151. Art and Ideas East and West. (3). (HU).
In this course a comparative study is made of eastern and western cultural forms, ideas, and values as these are reflected in examples of painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as in poetry, music, and other forms of creative expression. This course also compares western and eastern attitudes toward significant cultural themes such as time, nature, death, God, love, and action. Students will be assessed a lab fee of $15. Cost:2 WL:4 (Spink)
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-19th 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-¦-vis mainstream Euro-American society. Course topics are: 19th Century Domestic and Folk arts and Architecture, 19th Century Fine Arts: Painting and Sculpture, 20th Century: From the New Negro Movement to the Cold War Era, 20th Century: Civil Rights Movement and Black Nationalism, 20th Century: Postmodernism and the Construction of Identity. 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. There will be assigned readings from class text and/or course pack, and an object-study list (slide identification) for exam preparation. There will be two scheduled exams (19th and 20th Centuries), and a research paper/project. Students are encouraged to meet and research an undocumented Black artist or propose an interdisciplinary topic such as the aesthetics of improvisation. (Patton)
394. Special Topics. (1-3). (Excl). May
be elected for credit more than once.
Section 101 – Botanical Gardens, Zoos, and Scientific Voyages:
Images of Natural History, 1760-1860. (1 credit). This class will
meet May 7 through May 28. Students will explore relationships
between scientific inquiry, colonial expansion, and visual representation.
Images of natural history blur the boundary of fine art and scientific
document. They also describe complicated relationships between
Self and Other, or exotic. What is the role of aesthetics in such
work? What is the role of politics? Artists who traveled with
Captain James Cook to the South Pacific, artists who traveled
independently in Latin America, as well as artists who worked
at "home" in botanical gardens and zoos created pictures
of landscape and likenesses of plants and animals. How might topographical
map-making and visual descriptions of plant and animal life express
desired or actual dominion over foreign soil (or, in some instances, one's homeland)? During this short course, students will consider
questions regarding artists' contributions to the interests of
scientific inquiry and colonial expansion. Cost:1 WL:4 (Anderson)
Section 102 – Picturing Memory: Case Studies of Post-War
Representation. Two Case Studies: The Holocaust and Japanese American
Internment. Working outwards from two different World War
II era examples – the Genocide of the European Jewish community
and Japanese American internment in the United States – this course
will explore attempts by individuals and groups to represent and remember these difficult events. Through lectures, readings, screenings
and guest speakers, we will engage a wide range of media, (including
photography/film/video, painting, installation, poetry, popular
press, oral testimony and public monuments), as well as various
perspectives (personal, communal, national) to examine the role
of memory in the continual shaping of cultural and ethnic identities.
Requirements for the course will be regular journal entries, short
weekly response papers based on readings, class participation, and a final project/paper. The final project will be tailored
to students' specific interests. Creative final projects will
be encouraged. This is an interdisciplinary course suited to students
in a wide range of disciplines including Art History, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, History, Philosophy, Psychology, American Culture, and Fine Art. Cost:2 WL:4 (Alinder/Lehrer)
394. Special Topics. (3). (Excl). May
be elected for credit more than once.
Section 201 – Indian Painting: Warriors & Lovers. Indian
paintings reflect the history and multivalent culture of a vast
and very ancient land. This course examines how the different
cultural systems within India responded to and interpreted life, faith and each other, not organized historically in terms of the
development of form, but by genre. Questions we will consider
include: In what manner does the Indian language of art represent thinking of more than just phenomenal reality? To what extent
are the arts of music, poetry, dance, and painting believed to
be key expressions of the human soul? and How are paintings capable
of revealing the dominance of an emotional state? Thus, the discourses
of love and war, subjects which obsessed Indian artists, will
guide the class through the range and diversity of Indian painting, in the attempt to recognize indigenous and local social perspectives.
Viewings of private and public collections will supplement class
lectures and discussions. Students will be required to write two
short papers, as well as take two short tests. Cost:2 WL:4 (Totton)
Section 202 – Medieval Visions of Romance and Chivalry. Some elements of courtly art of the twelfth through fourteenth centuries seem very glamorous to the modern eye. Indeed, recent authors argue that artists and patrons deliberately created a "glamorous" image. Artists used techniques comparable to those of Madison Avenue: exotic elements, "sex-appeal" in a sense related to our own, and often a focus on style and decoration over material value. At times, the function of courtly art was not far removed from that of modern consumer goods. This course examines courtly art in Europe and its Islamic roots, with a special focus on images of knights and lovers. It covers castles and palaces, illuminated manuscripts, ivories, pottery, clothing and textiles, including works in the University Museum of Art. Readings include primary sources and historical analysis as well as studies of material culture and consumer society. Cost:1 WL:4 (Waugh)
458. Florentine Sculpture of the Renaissance. Hist. of Art l02 or 250; or permission of instructor. (3). (Excl).
Following an introduction to the nature of sculpture as an
art form and a brief unit on innovative achievements in Italian
Medieval sculpture, the course will trace in detail the history
of Florentine sculpture from the sumptuous International Style through the genesis and evolution of Early Renaissance realism
to the heroic vision of the High Renaissance. Lectures on a select
number of masters (above all Ghiberti, Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo) will consider the works as at once
products of specific sociocultural contexts, as testimony to special
creative genius, and as aesthetic objects which by instructing
and moving us can change us forever. The lectures, keyed to a
syllabus, will be supplemented by required and optional reading
(for which a bibliography and reserve books will be provided)
and continual study of the visual material, all leading to evaluation
by way of a midterm and a final examination, both of essay format.
Cost:2 WL:4 (Bissell)
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