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Fall 2000 Courses ART 70000
- Methods of Research Using some of the bedrock texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this course will consider formalism, structuralism, semiotics, social history, Marxism, and gender theory. Writers to be discussed will include Heinrich Wölfflin, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, Walter Benjamin, André Malraux, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Linda Nochlin, Laura Mulvey, Umberto Eco, and Jacques Derrida. The course will be given a loosely chronological structure, and analysis will concern the philosophies espoused, as well as the ideological constructs embedded in each methodology and the practical implications for their utilization. The course will combine lecture and discussion, and the requirements will include reading assignments - which students must come to class prepared to analyze critically - and two papers, eight to ten pages long, in which the ideas of significant writers are critically assessed. Five (5) auditors permitted. ART 70100
- Topics in Non-Western Art: Melanesian Art This course is a lecture course on the arts of Island New Guinea (Irian Jaya & Papua New Guinea), New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji. Lecture topics will include the prehistory of Melanesia, early European contact and exploration, colonization and early ethnographic archives and collections, and twentieth century field study of about thirty selected Melanesian art traditions. Requirements: Each student will be required to prepare a short museum photo display of a selected area of Melanesian art, an 8-10 page research paper, and a final exam. Three (3) auditors permitted. ART 70300
- Topics in Non-Western Art: Mesoamerican Painting This course focuses on Pre-Columbian painting in ancient Mexico and the Maya area, as expressed chiefly in murals, ceramic painting, and pictorial manuscripts. It also considers the relationship of painting to other more widely studied areas such as architecture and sculpture. In addition to the practices of painters and painting from the Olmecs to the Aztecs, it examines recent issues, research, discoveries, exhibitions, and publications concerned with Mesoamerican painting. Requirements include readings, short reports, discussions, and a final examination. A reading knowledge of Spanish would be helpful but is not required. Five (5) auditors are permitted, but they will be expected to do the readings and contribute to discussions. ART 71500
- Topics in Italian Renaissance and Mannerist Art: The High Renaissance
in Italy This course traces the development of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the later 15th century in Italy through the High Renaissance. Emphasis will be placed on the major artists in the context of their time. Some Mannerist works are also considered. The effects of religious upheaval on art and society were particularly significant in the 16th century and these are also taken up in the course. Auditors by permission of instructor. ART 72100
- Topics in Baroque Art: Anthony van Dyck: Art for the Courts
and Counter-Reformation In 1641 Anthony van Dyck expired at the age of 42. Though brief, his career is surely one of the most interesting of his age and his achievements among the most important. To mention but one: portraiture as we know it today would be inconceivable without Van Dyck's innovations. Native to the great Flemish city Antwerp, in the Habsburg Netherlands, Van Dyck matured at an auspicious moment, when his prodigious talent had ample occasion to develop. On the one hand, his talent was enlisted by the Catholic church in its reformatory program, the Counter-Reformation, while on the other hand, his unique gift in fashioning a likeness, a portrait, made him invaluable to the courts of Europe. Thanks to the numerous exhibitions held in 1999 marking Van Dyck's birth four hundred years ago, study of the artist's oeuvre has been significantly facilitated. This monographic course will introduce the man and his art, and examine issues of particular historical and aesthetic interest. Among these are Van Dyck's relationship to Rubens, his interest in Titian, patronage circles, working processes, crafting male and female identity, picturing children, gazing and glancing, fashion as art, tenderness and brutish violence, responses to the classical and humanistic culture, and, finally, Van Dyck's impact on art, both contemporary and posthumous. Auditors permitted. ART 75500
– Topics in Modern Art: Matisse and Picasso An in-depth study of two figures whose work and legend dominated early 20th century art. Emphasis will be placed on the two artists' works in painting and sculpture, and on the interrelationships between them. Particular attention will be given to the critical discourse that developed around their work, and to the ways in which their artistic personas were perceived. Five (5) auditors permitted. ART 75600
– Topics in Modern Architecture: Nineteenth-Century Architecture:
Theory and Practice This lecture class will survey European architecture culture from the French Revolution through the First World War. Lectures will map developments in architectural practice, as well as theoretical issues that were central to architectural discourse in this period. Readings will complement the lectures and will occasionally be the subject of in-class discussion. While a certain comprehensiveness in the treatment of French, British, and German architects of the nineteenth century will be attempted, the lectures will also develop a number of themes in the study of European architecture of the period. For example, the course will treat architecture as part of the larger process of modernization which entailed the wide-spread industrialization and urbanization of Great Britain and continental Europe, among other processes. The role of architecture in these developments will be among the subjects of the course, as will the place of architecture in the formation of national identities, the articulation of national histories, the professionalization of work, the separation of home and work, etc. While the approach to nineteenth-century architecture taken here might be described as "contextual", specific architects and buildings will also be the subjects of extended discussion. The goal will be to inscribe individual practice within the larger debates. Auditors permitted. ART 77100
- Topics in American Art: Reconstructing Art and Culture in the
U.S., 1865-1876: The Missing Decade The 'story' of 19th century art in the U.S. is generally told as a tale of two moments. The first is the 1840s-1850s, when landscape painting became the dominant mode of national expression. The second is the 1880s-1890s, when primarily European-trained artists aptly represented the sensibility of the high Gilded Age. This course shifts the focus to the decade in between--from the civil war to the centennial--when it argues that an aesthetic revolution accompanied the unfinished political revolution of Reconstruction (1863-1877). This was manifested in the birth of our major art museums, the rise of professional critics and a new language of culture, and an art scene that took its unrivaled energies form the racial, economic, and gender forces of the day. Drawing upon the work of cultural historians and critics--especially Bakhtin--we 'reconstruct' this 'missing decade.' Five (5) auditors permitted. ART 79500
- History of the Motion Picture: History of Cinema II Concentrating on major tendencies in film history since the early 1930s through a close examination of individual works, this course will deal with such subjects as German film just before the rise of Hitler, Hollywood movies during the Depression, French cinema before the war, film noir and other postwar Hollywood styles, Italian Neorealism, Hollywood in the1950s, the rise of the New Wave and other modernist tendencies in the fifties and sixties, the emergence of new young directors in America and Germany during the 1970s, and finally the rise of the American independent cinema. Films will include works by Lang, Lubitsch, Capra, Renoir, Welles, Rossellini, Kazan, Bergman, Antonioni, Fellini, Truffaut, Godard, Fassbinder, and Scorsese. Emphasis will be placed on the achievements of individual directors, on changes in studio style and the machinery of production, and on the major historical currents of each period. There will be readings from contemporary documents and key film histories. Auditors by permission of instructor. Text: David
Cook, A History of the Narrative Film, 3rd ed. (Norton) ART 79500
- History of the Motion Picture: The Aesthetics of Film This course introduces students to graduate-level film analysis by acquainting them with basic film techniques, strategies, and styles. Central topics to be studied include narrative and nonnarrative forms, mise-en-scène, composition, camera movement, editing, sound and music, genre, and spectatorship. In addition, students will become familiar with a variety of critical perspectives on film as well as the essential bibliographical sources and fundamentals of research in the field. Auditors by permission of instructor. ART 81500
- Seminar: Selected Topics In European Art And Architecture:
The Interaction of Italian A seminar dealing with the interchange of ideas north and south of the Alps from 1300 to 1525 in painting, manuscript illumination, and printmaking. Students will study such problems as the influence of Trecento painting and sculpture on Jean Pucelle, the parallels between the paintings of Jan van Eyck and Masaccio, Flemish influences on Filippo Lippi, the impact of Hugo van der Goes' Portinari Altarpiece on Florentine painting of the late fifteenth century, the influence of Memling's portraits on those of Perugino and Raphael, the impact of Schongauer's prints in Italy and Italian influences on Dürer's paintings and prints. Five (5) auditors permitted. ART 83100
- Seminar: Selected Topics In 19th Century Art: The Interrelationship
Between American and European Painting in the Nineteenth Century This course will deal with selected topics concerning both formal and ideological cross-currents between American and European Painting in the Nineteenth Century. Investigation will center on parallel developments and influences deriving primarily from Great Britain and from Germany, (especially Düsseldorf and Munich). These constitute important sources for artistic, cultural, and intellectual inspiration for America which do not regularly receive extensive treatment in courses here at the Graduate School. Credit students will be expected to present one hour-long presentations and a resultant paper, topics chosen after discussion with the instructor. Auditors are accepted, but they will be expected to prepare and deliver a short (ca. 10-15 minute) presentation. Student papers need not be confined to topics involving English and German art; rather, investigations of Spanish, Italian, Low Countries, and Scandinavian subjects are encouraged. A reading knowledge of German is not required; a reading (and speaking) knowledge of English is. ART 85500
- Seminar: Selected Topics In Modern Art: Art and Spectacle in Europe
in the 1930's This seminar will examine the way in which totalitarian as well as socialist regimes fell under the spell of art-as-spectacle in the 1930s (we will focus on Italy, Germany, the USSR, France, and Spain). Spectacular installations of mural size art in the medium of photomontage, mosaic, and (fake) fresco proclaimed a crisis of easel painting. We will consider these works in light of what W. Benjamin called "aura vs. theatricality," what A. Riegl called "age value," what A. Sironi called "Fascist monumentality," what S. Kracauer called "mass ornament," what A. Gramsci called "the politics of consent," and what G. Debord later called "the society of the spectacle." Key to our approach will be the concept of reactionary modernism and an understanding of the extreme instrumentalisation of art by politics in the endless series of national and international expositions mounted during those years. Besides essays by the authors mentioned above, we will read writings by artists such as Leger, Le Corbusier, Kutsis, and secondary art historical and historical texts by B. Buchloh, E. Braun, J. Schnapp, B. Groys, V. de Grazia, G. Mosse, R. Berman, J. Herf. Auditors permitted. ART 85500
- Seminar: Selected Topics In Modern Art: The Art Market in New
York since 1900 This course examines the history of the art market in New York since 1900, considering the specific role of museums, auctions, galleries, dealers, alternative spaces and special exhibitions, private collectors, and critics, as well as their impact on individual artists' careers. Ethical issues to be explored include stolen art and smuggled antiquities, "insider trading," forgeries, and how authenticity is determined. The responsibility of the art historian will be addressed from a practical as well as a theoretical point of view. Our discussions will touch upon current events, such as the recent discovery of a group of fake works attributed to Gerogia O'Keeffe (and the related art historical literature) or the controversy over the Brooklyn Museum's "Sensation" exhibition. Field trips, such as behind-the-scenes visits to museums, conservators, and galleries, will be included. Auditors by permission of instructor. ART 86000
- Seminar: Selected Topics In Contemporary Art: Doubt and Belief:
Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, and Sigmar Polke The rebirth of the avant-garde in postwar Germany after twelve years of Nazi rule and the division of the country into two antagonistic zones of influence took place in a context where the nature and limits of ideology and of skepticism became paramount aesthetic questions. While the former Luftwaffe officer turned jack-of-all artistic trades Joseph Beuys attempted to fill one void left by the collapse traditional values co-opted by National Socialism and another which lay between the doctrines of the Communist East and the Capitalist West, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, both coming from the Eastern zone, subjected modern systems of belief and studio conventions, both vanguard and conservative, to rigorous tests. This course will examine in depth the work and ideas of these three men against the background of cultural, social and political changes in Germany during the period. In addition, it will focus on the similarities and differences between Duchampian strategies in postwar American art and radical deconstruction and reconstruction of aesthetic codes and practices in and around Cologne from the 1960s through the beginning of the 21st century. The course will be run as a lecture-discussion, with weekly readings and two papers. Auditors permitted. ART 87100
- Seminar: Selected Topics in American Art: Photohistories
of Latin America, 1839-1939: New World Body-Intersection of Cartography,
Art, and Anatomy Latin America is here defined as both the object of photography and the arena of its practice. Seminar members trace the histories of photographic production by natives including Ferrez, Alvarez Bravo, Casasola, and Chambi alongside those of foreigners Charnay, Muybridge, Evans, Weston, Modotti, and others. We investigate these photohistories in relation to place; community; modernism; revolutionary politics. The seminar is intended to establish a perspective of ideas against which to examine the work of individual photographers, and in so doing to test the validity of studying Latin American photohistory as distinct from broad international developments. Emphasis is on the first 100 years, to 1939. Five (5) auditors permitted. ART 89500
- Seminar: Special Topics in the History of the Motion Picture:
Constructivism and Cinema: The Films and Film Theory of Pudovkin,
Eisenstein, and Vertov This course will focus on the complex artistic and ideological relationships between selected films and film theoretical writings by Pudovkin, Eisenstein and Vertov and many central monuments and spectacles of the Soviet Union's cultural production during the first decade after the revolution. Films to be analyzed in detail will include Eisenstein's Strike [1924-5], October [1927-8], and The General Line (Old and New) [1928]; Pudovkin's Mother [1926] and The End of St. Petersburg [1927]; and Vertov's Kino Glaz [1924], One Sixth of the World [1926], The Eleventh Year [1928], The Man with a Movie Camera [1929] and Enthusiasm [1931]. These works will be examined in the light of aesthetic debates among the Constructivists, including Alexander Rodchenko, Boris Arvatov, the Stenberg Brothers, Vesnin, Malevich and Tatlin in the visual arts, as well as literary and theatrical figures and critics such as Trotsky, Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, Sergei Tretyakov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Readings will include selected primary texts by all of the names mentioned, with particular emphasis on Eisenstein's Writings 1922-1934 [BFI/Indiana U.P., 1988], Pudovkin's Film Technique [1929] and Film Acting [1937] [Grove Press, 1970], Kuleshov on Film (University of California Press, 1974), and Vertov's Kino-Eye (University of California Press, 1984). In addition, a number of contemporary historical and critical articles and books by Christina Lodder, Annette Michelson, Richard Taylor, Orlando Figes, David Bordwell, Jacques Aumont and Boris Groys, among others, will be assigned. Knowledge of Russian is not required, although knowledge of it, or of Italian, French, and/or German, into which many Russian texts have been translated, will be useful. All films will be placed on reserve and students will be expected to screen them prior to class. Several slide lectures will provide necessary background. Seminar presentations and research papers will be required. Auditors by permission of instructor. THEA 81500
- Eyes on the Sparrow: Race and Gender in U.S. Cinema in the 30's
through the 50's This course will look at issues of race, gender and sexuality as they were handled by the mainstream commercial studio films from the time of their heyday in the 30s through their gradual decline in the early 60s. During these years, the most distinguishing feature upon the few occasions in which blacks were allowed to play central roles in Hollywood movies was the struggle against what were perceived as too exaggeratedly jovial and stereotypical black characters. Each of these films, not just the ones directed by black director Ocar Micheaux, sets out to accomplish a level of seriousness around issues of race and its conjunction with gender and sexuality that at that time still seemed unprecedented. What's clear, is that everyone is a lot more lucid about what to avoid and a good deal less so when it comes to determining how the black image will be different and yet an integral of the whole. On the whole, an interesting bunch of films made in interesting times. As for assignments, my suggestion would be one longish paper (15 pages) at the end and perhaps a very brief oral presentation. Auditors by permission of instructor. SOC 86906
- Selected Topics: Mass Culture & Arts One of the now-traditional ways of understanding the arts is to distinguish them from "Mass Culture," more recently called Popular Culture and composed of most genres that are transmitted via the mass media of radio, film and television. Also included are genres of visual art such as cartoons and genres of literature such as romance novels. For many reasons, the distinctions between Low/Mass/Popular Culture and High Culture (i.e. "the arts") are no longer valid, either politically, sociologically, or in sound aesthetic analysis. However, that distinction continues to plague the recent controversies over public funding of the non-profit arts and cultural institutions (including liberal arts programs at universities), with elitists and populists continuing to attack each other. Such conflicts inhibit an adequate understanding of the complexity of the connections between the arts and other cultural institutions, regardless of "level", and the political realm. That understanding is the goal of this seminar. We will explore such questions as: Who should determine the agendas and products of cultural institutions? How should commercial and non-profit cultural institutions intersect, if at all? How should private and publicly-funded institutions intersect, if at all? What are the political consequences of any particular answer to these questions--and what are the comparable consequences for the arts and cultural institutions? Comparisons will be drawn from case studies of various cultural policies and their artistic and political consequences, including Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and more contemporary examples from America, Europe and the developing countries. We will consider the often conflicting functions which the arts are expected to serve in a "mass society" (eg. as political propaganda, national aesthetic achievement, cultural identity, or individual expression). The approach will be sociological throughout, but the literature and methodologies should be accessible to students in other disciplines. In addition to keeping up with the assigned reading from the material on reserve, students are to complete a research project on a specific area of interest for class presentation during the final weeks of the semester. Its formal written analysis is due at the end of the term. Auditors by permission of instructor. |