Art History

This course examines the history of Daoist art from its pre-Daoist origin to its popularization in Late Imperial period. Students will be introduced to the visual and iconographic features of the Daoist pantheon and the rich material culture associated with Daoist rituals. Emphasis is also placed on considering Daoist art’s cultural and political contexts.

Prompted by decolonization, postcolonialism, globalization, and the globalized contemporary art world of the present day, many have suggested that narratives of modern art focused on Western cities such as Paris and New York are now provincial or inadequate. This course examines the rise of early- to mid-20th century "modern" art in a range of countries not usually considered in Western survey courses. With the 1900-1960 date range setting its boundaries, the course involves both close examinations of individual works by key figures, and broad comparative examination of movements and styles across times and places. As well as introducing students to some of the figures and movements that have been taken to show the distinctive nature of modernisms around the world, it asks broader theoretical questions about the status of art history and the study of modernism.

This course examines city and representation in Asia. Our period focus is the uneven context of modernization. The course will roughly cover developments beginning in the 1850s through the 1970s (and today). Topics discussed will include geography, landscape, and the inscription and uses of historical memory (The Past City); modernism and the rise of urban culture in the twentieth century (The Modernist City); urban forms in the age of imperialism (The Colonial City); and developmentalism and its critique in the post-war/post-independence periods (The City of the Future). it concludes with an exploration of diasporic formations, including in Vancouver—The Diasporic City.

This course examines the history of imperial and colonial archaeology in the nineteenth and twentieth century, and the ways in which archaeological extraction often went hand-in-hand with the European and North American imperial or colonial ventures. It covers the artefacts that arrived in museums as a result of these ventures and what that says about our current “encyclopedic” style of museum that purports to share knowledge of the world yet is also a testament to western intervention in Indigenous societies at home and in other parts of the world. 

This course navigates across European art movements, highlighting an intensive exchange and collaboration between German and Russian artistic and intellectual circles involved in the radical avant-garde practices after the First World War and the October Revolution (1917-1930). Covering debates on the artistic strategies of intervention in society, politics, everyday life, mass media, and urban planning, each session focuses on a theoretical response to a specific problem and a case study of artistic practices across various media and forms, including fine art, architecture, cinema, literature, and theatre.

This course examines various arts and themes from a region now called Asia, from the past to the present. Rather than providing a chronological or regional survey, it is designed to introduce students to the similarities and differences among cultures, their histories, and the skills needed to critically analyze visual materials from these regions. The primary focus will be on China, allowing students to utilize external resources such as museums and art galleries in Hong Kong. The course aims to highlight key ideas and themes in Asian art history, including how these concepts are transmitted, adapted, and transformed across different regions. Students will gain insights into fundamental aspects of Asian art, such as Buddhism, the Confucian code of authority, the significance of ink and brush painting, and contemporary art discussions that have global impact. 

This is the second part of a two-semester course covering the period from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. It focuses on the arts of the Classicism. Rather than the global and idealizing point of view, often confining to the "family novel" of the great heroic artists, it places greater emphasis on a whole series of problems, artistic and inartistic, considered as sensitive questions: problems of space, place of Antiquity, religious devotion, funerary practices, political images, mannerisms and bodily movements, and mannerism and technique. In other words, a history of forms and styles allows a deeper questioning of the profound inventiveness of the visual productions of the Renaissance and the Baroque age.

Starting with Linda Nochlin’s 1971 essay WHY HAVE THERE BEEN NO GREAT WOMEN ARTISTS?, this course considers the key global currents of fifty years of feminist art around a number of themes. These include feminist art about the body and sexuality, women’s domestic labor, feminist approaches to identity, motherhood and childcare, violence against women, feminism, and the art historical canon.

The course investigates the relationship between twentieth-century political-social movements and the artistic imaginary that these contribute to create, disseminate, transform and by which they are in turn influenced. Each artistic expression (from painting to design, from theater to music, from architecture to literature) has its own specific relationship with the historical conditions in which it was born and which in turn it contributed to create. The course presents a series of specific conjunctions between artistic forms and political-social events of the last 150 years. By the end of the course, students are expected to know the history of Italian and international social movements of the last century; how to analyse the cultural and artistic forms of these movements; how to relate the political transformation to the production of the artistic imagination; and to recognize the influence of social movements on contemporary art forms.

This course introduces Chinese and Western art concepts, explain the definition of art, understand the characteristics of art and artworks, and understand the status and role of art in culture. The whole chapter uses critical thinking to highly explain the current social issues caused by design, and guides students to become consumers with reasonable aesthetic abilities and aesthetic standards for design works.