Art History

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.

This course offers a study of contemporary art movements and the social, political, and economic context in which they developed. It analyzes works of art, from the origins of contemporary art in the mid-19th century to the present day, alongside corresponding primary sources and art history texts.

This is the first part of a two-semester course covering the period from the 15th and 17th centuries. It focuses on Renaissance and Baroque periods. 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.

In this course, students examine the art and visual culture of Australia's Indigenous people. Students are introduced to fundamental cultural concepts that are significant to Aboriginal people in terms of their visual culture and art-making. Ancient rock art, bark painting, post-contact art, and urban-based contemporary art are examined and discussed.

This course examines theories of museum informatization, including introduction; digital management of museum collections; digital museums (including digital tour/on-site multimedia display content and online exhibition digital methods); theories and technologies of the museum collection information management system including the function setting principle and operation method; text and multimedia information collection.

This course explores the histories of global connectedness in art and architecture from different regions in historical perspective, taking into consideration commonalities as well as the aesthetics of difference. The course starts with Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, when new maritime routes created the conditions for a truly globalized world. Artworks moved across cultural zones and into new contexts, resulting in innovative materials, styles, and themes. They also became agents of cultural interaction, shaping encounters and related cultures of knowledge and consumption. In this period, furthermore, the groundwork was laid for the different European 'empires' that were characterized by imperialist and extractivist attitudes towards regions beyond Europe. As we move from the Early Modern period (c. 1400-1800) into the Modern (from c. 1800 onward), the course critically evaluates how artistic ‘encounters’ were often not of a peaceful nature but were shaped by the power imbalance of colonialism and slavery. The course considers how the rise of the discipline of Western art history, as rooted in European texts and institutions, coincided with sharply increasing imperialism as we focus on the concepts of colonialism and orientalism and their role in transnational interactions along with their afterlives. Finally, the course considers the interrelations between contemporary art and globalization. On the one hand, the contemporary period presents a re-thinking of art history, challenging Eurocentrism by expanding its potential scope to include different forms of artistic production from various geographies around the world. Does global art merely imply broadening the field of case studies, or does art history need to question and address its deep-rooted disciplinary assumptions against the currents of modernity and coloniality? What challenges, then, does the contemporary period present for the discipline of art history? How can art history contribute to the search for terms and categories that bridge different cultures, geographies, and histories? During this course, explore key texts and artworks in relation to the rich collections and galleries of the Netherlands and beyond that testify to this history of intensive global exchange.