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Fall 2003 Courses
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.
A printable
version of these courses is available in Adobe
Acrobat format.
View suggested preliminary
readings for these courses (.pdf).
ART 70000 - Methods of Research
GC: Tues., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Bletter, Rm. 3416,
[45689]
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 c. pre-school and education
reform movement (Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori) through its emphasis
on the emotive (Cizek's and Itten's art classes for children in
Vienna, Frank Lloyd Wright's Froebel toys); and the influence of
synaesthesia (Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Expressionism), and primitivism
(Fauves, New Brutalists, etc.). It will conclude with a brief overview
of chaos theory, computer imaging, and fractal geometry's influence
on advertising, art and theory (Lyotard, The Post-Modern Condition,
1984.) Auditors permitted.
ART 70300 - Topics in Non-Western Art: Art of the Andes and Intermediate
Area (Central America and Caribbean)
GC: Wed., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Quiñones-Keber,
Rm. 3416, [45690]
This course, structured as a colloquium, focuses on Pre-Columbian
arts of the various cultures of the Andean region of South America,
from their origins to the 16th century Incas. Included among these
diverse arts are monumental architecture, sculpture, textiles, gold
and silver work, and ceramics. It also surveys the arts of the "intermediate
area" of Central America, chiefly gold and jade work and ceramics,
as well as the Caribbean, especially Taino sculpture. Requirements:
weekly written critiques and discussions of readings, and a final
examination. Auditors are permitted, but they will be expected to
attend regularly, do all the readings, and contribute to discussions.
ART 71500 - Topics in Italian Renaissance and Mannerist Art:
Trecento Painting and Sculpture in Italy, 1250-1400
GC: Wed., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Mallory, Rm. 3416, [45691]
This course will examine the art of Florence, Padua, Siena, Rome
and Assisi from c. 1250 until c. 1400. Called Late Gothic or Proto
Renaissance by art historians, this period is witness to a transformation
in religious and secular art that paves the way for the great masters
of the Italian Renaissance. Major painters and sculptors to be studied
include Nicola, Giovanni, and Andrea Pisano, Cimabue, Giotto, Duccio,
Simone Martini, and Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Topics to be
discussed include: the evolution of the altarpiece, the development
of large-scale fresco decoration, Giotto and Duccio and the growth
of visual narratives, the role of secular art, and the effects of
the "Black Death" on the art of its time. Auditors permitted.
ART 72100 – Topics in Baroque Art: Velázquez: Painting
as Making and As Discourse in 17th- Century Europe
GC: Tues., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Vergara, Rm. 3416, [45693]
The paintings and career of Velázquez provide the touchstones
of this course. "Making" refers to the material and formal
constituents of Velázquez's paintings--i.e., to the very
basis of their imagery and metaphors. "Discourse"--here
limited primarily to 17th-c. writings on art from Spain, Italy and
The Netherlands; highly influential passages on painting from Pliny's
Natural History (1st c. CE); and pictorial discourse discernable
in selected paintings by other 17th-c. practitioners--will provide
an important interpretative tool, and will also help historicize
the phenomena that inspired comments from that of painter Luca Giordano,
on Las Meninas: "this is the theology of painting"
(ca. 1692) to Manet's "Velázquez is the greatest painter
there ever was," and beyond. Recurring themes include: forms
of artistic self-definition and self-reflection; career strategies;
interdependencies of patronage and art; the value placed on virtuosity,
and some characteristically Baroque notions of this; concepts of
nature and the naturalistic; and the intense awareness of recognizable
visual languages (styles, manners) as essential components of artistic
intelligibility. Students will be provided with a list of promising,
manageable paper topics from which to choose, each with an accompanying
bibliography; they may also submit topics for approval. Auditors
permitted.
ART 75500 – Topics in Modern Art: From Symbolism to Constructivism:
Pioneers of Abstraction in France, Germany, The Netherlands, and
Russia
GC: Mon., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Long, Rm. 3416, [45695]
Why did so many European artists equate the process of abstraction
with concepts of purity and progress during the first two decades
of the twentieth century? This course will discuss the social, political,
and cultural context that contributed to the privileging of abstraction
as an international means of expression, not only in painting but
also in design and photography as well. Among the artists to be
considered wilt be Kandinsky, Marc, the Delaunays, Kupka, Mondrian,
van Doesburg, Malevich, Tatlin, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Stepanova,
and Moholy-Nagy. We will examine their involvement with Symbolism,
Expressionism, Orphism, Dadaism, Suprematism, Constructivism, and
Productivism and analyze critical essays of the period that attacked
and/or defended concepts of abstraction. Requirements: short oral
report and exam. Auditors permitted.
ART 75600 - Topics in Modern Architecture: Townhouses, Brownstones
and Rowhouses
GC: Mon., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Murphy, Rm. 3416, [45723]
This course will introduce the histories of a group of related building
types: townhouses, rowhouses, and brownstones. In general, it will
focus on buildings that share at least one party wall with another
residential structure and that were conceived as parts of larger
groupings in European and U.S. cities. Examples will range in date
from the origins of the type in the mid-18th century through the
"Brownstone Revival" of the 1960s onward. The intention
will be not just to show architectural variations on the basic themes,
but also to address how these building types responded to changing
conceptions of domestic and urban life. Further, we will look at
some of the ways that townhouses, rowhouses, and brownstones have
figured in works of literature and the other visual arts.
Lectures will begin with the development of attached housing for
various classes of urban dwellers in Europe and Great Britain. Then
the course will move to the U.S. to examine some of the many variations
on the rowhouse type that emerged in Boston, New York, Baltimore,
Charleston, San Francisco and other cities. Both modest examples
(often by unknown designers) and more elaborate architect-designed
rowhouses will be treated. In addition to attending the lectures,
students will be required to participate in class visits to New
York area rowhouses, take a final exam, and to write a short research
paper on a building of their choosing. For students not focusing
on architecture, it will be possible to write about a literary or
visual representation of a townhouse, rowhouse, or brownstone. Auditors
permitted.
ART 75600 - Topics in Modern Architecture: Islamic Art, Architecture
and Society in the West
GC: Mon., 2:00.-4:00 PM, 3 credits, Prof. Dodds, Rm. 3416, [45848]
This course will explore the meanings that can be drawn from interchange
between the architecture of Islamic communities within pluralistic
societies in Europe, the Mediterranean and America. In the 20th
Century, global economics and politics will draw the architecture
of Iraq, Iran and New York City into the subject of the course.
It will begin with an introduction to Islamic Architecture, and
an exploration of issues surrounding the formation of visual identity
in a multi-confessional landscape. It will continue with a number
of case studies ranging from the 8th century to the present, that
include introductions to some of the theoretical discourses that
have emerged concerning cultural representation and exchange and
appropriation in art and architecture. Auditors by permission of
instructor.
ART 76000 – Topics in Contemporary Art: Latin American Vanguards
GC: Mon., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, Rm.
3416, [45692]
This lecture course explores the character of Latin American artistic
vanguards of the 1920s and 1930s. Building on that material, we
then consider vanguardism as a precursor to developments in contemporary
art. We span the principle geographic centers where these movements
emerged including Havana, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, São
Paulo, and Lima. We look at these vanguards as multifaceted cultural
activity, a layering of a variety of creative acts and events. We
view the works of art against larger philosophical and political
themes expressed in manifestos, public performances, and criticism.
Parallel literary vanguard movements provide us with important counterpoints.
Five (5) auditors permitted.
ART 76000 – Topics in Contemporary Art: European Art
1945-1982
GC: Thurs., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Golan, Rm. 3416, [45696]
This lecture course will function as a survey of European art from
the aftermath of World War II, covering such movements as Art Brut,
Cobra, Zero Group, The Independent Group, Nouveau Realisme, Fluxus,
Situationism, Arte Povera, Art and Language, Neo-Expressionism up
to Documenta 7 of 1982. It will focus on specific themes
and the modalities that distinguish European art and criticism from
its American counterpart.
Themes such as: How did Europeans conceive of a Neo-avant-garde?,
Informel/Neo-Expressionism and historical trauma; European Pop and
America as mass culture; Institution Critique ca. 1968; the seduction
of poetry and myth; the role of international exhibitions. Five
(5) auditors will be accepted.
ART 79000 - History of Photography: Nineteenth-Century Photography
GC: Tues., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Batchen, Rm. 3416,
[45694]
This lecture class aims to examine the history of photography in
the nineteenth century as it develops within a number of specific
thematics, from the medium's conception around 1800 through
to the advent of the First World War. The class's structure
will allow for individual sessions to combine a formal, illustrated
presentation with 30 minutes of 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 which this medium helped to foster
and redefine over its first century. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ART 79500 - History of the Motion Picture: Aesthetics of Film
GC: Mon., 6:30-9:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Liebman, Rm. TBA, [45698],
[Cross-listed with Theatre 71400 and MALS 77100]
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. No auditors, non-matrics, permits.
ART 80300 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Non-Western Art: Problems
in Melanesian and Polynesian Art History
GC: Thurs., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Corbin, Rm. 3416,
[45699]
The Seminar will study the art of the following islands in Melanesia
(Island New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomon Islands,
Vanuautu, New Caledonia, and Fiji) and the following islands in
Polynesia (Tonga, Samoa, the Austral Islands, the Cook Islands,
the Society Islands, the Marquesas Islands, Hawaii, Easter Island,
and the Maori of New Zealand). Emphasis will be on both synchronic
(functionalist and structuralist) and diachronic (historical) approaches
to the study of Art and Architecture in Melanesia and Polynesia.
Course requirements: Each student will be required to present a
short in-class comparative book or article review of two
texts related to one of the art areas listed above. One text will
be from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, while the second
will be indicative of recent scholarship. Each student will give
a seminar report with slides of an in-depth study of some
aspect of a Melanesian or Polynesian art or architecture topic.
In addition, each student will submit an end-term research paper-10
pages in length (double-spaced text) with additional footnotes,
bibliography, list of illustrations, and illustrations - developed
from his/her seminar report.
Topics for the seminar reports might include such things as "Prehistoric
arts in Melanesia or Polynesia," "Women's arts
in Melanesia or Polynesia," "Masking," "Decorated
architecture," "Tattooing and or other body arts,"
Polynesian deities," "Eighteenth and nineteenth century
visual resources for art historical reconstruction in Melanesia
or Polynesia," the "Decorated canoe," and "Ethnographic
and Art Museum displays of Melanesian or Polynesian art."
No auditors allowed.
ART 82000 – Seminar: Selected Topics in European Art and
Architecture 1300-1750: Duccio to Holbein: The Interaction of Italian
and Northern European Renaissance Art
GC: Tues., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Lane, Rm. 3416, [45700]
A seminar dealing with the interchange of ideas north and south
of the alps from 1300 to 1550 in painting, manuscript illumination,
and printmaking. Among the problems to be considered are 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, Italian patronage of Flemish painting, Flemish
painters in Italy and Italian artists training in the Netherlands,
collections of Flemish paintings in Italy, the impact of Hugo van
der Goes' Portinari Altarpiece on Florentine painting of the
late fifteenth century, Memling's role in the development
of Florentine portraiture and the landscape "alla fiamminga,"
the reasons for the appeal of Flemish painting to Quattrocento painters
and patrons, the impact of Schongauer's prints in Italy, and
Italian influences on Dürer's paintings and prints. Five
auditors will be permitted with the understanding that they have
to come to all of the classes, including the ones devoted to student
presentations.
ART 83200 - Seminar: Selected Topics In 19th-Century Art: Changing
Places: The Role of Travel in Nineteenth-Century Art
GC: Wed., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Mainardi, Rm. 3416, [45701]
With the development of roads and railroads, artists, critics and
collectors of the 19th century traveled more than their predecessors
ever did. The role of travel in 19th century art has recently become
a topic of major interest, resulting in numerous exhibitions and
monographs. During spring 2003, the Metropolitan Museum of Art held
its Manet/Velazquez exhibition exploring the attraction that
Spain held for French and American Artists. In fall 2003, the Met
will host Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in
the Age of Romanticism, and the Dahesh Museum will show a selection
of works from the three recent Maestà di Roma (Majesty
of Rome) exhibitions that demonstrated the enduring attraction of
Rome for 19th century artists of all nationalities. This seminar
will introduce students to this rapidly burgeoning "travel"
literature and encourage them to contribute to it. We will examine
the various motivations that caused artists, critics and collectors
to "change places." Topics will include art training for
the young, the inspiration from "other" art or culture
for mature artists, exile for politically active artists such as
David, Goya, Courbet, the spread of tourism, the growth of museums,
collections, and international exhibitions, and the influence of
travel literature. The seminar will meet at the Metropolitan Museum,
the Dahesh Museum and at the Graduate Center. Students will give
a presentation of their research subject, and complete a written
paper based on the class presentation and subsequent critique. Auditors
by permission of instructor.
ART 84600 - Seminar: Selected Topics In the History of Criticism
in Modern Art: From Worringer to Adorno: German Modernist Criticism
and Its Impact
GC: Wed., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Long, Rm. 3416, [45702]
This course will focus on close readings of texts written in German
between 1900 and 1938 that extend our understanding of concepts
of modernism in the visual arts. Beginning with Wilhelm Worringer
and Sigmund Freud and concluding with Walter Benjamin and Theodore
Adorno, we will examine the political, social, and cultural contexts
from which these authors emerged and their eventual impact on criticism
in France, England and the United States. Other authors to be discussed
include: Wassily Kandinsky, Adolf Behne, Rosa Schapire, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy,
Siegfried Kracauer, Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Bloch, and Georg Lukacs.
Requirements: two oral reports [proposal for paper to grow out of
one]. German useful but not required. Auditors by permission of
instructor.
ART 88200 - Seminar: Selected Topics in American Architecture
and Urbanism: Modernism and Historicism in America Between the Wars
GC: Thurs., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Bletter, Rm. 3416,
[45703]
The Machine Age in America 1918-1941 (1986) will form the
core of a critical discussion that will differentiate, more clearly
than this publication, between the social underpinnings of the free-wheeling
twenties and the Depression-era thirties. It will also attempt to
define the flowering of the American skyscraper in the twenties
as a phenomenon of the Jazz age rather than the "Machine Age."
The course will expand H.-R. Hitchcock's layered historical model
to deal with the avant-garde, the historicizing Beaux-Arts, as well
as popular commercial styles (Art Deco and Streamlined Moderne).
Further it will explore institutional structures such as the Metropolitan
Museum's and MoMA's influence on architecture and crafts together
with the newly conceived profession of industrial design. The impact
of exhibitions (Chicago Century of Progress, the 1939 New York World's
Fair) will be examined for their projection of a synthesized modernity.
Sheldon Cheney's Art and the Machine will be contrasted with Lewis
Mumford's critical stance against technology. Among the individuals
to be discussed are architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Eliel Saarinen,
Hugh Ferriss, Raymond Hood, Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and
Jula Morgan; industrial designers Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Loewy,
Walter Dorwin Teague, Donald
Deskey; and artist-designers Eva Zeisel, Frederick Kiesler, and
Isamu Noguchi. It will conclude with the influx of European Modernists
in the thirties and the conflict this created for many American
practicioners. A research paper based on the seminar presentation
of the student's choice is required. Auditors permitted.
ART 89000 – Seminar: Selected Topics in the History of Photography:
The History of Photography
GC: Wed., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Batchen, Rm. 3416, [45704]
Participants in this seminar class will be invited to write their
own history of photography. The class will begin by looking at the
history of that history, and will then consider various alternatives
to it. Particular attention will be paid to the accounts provided
by two recent survey-histories of photography, Michel Frizot's A
new History of Photography (1998) and Mary Warner Marien's Photography:
A Cultural History (2002). But the class will also consider
how a selection of specific topics or individual photographers might
be incorporated into this type of historical account (eg. the invention
of Photography, the photo album, Malian photography, Andreas Gursky).
Students will be asked to prepare a publication proposal for a survey
history of photography, complete with conceptual rationale and chapter
breakdown, and then to write a chapter of that history. Auditors
by permission of instructor.
SEE ALSO
THEA 81500 Film Noir in Context
GC: Wed., 6:30-9:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Dickstein, Rm. TBA, [45222],
[Cross-listed with ENGL 87400]
The course will explore the style, sensibility, and historical context
of film noir. After tracing its origins in German expressionism,
French "poetic realism," American crime movies, the hard-boiled
fiction of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain, and the example of
Citizen Kane, we will examine some of the key films noirs of the
period between John Huston's The Maltese Falcon of 1941 and
Welles's Touch of Evil in 1958, including such works as Double
Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, Out of the Past, Detour,
Shadow of a Doubt, In a Lonely Place, Gun Crazy,
The Killers, DOA, Ace in the Hole, The Big
Heat, and Kiss Me Deadly.
We'll examine the role of French critics in defining and revaluing
this style, and delve into its influence on French directors like
Melville (Second Breath), Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player),
and Chabrol (La Femme Infidele, Le Boucher). Finally,
we'll look at the post-1970s noir revival in America in such films
as Chinatown, Blade Runner, Body Heat, and
Red Rock West.
Readings will include materials on the historical background of
this style, key critical and theoretical texts on film noir, and
hard-boiled fiction by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M.
Cain, and Patricia Highsmith. Auditors by permission of instructor.
THEA 81500 Realism and Naturalism in Film and Literature
GC. Thurs., 6:30-9:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Singer, Rm. TBA, [45219]
This course, "Realism and Naturalism in Film and Literature,"
will examine the aesthetic and historical evolution and relationship
of literary and film Realism and Naturalism. Beginning with representative
discourse from science and the humanities, this course will present
multiple, international literary and film narratives that exhibit
core precepts of Realist and Naturalist ideology: a commitment to
social and psychological verisimilitude, issues of genetic/environmental
causality; an anti-romantic/anti-supernatural "objective"
observation of the working world; a class-based context that suggests
an informing ideological perspective. Naturalism's foundation
in narrative realism alerts the reader to social and historical
contexts that mobilize the suppositions of verisimilitude. Naturalism
indicates an interpretive range that frames the meaning of human
nature and conditions, whether depicting the rage of the worker,
abuse of the prostitute, desperation of the indigent, or violence
of the alcoholic. [More information on this course can be found
in the Theatre department.] Auditors by permission of instruction.
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