History of Art 101, 102, 103 and 108, while covering different areas, are all considered equivalent introductions to the discipline of art history. These four introductory survey courses consider not only art objects as aesthetic experiences but also the interactions among art, the artist, and society. The lecture and discussion sections explore the connections between the style and content of works of art and the historical, social, religious, and intellectual phenomena of the time. Attention is also given to the creative act and to the problems of vision and perception which both the artist and his/her public must face.
Although it would be logical to move from History of Art 101 to History of Art 102, this is not required. One course in European/American art (101 or 102) and one course in Asian or African art (103 or 108) serve as a satisfactory introduction to the history of art for non-concentrators (concentrators should see the department's handbook for more information on requirements). The introductory courses are directed toward students interested in the general history of culture and are especially valuable cognates for students in the fields of history, philosophy, literature, and musicology as well as the creative arts.
Course requirements and texts vary with individual instructors, but an effort is always made to introduce students to works of art in the collections of the university as well as in the museums of Detroit and Toledo. Photographic material is available for study in the Image Study Gallery, G026 Tisch Hall. Examinations usually include short essays and slides which are to be identified, compared, and discussed.
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101. Near Eastern and European Art from
the Stone Age to the End of the Middle Ages. (4). (HU).
This course offers an introduction to major monuments and periods of art
from antiquity through the Middle Ages. Its purpose is not only to acquaint
students with key works of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Romanesque
and Gothic art and architecture, but also to help them develop a vocabulary
for the description and analysis of works of art, and to provide them with
a basic understanding of the methods and aims of art historical study. Lectures
will be supplemented by weekly discussion sections on readings drawn from
a general art historical survey and a course pack. Written work will consist
of two short papers on objects in the Kelsey Museum and the Museum of Art;
there will be a midterm and a final examination. This course, with History
of Art 102, is meant to provide a foundation in the history of western art
and will be useful to students taking higher level courses in the department.
Cost:2 WL:4 (Thomas)
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108/CAAS 108. Introduction to African
Art. (4). (HU).
This course offers a general introduction to the arts of African cultures
south of the Sahara desert. It reviews the history of African art from about
10,000 B.C. through the twentieth century. The survey is based on a carefully
selected corpus comprising prehistoric rock paintings and engravings, old
and recent sculptures in terracotta, metal, wood, and ivory; and textile
and bodily arts. While it adopts an historical approach, it will also explore
some prevailing themes in African art, such as African approaches to representation
and the social function and meaning of art. Last, it will highlight a number
of significant cultural transformations that resulted from contact between
African peoples and western societies. Scheduled lectures will be supplemented
with written and reading assignments, videofilms, tours of African art exhibitions
in museums and private collections in the Detroit area. Cost:2 WL:4 (Quarcoopome)
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112/Art 112. History of Photography.
(4). (HU).
This course will explore the history of photography in the 19th and 20th
century through a comparative study of photographs, photographers, and theories
about the nature of photography. The goal is to create an understanding
of the themes and issues, concepts and contexts associated with photographic
image-making - from American and international perspectives. One intent
is that at the end of the study the student should be aware of some of the
diverse concerns in present day photography and be able to identify their
origins and influences. The class should interest students from a wide range
of disciplines. Class structure combines three hours of lecture sessions
a week for general structured presentation of material, with one hour of
discussion section that meets weekly for deeper study of the main theories
about the nature of photography and its role in shaping our understanding
of the world. Assignments will include readings from course texts and completion
of some computer-based tasks using special programs developed for use with
this program. Grades will be based on participation in discussion sections,
three essays, and a final exam. Cost:2 WL:4 (Kusnerz)
See: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lily/web112.html
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113/Art 113. Introduction to the Visual
Arts. This course is for non-art majors only. (3). (Excl).
Visual arts are a part of the human experience in all cultures and all time
periods. The ability to appreciate, to understand, and to assess the quality
of visual art can enrich a person's life and broaden one's thinking. This
course will introduce students having no formal art or art historical background
to the major forms of visual expression through human history from the Stone
Age to the present. We will examine works of art in various media such as
painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, sculpture, architecture, graphics,
and industrial design. Students will learn how artists use the language
of form to communicate information, to express emotion, and to explore the
world of nature and the world of the mind. Students will learn the basic
techniques of the various media. Students will learn how the art of a time
and place defines and expands the boundaries of that culture. Assigned readings
and visits to museums and galleries will help students become critical consumers
of the visual culture as they learn to see, appreciate, and assess art forms.
Requirements include periodic quizzes, a final exam, and a term paper. Students
will also make some ungraded drawings and paintings as analytical tools.
(Kapetan)
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194. First Year Seminar. Only
first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register
for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (3).
(HU).
Section 001 - From Monk to Courtesan: The Portrayal of Extraordinary Men
and Beautiful Women in Japanese Painting and Prints. What is involved
in the creation of a striking likeness of a monk in Japan? Of an alluring
image of a courtesan? How have artists responded to the challenge of portraying
a revered Zen master, a celebrated beauty, an exiled emperor, a ruthless
warrior? Follow the trajectory of ten centuries of Japanese portrait-making,
from the earliest attempts to preserve the physical remains of deceased
monks to the latest in the fashionable portrayal of women. Explore the issues
involved in achieving or eschewing physiognomic accuracy and along the way
learn to distinguish stylistic conventions for aristocrats and warriors,
urban intellectuals and entertainers, courtesans and female impersonators,
monks and nuns. Course requirements include weekly readings and short written
assignments, brief quizzes and class participation, and a final paper. Cost:3
WL:4 (Sharf)
Section 002 - Art and Life in Nineteenth-Century America. This seminar asks what the study of art history and American history can tell us about each other through an intensive focus on a complex period in the past. The nineteenth century saw the transformation of the United States from a rural to an industrial, urban nation; a Civil War that divided the country, Westward expansion that enlarged it, and waves of immmigration and border movement that changed its population; and the emergence of women into public and professional life. American artists and architects sought to rival their European comtemporaries and eventually produce distinctive works that responded to national trends, culminating in such icons as the landscape photographs of Carlton Watkins, the realist paintings of Winslow Homer, and the Impressionism of Mary Cassatt, and the rise of a new architectural form: the skyscraper.
Through hands-on research in archives and visits to see original works of art in museums, we will examine both developments in the fine arts and the impact of historical change on the material and popular culture of everyday life in America. Among the topics to be investigated are: the role of art in creating an image of America as "nature's nation"; machine-made art and machines-as-art; the West as viewed from the painter's easel, the photographer's lens, and the frontier homestead; the interaction of Native American artists, Anglo settlers, and the tourist trade; the creation of Civil War monuments; parlors and the ideology of the Victorian home; the brooding psychology in the Gilded-Age paintings of Eakins, Homer, and Cassatt. Reading assignments include historical sources and recent critical interpretations of nineteenth-century American art. Requirements: informed participation in class discussion; two research projects using collections on campus and on-line. The class will include field trips to the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Henry Ford Museum, and possibly to the Cassatt exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Zurier)
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214/CAAS 214. Introduction to African-American
Art. (3). (Excl).
This course surveys the visual arts of African descendants residing in the
United States. Beginning approximately in the mid-eighteenth century, and
continuing until the present, the lectures and discussions will cover important
topics, issues, and art productions within the context of African-American
cultural history. Subject-matter, style and technique, training and patronage,
content and meaning will be examined as a means of identifying and comprehending
the social, cultural, political, and economic milieu of the African-American
vis-à-vis mainstream Euro-American society. Course topics
are Domestic and Folk Arts and Architecture (19th Century), Fine Arts, Painting
and Sculpture (19th Century), From the New Negro Movement to the Cold War
Era (20th Century), Civil Rights Movement and Black Nationalism (20th Century),
and Postmodernism and the Construction of Identity (20th Century). Within
each topic, one or more specific themes will be examined such as the diaspora
of Africa in 19th-century folk/popular art forms, the abolitionist as patron,
the muralist tradition, Black aesthetics, and the ancestral legacy of African
art. Students will be expected to be familiar with the course text and requisite
images in preparation for exams. Exams cover slide identification and one
brief essay. Course requisite: three exams. Cost:1 (Patton)
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221/Class. Arch. 221. Introduction to
Greek Archaeology. (4). (HU).
See Classical Archaeology 221. (Pedley)
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250/MARC 250. Italian Renaissance Art,
I. (4). (HU).
Section 001 - The Art of Florence and Northern Italy, 1300-1490. How
did the works of Giotto, Donatello, Masaccio, Mantegna, and Leonardo come
to be regarded as so important in the history of western art? Why, even
within the artists' lifetimes, was their art regarded as signaling a "rebirth"
of painting and sculpture? To what extent was their legendary reputation
seen to serve other social and political interests? This course aims at
an understanding of early Renaissance art by seeing it in relation to broader
transformations in the culture of the Italian city in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. The city will be viewed as the site of divergent uses
of art by different communities and interests, who employed images for the
expression of identity and status and as a strategic means of producing
consensus or exploiting social division. Lectures and sections will be organized
around the exploration of particular genres of visual media - the altarpiece,
mural painting, the multimedia chapel, portraiture, and monumental public
sculpture. All of these forms are explored as modes of argument and as points
of interaction among networks of clients, artists, social groups and institutions
(guilds, family associations, courts, confraternities), and figures of authority
(saints, mystics, Popes, rulers). From this multiplicity of uses and responses
emerged highly varied conceptions of the nature of the image and the role
of the artist, which in turn influenced artistic performance. Cost:2 WL:4
(Campbell)
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260. European Painting and Sculpture
of the Seventeenth Century. (4). (HU).
This course explores the vital, many-faceted visual culture of seventeenth-century
Europe with particular focus on the pictorial and plastic arts. Lectures
will consider the extraordinary achievements of such well-known figures
as Caravaggio, the Carracci, Artemisia Gentileschi, Bernini, Velázquez,
Poussin, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, as well as a range of
other visually interesting but less familiar works by their contemporaries.
We will be looking not only at painting and sculpture, but also at drawings,
prints, maps, and book illustrations, in order glimpse the many ways in
which the visual arts came to be used and valued in the seventeenth century.
Lectures and weekly readings are designed to situate art within discussions
of scientific inquiry, religious practices, politics, cultural encounter,
social and economic life. Requirements include informed participation in
discussion sections, a midterm quiz, a final examination, and a short paper.
Cost:2 WL:2 (Brusati)
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271. Origins of Modernism: Art and Culture
in Nineteenth-Century France. (4). (HU).
This course examines a series of remarkable episodes in modern French painting,
from the establishment of an official, State-sponsored form of Classicism
to the succession of movements - Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, and
Neo-Impressionism - that emerged in opposition to official art. The Nineteenth
Century is the period during which modern art developed its characteristic
strategies and behavioral patterns: an insistence on innovation, originality,
and individuality; a contentious involvement with tradition; a critical
relationship with both institutional and commercial culture; and a somewhat
strained allegiance with radical politics and alternative subcultures. It
is also the period that witnessed a thorough-going reassessment of visual
representation, and a parallel concern with the possibilities and limitations
of the medium of painting. The course is designed to encourage close readings
of images (by David, Gericault, Manet, Degas, Seurat, Cezanne, et al.)
within the parameters of their historical contexts and of recent critical
debate. Cost:2 (Lay)
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