Art History

This course explores the visual arts of Korea from the early 20th century to the present. It covers the period beginning with the Japanese colonial rule of Korea and continuing through the Korean War, Korea's division into North and South, industrialization, democratization, and globalization. The course discusses the historical trajectory of Korean visual art produced in South and North Korea and by the Korean diasporas, examining how it has shaped and reflected each period's political, cultural, and socio-economic changes and concerns. Artworks in diverse media, including painting, sculpture, and other alternative art forms, such as installation, video art, and performance, will be considered, with particular attention given to their place within the global art scene.

Paris has long been recognized as a center for both revolutionary activism and innovative artistic production. This course explores the coming together of these two domains through diverse visual manifestations of social justice and advocacy produced and/or displayed in Paris from the Revolution to the present, including painting, sculpture, architecture, performance, installations, photography, video, posters, graffiti, and street art. Students explore the ways in which the urban landscape bears the scars of revolutionary destruction and serves as a showcase for politically engaged production, housed in its museums or visible to all on the streets. The instructional format consists of both lectures and group site visits throughout the city, to venues including public and private museums, which are studied both for their content, architecture, and their politics of display; galleries, artist collectives, and Parisian neighborhoods with outdoor art displays.

The course covers architectural appreciation, architectural criticism, and creative thinking in architectural design. By interpreting the development history of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign architectural and environmental landscape aesthetic creation, and important achievements and creative thinking of designers in architectural creation, the course cultivates students' independent thinking ability and creative thinking, and opens up creative imagination and enlightenment.

This course is part of the LM degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by consent of the instructor. The course provides a historical overview of the major figures of Italian Renaissance architecture from 1400 to 1600—including Brunelleschi, Alberti, Bramante, Raphael, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Michelangelo, Peruzzi, Giulio Romano, Sanmicheli, Sansovino, and Palladio, as well as an outlook on a selection of European Renaissance architects. The architects are analyzed within the cities or countries they operated and are compared with the cultural, social, and political local context. The second part of the course is an overview on a selection of European courts and on the role of humanistic architecture at the dawn of colonialism. Issues such as local antiquities, revival and survival, rules and license, theory of architecture, drawings, and graphic conventions are addressed throughout the course.

This course examines the link between history and music. Opera, which was born and developed in Italy, went through the Golden Age of Opera when it became the major entertainment for Italian aristocracy. The course closely examines elements that Opera consists of: orchestra, conductor, state, lighting etc., and compares western opera based on Belcanto method with oriental traditional arts. 

This course introduces the essential principles of art history, and presents a chronological study of the main artistic manifestations of the Western World from prehistory to the Middle Ages. Special attention is paid to the classical antiquity and the Romanesque and Gothic medieval styles.