The Graduate School and University Center
of The City University of New York
Ph.D. Program in Art History
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS & PRELIMINARY READINGS
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 5-7% donation for the purchase of library books. Most of these books, of course, are also available to borrow from the Graduate Center and other CUNY schools’ libraries.
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
GC: Mon., 2:00 P.M.-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Long, Rm. 3421, [93246]
Office Hours: Wed. 4:30-6:00 p.m.
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, gender, and post-colonial approaches. Among the authors to be discussed will be Adorno, Barthes, Benjamin, Clark, Derrida, Freud, Fry, Foucault, Greenberg, Herbert, Kristeva, Panofsky, Pollack, Riegl, Sedgwick, and Wolfflin. Students will prepare an oral report, followed by a paper on an object located in New York, using a method/s of their choice. Auditors by permission.
Preliminary Reading
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939) and “Towards a Newer Laocoon” (1940) in Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, 2nd ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 539-548, 562-567.
Susan Platt, Art and Politics in the 1930s: Modernism, Marxism, and Americanism (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1999), 219-224, 246-250.
ART 70010 – Topics in Art History: Pedagogy of Art History
GC: Fri., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Ball, Rm. TBA, [93247]
Office Hours: Fri. 2:00-3:00 p.m.
This course will examine best practices for teaching art history with an emphasis on the survey, although upper level courses will also be addressed. A range of pedagogical questions will be discussed from ‘What is Art History?’ to more specific questions on the use of contextual information, formalist interpretation and other approaches in the classroom. These discussions will be used to develop and sharpen students’ personal teaching philosophies. Some attention will be paid to the teaching of writing, so important at CUNY and nationally with the Writing Across the Curriculum movement. Students will get practice in putting together lectures and be given coping strategies for classroom and time management. Every student will ideally get classroom experience with undergraduates once during the semester. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary reading:
Hollis Clayson, Tom Cummins, Natalie Boymel Kampen, Richard J. Powell, Martin J. Powers, O.K. Werckmeister. “Art> <History” in Art Bulletin 77:3 (September 1995), 367-391.
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 70020 – Topics in the Art and Architecture of Africa, the Pacific, and the Pre-colonial Americas: Native Arts of North America
GC: Thurs., 9:30-11:30 A.M., 3 credits, Prof. Corbin, Rm. 3416, [93248]
Office hours: Thurs. 11:30-12:30 p.m.
This lecture course is an introductory survey of North American Indian and Eskimo art. It covers the following art-producing areas: Northwest Coast; N.W. & S.W. Alaska; Southwest; Plains; Woodlands; and Contemporary Native American and Eskimo artists. The course will cover both Pre-Colonial arts and Historic tribal arts through the late 20th century. A brief discussion of several Contemporary Native American and Eskimo Artists will come at the end of the course. Course requirements: a ten-page research paper and a final exam. No auditors permitted.
Preliminary reading
Janet C. Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native American Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 or later editions).
Christian F. Feest, Native Arts of North American (London: Thames & Hudson, 1992 edition or later).
ART 74000 - Topics in Islamic Art and Architecture: Ottoman Art and Architecture and the West in the 18th and 19th Centuries
GC: Thurs., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Bates, Rm. 3421, [93249]
Office Hours: Thurs. 6:30-7:30 p.m.
NB: Satisfies the distribution requirement in the field of African, Pre-Columbian, Native-American, Oceanic, Islamic or Asian Art.
The Ottoman Art and Architecture, after tentative beginnings in the early 18th century, were transformed by the end of the 19th century into a complex system of Islamic-Western modes, materials, and techniques, through injecting novelty into conventional styles by appropriating artistic forms from Europe. The resulting eclecticism supplied flexibility and adaptability to the artistic practice, enriching it in the process. The two-hundred-year period coincided with massive territorial loss, worsening economic and financial situation, internal political turmoil, as well as the encroachment of Western Powers into the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire, in desperate attempts to survive, sought to reshape its military, technological, and cultural institutions, including artistic canons, in order to conform to the “modernity” that seemed to be the underlying factor in ensuring the superiority of the West. Westernization, as a term, became equated with Contemporariness, or Modernity. This course will examine the road that was taken by one Muslim country, the Ottomans, to make readjustments in its arts and architecture to attain the apparent prerequisite of “European contemporariness” in the period between 1700 and 1900. Three (3) auditors permitted.
Preliminary reading
Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 (New Approaches to European History), 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 2005; pb.
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 76010 - Topics in Late 18th and 19th Century Art and Architecture: Nineteenth-Century European Art: Theory and Practice
GC: Thurs., 11:45 A.M-1:45 P.M., Prof. Murphy, Rm., 3421, [93250]
Office Hours: Thurs. 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. Email: kmurphy@gc.cuny.edu
This course will survey architectural production and theory in western Europe from the French Revolution to World War I. Special attention will be paid to the historiography of nineteenth-century architecture, the relationship between the construction of national identity and the development of architectural form, the roles of historicism and revivalism in architecture of the period, the development of new industrially-produced materials and the theorization of their use, changing notions of private life and their impact on domestic architecture, among others. Requirements include: one short paper and a final examination. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary
Readings:
Barry Bergdoll, European Architecture, 1750-1890 (Oxford UP,
2000)
ART 76020 - Topics in Modern Art: Modernism and Nationalism in Germany and Central Europe, 1888-1938
GC: Wed., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Long, Rm. 3421, [93251]
Office Hours: Wed. 4:30-6:30 p.m.
This course will focus on the multiple modernisms that emerged from the polarizing tensions of industrialization and political instability in Germany and Central Europe from the end of the nineteenth century through the nineteen-thirties. Although we will focus on visual manifestations, such as Expressionism, Dada, Neue Sachlichkeit, that captured the attention of critics and patrons in Germany from the end of the Wilhelmine Empire through the Weimar Republic, we will also discuss the spread of such developments among the enthusiasts of modernism in Poland and Hungary. In addition, we will examine the impact of Soviet Constructivism upon experimental painters, photographers, and designers at the German Bauhaus and in other art schools during the twenties. Essays by contemporary critics such as Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, and Wilhelm Worringer will help to explain how modernism became the antithesis of nationalism, especially in Germany. To produce a more nuanced picture of the artistic experimentation that emerged out of the conflicting demands of modernism and nationalism, attention will be given to women artists such as Paula Modersohn-Becker, Käthe Kollwitz, Hannah Höch, Lucia Moholy as well as to their male colleagues – Ernst Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. We will conclude the course with a discussion of the Soviet and Nazi censorship in the thirties of these experimental artists. A final exam and a short oral report/paper will be required. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary Readings:
Bertolt Brecht, “Popularity and Realism” (1938) in Art in Theory: 1900-2000, ed. C. Harrison & P. Wood (Oxford, UK/ Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 489-93; and George Lukacs, from “Expressionism: Its Significance and Decline” (1934) in German Expressionism: Documents from the end of the Wilhelmine Empire to the Rise of National Socialism, ed. R. Long (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 307-11.
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 76020 – Topics in Modern Art: Art and Social Engagement
GC: Tues., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Bishop, Rm. C415A, [93853]
Office Hours: Tues.4:00-5:00 p.m.
This lecture course will examine the impulse towards social engagement in twentieth-century art: the desire to make art beyond the gallery, to facilitate collective production, and to realize a paradigm of creativity beyond individual authorship and its imbrication in the market. Spanning the historic avant-garde to current artistic and curatorial practice, the course will focus on the following recurrent issues: the relationship of aesthetic form to political context, ideas of community and publicness, the idea of a collaborative aesthetic, the representability of this work to subsequent audiences, the criteria deployed for its analysis. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Preliminary Readings:
Charles Esche
and Will Bradley, Art and Social Change, Afterall/MIT, 2007
Claire Bishop, Participation, Whitechapel/MIT, 2006
ART 76030 - Topics in Modern Architecture, Urbanism and Design: Early 20th-Century Architecture & Design
GC: Thurs., 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Bletter, Rm. 3421, [93252]
Office Hours: Tues. 2:00-3:00 p.m.; Thurs. 4:00-5:00 pm. and by appointment. Email: rbletter@gc.cuny.edu
This course will deal with such concepts as modernism, the avant-garde, nationalism, functionalism, and theories of progress and their evolving interpretation. While earlier histories saw this period as monolithic, as an International Style, or “orthodox” modernism, it is, from today’s vantage point 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: 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 Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe will be examined, as well as the Bauhaus with its several phases that recapitulate the changing avant garde. Auditors permitted.
Preliminary
Readings:
Kenneth Frampton Modern
Architecture: A Critical History (1980) for a basic introduction to the
period.
Hilde Heynen Architecture and Modernity: A Critique (1999).
ART 77400 – Topics in Modern Latin American Art & Architecture: Colonial to Independence: Latin American Arts of the 18th and 19th centuries
GC: Tues., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, Rm. 3421, [93253]
Office Hours: Tues. 2:30-3:30 p.m. Email: kmanthorne@gc.cuny.edu
This course surveys the transition from Spanish- and Luso-American colonies into independent nation statues through the production of visual arts. We analyze the central themes of People and Places as they were transformed in their diverse contexts across the 18th and 19th centuries. As examples, we consider the role that portraiture played in representing the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs who ruled these vast territories in absentia and then measure them against the visual representation of Bolívar and others as heroes of Independence. The pictorial treatment of Indigenous peoples is also critical to examine before and after this historic divide. Maps and other representations of terrain in late colonial times are examined in relation to the
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 77400 (cont’d)
secular representations of nature and landscape after the wars of independence. Given that 2009 is the 150th anniversary of Alexander von Humboldt’s death, special emphasis is given his Spanish American explorations (1799-1804) on the cusp on Independence, and to their impact on to the pictorial arts. Visits to the Hispanic Society of America and other collections will supplement class meetings. Requirements: image-based midterm exam, final exam, and a short paper. Five (5) auditors permitted.
Preliminary Readings:
Ilona Katzew, “Stars in the Sea of the Church: The Indian in Eighteenth Century New Spanish Painting,” in The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2006) pp.335-348
Dawn Ades, “Independence and its Heroes,” in Art in Latin America. The Modern Era, 1820-1980 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 27-39.
ART 79000 – History of Photography: Photography as Cultural Translation
GC: Mon. 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Pelizzari, Rm. 3421 [93254]
Office Hours: Mon. 1:45-2:45 p.m.
Preliminary Readings:
Eleanor Hight and Gary Sampson, eds. Colonialist Photography. Imag(in)ing Race and Place (Routledge, 2002).
James Ryan, Picturing Empire. Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire (University of Chicago Press, 1997).
James Duncan, “Scripting Egypt: Orientalism and the cultures of travel,” in Writes of Passage. Reading travel writing (Routledge,1999).
Diller + Scofidio, eds, Back to the Front: Tourisms of War (F.R.A.C., 1994).
Brian Wallis, ed., Strangers. The First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video (ICP, 2003).
Susan Meiselas, Encounters with the Dani (Steidl, 2003).
Robbins & Becher, The Transportation of Place (Aperture, 2006).
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 79400 – Aesthetics of Film
GC: Tues. 11:45 A.M.-3:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Miller, Rm. C-419 , [93255], Cross-listed with FSCP 81000 and THEA 71400 and MALS 77100
Ever since the Lumiere Brothers’ train arrived at the station, film has been concerned with its own mechanics and meanings and the ways in which film not only captures the moment but transforms it, creating an impact upon its audience with distinct aesthetics. This course highlights the self-referentiality of film and argues that a central aspect of the cinematic enterprise is the depiction of the filmmaking environment itself through the “meta-film”. Using this emphasis as an entry to the course, students will be provided with a thorough understanding of the concepts that are needed to perform a detailed formal analysis. The course’s main text is the 8th edition of Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art and the book is used to examine such key topics as narrative and nonnarrative forms, mise-en-scene, composition, cinematography, camera movement, set design/location, color, duration, editing, sound/music, and genre. In addition, we read Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in order to develop an understanding of the relationship between aesthetics and technology. We also read brief selections from Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime in order to underline the affectivity of aesthetics. In the final section of the course, we examine the challenges that digital culture has brought to aesthetics of the once entirely analog medium of cinema. We ask how is the medium transformed when films are watched on a tiny iPod screen or accessed via YouTube. In addition, as many films are now shot using digital video, we investigate how the changes in production and post-production environments are dramatically changing the look and sound of cinema. As part of the course, we cross genres and construct our own database of films that focus on the landscape and soundscape of the filmmaking terrain and highlight the aesthetics of cinema. As such, we watch Thanhouser and Marston’s Evidence of the Film (1913), Charlie Chaplin’s The Masquerader (1914), Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Donen and Kelly’s Singing in the Rain (1952), Jean Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer (1960), Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ (1963), Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973), Robert Altman’s The Player (1991), Tom DeCillo’s Living in Oblivion (1995), P.T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1998), David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001), and Fulton and Pepe’s Lost in La Mancha (2002). We also look at the formal conventions of the “making of” documentary, now included as a sub-feature on so many DVD versions of films. Students are expected to write short weekly response papers to the readings and screenings. The 12-15 page final paper is a critical analysis of a film that foregrounds the filmmaking process itself. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ART 79500 – History of the Motion Picture: Film History I
GC: Wed. 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Solomon, Rm. C-419, [93256], Cross-listed with THEA 71500, FSCP 81000, and MALS 77200
This course is an intensive examination of film history before 1930 that introduces students to international silent cinema, to the scholarly literature on early cinema, and to the practices of researching and writing film history. Topics for our consideration include the “emergence of cinema”; the “cinema of attractions”; the “narratvization” of cinema; theater and early film; sound, color and the “silent” image; the industrialization of film production; national cinemas of the 1910s; the Hollywood mode of filmmaking; women and African-American filmmakers; and film movements of the 1920s. We will study the work of such filmmakers as Lumière, Mèliès, Porter, Paul, Bauer, Christensen, Feuillade, Weber, Micheaux, Murnau, Dulac, Eisenstein, and others while considering the ways that silent films were exhibited and received in different contexts.
Students will write a 15+ page seminar paper on a research topic of their choosing that has been approved by the professor and will conduct a smaller-scale historical research project making use of archival resources. In addition, students are expected to complete assigned readings detailed in the syllabus and to actively participate in class discussions. Auditors by permission of instructor.
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 82000 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Classical Art: Greece, The Aegean, Etruscan, Roman Art and Architecture: Art and Power in the Age of Alexander
GC: Thurs. 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Kousser, Rm. 3421, [93258]
Office Hours: Thurs. 5:30-6:30 p.m.;8:30-9:30 p.m. or by appointments. Email: rkousser@brooklyn.cuny.edu
This course examines Hellenistic art within a global perspective, focusing on issues of art and power. It looks at the visual culture of the Greek world, at a time when the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors brought an area stretching from Sicily in the west to Egypt, Persia, and Afghanistan in the east under Hellenic rule. The emphasis is on Hellenistic monarchs and their courts as catalysts for artistic innovation. The course will consider both familiar monuments such as the Great Altar of Pergamon and more recently excavated works from Macedonia and Alexandria that have revolutionized our ideas of Hellenistic art. In addition, we will make use of the Metropolitan Museum’s newly installed Greco-Roman galleries as well as examining Hellenistic-period works in the Near Eastern, Egyptian, and South Asian collections. Course requirements will include responses to selected readings, but the focus will be on a long-term individual research project, with an in-class presentation and term paper. Up to three auditors permitted.
Preliminary Readings:
J. J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age.
ART 83000 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Medieval Art and Architecture: Illuminated Manuscripts of the Middle Ages
GC: Wed., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Clark, Rm. TBA, [93257], Cross-listed with MSCP 80500
An introduction to the study of medieval illustrated manuscripts, beginning with the tools for analyzing and studying them (simplified codicology) and some current theories on the origins of the book (codex). We will examine the major periods of manuscript production from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, through selected examples. Students will be expected to research and write a paper on a single manuscript of their choice. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ART 85000 – Seminar: Selected Topics European Art and Architecture, 1300-1750: Early Modern Print and its Detractors: Author and Artist, Publisher and Reader
This course will examine the possibilities that the mechanically reproducible word and image brought to the production of literary, visual, and intellectual arts and their delivery to an audience. Reading will be drawn from history, literature, and art history. We will begin by considering the various ways print technology affected the dissemination of ideas and information in early modern culture. We will then turn to the impact of print on literature and art in relation to competing forms of publication (painting, manuscript, and performance). Topics will include the relationship between painting and the reproducible print, and the professionalization of the printmaker as artist in Italy and Northern Europe; the rivalry between print publication and manuscript circulation of verse and prose; the rivalry between print and performance versions of drama; the development of the professional authorial persona and the resistance to authorial status; the place of women writers in networks of publication; the deployment of varied means of publication to negotiate position with family, coteries, and patrons. The course will end by considering the combination of text and image in the illustrated publication of the conquest of the New World. Topics will be examined in relation to specific writers and artists, including
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 85000 (Cont’d)
Mantegna, Dürer, Diana Mantuana, Petrarch, Erasmus, Montaigne, Labé, Shakespeare, Donne, Wroth, and Cortes. Because this is a cross-disciplinary course, participants are encouraged to make use of material from their home discipline. Assignments will include an oral report and a semester project. Auditors by permission of instructor.
GC: Mon., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Richter, Rm. 3421, [93259]
Office hours: Mon. 3:00-4:00 p.m.
The name Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) is known to all art historians. He is the designer of the Uffizi, one of the most important museums in the world, which contains at its nucleus the collection of masterpieces amassed by the Medici family. Vasari himself worked for Cosimo I, the first grand duke of Tuscany, serving as his chief architect and decorator. The Palazzo Signoria is frescoed by Vasari with scenes extolling the triumphs of this illustrious dynasty. He established the famous Accademia del Disegno in 1563 which would set the standard for formal art institutions for the next 350 years. In addition, he was active as a painter and architect in his native Arezzo, which in the cinquecento, was part of Florentine territory.
Vasari is also the author of Le vita de’ più eccellenti scultori, pittori, ed architetti, a work which ultimately eclipsed all his other efforts and placed him in a special pantheon of cultural heroes. First published in 1550 and then reissued in amplified form in 1568, Vasari’s Lives has become the standard reference work for the study of Italian Renaissance Art. An important cultural as well as historical document, it is considered by Italians to be on a par with the works of Dante and Boccaccio. Written by an artist for artists, his magnum opus has been both praised and vilified over the centuries; its author described alternatively as an excellent biographer or a witty and wicked and untrustworthy fabricator. His praise of disegno over colorito inspired the great rivalries between Poussin and Rubens in the seventeenth century and between Ingres and Delacroix in the nineteenth century. In order to understand the true importance of the Lives, Vasari’s work must be compared to those of his contemporaries such as Ludovico Dolce, Bellori and Karl van Mander.
This seminar will address all aspects of Vasari’s career: his art and historiography. Students should begin by reading his biography of Michelangelo, an artist praised as the greatest of all times having not just rivaled the ancient, but succeeding in surpassing them. Individual lives will be evaluated as well his role as court artist and architect within the cultural milieu of grand ducal Florence. Requirements: 30 minute seminar reports and a research paper. Four (4) auditors permitted.
Preliminary readings:
Vasari, Lives, 2 volumes, Penguin edition.
Vasari on Technique, Dover paperback, 1960
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 85020 Seminar: Selected Topics in Northern Renaissance Art and Architecture: Duccio to Holbein: The Interaction of Italian and Northern Renaissance Art
GC: Tues. 2:00-4:00 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Lane, Rm. 3421, [93260]
Office Hours: Tues. 4:00-5:00 p.m.
A seminar dealing with the interchange of ideas north and south of the Alps from 1300 to 1530 in painting, manuscript illumination, and printmaking. Lectures will focus on the reception of northern European art in Florence, in conjunction with the exhibition, “Florence and the Low Countries,” to be held at the pitti Palace from June 20 to October 20. Among the problems to be considered are Flemish painters and paintings in Florence, Florentine patronage of Flemish painting, Flemish influences on painters from Filippo Lippi to Raphael, 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,” and the theoretical basis for the appeal of Flemish painting to Quattrocento painters and patrons in Florence. Students may choose topics that focus on Italian influence on northern painting, manuscript illumination, or printmaking as well as northern European influence in Italy, such as the influence of Trecento painting and sculpture on Jean pucelle, collections of Flemish paintings in Italy, Italian painters who trained in Flanders, the impact of northern European prints in Italy, Italian influences on Durer’s paintings and prints, and Durer’s impact in Italy. Students are expected to have a basic knowledge of both Italian and northern Renaissance painting and graphics. Five (5) auditors allowed.
Preliminary Readings:
Christiansen, Keith, “The View from Italy,” in From Van Evck to Bneael. Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Musçuin of Art edited by Maryan W. Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, New York, 39—61.
Nuttall, Paula, From Flanders to Florence. The Impact of Netherlandish Painting. 1400-1500 (New Raven and London, 2004).
Rohlmann, Michael, “Flanders and Italy, Flanders and Florence. Early Netherlandish Painting in Italy and its particular Influence on Florentine Art: An Overview,” in Italy and the Low Countries—Artistic Relations. The Fifteenth Century, Proceedings of the Symposium held at Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, 14 March 1994, (Florence, 1999), 39-67.
ART 86010 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Late 18th and 19th-Century Art and Architecture: Changing Places: The Role of Travel 1750-1900
GC: Tues., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Mainardi, Rm. 3421, [93261].
Office Hours: Tues. 1:45-2:45 p.m. Email: pmainardi@gc.cuny.edu
With the development of roads and railroads, artists, critics and collectors traveled more than their predecessors ever did, and yet only recently, with globalization, has the role of travel in 18th and 19th century art become a topic of major interest. Numerous recent exhibitions and monographs have explored the various motivations, destinations, and influences of travel in this period. This seminar will introduce students to this literature and encourage them to contribute to it. Topics will include: the Grand Tour; art training; inspiration from other arts or cultures (ranging from the standard sojourn in Italy to trips farther afield to North Africa, the Near East, the Pacific); exile, whether temporary (Pissarro, Monet) or permanent (David, Goya, Courbet); nationalism and the spread of tourism; the growing importance of museums, collections, and international exhibitions. Students will give a presentation of their research subject, and complete a publishable written paper based on the class presentation and subsequent critique. Auditors by permission only.
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 86010 (Cont’d)
Preliminary readings: according to students’ interests. Students may consult with me in advance, either by appointment or email (pmainardi@gc.cuny.edu), for more specific bibliography.
ART 86040 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Modern Architecture, Urbanism, and Design: Modernism and Globalization: Modern Architecture, 1945-Present
GC: Wed., 11:45 A.M.-1:45 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Maciuika, Rm. 3421, [93262]
Office Hours: TBA. Email: john_maciuika@baruch.cuny.edu
This course examines a wide range of issues in modern architecture since the Second World War. In an increasingly globalized, mediatized, and commercialized world, how do the design professions in different cultural contexts respond to the challenges of architectural creativity, professional productivity, and artistic integrity? What purposes does modern architecture serve, under what political, economic, and social circumstances, and in whose interests? Students should expect a heavy reading, writing, and presentation load, and will benefit from familiarizing themselves with such introductory texts as Joan Ockman, Architecture Culture, 1943-1968; Kate Nesbitt, Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture; and William J.R. Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900. Auditors by permission of instructor.
ART 87000 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture: Archaeologies of Contact
GC: Wed., 4:15-6:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Pugh, Rm. 3421, [93263]
Office Hours: Wed. 3:00-4:00 p.m. and by appointment. Email: Timothy.Pugh@qc.cuny.edu
This seminar will survey archaeological and ethnohistorical studies of cultural contact with an emphasis on materiality. Intercultural objects traverse social boundaries, moving from one group to another and from one meaning to another. Contact situations almost invariably involve power relations, which carry over into the material world. The course will begin with discussions of theoretical positions regarding cultural contact from diffusion to appropriation. Students will also examine several case studies concerning objects in contact situations. While the theoretical readings will not be limited to a specific region, each student will compose and present a final paper involving an extensive investigation of the material culture of contact in some area of the New World. Two (2) auditors allowed but are required to do all the readings and participate in class.
Preliminary reading:
Appadurai, Arjun, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things, ed. Arjun Appadurai, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3-63.
Glassie, Henry, “Chapter 2: Material Culture,” in Material Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 41-86.
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 87300 – Seminar: Selected Topics in American Art: Hudson River School Revisited: Exhibition
GC: Mon., 6:30-8:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Manthorne, Rm. 3421, [93264], Cross-listed with ASCP 82000
Office Hours: Mon. 5:15-6:15 p.m. Email: kmanthorne@gc.cuny.edu
The seminar is intended to culminate in an exhibition, planned to open in Summer 2009, as part of the Hudson Quattrocentenary. Students will participate in all phases of the exhibit, and contribute to the accompanying publication. American landscape art known as the Hudson River School surprisingly has generated no single, comprehensive study, nor has it been the subject of a serious exhibition for over 20 years. 2009, the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s ‘discovery’ of the river that now bears his name, offers an opportunity to rethink this group of painters. This seminar aims to survey the existing literature as the launch pad for developing new directions and strategies for studying landscape art created in our region. During the fall we will make excursions to sites where the painters lived and worked as a complement to library and museum research. We interrogate women’s appreciation of nature as a counterpart to the usual emphasis on the Hudson River ‘men’, the role of transport routes and tourism in the expansion of painting, and the significance of an artist painting in her/his own backyard. Five (5) auditors are permitted.
Preliminary readings:
American Paradise. The World of the Hudson River School. Intro by John K. Howat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987).
ART 89600 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies: Film Noir in Context: From Expressionism to Neo-Noir
GC: Wed., 6:30-9:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Dickstein, Room C-419, [93265], Cross-listed with ENGL 87400, THEA 81500 & FSCP 81000
This 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 cinematography and narrative structure of Citizen Kane, we will examine some of the key film noirs of the period between John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958). These will include 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 explore the visual style of film noir, the importance of the urban setting, the portrayal of women as lure, trophy, and betrayer, and the decisive social impact of World War II and the Cold War. We’ll also examine the role played by 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 by Paul Scrader, Carlos Clarens, James Naremore, Alain Silver and others, and the work of some hard-boiled fiction by writers such as Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, David Goodis, and Patricia Highsmith. Each student will be expected to deliver one oral report and to write a 15-page research paper. Auditors by permission of instructor.
FALL 2008 - COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
ART 89600 – Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies: The Films of Luchino Visconti
GC: Tues., 4:15-8:15 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. McElhaney, Room C-419, [93266], Cross-listed with FSCP 81000 and THEA 81500
A seminal filmmaker in the birth of Italian neo-realism, Luchino Visconti’s body of work (in film as well as in opera and theater) intersects with a number of major issues in relation to post-war European culture. This
course will examine Visconti’s career from a variety of different perspectives and screen nearly all of his films.
Crucial to the concerns of the course will be Visconti’s relationship to traditions of cinematic, theatrical and literary realism, traditions within which Visconti has often been a controversial figure. Much of this controversy revolved around what were often felt to bet the excessive residual effects of a melodramatic sensibility on the form and structure of the films. Such charges have also been leveled against his process of adapting works from the canon of nineteenth and twentieth century literature (Dostoevsky, Camus, Mann, Maupassant) in which “great literature” has often been reduced to either a purely illustrative or conventional dramatic function. But these theatricalizing and melodramatic elements are no less crucial and no less historically significant than realism for understanding Visconti’s filmmaking practice and its relationship to post-war art cinema. For Visconti, melodrama and the theatrical often existed in a dialectical rather than contradictory relationship to realism. Moreover, melodrama for Visconti was the very essence of the theatrical and the dramatic. Throughout the semester, close attention will be paid to the historical and cultural moments surrounding the production and reception of the films, with particular attention given to Visconti’s coordination of all of these leads to one of the most complex, imaginative and voluptuous visual styles in the history of cinema. Course Requirements: Students are required to submit a final term paper of approximately twenty pages. The papers may address any number of issues in relation to the films. Close formal analysis is certainly encouraged but students are also welcome to do research on other matters, including the relationship to post-war Italian and European cultural scene; to address the films’ treatment of sexuality; to examine the implications of Visconti’s literary adaptations, and so on. This paper must be discussed with me in advance, followed by a formal written proposal of approximately two to three pages. Auditors by permission of instructor.
Required Texts:
Luchino Visconti, by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 3rd edition (BFI Publishing, 2003).
The House by the Medlar Tree, by Giovanni Verga.
The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky, David Magarshack, trans., Modern Library edition, 2001.
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, translated and edited by Clayton Koelb, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1994).
ART 89600 - Seminar: Selected Topics in Film Studies: Contemporary Hispanic Cinema
GC: Mon., 6:30-9:30 P.M., 3 credits, Prof. Glickman, Rm. C-419 [93267] Cross listed with FSCP 81000 and THEA 81500
This interdisciplinary course explores the literature and cinema of uprootedness as people move into and out of the Hispanic world, from colonial times to the present. It examines upheavals caused by wars, military dictatorships, economic hardships, religious and ideological persecutions. Migrations and internal and external exiles: North Africa, Spain, the Caribbean in South America, Argentina and Chile. Fictional selections are supported by critical articles. The films shown are renditions of historical events, literary adaptations and documentaries. I will try to have most of the films available to the students at the reserve room (except for those films borrowed from the Cervantes’ Institute). Students are responsible for reading the assigned material prior to each session. Students will make brief presentations on the material covered during the course and will write a final comparative paper based either on a film not seen in class, or only partially discussed during the semester. Auditors by permission of instructor. Required Text: Crossing Continental Bridges: Cinematic and Literary Representations of Spanish and Latin American Themes, Editors: Nora Glickman and Alejandro Varderi, Tucson: Chasqui Press. Arizona U. Press, 2005.