Art History Courses, 2011-2012
Faculty
N. Atkinson, H. Badamo, P. Berlekamp, C. Cohen, J. Elsner, D. English, P. Foong, C. Foxwell, C. Fromont, T. Gunning, E. Helsinger, M. Jackson, A. Kumler, A. Leonard, C. Mehring, S. Miller, W. J. T. Mitchell, R. Neer, J. Snyder, K. Taylor, Y. Tsivian, R. Ubl, M. Ward, H. Wu, R. Zorach
Courses: Art History (ARTH)
10100. Introduction to Art. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, this course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and appreciation when dealing with a variety of visual art forms. It encourages the close analysis of visual materials, explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given work of art, and examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study of art. Most importantly, the course encourages the understanding of art as a visual language and aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Examples draw on local collections. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
14000 through 16999. Art Surveys. May be taken in sequence or individually. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. The major monuments and masterpieces of world painting, sculpture, and architecture are studied as examples of humankindís achievements in the visual arts. Individual objects are analyzed in detail and interpreted in light of societyís varied needs. While changes in form, style, and function are emphasized, an attempt is also made to understand the development of unique and continuous traditions of visual imagery throughout world civilization. Courses focus on broad regional and chronological categories.
14005. Introduction to Early Christian and Byzantine Art This course will serve as an introduction to the vibrant visual culture that developed in the early Christian period and in the medieval east. The Byzantine Empire, which had its capital in Constantinople, was a powerful polity that considered itself to be the rightful successor to Rome. In this course, we will examine a wide range of objects (including churches decorated in gold mosaics, lavishly illuminated manuscripts, panel-painted icons, richly crafted metalwork, and luxurious textiles) and consider the function of images, objects, and architecture in specific historic contexts. Overarching themes of the course will include Byzantine attitudes towards the antique past, orthodoxy, medieval theories of the image, visualizations of imperial authority and piety, and the cult of icons and relics. H. Badamo. Autumn, Winter.
14007. Visual Culture in the world of Ancient Rome (=CLCV 15007) This course surveys the visual arts of the Roman world from the late Republican period, down to the reign of Constantine (100BC-AD336). †It explores Roman visual culture from this expanse of time, across the provinces, and in a range of spheres -civic, funerary, and domestic. Students will be introduced to major objects and monuments produced for Roman patrons, and also to lesser known works, which are nonetheless intriguing for the window they offer on to Roman aesthetic and social paradigms. Through this survey, the course will address the problematic question of how Roman art is ultimately to be defined. †We will pay special attention to the function and significance of prominent themes such as portraiture, copying, naturalism, and classicism in Roman art. †We will also engage with the difficult issue of how our own instincts about art, and our taxonomies of visual production, may actually hinder us in our attempt to grasp the priorities of effect inherent in Roman visual culture. N. Barham. Spring.
14107. Greek Art and Archaeology. (=CLCV 21807) This course will survey the art and archaeology of ancient Greece from ca. 1000 BCE ñ ca. 200 BCE. Participants will see the Greeks emerge from poverty and anarchy to form a distinctive political and social system based on city-statesóand they will see that system grow unstable and collapse. They will see the emergence of distinctive forms of sculpture, architecture, pottery, and urban design ñ many of which are still in use today. Along with these facts, they will acquire a conceptual toolkit for looking at works of art and for thinking about the relation of art to social life. The big question is: how can we make sense of the past by means of artifacts? R. Neer. Winter.
14211. Introduction to African Art This course is an introduction to the arts of Africa and its Diaspora. It surveys selected monuments of African expressive culture from a variety of places and times. Lectures, readings and discussions explore the relationship between art and leadership, religion, and society on the continent and in African diasporic communities in the Americas. Class meetings and assignments make use of local collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago and the Field Museum. C. Fromont. Winter.
14400. Italian Renaissance Art This course is a selective survey of the major monuments, personalities, and issues in the Italian art from around 1400 to 1550, with a look back at the 14th Century. At the same time, it attempts to introduce students with little or no background in art history to approaches, methods, or tools for looking at, thinking about, even responding to works of art. The origins and value of broad style groupings such as Late Gothic, Early Renaissance, High Renaissance and Mannerism will be critically examined, though we will concentrate on fewer artists and works rather than attempt a uniform survey of the vast body of material at the core of the Western tradition. Attention will also be given to the invention and development of distinctive artistic types and their association with particular moments in history (e.g., the "sacred conversation" altarpiece, centrally planned church, landscape painting). A major theme of the course will be the changing social context for the practice of art and with it the evolving nature of artistic creativity. The ability to talk critically and creatively about text and image will be the focus of required biweekly section meetings. C. Cohen. Winter.
14610. Survey: Art of the Northern Renaissance This course offers an overview of the art and material culture in France, Germany, and the Netherlands ca. 1350-1570 through selected case studies. As a secondary goal for non-majors, it is designed to introduce methods and issues in art history. We will study the development of new artistic genres and media such as oil painting and printmaking; questions of style (realism, classicism) and social context (courts, cities, and countryside); the location and circulation of art (markets, sacred spaces, regionalism and internationalism, exchange with Italy); uses and conflicts over religious imagery, and the impact of the Protestant Reformation. K. Wood. Autumn.
15510. The Visual Arts in American culture, 1839-1945 This course introduces students to multiple modes of art's production and reception from the Jacksonian era to World War II. The arts in the U.S. have never been limited to an elite tradition of painting and sculpture; indeed much of their vitality derives from interchange between European academic models of art and the popular, vernacular, and mass-media visual forms developed in the Americas. Our subjects will include monuments, landscape and urban design, architecture, mural and easel painting, popular prints and illustration, photography and avant-garde cinema, public and private forms of patronage and collecting, and the establishment and aspirations of civic art museums. This course requires a weekly discussion section in Weeks 3-8. Some written assignments will require visits to local museums. S. Miller. Autumn.
15500. 19th Century Art This survey engages with central developments in 19th century art, historically and formally. We will examine the relation of art to, for example, industrialization and modernity, colonialism and revolution, while attending to developments in reproductive technology, popular visual culture, and practices of exhibition and display. Artists considered include Jacques-Louis David, EugËne Delacroix, HonorÈ Daumier, Francisco Goya, J.M.W Turner, Gustave Courbet, Thomas Eakins, Edouard Manet, Paul CÈzanne, Auguste Rodin and Georges Seurat. An important aim of this course, which covers a broad stylistic range of images, is to develop fundamental skills of visual analysis and the use of visual evidence in persuasive writing. There will be one required visit to the Art Institute and at least one class session at the Smart Museum. J. Langbein. Spring.
15600. 20th Century Art A survey class that will revolve around issues central or unique to the 20th century, including abstraction, traditional and new media, art and politics, mass produced design and culture. We will consider different conceptions of modern art that emerged during this period--for example, "modernism," "avant-garde," or "postmodernism"--and the ways in which such understandings overlapped or differed, actively fostered exchange, rejected or influenced one another. Artists to be discussed include Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Cindy Sherman. Meetings and assignments will make use of local collections such as the Smart Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. No familiarity with art history is required. C. Mehring. Autumn.
15600. 20th Century Art This course provides a critical survey of the major artistic movements, paradigms, and documents of twentieth-century art in Europe and the United States. Artists to be discussed include Henri Matisse, Kasimir Malevich, Jackson Pollock, Donald Judd, and Eva Hesse. Writing assignments will include a close analysis of a work in a local collection such as the Smart Museum or the Art Institute of Chicago. M. Warnock. Winter, Spring.
15609. Visual Art in the Postwar U.S. A survey of major figures and developments in visual arts and related fields since roughly 1945. Chronological in progression, this course nevertheless affords a wide view of consequential developments in and beyond major art centers and occurring across mediums and national borders. Themes to be considered will include Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Happenings, Neo-Dada, Pop Art, Op Art, Minimal Art, Process, Performance, Situationism, Conceptual Art, experimental film and video, Earth Art, Neo-Geo, and others. D. English. Winter.
16100. Art of Asia: China This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on major monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public milieus. Lectures will reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, and to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced. Q. Ngan. Autumn.
16100. Art of Asia: China This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on the bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the Chinese appropriation of the Buddha image, and the evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions. This course considers objects in contexts (from the archaeological sites from which they were unearthed to the material culture that surrounded them) to reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, and to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced. Wu Hung. Winter.
16100. Art of Asia: China This course surveys the arts of China from the Neolithic to the contemporary period. Topics include bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, Chinese appropriation of Buddhist art, evolution of landscape and figure painting traditions, imperial architecture and contemporary photography. This course considers the contexts of the artworks, including their media, their archaeological sites, and the material culture surrounding them, then reconstructs the original functions and meanings to better understand Chinese culture through art. This course aims to familiarize students having little or no experience in Chinese art or culture with significant artworks, styles, and discourses in Chinese art history. S. Su. Spring.
16800. Art of Asia: Japan (=EALC 16806) This course surveys the arts of the Japanese archipelago through the study of selected major sites and artifacts. We will consider objects in their original contexts and in the course of transmission and reinterpretation across space and time. How did Japanese visual culture develop in the interaction with objects and ideas from China, Korea, and the West? Prehistoric artifacts, the Buddhist temple, imperial court culture, the narrative handscroll, the tea ceremony, folding screens, and woodblock prints are among the topics covered. C. Foxwell. Spring.
17000-18999. Art in Context. Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts. Courses in this series investigate basic methods of art historical analysis and apply them to significant works of art studied within definite contexts. Works of art are placed in their intellectual, historical, cultural, or more purely artistic settings in an effort to indicate the origins of their specific achievements. An informed appreciation of the particular solutions offered by single works and the careers of individual artists emerges from the detailed study of classic problems within Western and non-Western art.
17015. The Sacred Image in Byzantium Perhaps the most recognizable feature of Byzantine culture was its sacred images, known as icons and thought to be “windows to heaven.” In this course we will consider textual and pictorial witnesses to medieval understandings of the nature and function of images in the Byzantine East. Focusing on issues of representation, we will consider the icon from a variety of angles: in relation to modern and medieval theories of the images, aesthetics, travel and marvel literature, accounts of iconoclasm, and justifications for religious imagery in devotion. H. Badamo. Autumn, Winter.
17200. 19th Century Art in the Art Institute In this course, we will closely examine 19th century paintings and sculptures in the Art Institute of Chicago and seek to understand how and why art changed during this period. Topics to be considered include the meaning of stylistic innovation in the 19th century, the development and dissolution of the genres as landscape and portraiture, and varying conceptions of realism and abstraction. Most class sessions will be devoted to looking at works in the galleries of the Art Institute. Because attendance is mandatory, students should consider whether their schedules will allow time for traveling to and from the museum for class meetings. Assignments include three papers and a variety of written homework exercises. M. Ward. Spring.
17211. Arts of Medieval Japan (=EALC 17211) The arts of medieval Japan are known for their material luxury and otherworldly splendor, as in images of Buddhist paradise, and, conversely, for their rusticity and understatement, as exemplified by developments in ink painting, architecture, and ceramics. This course will examine the worldviews, historical circumstances, and practices of making and appreciation that underscore both trends. We will explore how the aesthetic tensions within and between objects relate to the social and political tensions among groups during this age of unrest and instability. The course spans the period between 1200 and 1550. C. Foxwell. Winter.
17400. University of Chicago Campus An introduction to architecture and planning, this course examines the changes in thinking about the University campus from its origins in the 1890s to the present. Many of the Universityís choices epitomize those shaping American architecture generally and some of our architects are of national significance. The course develops skill in analyzing architecture and urban form in order to interpret: how the University images itself in masonry, metal, and lawn; how it works with architects; the role of buildings in social and intellectual programs and values; the effects of campus plans and the siting of individual buildings; and the impact of technological change. ìOn-siteî sessions and study of archival documents required. K. Taylor. Spring.
17410. Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and Beyond This course looks at Wrightís work from multiple angles, examining his architecture, urbanism, relationship to the built environment and socio-cultural context of his lifetime, and legend. Weíll take advantage of the Robie House on campus, and of the rich legacy of Wrightís early work in Chicago; weíll also think about his later ìUsonianî houses for middle-income clients and the urban framework he imagined for his work (ìBroadacre Cityî), as well as his Wisconsin headquarters (Taliesin), and spectacular works like the Johnson Wax Factory (a required one-day Friday field trip, if funds permit), Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim Museum. By examining one architectís work in context, students will gain experience analyzing buildings and their siting, and interpreting them in light of their complex ingredients and circumstances. The overall goal is to provide an introduction to thinking about architecture and urbanism. K. Taylor. Autumn.
17611. Envisioning the Colonial Metropolis in the Early Modern Atlantic World This course explores urbanism and its representations in the colonial enterprises of Spain and Portugal from the 16th to the 18th century. Focusing on four cities, Mexico City (Mexico), Cuzco (Peru), Luanda (Angola), and Salvador da Bahia (Brazil), we will analyze how the policies adopted by the Spanish and Portuguese crowns led to the development of different types of cities, and how indigenous populations contributed to the distinctively local texture of each urban fabric. Bringing together analytical writings on urbanism, architecture, and space with close formal consideration of these cities and their representations in pictorial, cartographic, and literary media, we will consider how urbanism on the one hand and its social uses on the other hand contributed to the political and religious enterprise of colonialism, shaped colonial identities, and helped fashion notions of race and gender. Along with architecture, both durable and ephemeral, and city planning, the class will consider cities as spaces of social and economic interactions, examining processions, parades, and marketplaces as key elements of the making of the Colonial Metropolis. C. Fromont. Spring.
17800. Leonardo and Michelangelo: Their Art in Context This course examines the art and personality of the two artists who are often considered the culminating figures of the Italian Renaissance. Some attention will be devoted to understanding the Florentine artistic and social context out of which these two near-contemporary, but very different, individuals emerged. Their careers will then be followed and examined in the context of the other major centers in which they worked, especially Rome and Milan. The course will encompass the whole artistic career of Leonardo (d. 1519), but concentrate on the first half of Michelangeloís much longer career (including juvenalia, Pieta, David, Sistine ceiling, and Julius Tomb). Through the concentrated art-historical material studied, the course attempt to introduce students to some of the major avenues for interpretation in this field including formal, stylistic, iconographical, psychological, social and theoretical. Special attention will be given to the writings and drawings of these artists as means of thinking about the complex issues of artistic intention. C. Cohen. Spring.
17903. 1900 in the Smart Museum All the materials considered in this course are twentieth-century works of art located in the University's Smart Museum. Group discussions will focus on how to look at works of art and the questions to ask of them. We concentrate on different media (painting, sculpture, and print) and works drawn from different movements (Cubism, German Expressionism, Abstract expressionism and contemporary art. M. Ward. Spring.
17910. Introduction to American Material Culture ìMaterial cultureî can refer to almost any human-made or human-designed objectóincluding those we call ìart,î but extending to all manner of things crafted or manufactured for use or decor, along with printed matter and built environments.† This course introduces students to key methods and theories (drawn from art history, anthropology, archaeology, economics, psychology, literature, and philosophy) for interpreting ìthingsî as symbolic and communicative cultural texts.† Weíll explore these theories via specific artifacts produced, used, collected, sold, given, and discarded in North America between the 18th†and 20th†centuries in environments as varied as Native communities, Spanish missions, slave quarters, rural homes, elite artisan workshops, Victorian parlors, urban immigrant sweatshops, early photography studios, battlefields, political campaigns, religious colonies, worldís fairs, and modern factories.† 3-4 short writing assignments and several field trips to local institutions will be required. S. Miller. Spring.
18000. Photography and Film Art History 18000 is a core course that serves as an introduction to the history of art by concentrating on some fundamental issues in the history of photography and film. The course is divided roughly in half between still photography and film. The central theme of the course concerns the way in which photographs and films have been understood and valued during the past 165 years. There have been profound changes in attitudes and beliefs regarding the nature of photographs throughout the history of photography (this is likewise true of film). The current range of views is very different from those held by the various audiences for photographs and films in the last century and the century before. For instance, photographs were originally conceived of as copies of things that can be seen, but the notion of copy was drawn from a long established set of views about what makes a picture a work of art and copies were said to be incapable of being works of art. This view continues to haunt the writings of some critics and historians of photography and film. The course will concentrate on the work of photographers, theorists of photography and film, and on films by John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Roman Polanski. J. Snyder. Spring.
18305. New Art in Chicago Museums and Other Spaces. Through very regular, required site visits to museums, galleries, and experimental spaces in the greater Chicago area, this course will introduce students to the close considerationóin situóof works of art created in our times, as well as to the application to these works of pertinent modes of critical and historical inquiry. Sites to be visited include the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, the Fraction Workspace, Mess Hall, the Hyde Park Art Center, The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, among others. D. English. Spring.
The following courses do not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
20605. Roman Art (=ARTH 30605) This course will be an introduction to Roman art – its place in the genesis of the general theoretical bibliography of art history, its particular and complex characteristics and the range of its kinds of artifacts. We shall begin inductively, looking at lots of stuff, but move to a history of the general theoretical overviews that have been offered for Roman art – overviews that have been influential in the broader historiography of art history as a discipline. It will be taught in 5 (intensive!) weeks in the first half of the Spring quarter consisting of 2 x 3 hour-classes per week, plus some individual discussion sessions to set up term papers, which will be due at the end of the quarter or just after by arrangement. J. Elsner. Spring.
22609. Skills and Methods in Chinese Painting History (=ARTH 32609, EALC 20101/30101) This course aims to provide groundwork skills for conducting primary research in Chinese painting history. Emphasis will be on sinological tools and standard resources relevant to the study of early periods, especially the Song and Yuan Dynasty. To develop proficiencies in analyzing materials (silk, paper, mounting, ink, color) and investigating provenance (identifying seals, inscriptions). To gain familiarity with the scholarship on issues of connoisseurship, authenticity and quality judgment. Weekly task-based reports. Final research paper. P. Foong. Winter.
23700. Raphael and the High Renaissance (=ARTH 33700) This course concentrates on Raphael, perhaps historically the most influential figure of the outsized trio (including Leonardo and Michelangelo), who embody the ìculminating momentî of the Renaissance. Some attention will be given to the history of the idea and to the style concept ìHigh Renaissanceî and its usefulness as a vehicle for understanding three such diverse personalities. While we will try to do justice to the enormously diverse, if short, career of Raphael, the investigation of the High Renaissance will lead us to examine the mature works of Leonardo and Michelangeloís painting and sculpture through 1520 (including the Sistine Ceiling and the Julius Tomb), which is the part of their careers that overlap with Raphael. Special attention will be given to the writings and drawings of the major artists as a means of interpreting their works. C. Cohen. Autumn.
24602. Mediums and Contexts of Chinese Pictorial Art (=ARTH 34602) In this course, pictorial representations are approached and interpreted, first and foremost, as concrete, image-bearing objects and architectural structures---as portable scrolls, screens, albums, and fans, as well as murals in Buddhist cave-temples and tombs, and relief carvings on offering shrines and sarcophagi. The lectures and discussion investigate the inherent features of these forms, as well as their histories, viewing conventions, audiences, ritual/social functions, and the roles these forms played in the construction and development of pictorial images.Wu Hung. Winter.
24710. Japan and the World in 19th Century Art (=ARTH 34710, EALC 24710/34710) This seminar will explore artistic interaction between Japan and the West in the late 19th century. Topics include: changing European and American views of Japan and its art, the use of Japanese pictorial ìsourcesî by artists such as Monet and Van Gogh, Japan's invocation by decorative arts reformers, Japanese submissions to the worldís fairs, and new forms of Japanese art made for audiences within Japan. Class sessions and a research project are designed to offer different geographical and theoretical perspectives and to provide evidence of how Japonisme appeared from late 19th-century Japanese points of view. C. Foxwell. Spring.
24811. From the Abject to the Sublime: The Body in Medieval Art and Visual Culture (=ARTH 34811) In the Middle Ages the human body provoked contention, ambivalence, desire, celebration and fear. Organized thematically, this course examines how medieval art and visual culture represented the human (and semi-human) form. Our discussions will consider representations of the exalted body of Christ, the courtly body of male and female aristocrats, the anatomical body of medical literature, the body at prayer and in erotic play, monstrous bodies at the edges of the world, the stereotyped body of the Jew, and the virginal body of the saint. One goal of the course is to examine how medieval representations and peceptions of the human form negotiated various forms of power, desire, fear, and aggression in ways that resemble but also profoundly differ from today. A. Kumler. Spring.
24812. Museums and Art (=ARTH 34812) This course considers how the rise of the art museum in the 19th and 20th centuries affected the making of modern art and the viewing of past art. It is not designed to be a survey course, but rather a historical investigation of certain issues and developments. We will concentrate on the following: what has been said to happen to objects when they are uprooted and moved into the museum; how and why museums have changed display practices so as to get viewers to look at art in new ways; what artists have understood museums to represent and how they have responded to that understanding in their work and their display preferences. Though reference will be made to the contemporary art world, the focus will be on materials and case studies drawn from the French Revolution through the 1960s. French, German, English and American museums will be featured. M. Ward. Autumn.
24821. Early Modern Italian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (c. 1400–1780) (=ARTH 34831) This course will explore the holdings of early modern Italian art at the Art Institute of Chicago with particular attention paid to patronage, gender, social context, diverse media, and regional, stylistic differences in this period. The major artistic centers of Rome, Florence, and Bologna will be treated along with those areas too-often overlooked, especially Naples and Milan. This course will focus primarily on Italian paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, and several classes will be devoted to visits to the Print and Drawing study room and to Conservation. Each class will be oriented around a different thematic topic, which will be considered through readings and the analysis of specific objects in the collection. Assignments include a catalogue entry and a seminar paper. All classes will meet at the Art Institute of Chicago. Eve Straussman-Pflanzer. Spring.
25821. Art in Berlin (=GRMN 25821) From 1945 – 1991 Berlin was a site for major artistic developments and extraordinary political shifts. This course will trace the diverging artistic developments in East and West Berlin and will track points of artistic contact, exchange, and reunification. The class will examine how art in Berlin contended with a common past, postwar ruin and reconstruction, as well as Cold War ideology and occupation. In the process of reunification, Berlin became a site for the development of a public memory culture and a struggle over a common national identity, which was played out in public monuments, exhibitions, and artistic interventions. Reading knowledge of German welcome, but not essential. R. Jans. Winter
26400. The History of Photography in America (=ARTH 36400) The invention of the photographic system as a confluence of art practice and technology is studied in detail. The aesthetic history of photography is traced from 1839 through the present. Special emphasis is placed on the critical writing of P. H. Emerson, Erwin Panofsky, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Susan Sontag, and Michael Fried. J. Snyder. Autumn.
26409. Photography and American Cultural Memory This course investigates three intertwined questions: How have photographs served both to construct and to interrogate the United Statesí perception of its history, its culture, its collective identity, and the relationships among them? How has photography been construed and implemented as an art of memoryóand an art for contesting memoryóin the United States? And as American photographers have borne these questions in mind, how have they constructed for themselves a peculiarly ìAmerican traditionî of photography and energetically mined this invented tradition? For focus and continuity, we will concentrate primarily on two themes: the imaginative construction of community and citizenship, and the interpretation of Western landscape. Requirements include two short writing exercises, a longer final paper, and several visits to local museums. S. Miller. Spring.
26600. Early 20th Century Urban Visions (=ARTH 36600) It is hard to understand contemporary architectural debate about how cities should develop without knowing its origins in the influential city planning proposals developed by architects and planners in pre-World War II Europe and North America. This course studies those foundations, looking at the period when modernist architects and intellectuals proclaimed the obsolescence of the metropolis just as it came to dominate the modern landscape. We will examine a variety of strategies devised to order or replace the metropolis during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ranging from the City Beautiful movement in Chicago, Camillo Sitteís influential critique of Viennaís Ringstrasse, and the English garden city alternative Lewis Mumford championed for the New York region, to Le Corbusierís Plan Voisin for Paris, and Frank Lloyd Wrightís Broadacre City model displayed in New Yorkís Rockefeller Center. We conclude with urban renewal in New York and Chicago, and Jane Jacobsí reaction. Course readings are in primary sources. Focusing on particular projects and their promulgation in original texts and illustrations, as well as in exhibitions and film, we will be especially concerned with their polemical purposes and contexts (historical, socio-cultural, professional, biographical) and with the relationship between urbanism and architecture. K. Taylor. Autumn.
26611. Abstraction (=ARTH 36611) This course will examine the elaboration and dissemination of major iterations of ìabstractî art at key junctures throughout the twentieth century, with an emphasis on developments in Europe, the United States, and South America. Why abstraction? What were the formal, social, and philosophical stakes of divergent models and paradigms of abstract practice? And what difference do they make in the history and theory of artistic modernism? Case studies will include: Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Simon HantaÔ, the Zero Group, Lygia Clark, and Eva Hesse. M. Warnock. Spring.
26612. Circa 1650: Art in a Global Age (=ARTH 36612) This course explores the artistic forms born of the exchange of knowledge, images, materials, and ideas among distant peoples across the globe in the wake of the age of exploration. Readings, discussion, and student research investigate the phenomenon of the cabinet of curiosity, the visual interactions between Europe and the Africans kingdoms of Benin and Kongo, colonial art and urbanism in Latin America, fumi-e ìpicture-treadingî in Japan, the visual culture of Dutch Brazil, and Baroque architecture from Rome to India. Class discussion and assignments make use of local collections such as the Art Institute and the Regenstein rare books collection. C. Fromont. Spring.
26711. Florentine Topographies: Art, Architecture, and Urban Life in the Italian Renaissance City (=ARTH 36711) This course is open to advanced undergraduate majors in art history, art history graduate students, as well as others by permission of the instructor. The site of some of the most widely recognizable monuments of western art history and the home to some of the most famous artists, writers, designers, thinkers, and cultural patrons of early modern culture, Florence has long occupied a central place in a larger pan-European discourse of Modernity, Beauty, and the Individual Subject. †As a result, the city itself has come to occupy a mythic position as a central hub of Western intellectual culture: uprooted from its geographical specificity by the circulation of such proper names as Machiavelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and unmoored from its historical heritage by the disorienting complexities of modern mass tourism. †Therefore, this course seeks to re-integrate the ìRenaissanceî into the urban context from which it emerged, to defamiliarize it so that it can be looked at from other perspectives. †It focuses on the city itself as the protagonist of some of the most important experiments in art, architecture, and urban development and shows how they were intimately connected to a lively and engaged social body. By approaching images and monuments through the spatial practices by which they were encountered by Renaissance society (rituals of conflict, contests, economic exchange, religious devotion, urban politics, identity formation, among others), students will gain a more nuanced understanding of the links between a localized urban culture and a larger intercultural and cross-temporal exchange of ideas. †Rather than diminishing the cultural achievements of its artistic giants, or de-legitimating the rich, varied, and sophisticated intellectual heritage of Renaissance scholarship, this course works toward a critical dialogue between historiography, the historical monument, and the urban context. N. Atkinson. Spring.
26712. Wassily Kandinsky: Artist, Designer, Writer, Teacher (=ARTH 36712) The Russian-German-French Wassily Kandinsky played central roles in pioneering important strands of 20th century art, such as abstraction and expressionism, and in shaping the most influential art and design school, the Bauhaus. In this seminar, the monographic focus on Wassily Kandinsky will function as a matrix to examine broader issues that have become, or might become, central to the study of 20th century art. Kandinskyís multiple roles as artist, designer, writer, and teacher will form the basis for discussions of: canon formation and artistic self-definition; the status of artistsí writings, collaborations, and teaching; the intertwinement of art and design; the social and revolutionary potential of art; national and post-national conceptions of culture. Includes visits to the Smart Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Reading knowledge of Russian, German, or French helpful but not required. C. Mehring. Winter.
27509. Reading Artists Writing (=ARTH 37509) The purpose of this course is to think deeply about the writing of artists and its considerable implications for the practice of art history. What kind of knowledge is produced when a visual artist writes? What if ëmakingí and writing distinctive forms of artistic production? If every art practice has its own conditions of visibility, what role does an artistís writing play in establishing those conditions? How does said writing affect how and what one sees? What is art historyís responsibility to it? Such questions will be guiding ones for this course. Students will be required very early in the quarter to formulate a monographic, thematic, or historical domain of practice on which to focus their research projects, and with which to guide their reading of the general course materials. In addition to regular course meetings, several required sessions will be scheduled to accommodate site visits beyond Hyde Park. Enrollment strictly limited to 15 with instructor consent required. D. English. Autumn.
28211. The Art of Contemporary Africa and Its Diasporas (=CRES 28211) This course will examine the emergence of Africa and its diasporas as key sites of art production and discourse during the past thirty years. The course will work through exhibition histories, theorizations of globalization and diaspora, the legacy of identity politics and multiculturalisms, and shifts in curatorial and critical discourse around questions of difference. Key case studies will include black internationalist formations such as Negritude and Rastafarianism, the connections between art and national identity in Nigeria and South Africa, the durability of traditional African practice in a global art economy, the syncretisms of Santeria and Voodoo, and African-American and black British mediations of real and imagined homelands. I. Bourland. Autumn.
28711. Art of the Avant-Garde (=ARTH 38711) This course will introduce the art and theory of the historical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century. Focusing on the interrelationships between avant-garde culture and the emerging mass cultural formations of the industrial societies in Western Europe and the former USSR, this course will address a wide range of historical and methodological questions: the impact of new technologies of production; the utopian projects of the avant-gardes; the transformation of modernist concepts of artistic autonomy; the changing roles of cultural institutions, as well as the construction of social Others and the formation of new audiences. Our meetings will be devoted primarily to the analysis of the historical avant-gardes that developed in France, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. This course will be taught at the Paris Center. M. J. Jackson. Spring.
29600. Junior Seminar: Doing Art History. Required of third-year students who are majoring in art history; open to nonmajors with consent of instructor. The aim of this seminar is to deepen an understanding of art history as a discipline and of the range of analytic strategies art history affords to students beginning to plan their own BA papers or, in the case of students who are minoring in art history, writing research papers in art history courses. Students read essays that have shaped and represent the discipline, and test their wider applicability and limitations. Through this process, they develop a keener sense of the kinds of questions that most interest them in the history and criticism of art and visual culture. Students develop a formal topic proposal in a brief essay, and write a final paper analyzing one or two works of relevant, significant scholarship for their topics. This seminar is followed by a workshop in Autumn Quarter focusing on research and writing issues for fourth-year students who are majoring in art history, which is designed to help writers of BA papers advance their projects. P. Foong. Winter.
29700. Reading Course. PQ: Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Chair. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. Must be taken for a quality grade. With adviserís approval, students who are majoring in art history may use this course to satisfy requirements for the major, a special field, or electives. This course is also open to nonmajors with advanced standing. This course is primarily intended for students who are majoring in art history and who can best meet program requirements by study under a faculty memberís individual supervision. The subject, course of study, and requirements are arranged with the instructor. Autumn, Winter, Spring.
29800. Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop. Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in art history. This workshop is designed to assist students in researching and writing their senior papers, for which they have already developed a topic in the Junior Seminar. Weekly meetings target different aspects of the process; students benefit from the guidance of the workshop instructors, but also are expected to consult with their individual faculty advisers. At the end of the course, students are expected to complete a first draft of the senior paper and to make an oral presentation of the project for the seminar. Autumn.
29900. Preparation for the Senior Paper. PQ: Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Chair. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. May be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. This course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. This course provides guided research on the topic of the senior paper. Students arrange their program of study and a schedule of meetings with their senior paper adviser.
Graduate Courses
32609. Skills and Methods in Chinese Painting History (=ARTH 22609, EALC 20101/30101) This course aims to provide groundwork skills for conducting primary research in Chinese painting history. Emphasis will be on sinological tools and standard resources relevant to the study of early periods, especially the Song and Yuan Dynasty. To develop proficiencies in analyzing materials (silk, paper, mounting, ink, color) and investigating provenance (identifying seals, inscriptions). To gain familiarity with the scholarship on issues of connoisseurship, authenticity and quality judgment. Weekly task-based reports. Final research paper. P. Foong. Winter.
32820. Space, Place, Landscape (=ENGL 32820) This course will analyze the concepts of space, place, and landscape across the media (painting, photography, cinema, sculpture, architecture, and garden design, as well as poetic and literary renderings of setting, and “virtual” media-scapes). W.J.T. Mitchell. Winter.
33700. Raphael and the High Renaissance (=ARTH 23700) This course concentrates on Raphael, perhaps historically the most influential figure of the outsized trio (including Leonardo and Michelangelo), who embody the ìculminating momentî of the Renaissance. Some attention will be given to the history of the idea and to the style concept ìHigh Renaissanceî and its usefulness as a vehicle for understanding three such diverse personalities. While we will try to do justice to the enormously diverse, if short, career of Raphael, the investigation of the High Renaissance will lead us to examine the mature works of Leonardo and Michelangeloís painting and sculpture through 1520 (including the Sistine Ceiling and the Julius Tomb), which is the part of their careers that overlap with Raphael. Special attention will be given to the writings and drawings of the major artists as a means of interpreting their works. C. Cohen. Autumn.
34710. Japan and the World in 19th Century Art (=ARTH 24710, EALC 24710/34710) This seminar will explore artistic interaction between Japan and the West in the late 19th century. Topics include: changing European and American views of Japan and its art, the use of Japanese pictorial ìsourcesî by artists such as Monet and Van Gogh, Japan's invocation by decorative arts reformers, Japanese submissions to the worldís fairs, and new forms of Japanese art made for audiences within Japan. Class sessions and a research project are designed to offer different geographical and theoretical perspectives and to provide evidence of how Japonisme appeared from late 19th-century Japanese points of view. C. Foxwell. Spring.
34811. From the Abject to the Sublime: The Body in Medieval Art and Visual Culture (=ARTH 24811) In the Middle Ages the human body provoked contention, ambivalence, desire, celebration and fear. Organized thematically, this course examines how medieval art and visual culture represented the human (and semi-human) form. Our discussions will consider representations of the exalted body of Christ, the courtly body of male and female aristocrats, the anatomical body of medical literature, the body at prayer and in erotic play, monstrous bodies at the edges of the world, the stereotyped body of the Jew, and the virginal body of the saint. One goal of the course is to examine how medieval representations and peceptions of the human form negotiated various forms of power, desire, fear, and aggression in ways that resemble but also profoundly differ from today. A. Kumler. Spring.
34812. Museums and Art (=ARTH 24812) This course considers how the rise of the art museum in the 19th and 20th centuries affected the making of modern art and the viewing of past art. It is not designed to be a survey course, but rather a historical investigation of certain issues and developments. We will concentrate on the following: what has been said to happen to objects when they are uprooted and moved into the museum; how and why museums have changed display practices so as to get viewers to look at art in new ways; what artists have understood museums to represent and how they have responded to that understanding in their work and their display preferences. Though reference will be made to the contemporary art world, the focus will be on materials and case studies drawn from the French Revolution through the 1960s. French, German, English and American museums will be featured. M. Ward. Autumn.
34821. Early Modern Italian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (c. 1400–1780) (=ARTH 24831) This course will explore the holdings of early modern Italian art at the Art Institute of Chicago with particular attention paid to patronage, gender, social context, diverse media, and regional, stylistic differences in this period. The major artistic centers of Rome, Florence, and Bologna will be treated along with those areas too-often overlooked, especially Naples and Milan. This course will focus primarily on Italian paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, and several classes will be devoted to visits to the Print and Drawing study room and to Conservation. Each class will be oriented around a different thematic topic, which will be considered through readings and the analysis of specific objects in the collection. Assignments include a catalogue entry and a seminar paper. All classes will meet at the Art Institute of Chicago. Eve Straussman-Pflanzer. Spring.
35311. Figures of the Sublime (=GRMN 35411, CMLT 35411) This seminar will consider theoretical figures of the sublime from Longinus to Jean-François Lyotard and their incorporation in literary texts and painting. Readings will include aesthetic writings by Longinus, Shaftesbury, Edmund Burke, Kant, Schiller, Kleist, Stifter, Freud, Lyotard, Hans Blumenberg, and others. Special attention will be directed to the renaissance of the sublime in the 20th century, and to the question of whether the aesthetic sublime has a political counterpart. The course is designed for graduate students of all levels. All readings and discussion will be in English. MAPH students are especially encouraged to participate. S. Luedemann. Autumn.
36400. The History of Photography in America (=ARTH 26400) The invention of the photographic system as a confluence of art practice and technology is studied in detail. The aesthetic history of photography is traced from 1839 through the present. Special emphasis is placed on the critical writing of P. H. Emerson, Erwin Panofsky, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Susan Sontag, and Michael Fried. J. Snyder. Autumn.
36409. Photography and American Cultural Memory This course investigates three intertwined questions: How have photographs served both to construct and to interrogate the United Statesí perception of its history, its culture, its collective identity, and the relationships among them? How has photography been construed and implemented as an art of memoryóand an art for contesting memoryóin the United States? And as American photographers have borne these questions in mind, how have they constructed for themselves a peculiarly ìAmerican traditionî of photography and energetically mined this invented tradition? For focus and continuity, we will concentrate primarily on two themes: the imaginative construction of community and citizenship, and the interpretation of Western landscape. Requirements include two short writing exercises, a longer final paper, and several visits to local museums. S. Miller. Spring.
36600. Early 20th Century Urban Visions (=ARTH 26600) It is hard to understand contemporary architectural debate about how cities should develop without knowing its origins in the influential city planning proposals developed by architects and planners in pre-World War II Europe and North America. This course studies those foundations, looking at the period when modernist architects and intellectuals proclaimed the obsolescence of the metropolis just as it came to dominate the modern landscape. We will examine a variety of strategies devised to order or replace the metropolis during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ranging from the City Beautiful movement in Chicago, Camillo Sitteís influential critique of Viennaís Ringstrasse, and the English garden city alternative Lewis Mumford championed for the New York region, to Le Corbusierís Plan Voisin for Paris, and Frank Lloyd Wrightís Broadacre City model displayed in New Yorkís Rockefeller Center. We conclude with urban renewal in New York and Chicago, and Jane Jacobsí reaction. Course readings are in primary sources. Focusing on particular projects and their promulgation in original texts and illustrations, as well as in exhibitions and film, we will be especially concerned with their polemical purposes and contexts (historical, socio-cultural, professional, biographical) and with the relationship between urbanism and architecture. K. Taylor. Autumn.
36611. Abstraction (=ARTH 26611) This course will examine the elaboration and dissemination of major iterations of ìabstractî art at key junctures throughout the twentieth century, with an emphasis on developments in Europe, the United States, and South America. Why abstraction? What were the formal, social, and philosophical stakes of divergent models and paradigms of abstract practice? And what difference do they make in the history and theory of artistic modernism? Case studies will include: Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, Simon HantaÔ, the Zero Group, Lygia Clark, and Eva Hesse. M. Warnock. Spring.
36612. Circa 1650: Art in a Global Age (=ARTH 26612) This course explores the artistic forms born of the exchange of knowledge, images, materials, and ideas among distant peoples across the globe in the wake of the age of exploration. Readings, discussion, and student research investigate the phenomenon of the cabinet of curiosity, the visual interactions between Europe and the Africans kingdoms of Benin and Kongo, colonial art and urbanism in Latin America, fumi-e ìpicture-treadingî in Japan, the visual culture of Dutch Brazil, and Baroque architecture from Rome to India. Class discussion and assignments make use of local collections such as the Art Institute and the Regenstein rare books collection. C. Fromont. Spring.
36711. Florentine Topographies: Art, Architecture, and Urban Life in the Italian Renaissance City (=ARTH 26711) This course is open to advanced undergraduate majors in art history, art history graduate students, as well as others by permission of the instructor. The site of some of the most widely recognizable monuments of western art history and the home to some of the most famous artists, writers, designers, thinkers, and cultural patrons of early modern culture, Florence has long occupied a central place in a larger pan-European discourse of Modernity, Beauty, and the Individual Subject. †As a result, the city itself has come to occupy a mythic position as a central hub of Western intellectual culture: uprooted from its geographical specificity by the circulation of such proper names as Machiavelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and unmoored from its historical heritage by the disorienting complexities of modern mass tourism. †Therefore, this course seeks to re-integrate the ìRenaissanceî into the urban context from which it emerged, to defamiliarize it so that it can be looked at from other perspectives. †It focuses on the city itself as the protagonist of some of the most important experiments in art, architecture, and urban development and shows how they were intimately connected to a lively and engaged social body. By approaching images and monuments through the spatial practices by which they were encountered by Renaissance society (rituals of conflict, contests, economic exchange, religious devotion, urban politics, identity formation, among others), students will gain a more nuanced understanding of the links between a localized urban culture and a larger intercultural and cross-temporal exchange of ideas. †Rather than diminishing the cultural achievements of its artistic giants, or de-legitimating the rich, varied, and sophisticated intellectual heritage of Renaissance scholarship, this course works toward a critical dialogue between historiography, the historical monument, and the urban context. N. Atkinson. Spring.
36712. Wassily Kandinsky: Artist, Designer, Writer, Teacher (=ARTH 26712) The Russian-German-French Wassily Kandinsky played central roles in pioneering important strands of 20th century art, such as abstraction and expressionism, and in shaping the most influential art and design school, the Bauhaus. In this seminar, the monographic focus on Wassily Kandinsky will function as a matrix to examine broader issues that have become, or might become, central to the study of 20th century art. Kandinskyís multiple roles as artist, designer, writer, and teacher will form the basis for discussions of: canon formation and artistic self-definition; the status of artistsí writings, collaborations, and teaching; the intertwinement of art and design; the social and revolutionary potential of art; national and post-national conceptions of culture. Includes visits to the Smart Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. Reading knowledge of Russian, German, or French helpful but not required. C. Mehring. Winter.
37509. Reading Artists Writing (=ARTH 27509) The purpose of this course is to think deeply about the writing of artists and its considerable implications for the practice of art history. What kind of knowledge is produced when a visual artist writes? What if ëmakingí and writing distinctive forms of artistic production? If every art practice has its own conditions of visibility, what role does an artistís writing play in establishing those conditions? How does said writing affect how and what one sees? What is art historyís responsibility to it? Such questions will be guiding ones for this course. Students will be required very early in the quarter to formulate a monographic, thematic, or historical domain of practice on which to focus their research projects, and with which to guide their reading of the general course materials. In addition to regular course meetings, several required sessions will be scheduled to accommodate site visits beyond Hyde Park. Enrollment strictly limited to 15 with instructor consent required. D. English. Autumn.
38711. Art of the Avant-Garde (=ARTH 28711) This course will introduce the art and theory of the historical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century. Focusing on the interrelationships between avant-garde culture and the emerging mass cultural formations of the industrial societies in Western Europe and the former USSR, this course will address a wide range of historical and methodological questions: the impact of new technologies of production; the utopian projects of the avant-gardes; the transformation of modernist concepts of artistic autonomy; the changing roles of cultural institutions, as well as the construction of social Others and the formation of new audiences. Our meetings will be devoted primarily to the analysis of the historical avant-gardes that developed in France, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union. This course will be taught at the Paris Center. M. J. Jackson. Spring.
39800. Approaches to Art History. Open to MAPH students concentrating in Art History. A. Lee. Winter.
40108. Art and the Arts Is the specificity of the individual arts crucial to the future of art? At least since T.W. Adorno's late essay "Art and the Arts" (1967), this question is at the center of the discussion about the legacy of modernism. In this seminar, we want to read some of the most important participants in this discussion (Fried, Nancy, de Duve, Wall, Krauss, Luhmann, Cavell, among others) and study how it refers back to the emergence of modern aesthetics between Lessing and Nietzsche. R. Ubl. Winter.
45001. Art and Visual Culture between Han and Tang (220-618 AD) The approximately 400 years between the Han and Tang dynasties, also known as the "Three Kingdoms, Two Jins, and Northern and Southern Dynasties," was one of the most important and complex periods in Chinese art history. The early dynasties of Qin and Han which first unified China had fallen. The break-up of the empire brought new forces into play in the development of Chinese art and culture: regional autonomy, foreign incursions, and resettlement of populations. Many important changes in art and visual culture took place and initiated subsequent developments during the Sui and Tang dynasties. This course utilizes new archaeological evidence to examine these changes, and explores new narrative modes to reflect on the specific nature of this "Period of Division." (Reading knowledge of Chinese is required.) Wu Hung. Spring.
41310. Images and Science (=ENGL 51310) This course will survey recent work in visual studies, iconology, and art history that engages with scientific theories and practices, primarily (but not exclusively) in the life sciences. The colloquium will be constructed around a faculty reading group (from various departments) assembled for the purpose of discussing this topic. W.J.T. Mitchell. Fall.
42300. North Italian Painters: Lotto and Pordenone This course will explore the phenomenon of provincialism in north Italy in its full political, social and cultural context by focusing on two major personalities, Giovanni Antonio da Pordenone and Lorenzo Lotto, although many other artists and schools will be introduced.† These north Italian milieux are particularly fascinating in the first half of the sixteenth century when local schools of painting provide a substantial counterweight to Venice and are the source of considerable artistic innovation.† The course will attempt to define the issues that emerge from the interaction of a central metropolitan artistic culture and local provincial ones, which have their own well-developed artistic traditions.† For example, we will attempt to discover distinctly provincial modes of patronage, picture type, iconography and style against the background of this play of local traditions and the pull of Venice.† In the process the course will try to understand certain art historical phenomena that transcend the individual cases of Pordenone and Lotto, and are generalizable to this artistic environment.† Examples of these are the following: 1) Peripatetic provincial artists such as Pordenone and Lotto made earlier and more consequential trips to central Italy than their Venetian contemporaries, and their art becomes a real middle ground between Rome and Venice (and between disegno and colore).† 2) Artists such as Pordenone and Lotto produce some of the most personally expressive religious pictures of the era and seem to have been particularly affected by the pre-Tridentine Reform movement (possibly to the point of heresy in a religious moment little discussed by art historians).† 3) Lotto and a whole cast of other north Italian artists, who Roberto Longhi characterized as "irregular," produced works of nervous intensity and private emotionalism in the second decade of the century, i.e., at the same time or earlier than the first generation of Mannerists in Florence.† 4) Pordenone and other north Italian painters (e.g., Correggio) move in a direction still in the first third of the century that has been described as proto-Baroque and seem to have had a substantial impact on the first generation of Baroque artists in Lombardy and Emilia. While students will be invited to employ a wide range of art-historical methodology in exploring these and other issues, in their own reports they are welcome to employ approaches and discuss issues that are particularly relevant for their own interests. C. Cohen. Spring.
42610. Imperial Collections of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 42610. Imperial Collections of Chinese Painting and Calligraphy This course looks at imperial art collections of painting and calligraphy and the institutions that administered them. We will survey approaches in secondary scholarship on collections amassed for the court by members of the court: emperors, empresses, clansmen, eunuchs, scholars. Readings will focus on the great collections of Emperors Tang Taizong, Li Houzhu, Song Huizong, and Yuan Wenzong (Tugh Temür), but research topics can be chosen from later dynastic periods. Weekly reports, discussion, and final projects may investigate extant works by addressing issues such as: art catalogs as courtly enterprise; the relationship between art and library collections; emperor as private collector/public patron; expatriated collections and imperial identity under foreign rulers, and so on. Chinese required. Japanese (reading) highly recommended. P. Foong. Spring.
42612. The Sacred Precinct in Japan How are sacred sites framed and represented in medieval and early modern Japan? What can site-based studies reveal about the changing relationships between landscape, building, painting, mapping, travel, and the body? This course will examine major sacred precincts in Japan through the analysis of architecture, painting, devotional practice, and historical documents. We will focus on recent writings in English, evaluating their methodological and theoretical contributions. Themes include: ways in which images of a site are formed and distributed; the political dimensions of the sacred; effects of urbanization and commodification on pilgrimage; the use of landscape to reinforce ideas of the liminal and the foreign; memory and the physical and metaphorical reshaping of sacred sites. All readings will be in English. Students without prior background in Japanese art are welcome. C. Foxwell. Winter.
42800. Saints: Economies of Transgression This course will explore the ideologies, inconsistencies, passions in the construction and representation of sainthood — textual, visual and cinematic — in the Western tradition. From holy fools to charismatics, from collections of saints' lives to treasuries full of relics, from Virgins to old bones, we will examine the manifestations of one of the most potent phenomena to have gripped European and American culture since before the advent of Christianity to the present day. This will include both the attempts to control sainthood through theory and theology, and the attempts to bring it to mind through icons and reliquary. J. Elsner and F. Meltzer. Spring.
42906. Conceptual Art In 1969, the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth wrote, "If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art." If traditional media produced accounts of experience that lacked this crucial measure of self-reflexivity, Kosuth wondered, then what would constitute a vital and self-aware art practice in the information age? Conceptual artists in the 1960s and 1970s not only reconsidered the status of the art object, they also created a diverse body of remarkable and often enigmatic works of art. This seminar concentrates on episodes in the history of conceptual art in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. M. Jackson. Winter.
46701. Codicology Codicology, or “the archaeology of the book,” is the study of the manuscript book as a material object and of the processes by which manuscripts were produced. This advanced seminar, focused exclusively on medieval practices and codices, will introduce students to the key questions, analytic methods and historical data yielded by codicology as an auxiliary discipline. An historiographic orientation, as well as a practicum, the course will involve intensive reading, weekly presentations and the practice of codicological methods of analysis. While not required, competency in medieval Latin will be advantageous. Students will be expected to read, synthesize and present relevant scholarly literature in French and/or German as well as English. Prerequisite: Ability to read scholarly literature in French and/or German. A. Kumler. Winter.
47011. Sculptural Aesthetics Comparative in spirit, this course will provide a theoretical and methodological toolkit for working with sculptural works of art. Our focus will be largely, but not exclusively, on Western representational sculpture (statues and reliefs), although distinctions between iconic and aniconic, and between sculpture and architecture, will themselves be up for debate. Each week will juxtapose critical and philosophical discussions with pre-Modern cases. The unifying thread will not be a corpus of artifacts but a set of issues, concerns and problems, e.g., iconicity and aniconism; the phenomenology of sculptural surface; ìfields,î expanded and otherwise; automata; attributions of agency to statues; idolatry and ìcult imagesî; and the fate of statues on film. Readings will range from Hegel to Stokes to Cavell; cases, from the Elgin Marbles to Rodin to Rossellini. R. Neer. Winter.
48933. Other-speech and Visible words: Allegory, the Allegorical, and Allegoresis Before Modernity (=CDIN 41100, FREN 41112, CMLT 41100) This seminar will bring two disciplinary lenses to bear on the problem of allegory before modernity: literary history and art history. We will consider a range of visual and textual practices in order to explore the limits, even failures, of certain disciplinary accounts of allegory and allegoresis.†Our focus will be on visual and textual evidence before modernity, but the questions and problems examined in the seminar will bear on allegory and allegoresis more broadly.†By attending to the specific modes of analysis and insights developed within each discipline, the seminar will permit us to develop a more critical and productive understanding of how different disciplinary habits of thought have shaped our perception of allegory and allegoresis as practices.†Seminar meetings will put into dialogue visual and textual historical works, as well as landmark critical accounts of allegory and allegoresis. Many key readings will be in French. D. Delogu & A. Kumler. Winter.
48504. Alternative Approaches to the Visual What does it mean to think and read across disciplines with expressly art historical objectives in mind? That question drives this seminar, which is an intimate and rigorous close-reading situation designed that introduces students to a variety of interpretive and theoretical frameworks that originate outside art history but have important implications for the present practice of historicizing modern and contemporary art in context. Cultural studies texts will have priority; other frameworks considered may include continental aesthetics, moral philosophy, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, queer theory, social theory, and other theories of cultural production. Students will be required very early in the quarter to formulate a monographic, thematic, or historical domain of practice on which to focus their research projects, and with which to guide their reading of the general course materials. Enrollment strictly limited to 15 with instructor consent required. D. English. Spring.
48511. The Art of Conversion What is conversion and how does it take place? What role do images play in the process of religious change? This seminar explores the intricate relationship between artistic form and religious thought in the course of religious change. Readings, class discussions, and student research consider examples from a variety of regions, religions, and time periods such as Early Christianity, the Iberian Reconquista, Kongo Catholicism, colonial Latin America, popular religion in North America and contemporary Africa. C. Fromont. Winter.
48212. Looking and Listening in the 19th Century It is by now well known that the attention paid to objects in the world, or to the sounds of nature or music, cannot be taken for granted as historically constant; rather, the habits and values associated with different kinds of attention change over time. †Emphasizing the latter half of the nineteenth century in France, this course will historicize two broad types of attention: looking and listening. †During the nineteenth century, visual culture was proliferating at an unprecedented rate; technologies for looking and listening were in a rapid stage of development; and the social settings for those activities (Salons, gallery shows, Universal Expositions, concerts, recitals in the home, and so on) were also in flux. †At the end of the century, the burgeoning science of psychology was focusing inquiry on the variable nature of consciousness. †The reception of art, whether in public exhibitions and more private venues, will be a major theme of the course, but we will also treat other forms of attention like music listening. †We will consider the impact that technological innovations had on shaping forms of attention, and analyze examples of how artists came to respond to these new conditions, creating works of art that call for particular kinds of attention from viewers or listeners, or works that themselves thematize attention. †Apart from works of art in the Smart Museum and Art Institute collections, the courseís tools for study will include critical and theoretical texts from the period, as well as a wide variety of visual materialsófrom caricatures and popular prints to illustrated books and revues to fine art prints and paintings. The course will begin with a set of interdisciplinary readings on various subjects ñ the nature of attention, the social constitution of audiences, the changing design of places for viewing and listening. †We will then proceed to pose a set of questions to particular visual representations that thematize attention. † Each student will be expected to research and present a seminar paper on an object, in a local collection, that relates to the themes of the course. Basic knowledge of French 19th century art history required; reading knowledge of French highly desirable. M. Ward & A. Leonard. Winter.
48922. Vision and Communism (=CDIN 48922, SLAV 48922, ARTV 40200, CMST 48922, RLIT 48900) In this course, we seek to understand how communists(mainly filmmakers, visual artists and writers in the Soviet Union(defined themselves with and against various others, from the middle class American consumer to the postcolonial, revolutionary subject. This is also a question of how Soviet artists appropriated Western ways of seeing and technologies of representation for the work of communism. How (we plan to ask) was Soviet ìpropagandaî different from capitalist advertising? How was communism a different kind of good than a new Timex watch? And do these questions really need to be asked in the past tense? Accompanied by the publication of an edited volume of texts and exhibition at the Smart Museum. R. Bird & M. J. Jackson. Autumn.
49709. Skyscrapers Since its inceptionóattributed to Chicagoóthe skyscraper has posed a special design challenge. Neither technology (entailing the most self-effacing materials yet devised for construction) nor the program of its major clients (the honeycomb of the office building), nor the cultural status of those clients (who have had to justify overshadowing the traditional collective spheres defined by public and religious buildings) provides an obvious basis for the high-profile imagery the tall building invites. Yet the capital that funds this building form has shaped mass marketing and public relations, and used the skyscraper in that enterprise. What have architects made of this situation, particularly in a century of architectural avant-gardes, which have embraced modernity as embodied in the skyscraper but sought to define its formal terms? This seminar will consider issues of representation and transparency, as well as cultural significance, in the skyscraper throughout its history. Weíll explore those ideas as broached in a range of writings as well as through analyses of particular examples and seminar paper presentations. K. Taylor. Winter.
49900. Historiography This course, designed specifically for art history graduate students, explores the foundations of the art historical discipline as it emerged from the German intellectual context in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It then focuses on those approaches that have proved most formative for the development of the discipline in Anglo-American contexts after the Second World War. Rather than attempting to cover a comprehensive history of the historiographic tradition, the readings will attempt to present a coherent, if highly complex and conflictive, narrative that remains open to continued interrogation by its practitioners. N. Atkinson. Spring.
49911. Methodology and Historiography This seminar introduces first-year PhD students in art history to the different ways in which art history has been conceived and practiced, for example, based on the method of iconography or informed by post-structuralist theories. Readings are drawn from different periods in the history of the discipline, ranging from writers instrumental in laying the disciplineís foundations, such as Giorgio Vasari or Aby Warburg, to classic formulations of a method, such as that of the social history of art in the writings of T.J. Clark, to very recent scholarship of the last decade. C. Mehring. Autumn.