Art History

This course explores the theory and history of cinema, from a historical perspective, with different considerations: historical, aesthetic, linguistic, industrial, technological, and sociological.

The content, form of teaching, and form of assessment for the Current Topics in Art History course vary from semester to semester. The spring 2022 course discusses the following topics.

Why would Duke Phillip the Good of Burgundy want to eat the face of Christ? This seemingly bizarre question becomes answerable during this course, which explores the fascinating world of medieval religious objects and images (ca. 1050-1500 CE). In this period a broad array of items - ranging from unsightly pieces of bone and rock as well as simple images in woodprint, to outstandingly fine paintings, sculpture and architecture - offered those interested a means of connecting higher powers and practicing religious devotion. Why and how could these holy items play such an instrumental role? Which ideas formed the ideological basis for their production and consumption? This course considers the broader religious culture at the time to answer these questions.

This course explores how various forms of art, especially painting and architecture, have served to establish and strengthen the political cohesion of the young American nation. After defining key concepts, the course focuses on landscape painting in the 19th century, which was dedicated to the majesty of American landscapes. On the architectural level, it studies classicism as well as specific American forms of architecture. The course provides an opportunity analyze an artistic work in its historical and cultural context through the prism of building a national identity.

This course focuses on the history of the 1960s in America and connects it to global and American artistic reactions. It studies mediums such as sculpture, painting, text, and performance. The course explores David Hammons and the connection of his work to the history of the civil rights movement in America.

This course examines Japanese painting, calligraphy and craftwork from from the ancient through the early modern periods, with a focus on the Edo period (1615-1868), especially the Rimpa school associated with Ogata Korin. Students consider Japanese artistic products in light of various concepts, including “classicism,” “revival,” “school,” “decoration,” and “design.”

Renaissance art is often seen as the conceptual anchor for a conservative type of art history that focuses on great male artists and their revival of a classical past. This course uses recent research to challenge the idea, showing how old master painting can speak to current issues of sexual, gender, and political identity. Focusing on different roles for women, students investigate how visual culture promotes and challenges ideas of what it means to be female. Students look at women as archetypes of beauty, as wives, prostitutes, artists, patrons, poets, and witches. Students consider medical beliefs in women's inferiority; the notional link between male creativity and reproductive processes; and how the separation of 'art' from 'craft' denigrated traditional areas of women's expertise, notably textiles, to a lesser form of making.

This course explores European art from the fifteenth to the twentieth century with a particular focus on the travels of artists between urban centers like Florence, Rome, Venice, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris, London, and Berlin. The aim is to analyze how mobility contributed through the centuries to shape local identities as well as European cultural traditions common to different countries. The course presents iconic moments of the history of the arts in Europe by drawing a special attention to episodes of cultural exchanges and hybridization that arose from travelling artworks as well as from artists' travels. From the impact of Flemish art in fifteenth century Italy, to the stays of artists like Raphael and Michelangelo in early sixteenth-century papal Rome; from the rise of genre painting in the Flanders and the Dutch Republic of the Age of Explorations, to the “painters of modern life” in nineteenth-century Paris, and the European network of the Avant-gardes of the 1910s-1920s, students analyze the artworks and their authors in relation to the different historical contexts and the places of their creation. Recurrent is the focus on the complex interplay between artists and patrons, between local traditions, individual creativity and the broader social, political, and cultural contexts in which artworks were produced. Students gain understanding of the main art movements and relevant artists from the Renaissance to the postwar period and the special role played by travels in giving shape to a European cultural space. For the onsite program only: Visits to the outstanding collections of Berlin museums allow the participants to study original artifacts and to learn how to look closely at works of art.

This course introduces students to the full range of the material and visual culture of the ancient world in Rome from the Republican period to late Antiquity. The course includes a study of the built environment, from the major urban and imperial monuments to the forts and farms of the frontiers, the images housed in public buildings, houses and tombs, as well as portable objects, and the material residues of daily life and ritual. Students in this option undertake the spring term of the yearlong course Art & Archaeology of Greece & Rome.