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Courses

101. Introduction to Art. For nonconcentrators, this course fulfills the Common Core requirement in the musical and visual arts. Students must attend the first class to confirm enrollment. This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and appreciation when dealing with a variety of visual art forms. It encourages the close analysis of visual materials, explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given work of art, and examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study of art. Most important, the course encourages the understanding of art as a visual language and aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

150-151-152. Art of the West. For nonconcentrators, any course in this sequence fulfills the Common Core requirement in the musical and visual arts. May be taken in sequence or individually. Students must attend the first class to confirm enrollment. The major monuments and masterpieces of painting, sculpture, and architecture are studied as examples of humankind's creative impulses in the visual arts. Individual objects are analyzed in detail and interpreted in light of society's varied needs. While changes in form, style, and function are emphasized, an attempt is also made to trace the development of a unique and continuous tradition of visual imagery throughout Western civilization.

150. The Ancient and Medieval World. This course examines the nature of artistic production from the prehistoric animal images in the caves of southern Europe to the handmade, gilded books that circulated at French and English courts some fifteen thousand years later. Particular attention is given to the transformation of the natural landscape into imposing built environments around the Mediterranean, including Africa and the Near East, and to the role art played as image-maker for political and religious institutions. At the conclusion of the class we consider the ways every age reworks its past, selecting from an available array of visual production the material that gives shape to its sense of itself. L. Seidel. Autumn.

151. Renaissance to Rococo. The major achievements of European artists in painting, sculpture, and architecture from about 1400 to 1775 are discussed chronologically. While broad style groupings such as Renaissance, mannerism, baroque, and rococo are an important organizing principle, an effort is made to concentrate on fewer artists and masterpieces rather than a uniform survey. Attention is also given to the invention and development of distinctive artistic types and their association with particular moments in history. Where possible, study of the imagery is supplemented with contemporary written documents such as contracts, letters, and theoretical texts. C. Cohen. Winter.

152. The Modern Age. This course examines art and architecture from the rococo to the present. An attempt is made to define the movements that have conditioned modern art. Romanticism, realism, impressionism, and expressionism are among the "-isms" discussed; other topics include the evolution of abstract painting, the international style and the development of modern architecture, and city planning. Major figures include J. L. David, Turner, Manet, Monet, Rodin, Matisse, Picasso, and Frank Lloyd Wright. M. Ward. Spring.

161. Art of the East: China I (=EALC 261). For nonconcentrators, this course fulfills the Common Core requirement in the musical and visual arts. Students must attend the first class to confirm enrollment. This course examines Chinese art and architecture from prehistory to the third century A.D. in its social, religious, and cultural contexts. Carved jades, ritual pottery and bronzes, monumental tombs, and funerary shrines are studied in light of religious texts, such as temple hymns, ritual canons, poems, and songs. Students reconstruct the physical and cultural contexts of individual works of art and study original objects in the Art Institute of Chicago. H. Wu. Autumn.

162. Art of the East: China II (=EALC 262). For nonconcentrators, this course fulfills the Common Core requirement in the musical and visual arts. Students must attend the first class to confirm enrollment. An introduction to Chinese art from the third century to the recent avant-garde movement. Major subjects include the appearance of individual artist and scroll painting; the introduction and sinification of Buddhist art; the formation of different art genres, schools, and theories; and the influence of Western art in premodern and modern ages. E. Wang. Winter.

170-179. Art in Context. For nonconcentrators, this course fulfills the Common Core requirement in the musical and visual arts. Students must attend the first class to confirm enrollment. Courses in this series investigate basic methods of art historical analysis and apply them to significant works of art studied within definite contexts. Works of art are placed in their intellectual, historical, cultural, or more purely artistic settings in an effort to indicate the origins of their specific achievements. An informed appreciation of the particular solutions offered by single works and the careers of individual artists emerges from the detailed study of classic problems within Western and non-Western art.

170. Genesis 1-4. This class examines the impact of the narrative that is recounted in the opening chapters of the Bible on various aspects of the visual arts--painting, architecture, garden design, prints, and filmmaking, in both East and West in recent, as well as more distant, times. We explore such major themes as the representation of nature as tamed and controlled, the construction of hierarchical relationships, the gendering of activities, and the depiction of jealously and fratricide. L. Seidel. Autumn.

171. Gender, Race, and Sexuality: Problems in Visuality and Identity (=Eng 103). Utilizing a variety of visual and written texts, this course investigates the construction and intersection of gender, racial, and sexual identities. The focus is on the negotiation of subjective meanings in and through a variety of cultural productions: paintings, film, novels, and news media. In this course, the notion of various kinds of "normalities," as evinced through the production of "abnormalities" (racial, gender, and sexual) serves as the common thread uniting our investigations. P. Rogers, C. Vogler, Staff. Winter.

172. The Parthenon. From their construction to their recent evocation in Nashville, the Parthenon and the colossal statue of Athena that it housed have held a special place in the history of Western culture, where they have come to symbolize ideals fundamental to civilization. This course offers a view into the making of the myth, by restoring the temple to the specific historical and political circumstances of its creation. As much as the surviving evidence allows, we trace planning, financing, and construction; we examine how the temple functioned as the site of cult and civic display; and we discuss the themes that make up the program of its sculptural decoration in relation to contemporary Athenian ideology. G. Pinney. Winter.

175. The Altarpiece. The aim of this course is to introduce undergraduates to the problems and issues surrounding a major form of late medieval and Renaissance art--the altarpiece. In addition to a history of the altarpiece from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, the course focuses on some major examples in the Art Institute of Chicago. Examples from the Ayala Altarpiece in that museum to Grunewald's famous Isenheim altar are included, as well as many Italian examples. M. Camille. Spring.

178. Strange Shadows: Four Painters in Search of the Invisible. This course examines the increasing tension between the highly visible structure and the elusive, or invisible, content in the works of four nineteenth-century masters: David, Goya, Manet, and Gauguin. B. Stafford. Autumn.

179. Writing as Artifact in Chinese Civilization (=EALC 272). The ideographic writing system has been central to Chinese civilization not only in its role as a discursive medium but also in its pictographic form and intricate texture that conflate words and images. This course looks at the Chinese writing system in different media, including inscriptions in durable materials and ink on paper and silk. Rather than a traditional historical survey of the art of calligraphy, the course focuses on the calligraphic/inscriptive form as a special means of signification and the ways in which Chinese have attached meanings to it in different circumstances. E. Wang. Winter.

The following 200-level courses have as a prerequisite any 100-level art history or art and design course or consent of instructor. These courses do not fulfill the Common Core requirement in the music or visual arts unless 4 or 5 has been scored on the AP art history test.

204/304. Landscape in Roman Art. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. Roman wall paintings of the late Republic and the Early Empire offer the largest body of representations of nature that survives from antiquity. Among those, two genres emerge, both of them extensively used and each stereotypical in its formal devices: "garden" paintings and idyllic landscapes. Issues considered in this course are: what different accounts of nature do these genres represent? What is the relationship of the idyllic landscape to a broader definition of pastoralism? Attention is paid to the architectural context of the images and the way they are framed on the wall, to the relationship of visual representation to texts, and to landscapes built for emperors and the wealthy--some known from description in texts, others partially recovered in excavations. G. Pinney. Spring.

210/310. Augustan Rome. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. This course explores the political, cultural, literary, artistic, and architectural life under Rome's first emperor. I. Rowland. Autumn.

216/316. Medieval Art and the Body. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. The body has become central in recent years to developing new historical paradigms. This course explores the different ways medieval image-making constructs ideas and attitudes toward issues in medieval art, including sculpture, painting, metalwork, and manuscript illumination, from the fifth through the fifteenth centuries. Among the topics explored are medical imagery, relics, devotional attitudes, and courtly self-fashioning. M. Camille. Spring.

219/319. Jerusalem. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. This class explores the history of the 3,000-year-old city during its middle millennium and its mythic hold on Western imagination as physical goal and place of longing. A variety of visual materials are examined: late Antique, Muslim, and crusader structures are studied through archaeological records and historic photographs; painted representations of both the heavenly and earthly city are reviewed, and written accounts of travel through the holy land through Josephus on are examined. L. Seidel. Winter.

225/325. Byzantine Manuscript Illumination. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. In the Eastern Middle ages, like the Western, the embellishment of manuscripts was a major endeavor and, as such, can inform us about diverse issues: the relation of words and images, the nature of narrative, the social and religious value of images, reading and seeing, speaking and hearing, craft production and patronage, and monastic and secular values. This course considers illumination from late Antiquity to the late Middle Ages. R. Nelson. Autumn.

233/333. Early Renaissance Painting in Florence. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. This course concentrates on two themes: (1) the origins of the Renaissance in Florence as seen in the painting and sculpture of the early fifteenth century, examined in the context of civic humanism and contemporary politics; and (2) the diverse and often inconsistent responses of a second generation of artists to these radical ideas, especially in the linked areas of style and religious expression. The main artists studied in the course are Masaccio, Donatello, Gentile da Fabriano, Lippi, Angelico, Uccello, Domenico Veneziano, Castagno, and Piero della Francesca. In addition to reading, students are expected to do a considerable amount of visual study. C. Cohen. Winter.

245/345. Constructing the Sixteenth-Century New World. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. This course investigates the intersection of the material construction of colonial cities and the production of painting, books, and maps. At issue is how these new urban spaces became imagined through other forms of representation. Four colonial cities are examined in depth: Mexico City, Quito, Lima, and Cuzco. T. Cummins. Winter.

257/357. Perspectives on Imaging. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. Recent advances in digital computer technology enable us to deal with all images with the same set of principles, concepts, and methods. This fact is enabling imaging to emerge as a new academic discipline. This course offers an introduction to the kinds of expertise, tools, and problems required in a multimedia future. R. Beck, B. Stafford. Winter.

263/363. American Landscapes I: 1850-1904 (=Geog 410, Hist 270/370). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. This course treats changes in the natural and human-made environment, focusing on the settings American designers, builders, architects, and their clients developed for work, housing, education, recreation, worship, and travel. Lectures relate specific physical changes to social values, aesthetic theories, technological skills, and social structure. N. Harris. Autumn.

264/364. History of Photography 1839-1996 (=GS Hum 232/332). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course. The invention of the photographic system as a confluence of art practice and technology is studied in detail. The aesthetic history of photography is traced from 1839 through the present. Special emphasis is placed on the critical writings of P. H. Emerson, Erwin Panofsky, Alfred Stieglitz, Lewis Mumford, Susan Sontag, and Michael Fried. J. Snyder. Spring.

275. Theories of the Photographic Image and Film (=CMS 275, GS Hum 233/333). PQ: ArtDes 101, 102, or 100-level ArtH course, or consent of instructor. This course is an introduction and survey of theories concerning photography and cinema. A variety of works by the following authors, among others, is discussed: Stanley Cavell, Erwin Panofsky, André Bazin, Christian Metz, Susan Sontag, Edward Weston, Ernst Gombrich, Nelson Goodman, and John Szarkowski. J. Snyder. Spring.

274/374. Other Modernisms. PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. This course explores the issue of racial and ethnic representation in twentieth-century art of the Americas. The major issues considered include how minority artists conduct oppositional practices within the visual arts; their involvement in the often contested and conflicting utilization of so-called subcultural artifacts in modern and avant-garde art; the value of "otherness" in the analysis of visual representation; and the possibilities contained in a variety of visual media for oppositional criticism/viewership. P. Rogers. Spring.

287/387. Thick Description: Face and Effacement in Modern China (=EALC 322). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. Modern Chinese visual culture has betrayed a preoccupation with faces, represented as head-on portraits or portraits within pictures, and extreme close-ups shot en-face with a stationary camera in films. From the eighteenth century to the present, we cover ancestral icons, advertisements, Beijing-opera masks, allegorical/satirical portraits, and the stationary close-ups on films. Issues explored include revelation, masquerade, and masking; visual moods and verbal categories; physiognomy and identities; icons, iconoclasm, and the aniconic; memory, commemoration, and remembrances; and static portraiture and narrative undercurrents. E. Wang. Spring.

294/394. Feminine Space in Traditional Chinese Art (=EALC 251). PQ: Any 100-level ArtH or ArtDes course, or consent of instructor. "Feminine space" denotes an architectural or pictorial space that is perceived, imagined, and represented as a woman. Unlike an isolated female portrait or an individual female symbol, a feminine space is a spatial entity--an artificial world composed of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, color, fragrance, light, and sound, as well as selected human occupants and their activities. This course traces the construction of this space in traditional Chinese art (from the second to the eighteenth centuries) and the social/political implications of this constructive process. W. Hung. Winter.

295. Senior Seminar: Problems and Methods in Art History. PQ: Required of fourth-year art history concentrators, who present aspects of their senior papers in oral reports; open to nonconcentrators with consent of instructor. This course investigates fundamental methods of art historical research, with emphasis on perspectives characteristic of the discipline in the twentieth century. Topics include connoisseurship, formal and iconographic analysis, psychoanalytic approaches, and perspectives of social history. T. Cummins. Autumn.

298. Reading Course. PQ: Consent of instructor and director of undergraduate studies. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. Must be taken for a letter grade. This course is designed for students in art history or advanced students in other concentrations whose program requirements are best met by study under a faculty member's individual supervision. The subject, course of study, and requirements are to be arranged with the instructor. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

299. Preparation for the Senior Paper. PQ: Consent of instructor and director of undergraduate studies. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. May be taken for a Pass grade with consent of instructor. This course provides guided research on the topic of the senior paper. The program of study and schedule of meetings are to be arranged with the student's senior paper adviser. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

433. Renaissance Drawings: History, Theory, and Practice. PQ: Open to art history and art and design concentrators with consent of instructor. This course looks at the history of Renaissance drawings and how they relate to the Renaissance theory of creation, as well as into practical matters of materials, techniques, and connoisseurship. We try to tap the potential of Renaissance drawings, which were made primarily in preparation for paintings and other works of art, to bring us very close to the disguised hand of artists and to processes by which they ideated and then executed works of art. About half the meetings are held in the Art Institute Prints and Drawings Study, where Curator of Drawings Suzanne McCullagh helps us study the original drawings and shares with us some museological issues related to the mounting of two major exhibitions. C. Cohen. Spring.

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