
Prof. Hollis Clayson
Th 10:00 – 12:30 KRG 3-430

Impressionism was the definitive advanced French art form of the late 1860s, 1870s and 1880s, and the Impressionists were the exemplary independent aesthetic actors of the era. The central project of this course will be to probe and define the “relationship” between the events and art forms of the “Terrible Year” – 1870-71, a year of non-stop war and revolution in Paris – and the ostensibly peaceable kingdom of sun drenched images of leisure and visual pleasure produced by the Impressionists. The course asks: were War, Revolution and Impressionism connected, and if so in what ways?

 

Art History 320-1
Late Antique and Byzantine Art
Winter 2005
Prof. Ann Marie Yasin
MW 2:00 – 3:20 KRG 4-425

Between antiquity and the middle ages Rome's monumental center changed from marble bedecked imperial capital to cow pasture.  The Parthenon of Athens, world symbol of civic magnificence, became a church of the Virgin Mary, and the city of Constantinople was transformed from provincial backwater to dominant imperial and religious capital.  This course opens in the third century CE, and focuses on the transformations in the urban landscapes and artistic forms that accompanied the political, religious and cultural upheavals of the later Roman Empire.  We will continue to question the notion of the "end" of the classical world as we examine the art and architecture of the Byzantine empire, the self-proclaimed inheritors of Rome's classical tradition.  Our study will focus on material and visual manifestations (including architecture, painting, illuminated manuscripts and other luxury goods) of the Byzantine appropriation of classical ideology and culture, controversies over orthodoxy, and encounters between her neighbors in the Latin West and Islamic East.  The course will close with the end of the Byzantine empire's role as world power as a result of the crusader occupation of Constantinople in 1204 and ultimate Ottoman takeover in 1453.

Art History 330-2
Renaissance Art
Winter 2005
Prof. Lyle Massey
TTh 11:00 – 12:20 KRG 4-425

This course provides a focused look at the visual culture of what is commonly called the Age of the Baroque. Dealing with art and architecture produced mainly in Italy (with some excursions into France and Spain), lectures and discussions will cover a variety of issues. Works of art and architecture will be considered against the backdrop of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the rise of absolutism and the modern state. But we will also look at how art was defined and consumed during this period: that is, we will look at the rise of collecting and cabinets of curiosities; the intersection of art and science (anatomy, natural history); the development of print culture and print technology; the emergence of women as artists and patrons. Throughout the course we will have various workshop/discussions to examine these and other issues. For instance, we will hold one week's session in Special Collections to discuss and look at the emergence of print culture and the sale and distribution of prints in the 16 th century.

 

Art History 340-2
Baroque Art (1550-1650)
Winter 2005
Prof. Claudia Sawn
MW 12:30 – 1:50 KRG 4-425

Baroque Art: Art in the Age of Rembrandt
 
Art in the Age of Rembrandt surveys the arts, popular and elite, of the newly founded Dutch Republic; its focus is on the northern visual culture of the seventeenth century. The course considers a variety of types of images in a range of media -- from genre scenes to landscapes to self-portraits, painted, drawn, and in print -- dating to what is conventionally credited as the 'Golden Age' of Dutch art; it also analyzes and assesses the various interpretive models that have been brought to bear on them. The presentation of the historical material is organized, roughly, according to the various genres whose emergence is a defining characteristic of artistic production of the time. Particular attention will be given to the socio-cultural context in which the works were produced and viewed; the rise of the open market in the Netherlands in the 17th century; and individual career trajectories (Goltzius, Steen, Rembrandt, de Keyser, Vermeer). The defining role of Rembrandt in relation to his contemporaries and in the context of the historiography of Dutch art will be critically assessed.

 

 

Art History 369-0 Special Topics in 20 th Century Art
The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Culture or Politics?
Winter 2005
Prof. Nina Gourianova
TTh 9:30 – 10:50 KRG 4-425

This course focuses on the relationship between aesthetics and politics from Post-Impressionism to Constructivism, in the context of the general theoretical issues and the poetics of early 20 th century art movements. There will be an emphasis upon Russian material in the broad context of European modernism and avant-garde.

The interrelationship between the concepts of culture and politics, and between aesthetics and anarchy underwent an extremely complex development over the past century. Antoine Compagnon points out “two contradictory elements in any avant-garde: destruction and construction, negation and affirmation, nihilism and futurism.” Paradoxically, this structural antinomy is mirrored in the “creative-destructive” nature of anarchism. What was the impact of anarchism on the early 20 th century, if we define anarchism as a social philosophy, and not just a political movement? What are the most important concepts that were successfully "implanted" from the social and philosophical domain into aesthetics, and completed the transformation "from politics to culture?” How do both political and cultural movements treat the issue of individual vs. collective? What was the mechanism that led to a new program in which the idea of utopia and the "politicization" of art became paramount?

Art History 369-0 Special Topics in 20 th Century Art
Contemporary Art Beyond The White Box
Winter 2005
Prof. Hannah Feldman
TTh 12:30 – 1:50 KRG 4-425

This class is designed to introduce intermediate and advanced students to several of the most important and provocative artists and art practices of the last two decades through the present moment. After a brief survey of historical works that establish a tradition of site-specific critique, we will focus upon a careful, contextualized analysis of contemporary art practices from around the world that build upon and expand the established traditions of installation art and institutional critique. We will explore how they articulate socio-political and economic critiques outside of the traditional museum-gallery circuit, in, for example, the street, the internet, the housing project, political demonstrations, community centers, etc. Of crucial import throughout this discussion will be considerations of what constitutes a work of art, what or who defines aesthetic criteria, and what art's responsibilities are or might be. Students interested in all periods of art history will therefore be exposed to important debates that pertain to a number of historical moments while studio practitioners will find a stimulating context to think through their own production and possible means of distribution. In addition, because much of the artwork we will look at makes specific critiques about a broad range of topics, including globalization, economic and power imbalances, the fabrication of history, healthcare disparities, gender and sexuality politics, students from disciplines such as political science, philosophy, history, and women's studies will also find in this course an opportunity to examine how artistic production addresses social issues. Participants will be expected to come to class having carefully read all assigned materials, looked at all assigned visual material, and/or visited all assigned sites in order to participate actively in meaningful discussion.

 

Art History 390-0 Undergraduate Seminar
Winter 2005
Prof. Lyle Massey
W 2:00 – 4:50 KRG 3-420

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 another 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 evaluating the fortunes and work of women artists according to the standards associated with 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 complexly intertwined. 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 historiographic analysis of the way in which her life and work have been interpreted within the field of art history.

Art History 390-0 Undergraduate Seminar
Theories and Methods of Art History
Art History After the “End” of Art
Winter 2005
Profs. Keith Moxey/Michael Holly
M 9:00 – 11:50 (Won't start until January 10) KRG 3-430

The issue of aesthetics, long naturalized by art history's empiricist aspirations and marginalized by postmodern theory, has returned. This course will examine the nineteenth and twentieth century background that lies behind this resurrection and will try to imagine the future of the discipline now that both art and history have been pronounced “dead”. Might aesthetics offer the discipline new life? By means of assigned readings, we will chart the universalizing principles on which art history was founded, and then review the continuing relevance of these ideas today. The seminar is primarily a reading course designed to familiarize us with some of the most important texts that have shaped arty history's notions of history and aesthetics. Each week we will discuss assigned readings. These texts are often challenging and the point of reading them together is to grapple with their interpretation. Our meetings are an opportunity to bring up questions and compare notes.

 

Manet's Olympia (1863); Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907); Brancusi's Blonde Negress (1933): as each of these examples implies, and as they collectively spell out, the figuration of black bodies has persistently mattered to the aims, forms, and ambitions of Western art. At once a seemingly incontrovertible fact of social identity and that most elusive signifier of negation, “black is…. And black ain't:” wherever it appears in the visual field, its meaning cannot be assumed, but rather must be approached through the lens of history. In this course, we will do just that, taking seriously the strange admixture of literalness and metaphoricity, emptiness and plenitude, which has shaped the idea of blackness in the cultural imaginary, with an emphasis on its U.S. manifestations since the advent of the Civil Rights movement. It is from this point—one marked by social upheaval, radical artistic transformation, and the voices of newly empowered black subjects—that our study will properly begin, as we seek to understand both what dominant art historical narratives have occluded in slighting considerations of race, and how blackness might be deployed as a powerfully expansive analytic framework. After fleshing out some of the significations of the Africanist presence for modern artists, we will explore, more or less chronologically, a range of American aesthetic practices from the 1960s to the present in order to think through the various pictorial rhetorics and critical strategies associated with this darkest of colors. Ultimately, we will aim to gauge its importance for an emerging generation of African-American artists, which has been dubbed postmodern, postnationalist, and effectively “post-black.” Along the way, we will closely examine seminal bodies of work by Glenn Ligon ( Stranger in the Village ), Adrian Piper ( The Mythic Being ), and Kara Walker ( African't ); other artists to be considered include: Vito Acconci, Sam Durant, Romare Bearden, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Joseph Kosuth, Robert Mapplethorpe, Allan McCollum, Dave McKenzie, Julie Mehretu, Paul Pfeiffer, Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Andy Warhol, and Carrie Mae Weems.

 

Graduate Level Courses 

Art History 401-1 Methods/Historiography of Art History
Winter 2005
Prof. Stephen Eisenman
T 2:00 – 4:50 KRG 3-430
Graduate Course in Art History Methods

The course will examine some fundamental methods and theories -- mostly derived from philosophy and the social sciences -- that underlie the modern practice of art history.   Special emphasis will be placed on Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, and close reading of key, primary texts by Marx, Adorno, Benjamin, Freud, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida. Selected art historical texts by past and present authors -- Wofflin, Schapiro, Clark, Baxandall and Pollock will also be examined.

 

Art History 461-0 Methods/Histography of Art History
Art History After the “End” of Art
Winter 2005
Profs. Michael Holly/Keith Moxey
M 2:00 – 4:50 (Won't start until January 10) KRG 3-430

The issue of aesthetics, long naturalized by art history's empiricist aspirations and marginalized by postmodern theory, has returned. This course will examine the nineteenth and twentieth century background that lies behind this resurrection and will try to imagine the future of the discipline now that both art and history have been pronounced “dead”. Might aesthetics offer the discipline new life? By means of assigned readings, we will chart the universalizing principles on which art history was founded, and then review the continuing relevance of these ideas today. The seminar is primarily a reading course designed to familiarize us with some of the most important texts that have shaped arty history's notions of history and aesthetics. Each week we will discuss assigned readings. These texts are often challenging and the point of reading them together is to grapple with their interpretation. Our meetings are an opportunity to bring up questions and compare notes.

Art History 470-0 Studies in Modern Architecture
Chicago Architecture and Urbanism c. 1900
Winter 2005
Profs. David Van Zanten/Robert Bruegmann
W 2:00 – 4:50 KRG 3-430

This will be a collaborative seminar led by David Van Zanten and Robert Bruegmann (University of Illinois, Chicago) focusing on conceptual issues in the history of Chicago's built environment. The classes will meet alternative weeks at Northwestern and at the University of Illinois and will be divided hour-and-a-half segments led by the instructors in alternation. The subjects studied will include:

The growth of the city out of the agricultural grid; the creation of an urban infrastructure; the coalescence of an architectural profession at the colonial periphery; the economics and technics of Chicago as “Nature's Metropolis”; the texture of the city and architectural vernaculars; the creative tension between radical (Sullivan, Wright) and conservative (Burnham) design; the competing cultures of the skyscraper and the suburb; urban sprawl. Robert Bruegmann is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and author of Sprawl (about to appear, on the expansion of American cities, especially since World War II); The Architects and the City (1997) about the Chicago skyscraper and Modernism at Midcentury (1994) about Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

During the Republican period (1911-1949), Chinese artists and intellectuals question the nature of Chinese identity in a newly emerging, non-imperial state.  Cultural debates address the nature of Chinese art and expression in a new world that draws on Japanese, American, and European models, but yet is distinct.  During this period of extraordinary eclecticism in architecture, film, painting, drawing, and the practice of art history and archaeology, Chinese urban spaces undergo radical transformations.  New commercial centers with western architecture are juxtaposed with Chinese ritual spaces, which, over the course of these twenty years, become historical monuments and museums (Forbidden City, Altar of Heaven, bell and drum towers, etc.).  Simultaneously, as the urban centers transform along ocean and river routes (Tianjin, Shanghai, Wuhan, Hong Kong and Chongqing), scholars become increasingly interested in the interior.  Ethnographic research into Muslim Hui, Buddhist Tibetan, and other minorities groups become the central focus of government-sponsored research trips. These academic surveys lead to military surveys of the interior, and eventually to the wars with Chinas diverse ethnic groups during the 1950s.
 
This course will take on this heady array of cultural shifts in Republican China, attempting to answer the question: What are the defining features of Chinese modernism?