THE GRADUATE CENTER
of THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
SPRING 2004 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
N.B. The Methods of Research course is limited to 15 students, other lectures are limited to 20 students and seminars are limited to 12 students. Three overtallies are allowed in each class but written permissions from the instructor and from the Executive Officer and/or the Deputy Executive Officer are required.
ART 70000 - Methods of Research
GC: Wed., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Long, Rm. 3421, [62105]
This course will examine a variety of methodological approaches associated with the practice of art history in the twentieth century. Beginning with formalist interpretations, we will proceed to discuss iconographical, social/political, psychoanalytic, post-structuralist, feminist, and post-colonialist approaches. Among those to be discussed will be Adorno, Barthes, Benjamin, Clark, Derrida, Freud, Fry, Greenberg, Herbert, Panofsky, Pollack, Riegl, Sedgwick, and Wollflin. Students will prepare an oral report, followed by a paper, on an object or building located in New York, using a method of their choice. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ART 70400 - Topics In Non-Western Art: Introduction to African Art
GC: Thurs, 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Corbin, Rm. 3421, [62106]
The lecture course will cover about thirty-one of the major art styles and traditions in Sub-Sahara West and Central Africa. Emphasis will be on an art historical understanding of these art forms within their cultural context. Styles and traditions to be covered include (alphabetically): Afro-Portuguese ivories (Bini-Portuguese, Kongo-Portuguese, Sapi-Portuguese), Akan terra cottas, Asante, Baga, Bamana, Bamum, Baule, Benin, Bwa, Chokwe, Dan, Djenne, Dogon, Fang, Ife, Igbo, Igbo-Ukwu, Ijaw, Kongo, Kota, Kuba, Lower Niger R. Bronzes, Luba, Mambila, Mende, Mossi, Nok, Senufo, and Yoruba. Course requirements: Each student will be required to present a short in-class review of a selected text (article, catalog, or book) on a seminal work of African art history published in the past ten years. There will be a comprehensive Final Exam during Finals Week in May. In addition, each student will submit an end-term research paper- ca. 10 pages of double-spaced text with footnotes, bibliography, and illustrations - focusing on a specific work of West or Central African art on view in New York museums and/or collections. No auditors permitted.
ART 72000 - Topics in Northern Renaissance Art: Art in Paris from Jean Pucelle to Jean Fouquet
GC: Wed., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Clark, Rm. 3421, [62107]
An Introduction to French art from the courtly Rayonnant style of the early 14th century to the beginnings of Late Gothic and French Renaissance art in the early 16th century. We will explore the major transformations in Parisian architecture, sculpture, and painting, with special emphasis on manuscript painting, as reflections of the changes in society. Auditors permitted.
ART 72500 - Topics in Baroque Art and 18th-Century Art: Art in Europe, 1648-1784
GC: Mon., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Sund, Rm. 3421, [62108]
This course will survey artistic production, institutions and patronage throughout Europe, with particular attention to French aesthetics and the pan-European influence of the Parisian scene. Discussion begins with the founding of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts (1648), and the long shadows cast into the 18th Century by 17th-century luminaries (Rubens, Bernini, Poussin) and well as the “Little Dutch Masters.” The course will include in-depth examinations of the careers of Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Tiepolo, Hogarth, and concludes with David’s now-iconic Neo-Classic essay, The Oath of the Horatii (1784). Auditors permitted.
ART 75500 - Topics in Modern Art: Cubism and Futurism
GC: Mon., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Braun, Rm. 3421, [62109]
On the occasion of the upcoming exhibition at the Solomon Guggenheim museum (Boccioni’s Materia: Futurism and the European Avant-Garde February 2004), this lecture course examines the direct links, mutual influences, and profound differences between the cubist and the futurist artists. It takes an interdisciplinary approach. The lectures cover both movements in depth, including their respective styles, theories of popular culture, gender politics, and political ideologies. Topics include the origins of cubism in the work of Picasso and Braque, and the differences between them and the so-called “Salon cubists.” The Futurist movement will be examined through manifestos and the writings of F.T. Marinetti, visual arts, and performance. Comparisons will be drawn between cubist papier collé and Futurist parole in liberta, both studied from the perspective of literary and semiotic theory. At least one class will be held at the Guggenheim, working directly with the exhibited objects. Students will be expected to cover extensive readings, and the course grade is based on a brief essay (an analysis and critique of selected readings) and a final exam. Reading knowledge of French and or Italian is highly desirable. Auditors permitted.
ART 75600 - Topics in Modern Architecture: 19th Century Theory and Practice
GC: Thurs, 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Murphy, Rm. 3421, [62110]
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 76000 - Topics in Contemporary Art: Abstract-Expressionism to Pop: The Forties and Fifties
GC: Wed., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Hadler, Rm. 3421, [62111]
This course charts the major artists and movements from the end of World War II, through the Cold War, and into the late fifties and early sixties with the explosion of consumerism so associated with the rise of Pop Art. Lectures will cover topics ranging from Abstract Expressionsim to Fluxus, the Judson Dance Theater, Assemblage Environments and Happenings, as well as early Pop. Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, Bontecou, Rauschenberg, Johns, and Warhol will be among the artists discussed. Questions relating to mass culture and gender will be addressed. Auditors permitted.
GC: Thurs., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, Rm. 3421, [Cross-listed with ASCP 82000], [62112]
American Modernism, according to museum curators, has now become the new Impressionism. The art-going public -- once blissfully ignorant of all but the most famous figures -- now line up to see any exhibition covering the Stieglitz Circle, Ashcan School, or so-called American Surrealists. Who are these artists, and how has public perception of them altered so dramatically? This course functions as a survey, encompassing central figures such as Sloan and O’Keeffe as well as more peripheral characters like Kuhn or Daugherty. Major collectors John Quinn, Duncan Phillips and others are added to our repertoire. Fine art’s borders with print culture, decoration, and popular entertainment are also explored. And we analyze ethnicity and its relation to how the story of American art has been told, and possibilities for future narratives. Several class meetings are held in the galleries of the Whitney and Metropolitan Museums and the Studio Museum, Harlem, to work directly with the objects. Five (5) auditors permitted.
ART 79500 - History of the Motion Picture: History of Film I
GC: Thurs., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Hendershot, Rm. C-419, [Cross-listed with THEA 71500 and MALS 77200], [62113]
This is a course in the history and historiography of the silent cinema. Weekly screenings represent technological and artistic developments from 1895 through the transition to sound. Topics include the rise of the Hollywood studio system and the relation of modernist movements in the arts to German cinema, Soviet cinema, and French avant-garde cinema. Selected essays by Sergei Eisenstein, Noël Burch, Thomas Elsaesser, Tom Gunning, and others accompany films seen in class and focus upon spectatorship and the emergence of “classical style.” No auditors permitted.
ART 80100 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Non-Western Art: Art of the Maya
GC: Wed., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Quiñones Keber, Rm. 3421, [62114]
Among Pre-Columbian societies, the Maya are considered by many to represent an intellectual and artistic peak. In recent years, archaeological explorations and advances in the decipherment of their hieroglyphic writing system have expanded our understanding about their history and culture. This seminar focuses on how these discoveries have revised our thinking about Maya art. Lectures in the first part of the course present an overview of Maya art (architecture, sculpture, mural and manuscript painting, ceramics), with student seminar reports following in the second part. Requirements: written critiques and discussions of readings and a seminar report/paper. Readings are in English, with some in Spanish for Pre-Columbian and Latin American majors. Auditors permitted, but they are expected to attend regularly, do all readings, and contribute to discussions.
ART 81500 - Seminar: Selected Topics in European Art and Architecture: Florentine Mannerism: Pontormo, Rosso and Bronzino
GC: Tues., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Cox-Rearick, Rm. 3421, [62115]
Students will investigate the late Renaissance style in painting, sculpture, and architecture known as Mannerism (ca. 1520-70). Although Mannerism became widely diffused, its birthplace was central Italy, particularly Florence, and its main expression was in painting and drawing. The seminar will concentrate on the work of the three major Florentine Mannerist painters: Pontormo and Rosso, who belonged to the first generation, known as primo manierismo, and Pontormo’s pupil Bronzino, the major expondent of la Bella Maniera in the mid-16th century.
A seminar on this subject is timely. Stimulated by the 500th anniversaries of the births of Pontormo and Rosso (1494) and Bronzino (1503), scholars have published much new research in the last decade, such as monographs on Pontormo (Costamagna, 1994), Rosso (Franklin, 1995), and Bronzino (Brock, 2002), and there have been major exhibitions (L’Officina della maniera, 1996; and The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, 2002). Florentine Mannerism is by no means a closed subject, and these and other new publications provide a basis for a revaluation of the work of Pontormo, Rosso, and Bronzino.
In addition to a close study of these three painters, students in the seminar will review the historiography of Mannerism--a 20th century phenomenon which reflects changing trends in art history, as well as current discourses about the subject. Drawings by these and other Mannerist artists will also be studied in a visit to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum and possibly other collections.
Requirements: seminar members will give several brief reports before spring break. The last two weeks of the seminar will be devoted to presentations on the subject of the final paper, which will deal with a topic chosen by the student on one of the three artists. Recommended prerequisite: a survey course in Italian High and Late Renaissance art. Reading knowledge of Italian is desirable but not required. Auditors not permitted.
ART 85600 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Architecture: Early 20th Century Modernisms in Europe
GC: Tues., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Bletter, Rm. 3421, [62116]
This course will deal with such concepts as modernism, the avant-garde, nationalism, functionalism, and theories of progress and their changing interpretation. While earlier histories saw this period as monolithic, as an International Style, or classic modernism, it is characterized by distinctive regional, often concurrent developments in the Soviet Union, Germany, Holland, France, and Italy. Problems, contradictions, and conflicts between movements will be discussed: the de Stijl group and the Amsterdam School, the Italian Futurists and Rationalists, the Russian Constructivists and “de-urbanists,” the German Expressionists and the adherents of the Neues Bauen. Extensive contacts between these groups will be developed as a minor theme together with a shifting understanding of internationalism from an initially political to an aestheticized idea. Some central figures such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe will be examined, as well as the Bauhaus and its series of styles that recapitulated the avant garde. Requirement: oral presentation and term paper. Auditors permitted.
ART 86000 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Contemporary Art: Minimalism in Perspective
GC: Tues., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Chave, Rm. 3421, [62117]
Beginning with an introduction to (New York-based) Minimalism at its inception in the 1960s, this course will proceed to focus on the eventual fortunes or fate of the movement, critically and historically speaking--in the evolution of a canon and an orthodoxy, institutionally and museologically, as well as in terms of artistic practice. The later careers of some artists associated with the movement; responses to Minimalism by other artists during and since the movement’s heyday; the role of patronage in shaping the public face of the movement will all be touched upon. Students will visit Dia facilities in NYC and Beacon. Auditors permitted.
ART 86000 - Seminar: Selected Topics In Contemporary Art: The Spaces of European Art: 1962-1972
GC: Thurs., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Golan, Rm. 3421, [62118]
Will consider the “spatialization” of art and theory during those years. I.e. Nouveau Réalisme and the New Urbanism, Fluxus, Situationism (in Paris/London), Institution Critique (Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren), Support-Surface, Arte Povera, the later Beuys, Blinky Palermo, Hanne Darboven, Art & Language, the reception of the Venice Biennales of 1964, 1968, 1970 and Kassel’s Documenta IV (1968), the importance of Documenta V (1972), as well as Harald Szeemann’s “When attitudes becomes form” (1969). Reading will include some of the key texts that marked the theoretical turn at that moment such as Umberto Eco on the “open work,” Henry Lefèbvre on the spaces of everyday life, Louis Althusser on ideological State apparatuses, Guy Debord on the society of the spectacle, Michel Foucault on the prison, Jürgen Habermas on the public sphere, and texts on art by Peter Bürger, Marcelin Pleynet, Germano Celant, Jean-Marc Poinsot, Charles Harrison and artists like Broodthaers and Buren. A knowledge of French is recommended. No auditors permitted.
ART 87100 - Seminar: Selected Topics in American Art: Current Scholarship on Art of the United States
GC: Mon., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Webster, Rm. 3421, [Cross-listed with ASCP 81500], [62120]
This seminar will review the state of scholarship on historic American art (Colonial period to 1950) based on John Davis’ analysis in, “The End of the American Century: Current Scholarship on the Art of the United States,” Art Bulletin, 75/3 (September 2003): 544-80. In conjunction with Davis’ article, four recent textbooks on American art by Wayne Craven, Frances Pohl, Barbara Groseclose, and David Bjelajac, will be examined. Students will be required to write weekly reviews, give occasional short in-class presentations, and submit a final research paper. This is an ideal course for students studying for orals in American art or who are teaching or are planning to teach an American art survey. Auditors are permitted with the proviso that they do all the reading and give one, short, in-class report.
ART 87100 - Seminar: Selected topics in American Art: Modern and Postmodern Landscape Conventions:
GC: Wed., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Senie, Rm. 3421, [Cross-listed with ASCP 81500], [62119]
This course will consider changing conventions and critical issues in landscape art from the postwar period to the present. The major focus will be on art in all media that depicts themes of the American road, establishing links to American road literature, film, and music. Other topics will include the debate over landscape vs. abstraction, the landscape as utopia/dystopia, and sculpture as landscape. Five (5) auditors permitted but will be required to participate in some gallery-based assignments.
ART 89500 - Seminar: Special Topics in the History of the Motion Picture: Seminar in Film Theory
GC: Wed., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Boddy, Rm. C-419, [Cross-listed with THEA 81500], [62121]
This course will provide an overview of classical and contemporary film theory. Writers, whose contributions to the field will be examined, include Eisenstein, Arnheim, Epstein, Balazs, Bazin, Merleau-Ponty, and Kracauer, among the earlier figures, and such contemporary theorists as Metz, Mitry, Baudry, Mulvey, Heath, and Carroll. Questions about the structure and function of the filmic “text,” the nature of cinematic representation and film spectatorship raised by various schools of thought, including phenomenology, Marxism, semiology, psychoanalysis, and feminism will be considered. Although attention is largely on primary theoretical writings, secondary texts and films that help to contextualize specific theories will be used as well. Auditors by permission of instructor.
SEE ALSO
THEA 81500 - Gay and Lesbian Experimental Film
GC: Tues., 6:30-9:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Schulman, Rm. C-419, [Cross-listed with WSCP 81000], [62061]
Gay and lesbian filmic images and perspectives are as old as cinema itself. This class will review the history of gay and lesbian experimental cinema from silents to modern day. We will also explore heterosexual icons of experimental film like Reifenstahl and Deren, and their profound influence on subsequent lesbian and gay cinema. The class will focus on the differences between formal invention and conventional narrative structure, and how the significance of this dynamic in understanding lesbian and gay expression and representation.
GC: Wed., 6:30-9:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Carlson, Rm. C-419, [62621]
This course will investigate magical realism as a cultural and historical phenomenon of global storytelling. Why has magical realism gained such importance and prominence in recent years? How is it related to globalization and to postmodernism? How do its aims change in relation to its places and times of origin in particular cultures? What are its shared formal characteristics? What are the specifically cinematic configurations of those characteristics? How does magical realism differ from but retain family resemblances to the supernatural and the fantastic? Indeed, how useful is the designation magical realism? A selection of films from around the world will be analyzed in light these questions. Film may include A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Cuba), The Exterminating Angel (Mexico), Daughters of the Dust (USA), and Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia). Readings will include comparative examples of prose fiction and theoretical writings by Alejo Carpentier, Tsvetan Todorov, Frederic Jameson, and others.