Art History

The art and architecture of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and medieval Europe, presented in terms of their visual and cultural significance.

Credits: 4

A survey of the history of Western art, including the works of Masaccio, Van Eyck, Donatello, Bosch, Michelangelo, and Leonardo; followed by the rise of national styles in the 17th and 18th centuries in France and England. Nineteenth-century neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, impressionism, and postimpressionism, as well as modernism and developments in 20th-century art, are also covered. The discussion is required.

Credits: 3

COREQ: ARH1021

A discussion of the history of Western art, including the works of Masaccio, Van Eyck, Donatello, Bosch, Michelangelo, and Leonardo; followed by the rise of national styles in the 17th and 18th centuries in France and England. Nineteenth-century neoclassicism, romanticism, realism, impressionism, and postimpressionism, as well as modernism and developments in 20th-century art, are also covered.

Credits: 1

COREQ: ARH1020

In this seminar-style course, freshmen will explore the aesthetic, historical, and literary context of a given exhibition at the Neuberger Museum of Art. Through close observation, readings, and discussion, students will gain a deep knowledge of the artists in the exhibition, the aesthetic and social questions relevant to the artists’ work, and the curatorial logic guiding the exhibition.

Credits: 4

The work of Courbet, Manet, and the circle of the Impressionists sets the stage for the revolutionary modern movements of the 20th century (e.g., Cubism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism). The course concludes with those artists who came to prominence in America at the time of World War II.

Credits: 4

Introduces the diversity of practices that have dominated the history of art since World War II. Movements include: Abstract Expressionism, postwar European painting, happenings, Fluxus, Pop art, minimalism, conceptual art, performance art, and postmodernism. While European and North American art are emphasized, Asian and Latin American art are also addressed, particularly in the context of increasing globalization.

Credits: 4

Explores a range of topics, including the history of art museums, current theories and methodologies of display, and museum administration. In addition to class discussion, students meet with museum personnel from the Neuberger Museum of Art to learn the basics of museum operations, including curatorial work, exhibition design, registration, education and public programming, marketing, public relations, and finance.

Credits: 3

An examination of painting, sculpture, and architecture during the European Middle Ages, from the end of the Roman Empire through the Gothic era (c. 300–1400). French and Italian art are emphasized, but works from every part of Christian Europe, from England and Spain to the Byzantine Empire, are included.

Credits: 4

What is American about American art, and how have questions of race and ethnic and cultural identity shaped our visual culture? Offering an interpretive overview of American history through the lens of American culture, this course traces the formation of American identity from the eve of the European arrival in North America to shortly before the beginning of World War I.

Credits: 4

An examination of painting, sculpture, and architecture produced in Italy from the late 13th century to the late 15th century, including Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Piero della Francesca, and Botticelli.

Credits: 4

An examination of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Italy during the 16th century. The course begins with an in-depth study of the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bramante, Giorgione, and Titian, and then traces the evolution of the anticlassical style known as mannerism.

Credits: 4

Developments in Greek sculpture, vase painting, and architecture are traced from the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces (c. 1200 BCE) to the rise of the Roman Empire (1st and 2nd centuries BCE). Topics include the impact of Near Eastern civilizations on early Greek culture, the “classical” style’s florescence in 5th-century Athens, and the creation of the Hellenistic world by Alexander the Great.

Credits: 4

Begins by examining the relation between landscape and modernity in nineteenth-century painting and photography, ranging from Impressionism to travel and survey photography. We then track modern art’s changing relation to both the natural and built environment through land art, earth art, and the New Topographics movement of the 1960s and 1970s, concluding with contemporary art of the human-altered environment.

Credits: 4

This survey examines the arts and architecture of Africa in a global context from the 13th century to the present. In regional studies of the continent’s vast territory and diaspora, we analyze artworks to consider their roles in daily life, ritual, displays of power and prestige, artistic exploration and innovation, and more. Weekly visits to the Neuberger Museum are required.

Credits: 4

Examines the arts and architecture of Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries, engaging critically with how the field of modern and contemporary African art has developed. Students consider the influence of cross-cultural interactions on artistic practices, concepts of traditional, popular, and high art, colonialism and independence movements, primitivism, the rise of African modernisms, Afro-futurism, and more.

Credits: 4

An introduction to women artists from the Renaissance era through the Enlightenment, including Anguissola, Gentileschi, Vigée-Lebrun, and Kauffmann. Topics include access to professions, constructions of sexuality and gender, and attitudes toward the body in representation.

Credits: 4

Since the 1800s, the avant-gardes have tried to resist the delimited role of fine art in Western culture. In this course, students examine the strategies that avant-garde artists have used to reconnect their art practice with the more contentious areas of social and political life.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994

Students contextualize Beninese contemporary art and culture into the larger context of West African history. Readings in African history and post-colonial theory accompany hands-on workshops on how to make and write about art while visiting Benin. Students will write response papers, participate in class discussions, and make work using the methods presented in the course.

Credits: 4

Half of this team-taught course is devoted to examining Johannes Vermeer’s subjects, painting techniques, and reception. The other half examines the invention and use of comparable subjects and literary techniques during the three eras in which Vermeer figured prominently on the global stage: the Dutch Golden Age, the American Gilded Age, and the US financial boom of the 1990s.

Credits: 4

Takes a broad view of the aesthetic, historical, and conceptual development of modern and contemporary art and architecture of the Middle East. Topics include legacies of Orientalism; colonialism and decolonization; religion and secularization; relationships between art and nation-building; the rise of petrocultures; and questions of reception in the context of global contemporary art.

Credits: 4

Explores the history of twentieth-century architecture through the modern city, tracing the rise and occasional decline of the metropolis internationally. Students analyze how architects and urban planners proposed new visions of urban life and devised solutions for urgent social and political problems related to urbanization (e.g. public space, housing, gentrification, globalization).

Credits: 4

Explore the history of colors within global art history in a global context. Factors like the availability and cost of pigments, trade routes, religious and political meanings will be considered, along with the impact of industrial color production, globalization, marketing and digital technology on our understanding of colors.

Credits: 4

How and why do certain artworks become embroiled in major public debates, political scandals, and legal disputes? Beginning with the 1863 Salon des Refusés and continuing to the present day through an itinerary that travels the globe, students will examine the role of controversy in defining art, society, and how we imagine the relationship between the two.

Credits: 4

The paintings of Michelangelo Mersisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) had a revolutionary impact on the art world of his era, and the fascination with his extraordinary re-evaluation of pictorial effects continues to this day. This course examines Caravaggio’s art and career and considers responses to his work by other artists, including film directors, up to the present.

Credits: 4

This seminar focuses on the inception of the “readymade” and the abandonment of traditional forms of painting in the work of Marcel Duchamp, as well as the later development of readymade practices in the context of New York and Paris Dada. The history of the readymade as an artistic strategy is traced.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1010 Or ARH1020 Or ARH2050 Or ARH2060

Based on objects in the Neuberger Museum of Art. Students undertake independent research projects on works in the museum’s collection, investigating issues of documentation and interpretation. Limited to art history majors.

Credits: 3

Examines the relationship between the traditional crafts and the upheavals of modernity. Beginning with the Arts and Crafts movement in the 19th century and continuing to the present day, students explore how craft is framed as protest against industrialization, as utopian model of labor and exchange, and as aesthetic transformation.

Credits: 4

A study of African American painting, sculpture, architecture, prints, drawings, photography, film, and vernacular and popular art. The course begins with the Afro-Atlantic era and covers images made by Southern artists in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as artists associated with the “New Negro” movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement, and postmodernism.

Credits: 4

A study of artists and exhibitions from and about Africa, spanning a wide variety of traditional and new media. Important exhibitions like The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994 (2001) and Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora (2004) are analyzed. Themes include framing “Africa,” African identities, memory and place, and popular culture.

Credits: 4

Focuses on women artists and their place within the art-historical narrative of the 20th century. Students examine both the diverse practices of women artists and the reception of their work by critics, dealers, and collectors.

Credits: 4

An introduction to a wide range of photographic practices, from the medium’s conception in the 19th century to the ubiquitous online photo-sharing of today. Lectures have a special focus on the major artistic developments of photography. Topics include the significance of vernacular practices and their historical contexts in different parts of the world.

Credits: 4

Treats the history of photography in a global framework. Topics include the transformation of photography as it spreads from Europe to Africa, the Americas, Asia, and the Middle East; the decentering of European modernism in postmodernism; the role of photography in colonialism and decolonization; and its role in fine art as well as vernacular portraiture, journalism, documentary, and other fields.

Credits: 4

Examines the photographic medium from its earliest forms through the 1920s and 1930s. Topics include technical innovations, manipulations and interventions, function and reception, the relationship to the fine arts, and debates about photography’s claims of realism.

Credits: 4

A study of the German painter, printmaker, and draftsman Albrecht Dürer. The artist’s interests in science, politics, religious conflicts, sexuality, and the non-Western world are emphasized.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994 Or HIS1000-2994 Or HIS3000-3994 Or HIS4000-4994

Examines the history of painting and sculpture in Northern Europe from the 14th century to c. 1570. Flemish, Dutch, French, German, and Czech works are considered, with emphasis on such artists as the Limbourg Brothers, Van Eyck, Bosch, Dürer, and Bruegel.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994 Or HIS1000-2994 Or HIS3000-3994 Or HIS4000-4994

From ancient to neoclassical, Campania’s monuments are overwhelming with the riches of the past. Students delve into the histories of these great works and the ways they have shaped the modern world through the development of revivalist styles, academic disciplines, and tourism as a leisure activity. Includes visits to such historic sites as Pompeii, Paestum, Amalfi, and Naples.

Credits: 4

Investigates the themes, diverse genres, and major figures in 17th-century Dutch painting. Current problems of interpretation are examined, including the idea that there may have been a specifically northern form of visual thinking.

Credits: 4

Despite a growing interest in the work of the Russian avant-garde, there is still relatively little known about the artists of the late Russian Empire and the early Soviet Union. This course addresses the broad scope and multidisciplinary practice of Russian modernism, from the shocking primitivism of The Rite of Spring to the cold pragmatism of constructivism.

Credits: 4

An examination of the visual arts in Venice and its hinterland from the early Middle Ages to the end of the Venetian Republic in 1797. In addition to in-depth treatment of such artists as Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, and Tiepolo, the social context of the arts and the unique urban development of Venice are studied in detail.

Credits: 4

A study of the representation of Asians, Africans, and Americans (and their native lands) in European and American art from the end of the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. Some consideration is also given to the impact of non-Western arts on the European tradition.

Credits: 4

Design is both a noun and a verb. This course deals with the idea of design as a cultural phenomenon and a creative practice. Contemporary design and its making are situated within a broad methodological framework, drawing from existing and emerging theories in anthropology, art history, film studies, criticism, the history of technology, and architecture.

Credits: 4

Focuses on contemporary Latin American artists working in and out of Latin America: Gabriel Orozco, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Adriana Varejao, Teresa Margolles, Carlos Garaicoa, Betsabeé Romero, Javier Tellez, Nadín Ospina, Tania Bruguera, and Nicolás de Jesus. Students analyze the way these artists address such questions as urban violence, social inequality, pollution, emigration, and national identity.

Credits: 4

Examines the history of design as it parallels the history of technology and industrialization. Covering a variety of design disciplines, including architecture and urban planning, graphic design, fashion, and industrial design, this course focuses less on aesthetics than on the cultural programs that have shaped buildings, objects, and communication systems for more than two centuries.

Credits: 4

The simultaneous development of various painters associated with Impressionism (e.g., Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Cassatt) is presented. This radical new art movement is traced from the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874 to the last exhibition of 1886 and the appearance of the post-Impressionists. Students explore the shared relationships of the Impressionist artists.

Credits: 4

Examines a selection of poetry, short stories, novels, and films from different historical periods that foreground the visual arts through various means, including the character of the artist, the practices of art, the nature of creativity, and the critical reception of art.

Credits: 4

European art from the French Revolution to 1900, with movements in France, Germany, and England receiving particular attention. Major artists studied include David, Gericault, Delacroix, Ingres, Frederich, Constable, Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Daumier, Manet, Degas, Monet, and Gauguin.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994

An examination of visual artists who have used performance as an integral component of their practice, with emphasis on post-1950 object-oriented work (rather than theatre or dance). Both primary texts and critical interpretations are studied.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH2050 Or ARH2060

An examination of contemporary art outside of the traditional media of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Looking at painting-based performances of the 1950s, feminist body art, guerrilla television, and current political interventions based in digital media, students identify the strategies artists used to create new forms, and assess their success in modifying our understanding of the world.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994

Examines photography as a medium used by European colonizers and its subsequent use by Africans for self-definition and liberation. Topics include early studio photography, photographs in cultural outlets like the Nigerian edition of Drum magazine, photography during the apartheid era, and contemporary work. The political and stylistic aspects of portrait, documentary, ethnographic, pop, and abstract images are considered.

Credits: 4

From photography’s 19th-century origins to contemporary practices, this survey course explores how and why photography became central to arguments about the modernity of African visual art. Moving from one regional focus to the next, students examine photography’s role in expeditionary and ethnographic projects, identity formation, political activism, spirituality, documenting the landscape, and representing the fantastical and the everyday.

Credits: 4

A variety of intersections between extreme mental conditions and the production of works of art during the modern period are investigated. Topics include connections between creativity and mental instability, artists with a history of mental disorder, and theories about stylistic or formal affinities between madness and art.

Credits: 4

Focuses on the work of French artists from the early modern era to the French Revolution, with special attention to the Gallic obsession with realism, alongside the more abstract aspects of representation.

Credits: 4

If the postwar period famously represented the ascendency of American art, what art forms emerged simultaneously in traditional European centers? This course examines seemingly antithetical practices in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere: Art Informel, nouveau réalisme (new realism), Arte Povera, neoexpressionist painting, body art, conceptualism, Young British Art, etc. How has the changing European political landscape affected art and its institutions?

Credits: 4

An examination of critical and theoretical writing by artists about art. The course considers texts from various eras, but focuses primarily on 20th-century and contemporary material. Artists’ writings are analyzed in the context of art criticism as a whole, and students also have the opportunity try their hand at criticism.

Credits: 4

A broad look at modern and contemporary Mexican art, using an interdisciplinary and comparative approach. Special emphasis is on the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) and its aftermath throughout the 20th century. Students analyze links between the visual arts (including mural painting, prints, and photography) and the literature, the popular scene and the mainstream, the street art and the gallery art.

Credits: 4

Provides art history majors with an opportunity to examine the nature of the discipline by analyzing and comparing the writings of several art historians. The seminar concentrates on the work of a single artist in light of various art historical approaches. This writing-intensive course requires a variety of short essays and concludes with a research paper and class presentation. Limited to art history majors.

Credits: 4

Students focus on developing competence in both critical style and content. Focusing on visual art, the course explores different kinds of critical voices, from belle-lettristic to theoretical. Readings and discussions analyze examples by leading critics. Writing assignments aim for students to develop an engaging argument, and the importance of revision, clear thinking, and descriptive ability is stressed.

Credits: 4

Explores ideas of the “normal” and “non-normal” in art and design today. Through readings, guest speakers, and projects, the class investigates both traditional and unusual depictions of bodies, race, and gender, along with the art and design practices developed in order to represent and understand them.

Credits: 4

Participants in this seminar propose, research, plan, and coordinate an exhibition series and related public programming to be undertaken the following semester (as part of the course, Exhibition II). These exhibitions will take place in the Neuberger Museum, other sites around campus, or in a combination of Museum-based and other locations.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH4035 Or ARH4037

Participants in this seminar coordinate an exhibition series and related public programming based on the plans and preparations of the previous semester (conducted as part of the course, Exhibition I). These exhibitions take place in the Neuberger Museum, other sites around campus, or in a combination of Museum-based and other locations.

Credits: 3

PREREQ: ARH4025

In this seminar, students and the instructor co-curate an exhibition for the Neuberger Museum of Art. The class works on all aspects of the exhibition with the instructor and museum staff. Students learn about the various functions of departments, including curatorial, education, exhibition design, development, and public relations, putting exhibition theory into practice. Exhibition topics vary.

Credits: 4

An investigation of the historical development and function of museums. Students examine the growth of collections and exhibitions, along with the various roles that museums have played in relation to art history and society around the world. Central to this course and its final project is the question: “What should a museum be in the 21st century?”

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH2140 Or ARH4030 Or ARH4715

A rigorous examination of the historical, theoretical, and concrete concerns of curatorial practice. Course-work culminates in a complete exhibition proposal.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH2050 Or ARH2060

Addresses the tension between art and document, or making and recording, in twentieth-century visual culture. The first half investigates the aesthetics and politics of documentary photography and film, including conflicts between realism and modernism. The second half examines the use of documents and documentation by postmodern art and subsequent transformations in the style, form, and truth-content of documentary practices.

Credits: 4

Since the 1990s, the art market has become integral to an understanding of contemporary art practices. This course introduces the economic foundation of the art market and the practices of participants. The focus is on the history of the primary market, where new works of art produced “on spec” are introduced to the public in a retail setting.

Credits: 4

The relationship between artistic practice and the social realm is addressed, with emphasis on the development of the avant-garde in the 19th and 20th centuries, the role of artists in contemporary political discourse, and the theoretical discourse that constitutes the larger debate on these issues.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994

Drawing on both contemporary artists’ and critics’ writings and recent historical accounts, students consider minimalist art of the 1960s as a well-defined movement comprising a specific group of artists, versus “minimalism” as a diffuse tendency appearing in sculpture, painting, film, music, and dance. The relationship of minimalism to subsequent practices—postminimalism, process and land art, and conceptualism—is also explored.

Credits: 4

African-American artistic trends since 1968 are examined by using the binary of East Coast-West Coast as appropriated from hip-hop culture, particularly in Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York. Both the limits of hip-hop aesthetics in the visual arts and the limits of thinking about “black aesthetics” as a stable or quantifiable style are tested.

Credits: 4

Explores the ways in which ability and disability are conceived, represented, and negotiated in museum culture. Weekly discussions, visiting lecturers and screenings will examine key theoretical concepts, practical case studies, as well as the use of educational and internet-based media as assistive technologies. Specific topics will include: museums and the establishment of norms; the category of “assistive technology”; inclusive architecture and design; staring and other practices of looking; disability and performance art; media advocacy and activism.

Credits: 4

Painting has long been accompanied by theories describing its abilities to attract, deceive, and even harm. This course looks at key theories and debates in the history of the medium (e.g., Rubenistes vs. Poussinistes, painting’s role among pluralistic practices) to better understand how both making and seeing a painting are colored by a history of ideas.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1020 Or ARH2050

A practical course in art criticism, which meets regularly in New York. Contemporary works of art form the basis for lectures, discussions, and written essays.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994

This seminar focuses on uses of history—as both subject and method—in art around the turn of the 21st century. Within a globally comparative frame, students investigate contemporary theories and practices that take stock of the past in order to reimagine the future at a moment when the world seems simultaneously more connected and more fractured than ever before.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1020 Or ARH2050 Or ARH2060

Explores reciprocal influences of Western and non-Western art in the modern period. Topics include diverse artistic movements like “Orientalism,” “Japonisme,” and “Primitivism.” The class also examines the impact of non-Western art on specific artists, including Delacroix, Manet, Whistler, Picasso, and Pollock.

Credits: 4

This seminar delves into the historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of museum and exhibition practices in the U.S., from encyclopedic museums to storefront galleries. In addition to classroom discussion, students visit arts institutions in the area to consider collection and exhibition-related issues and to learn more about the operational function and structure of museums.

Credits: 4

African art and visual culture are considered in the context of African film. African youth, who make up most of the continent’s population, have had a marked effect on many sociopolitical phenomena. The films screened address African youth culture and such issues as the new independence (1960s), post-apartheid South Africa, youth rebels, religious fundamentalism, HIV, hip-hop and digital culture, and global emigration.

Credits: 4

The visual record of the production and consumption of food and drink are examined in this seminar. Topics include food in the still life, the representation of gluttony, and the prominent position of sacred feasts and food miracles in religious art. The primary focus is on Western art, but examples from other traditions are considered.

Credits: 4

PREREQ: ARH1000-1994 Or ARH2000-2994 Or ARH3000-3994 Or ARH4000-4994

In this advanced lecture, the first wave of Gothic novels from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century is examined in relation to visual representations of issues that dominate Gothic discourse. Topics include horror, imprisonment, madness, gender, ghosts and vampires. Authors and artists studied include Austen, the Brontë sisters, Radcliffe, Collins, Blake, Fuseli, and Turner.

Credits: 4

Do photographic images have privileged access to truth? This course explores the complicated relationship between truth and visual (particularly filmic) images. It begins with Plato on the “fakery” that is painting, turns to 17th-century “faithfulness” and “sincerity” in still-life painting and scientific drawing, and looks in depth at 20th-century writings about the nature of photography and realism in representation.

Credits: 4

What, if any, moral and political obligations does art have? Should public policy promote some kinds of art and discourage others? This course addresses these and related questions via works from across the arts and philosophical texts.

Credits: 4

In this survey of the historical significance of printmaking, the focus is on understanding the history of print media and its influence on culture in Europe, Asia, and the New World. Students explore both the history of printmaking and its intertwined relationship to the history of art. Of prime concern are the unique and distinct characteristics of each printmaking process.

Credits: 3