Art History

The art libraries of major museums around the world are important places for art lovers, curators, and researchers to conduct research and studies. This course focuses on the importance and characteristics of specialized art libraries. The course also explores the exhibition catalogue collections of important art historical research centers in Europe and the United States, as well as specific examples of online resources provided by these research centers.  

This course analyzes the development of the central European art, architecture, and design between the 1880s and the 1910s. Focusing on the Austro-Hungarian empire (in particular the cities of Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Cracow) and the Balkans (e.g. Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia), it examines significant new material expression in this key crucible of modern cultural forces. Emphasis is placed on the relationship between the artistic search for cultural and personal identity, the state, and contemporary society. Issues of nationalism and supranationalism are analyzed in the course of studying the work of such groups as the Austrian Secession, Wiener Werkstätte, Gödöllő colony, Mánes, and Sztuka societies. Major figures include Klimt, (Otto) Wagner, Hoffmann, Lechner, Luksch-Makowsky, Mucha, Petrović, Rippl-Rónai, and Wyspiański.

This course examines Buddhism and its art from ancient times to the present. Rather than portraying Buddhist art as a timeless ideal, the class deploys case studies to foreground the dynamics of its development. In particular, it examines how styles, iconographies, and media have been purposefully selected and reconfigured in varying contexts across and beyond Asia. The class also explores contemporary art inspired by Buddhist concepts, and the role of collecting and curatorial practices in shaping the interpretation of Buddhist artifacts.

The first part of this course introduces central topics in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of art. It mainly examines contemporary English-speaking authors, but occasionally also considers historical figures. The second part of the course examines more in detail philosophical problems related to art criticism. At the end of the course, students will have a general understanding of some crucial issues in the field of the philosophy of art, and a detailed understanding of a recent work on the philosophy of art criticism.

This course examines key issues and debates in western feminist art movements between the 1960s and 1980s. The inclusion of case studies on the works of women artists, including Mona Hatoum, Nikki S. Lee, Yin Xiuzhen, Shen Yuan, and Megumi Akiyoshi. It also covers new artistic contents, and alternative cultural formats and theoretical paradigms to the on-going construction of a feminist history of art within the increasingly interconnected, yet unevenly developed globalizing contemporary society.

Opera is one of the best traditional Chinese culture, in many existing drama and stage performance, not only containing Chinese ancient and modern aspects of life, but also presenting the emotion, Chinese sentiment and ideas in the world. In this course, through the interpretation of the opera text, you will learn to analyze and display the opera stage imagery, then reveal the close relationship between opera and traditional Chinese culture.

This course examines the fundamental aspects of the history of art criticism from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, with a strong focus on the contextualisation of the different methodological approaches related to the analysis of works of art. By analyzing art criticism as its own distinctive genre, it will focus specifically on the advantages and dangers of close description, as well as the discussion of the broader questions: What is the nature of criticism and critique? Are critics judges, historians, participants or creative agents in their own right? A wide range of figures that characterized art criticism and defined the practice will be discussed, ranging from Denis Diderot to Susan Sontag and, more recently, Hilton Als. Through a selection of significant examples of their work, the course discusses how the functions and audiences of art criticism have changed, and how its writing has not only helped to criticize, but also simultaneously shape the practice of art.

Political leaders use architecture to convey power, to express political ideas, and to influence how people think and act. In 20th-century Europe, political ideologies including fascism, communism, colonialism, and democracy influenced the creation of new buildings and cities. Students explore those ideologies through the spaces that they produced, and a selection of examples spanning between Hitler’s plans to transform Berlin to public swimming pools in post-war Britain. Under the banner of democracy, students also explore how forces within Irish politics impacted the Dublin cityscape. This is a history of modern Europe told through the mark left by political actors upon architecture and cities.

The course considers such matters as the iconography of major religious and mythological subjects, issues of style and the functions of works of art and architecture. Art works are considered in the context of influential factors such as historical period, geographic location, inter-cultural influences and the prevailing social, political and religious environments. This course offers a survey of art and architecture up to the end of 17th century, with a focus primarily, although not exclusively, on the Western world. It provides an introduction to the critical analysis of artworks, including painting, mosaic, fine metalwork, manuscripts, sculpture and building types.

This course offers an in-depth discussion of key topics in the history of Brazilian art and its relation to other cultural spheres such as architecture, literature, and popular music. It examines the trajectory of avant-gardism in Brazil, starting with its consolidation in 1920s debates apropos of notions such as futurism, modernismo and
anthropophagy; its constructivist inflection in the 1950s, with the appearance of Museums of Modern Art and the São Paulo Biennial and provisional cultural alliances with cosmopolitan sectors of an emergent urban bourgeoisie; the growing social and political tensions that marked the resurgence of figuration in the 1960s and the
development of what artist Hélio Oiticica called his “environmental program”; and finally the dispersion of the avant-garde during the harshest years of the military regime and the rise of new experimental tendencies by Brazilian artists who either remained in the country or took exile abroad in the 1970s. The course also discusses the broader background of modernism in Brazil (as opposed to the narrower sphere of the avant-garde) and developments in the fields of architecture (such as the construction of Brasília) and popular music (such as musical Tropicalism) that proved impactful also to visual artists. Throughout the course, students investigate the issue of nationalism x internationalism in the arts, highlighting different strategies of critical assimilation of international tendencies by Brazilian artists and critics.
The course includes not only classroom lectures and discussion seminars, but also occasional visits to museums and architectural landmarks in Rio de Janeiro.