Art History

This course examines art from a cultural point of view. It is divided into two parts. The first part discusses art as a whole with a focus on particular aspects of art as historical, social, and cultural practice. The second part focuses on the main types of analysis of art and the work of art.

The course serves as an introduction to the city of Prague as a specific cultural and social milieu, seen through the lens of its artists, architects, and their works. It is also intended – particularly through the reading list – to inspire an interest in the unique blend of storytelling and legend that underpins much of the city’s character and history. The scope of the course includes the major periods of European architectural development: from medieval to modern, as well as aspects specifically reflecting the history and heritage of the Czech nation. In structuring the course according to artistic styles and movements, the course recognizes the ways in which artists of widely varying origins and temperaments responded to, influenced, or disrupted the artistic conventions of the day, and how their work continues to reflect the social and political dynamics of the city.

This course introduces visual and material culture and built environments from the Ancient Near East through 1650. It traces developments in cultural and visual production at the center and periphery of the great empires of the pre-modern world with a focus on Asia, Europe, Africa, the Near East, and the Americas, with a consideration of political and religious institutions that regulated the production and use of images, objects, buildings and space. Focus is also on the impact of technological innovation and cultural exchange on art and architecture, including changes brought about by commercial expansion, cross-cultural contact, religious conversion, and pilgrimage. 

This course focuses on the most significant visual and artistic movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Beginning prior to WWII, the course examines how new design emerged as its own discipline in the United States. It also explores topics including material culture, kitsch, and feminism in design as it traces the progress of global visual culture to the current state.

This course examines exhibition planning, the transformation of exhibition planning and design, the significance of exhibition content planning, the conditions and basis of exhibition content planning, the operation process, exhibition planning methods and skills, and exhibition planning case analysis.

Course goals

After successful completion of this course, the student has:
 
•          developed a critical understanding of theories and philosophies dealing with visuality and the hierarchy of the senses 
•          developed a critical understanding of theories of visual culture and the relation they has with the visual arts
•          practiced with making critical understanding of visual culture theories and theories, criticism and philosophies dealing with visuality, the senses and the hierarchy of the senses
 

Content

The aim of this course is to make students familiar with and learn them to look critically at theories of visuality and theories that consider the senses, the importance of sight and the anti-ocular impulse. Today sight seems to be the most importance sense in our culture. But has this, from a historical point of view, always been so? Which theories and philosophies have questioned the dominance of sight and why? How has modern and contemporary art dealt with its own historically grown inclinations towards the eye? We will be considering ideas developed by philosophers such as Rene Descartes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord; psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan and look at art from amongst others Gustave Courbet, impressionists, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Martin Kippenberger…

Students familiarize themselves with the basic concepts of evolutionary theory and cognitive science in order to able to evaluate the controversies and debates within the framework of an evolutionary perspective on art, literature, and music. Several themes are discussed, such as: the mating mind; artistic universals; human nature: blank or pre-wired, the rhythm of poetry; the science of art; the origins of music, grooming, gossip, and the novel; art as adaptation vs. art as by-product. At the conclusion of this course, students are able to evaluate and apply Darwinist approaches to practices in art, literature, music, and religion.