Art History

This course focuses on contemporary art and architecture. Students examine the historical and cultural background of the contemporary art movement in the United States in the 1960s and discuss artworks and artists from this period as well. The course examines the relationships between visual arts, historicity, and issues both at the aesthetic as well as the socio-political level in order to revisit a history of contemporary art of the 20th century structured according to a succession of movements. It observes the distinctions that exist between West Coast art and East Coast art in the United States.

This course begins with a radical group of artists named the "Fauves," meaning wild beasts, for their unconventional and daring use of color. The 20th century was a time of great change which artists responded to in different ways. It saw the explosion of the "isms": cubism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, etc. The course explores and discusses the vision and techniques of these movements.

This course chronologically examines art in its historical context from the 15th century to the present. Emphasis is placed on the main styles of Western art, specifically from the Renaissance, baroque, and neoclassical periods in addition to modernism and the avant-garde.

This workshop provides a firm grounding in cultural, social, historical, and practical aspects of art in contemporary Japan. The course provides engagement in diverse activities both in and outside of class – workshops, field trips and research - within the multicultural student body. 

The course examines pre-Columbian art history in one or more areas of the American continent. The course explores the potential and limits of applying the “art” category to pre-colonial indigenous productions. The course includes an overview of fundamental elements of the current debate on the anthropology of art. The course analyzes the artistic productions of Mesoamerican pre-colonial indigenous peoples to explore their multiple aesthetic, religious, and political functions. The course discusses how such products were perceived, collected, and exhibited in museums in modern times, focusing attention on the objects’ materiality and agency, here perceived as their ability to continuously arouse new questions and discourses. The course examines topics including art and anthropology; artistic practices in ancient Mesoamerica (Olmecs, Maya, Teotihuacan, Aztecs); Indigenous American artefacts in early modern European collections; birth and transformation of the Ethnographic museum, with specific focus on the musealization of Haida artifacts; and contemporary indigenous art and politics of display.

The millennium following the collapse of the Roman Empire saw the development in Europe of a radically new form of civilization now called "medieval." With its nuns and monks, knights and nobles, troubadours and artists, plagues and famines, crusades and cathedrals, and cities and castles, the Middle Ages left an indelible mark on the western world. Rome, the city of the Popes, played a key role in medieval western civilization and was the center of a long-lasting tradition of pilgrimage to the apostles' and martyrs' relics preserved in its many churches. This course is intended as a broad survey of medieval culture and history with a specific emphasis on Rome. The course takes advantage of the city's abundance of medieval monuments and works of art: mosaics and paintings, sculptures, and religious architecture, which are analyzed in comparison to the artistic production of the rest of Europe, the Byzantine East, and other cultural contexts such as the Islamic world. The reading of relevant historical and literary texts completes the course.