The
of
The
Ph.D.
Program in Art History
FALL 2005 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS & PRELIMINARY
If you purchase your books through http://www.gc.cuny.edu/bookshop,
you will have these discount prices (through arrangement with Amazon.com and
other retailers) and the Mina Rees Library will receive a 15% donation for the
purchase of library books. Most of these
books, of course, are also available to borrow from the
N.B. Lecture
classes are limited to 20 students,
Methods of Research is limited to 15
and seminar classes are limited to 12
students. Three overtallies are allowed
in each class, but written permission from the instructor and from the
Executive Officer and/or the Deputy Executive Officer is required.
ART
70000 - Methods of Research: The
Development of Visuality from Goethe to Gombrich and Current Critiques
GC: Thurs.,
The course will examine the power of
visual imagery over text first as a pre-literate, then as a populist, seemingly
non-elitist system of information that dominates our culture today. It will deal with the impact of scientific
rationalism (the role of perspective and axonometric projections) and
Romanticism on the understanding of perception in general (Goethe, Friedrich,
and Schinkel will be used as case studies).
Notions of mimesis will be introduced through an analysis of the
panorama, diorama, photography, and theories of polychromy. The psychological and social developments of
perception and their formative influence
on theory and practice of art in the nineteenth century will be stressed, as
well as the impact of phenomenology and Gestalt psychology in the twentieth
century. Jonathan Crary’s approach in Techniques of the Observer will be
problematized through examples that contradict his thesis, such as the central
place of emotive states in Charles Fourier’s social utopianism, the anti-rationalist
program of the 19th century Pre-school and education reform movement
(Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Montessori) through its emphasis on the emotive
(Cizek’s and Itten’s art classes for children in Vienna, Frank Llyod Wright’s
Froebel toys); and the influence of synaesthesia (Symbolism, Art Nouveau,
Expressionism). It will conclude with a
brief reference to chaos theory, computer imagine, and fractal geometry’s
influence on advertising art, and theory (Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition, 1984).
Auditors permitted.
Preliminary
Martin
Kemp, The Science of Art (1990), and
Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the
Observer (1990).
ART 72000 - Topics in Ancient
Art and Architecture: Roman Art: Originality
and Emulation
GC: Wed.,
This
course examines Roman art from the reign of Trajan to that of
Preliminary reading
Jas Elsner,
"Imperial
ART 75010 - Topics in Italian
Renaissance and Mannerist Art and Architecture:
Renaissance Sculpture: Ghiberti
to Michelangelo
GC: Fri.,
A basic paragone
of the Renaissance centered on the debate over the primacy of painting versus
sculpture. Despite Leonardo’s claim that
the painter employed greater mental effort whereas the sculpture expended
mostly physical energy, many of his contemporaries thought otherwise. Vasari (Lives
of the Artists, 1550-1568) reserved his highest praise for
Michelangelo. In doing so, he followed
the lead of the great humanist-architect Alberti who dedicated his Della Pittura to five colleagues:
Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Luca della Robbia, and Masaccio, who, with
the exception of the last, were all sculptors.
This lecture course will focus on the casters, modelers, and carvers of
the 15th century. Topics of
discussion will include the decoration of such great civic and community
centers as the Baptistery, the guild
Preliminary
Roberta J.M.
Olson, Italian Renaissance Sculpture (New
York: Thames & Hudson 1992).
John
Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance
Sculpture (
ART 76010 – Topics in Late
18th and 19th Century Art and Architecture: Sculpture in
Histories of
style tend to treat sculpture as an artform that resembles painting, but exists
in three dimensions. By the mid-19th
century, however, the making of sculpture usually entailed some form of
mechanical reproduction and usually resulted in the issuing of multiple
carvings and casts. Thus, what we think
of as a “Rodin” or “Claudel” was actually a collaborative effort, which
involved the work of other hands and which resists the traditional concepts of
uniqueness and authenticity. Beginning
with an analysis of sculpture techniques, this course will focus on works by
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Marcello (pseudonym of Adèle d’Affry), Auguste Rodin,
Camille Claudel, Edgar Degas, and Paul Gauguin and will conclude with the
rethinking of sculpture that occurred in the early 20th century.
Of central concern will be not only such issues as narrative,
originality, and eclecticism, but also what Charles Baudelaire designated as
sculpture’s “divine role.”
The course will
combine lecture and discussion, and the requirements will include weekly
readings, a short slide quiz about two-thirds of the way through the course,
and a research paper 15 to 20 pages in length.
One class will be spent at the Modern Art Foundry in
Preliminary
Robert Rosenblum and H. W. Janson, 19th Century Art, Rev. ed. (
ART 76020 – Topics in Modern
Art: Pioneers of Abstraction from
Symbolism to Constructivism
Robert P. Welsh, “Sacred Geometry: French Symbolism and Early
Abstraction,” in The Spiritual in Art:
Abstract Painting, 1890-1985 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, 1986), 62-87.
ART 76040 - Topics in Contemporary Art: European Art 1945 to 1982
GC: Tues,
This lecture
course will function as a survey of European art from the aftermath of WWII,
covering such movements as Art Brut, Informel, Zero Group, The Independent
Group, Fluxus, Nouveau Realisme, Situationism, Arte Povera, Art and Language,
Institution Critique, Neo-Expressionism, up to Documenta 7 of 1982. It will focus on specific themes and
modalities that distinguish European art and criticism from its American
counterpart. These will include: the situation in Europe at mid-century; how
did European conceive of a neo-avant-garde?; informe vs. informel; historical
trauma; the impact of John Cage and the “open work”; European pop and the cocacolonization of [European] culture;
the spatialization of art from Fontana, Zero, Fluxus to the critique of New
Urbanism via dérive and détournement, to 1968 and the surge of
Institution Critique; the seduction of alchemy and myth; the “theoretical turn”
and its impact on art (i.e. the writings of Lefebvre, Althusser, Eco, Habermas,
Foucault); key exhibitions such as “When attitudes become form” and “Vitalita
del negativo”; and finally the role of international exhibitions (Venice
Biennale/Kassel’s Documenta). There will be a
final paper (on the readings) and a final exam in the classroom.
Five
(5) auditors permitted.
Preliminary
readings:
Benjamin
Buchloh, “The Primary Colors for the Second Time: A Paradigm Repetition of the
Neo-avant-garde,” October 37, Summer
1986, (xerox on reserve plus website link).
Germano
Celant, “Mario Merz: The Artist as Nomad,” Artforum,
December 1979 (xerox on library reserve).
Both
of these readings are also being scanned by the library.
ART 77100 - Topics in Colonial Latin
American Art and Architecture: Colonial
Art in the Viceroyalties of
GC: Wed.,
This course
examines the background, origins, and development of “colonial” art in the
viceroyalties of
European art
traditions in the new viceroyalties.
This course thus focuses on the unique political, social, and artistic
situations in the
Preliminary readings:
Gauvin Alexander
Bailey, Art of Colonial
ART 77400 –
Topics in Modern Latin American Art and Architecture: Mexican Modern Art, 1900-1950
GC: Thurs.,
The art produced
in
Preliminary reading:
David Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America,
1910-1990 (
ART 79000 – History of Photography: Nineteenth-Century Photography
GC: Tues.,
Roland Barthes described the emergence
of photography in the early nineteenth century as an "anthropological
revolution in man's history," a "truly unprecedented type of
consciousness." This lecture class aims to examine this proposition by
examining the history of photography in the nineteenth century as it develops
within a number of specific thematics, from the medium's conception in the late
18th century through to debates in the early 20th century about photography's
relationship to artistic and social issues.
The class's structure will allow for individual sessions to combine a
formal, illustrated presentation with some detailed discussion of particular
images and texts.
Taken as a whole, the class will look
at photography as a cultural phenomenon as much as an art form, critically
studying the various discursive arenas that this new medium helped to foster
and redefine. Requirements include two papers. Auditors: only after
consultation with instructor.
Preliminary
Douglas Nickel, “History of
Photography: The State of
Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (MIT Press,
1997).
ART
79400 - Aesthetics of Film
GC: Thurs.,
This course introduces the
properties of cinematic form by exploring film in relationship to the other
arts. Since its beginnings, film was
theorized--as art, as political tool, as entertainment--against the backdrop of
the aesthetic properties of painting, theatre, literature, and, not
surprisingly, magic. By studying the
specific properties of cinema, the content it ultimately delivers, and its use
of and break from the other arts, we will investigate film aesthetics as a
dynamic and modernist negotiation of multi-mediated texts. In this way, this course will engage issues
of genre, style, and narrative as they are transformed through the mode of
cinematic production and address.
Readings include selected works
by: David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson
(Film Art), Robert Allen and Douglas
Gomery “Aesthetic Film History”), Lotte Eisner (The Haunted Screen), J.Matthews (Surrealism and Film), Vachel Lindsay (Art of the Motion Picture), Sadakichi Hartmann (“The Esthetic
Significance of the Motion Picture”), Michael Fried (Realism, Writing, Disfiguration), and others.
Screenings include complete and
selected works by F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu),
Alfred Hitchcock (Spellbound, Vertigo),
Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thief,
Shoeshine), Maya Deren (Meshes of the
Afternoon), Vincente Minnelli (Yolanda
and the Thief), the Wachowski Brothers (Bound),
Marlon Riggs (Tongues Untied), Oscar
Micheaux (Within Our Gates, Symbol of the
Unconquered), Jean Luc Godard (Pierrot
Le Fou, Weekend), Shirley Clarke (Portrait
of Jason), Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler (Manhatta), Dziga Vertov (Man
With a Movie Camera), Sergei Eisenstein (Strike), Walter Ruttman (Berlin:
Symphony of a City), Gus Van Sant (Gerry,
Elephant), Michael Mann (Collateral),
and others. Students will be expected to
write short weekly response papers to the readings and screenings, be prepared
to discuss the films and readings, and complete a final 12-15 page paper. No auditors, non-matrics, or permits allowed.
ART
80020 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Art
and Architecture of
GC:
Thurs.,
No Preliminary
ART 80050 –
Seminar: Selected Topics in Theory and
Criticism: From Worringer to Adorno
IDS 81620 -
Seminar: American Material Culture
GC: Thurs.,
Americans have always lived in a rich
and complex material world. In the field
of art history, the development of material culture studies has embodied a
critique of formalism and connoisseurship, approaches that treated objects in
historical isolation. Thus art
historians, especially those specializing in American works, have begun to look
at objects as both expressions of a particular moment and as things that
contributed to the construction of political and social formations. At the same time historians have increasingly
relied on material culture as another means of understanding the past. This
course will survey that literature (cultural history, art and architectural
history, folklore) as well as have students learn to “look” at portraits and
monuments, samplers and houses from a variety of disciplinary perspectives—art
historical, material culture, decorative arts, historical, and literary. A term
project will be required. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary
ART
85020 - Seminar: Selected Topics In Northern Renaissance Art and
Architecture: Memling and the
Renaissance Portrait
GC: Mon.,
A seminar centered on the exhibition,
“Memling’s Portraits,” at the Frick Collection, October 6 -
Four lectures by
curators and Memling scholars are scheduled at the Frick Collection in conjunction
with the
Memling
exhibition, all at
three are on Wednesdays: October 26, November 16, and December 7. Students are strongly urged to attend these
lectures if possible. Five (5) auditors
permitted.
Preliminary
Lorne Campbell, Renaissance
Portraits, European Portrait Painting in the 14th, 15th
and 16th Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale, 1990).
Paula Nuttall, From
ART
86010 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Late
18th and 19th Century Art and Architecture: The Legacy of Homer: Classicism, 1750-1900
GC: Tues.,
In Fall 2005, the most important exhibition of classicism in decades,
“The Legacy of Homer,” will come to the U.S. from the Ecole des beaux-arts in
Paris, and will be shown at the Princeton University Art Museum and the Dahesh
Museum of Art. In conjunction with the exhibition, this seminar will explore
classicism from 1750 to 1900, focusing on the major artists and themes of
European Neoclassicism as well as its continuation and transformation by later
academic followers. Students will be required to do weekly readings on various
aspects of classicism, give a class presentation of their research topic, and
complete a publishable, written paper. There will be also be a mid-term
examination on images and terminology and several field trips. Auditors by
permission of instructor.
Preliminary
ART
86030 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern
Architecture, Urbanism and Design:
Disappearing Space in Modern Architecture
GC: Tues.,
The Seminar
will explore the increasingly imbalanced relationship between public and
private space as suggested by Habermas’ The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The overt interiorization of the domestic
realm in the late nineteenth century will serve as a prelude to the “open”
interior of classic modernism together with the simultaneous reduction of the
public realm. Foucault’s projection of a
controlling power onto the interior of public buildings and the inclusion of
everyday places in Derrida and Lefèbvre’s discourse will be considered as
symptomatic of the later twentieth century.
Sennett’s The Fall of Public Man
will introduce the American setting with its expanding car culture and highly
restrictive definitions of space in the work of such figures as Venturi,
Eisenman, and Gehry. Virilio’s writings
on speed and information networks that produce non-places will be analyzed as
part of the discussion. Case studies
will cover works of architecture primarily, but student presentations that
apply such concepts to painting and sculpture will be welcome. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary
ART 87300 - Seminar: Selected Topics in American Art: 19th Century American Landscape
Painting
GC: Mon.,
This course is
an in-depth examination of American landscape painting from colonial times to
1900. Students will be required to give
in-class reports and to write a 20-30 page research paper. Paper topics can include but are not limited
to: natural history illustration, the
aesthetics and ideology of the Hudson River School, the contested history of
luminism, the role of survey photographs in the defining of the American West,
the emergence of the Barbizon School and French Impressionism, the influence of
James A.M. Whistler and the rise of tonalism in painting and photography, and
the impact of religious and spiritual concerns in the aesthetics of George
Inness and others at the end of the century.
There will be guest lectures and a trip to New York Historical Society
to view, with its new museum director, Dr. Linda Ferber, the reinstallation of
its
Preliminary
Andrew,
Malcolm, Landscape and Western Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
For students who DID NOT take the lecture course on
American Landscape Painting last fall the following exhibition catalogues are
recommended:
Edward J.
Nygren, Views and Visions, American Landscape before 1830 (Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery, 1986).
Andrew Wilton
and Tim Barringer, American Sublime, Landscape Painting in the
ART 89000 - Seminar: Selected Topics in the History of
Photography: Photography in the World
GC:
Wed.,
This seminar class will consider what
happens to certain photographs when they circulate within the world of the mass
media and thereby enter public discourse. This topic is inspired, if that's the
right word, by the dissemination of, and debate generated by, the Abu Ghraib
pictures, and by the histories of previous examples of atrocity photographs
(such as the image by Eugene Smith of Tomoko in her bath and the one by Nick Ut
of a girl fleeing after a napalm attack).How do such photographs inscribe
themselves in the world of public discourse? How do they have their effects on
that world (and what effects are these)? What can images of atrocity tell us?
What can't they tell us? Participants in the class will read texts that address
these and related questions, and will write an essay analyzing the fate of one
particular photograph. However the class will also collectively spend the semester
preparing an exhibition on this same theme, to be mounted in the row of
glass-fronted cabinets in the foyer of the
Preliminary
Roland Barthes, 'The Scandal of Horror
Photography” (1969), and John Taylor, “Shock Photos” (1998), in David Brittain,
ed., Creative Camera: Thirty Years of
Writing (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 32-34, 296-300.
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (
SEE ALSO
FSCP 81000
Film and American Culture in the 1950s:
Genre and Politics
GC: Wed.,
In recent years
the 1950s has emerged as one of the most fascinating decades in the history of
the twentieth century and in film history. Once stereotyped either as golden
age of home and family or a swamp of conformism, repression, and anti-Communist
hysteria, the period is now seen as a much more complex and transitional era.
This course will examine the cross-currents of politics and culture in the
1950s by focusing on key American films and film genres, including musicals,
westerns, films noirs, sci-fi, horror, women’s films, thrillers, and socially
conscious dramas about race, troubled youth, the cold war, and other issues.
With the help of some key books of the period, such as The Catcher in the Rye and The
Organization Man, as well as some sidelong glances at key television
programs, the course will explore the social and aesthetic context of these
films. Topics of discussion will include the cold war, the debate over McCarthyism
and conformity, the changes in Hollywood (including the blacklist), the decay
of cities, concerns about organized crime and juvenile delinquency, the effects
of affluence and suburbanization, the conflicts over race, the rise of consumer
culture and of new forms of mass communication, the generation gap, and the
changes in American values that led to the 1960s, including the beginnings of
the counterculture. The course will try to define the moral and intellectual
climate of the postwar era as seen through its films.
The films
screened will include such works as Sunset
Boulevard, Singin’ in the Rain, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Rebel Without a Cause, The Thing, The Searchers, Bend of the
River, Pickup on South Street, Forbidden Planet, The Defiant Ones, The Big
Heat, Written on the Wind, and The Sweet Smell of Success. The
structure of the course will be comparative and cumulative. Each film will be
linked with another film or book on a similar theme, to be seen or read in
preparation for the class. Each student will be expected to deliver one oral
report and to write a research paper. Secondary works will include books like
Peter Biskind’s Seeing Is Believing
and Elaine Tyler May’s Homeward Bound:
American Families in the Cold War Era.
No auditors, non-matrics, permits allowed.