Art History

This course examines the diversity and specificity of contemporary popular arts using aesthetic perspectives. We analyze popular arts as a everyday experience as well as a collective experience using the main concepts of aesthetics such as art, aesthetic experience, and aesthetic sensitivity, and thereby cultivate liberal humanity that connects cultural experiences with critical theories. Through classes that look back on popular arts as easy, familiar, and entertaining, from critical and reflective approaches, we seek to gain a new perspective on the popular 'art'. To this end, we survey previous studies, debates, and perspectives on "popular art". We also look at representative examples which show the transformations of genres and medium, and examine how they have forces the aesthetics to adjust its methodologies and perspectives. Popular art is not only for the masses, but also an art given to the masses. And it is often created by the masses themselves. Through the multifaceted analysis and understanding of the stereoscopic aspect of these popular arts, we gain a new dimension of public, culture, art, and sensitivity.

The course focuses on the principal facts and crucial questions regarding Italian art from the fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century. In particular, the technical methods that define style and form, iconography, and technique and the connections to the historical, social and cultural timeframe in which the works of art were produced. Students are expected to become familiar with the key themes and particularities of the period along with the ambitions of the artists themselves. Students are also expected to be able to identify and comment on the works of the most representative artists and movements of the periods. It begins with the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci and concludes with the careers of Antonio Canova and Jacques-Louis David. It focuses on artists, movements, and essential topics, and at the same time provides students with the tools for understanding and analyzing the works of art, in relation to their historical and cultural context, their style, iconography, and technique. Students are expected to complete the knowledge and skills acquired during lectures with the assigned background readings.

This course provides a study of the history of Aesthetics in both Asia and the Western world. It also examines the structure of aesthetics and its social impact.

This course is an interdisciplinary course that explores the relationship between art and architecture through visits to London’s famous museums, art galleries, public artworks, and iconic architecture. Students analyze the impact architecture has on viewing art with seminars which take place in some of London’s most famous museums and galleries such as the British Museum, Tate Modern, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The course then consider alternatives to this model, including more recent curatorial phenomena by organizations such as ArtAngel which commission contemporary artists to make artworks in unexpected places: from a performance in an abandoned Underground station to a concrete cast of an entire house. Through the lens of specific case studies of art and architecture, the course examines relevant critical issues such as race, globalization, and environmental justice. In doing so, students interrogate how urban circumstances have shaped issues in modern and contemporary art and architecture in London.

This gallery-based course focuses on developments in modern art during the 20th century in relation to artistic concepts of the future, looking at how these changed as the century progressed and earlier imagined futures were not realized. Themes discussed include historical avant-gardes, the Dada group, surrealism, utopion ideas, futurism, and activist art from Europe and the US in the 1960s.