U.C. Berkeley History of Art

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COURSES FALL 2007

Histart 234

GRADUATE SEMINAR: IN PIECES: FRAGMENT AND FRAGMENTATION IN ART AND ART HISTORY (4 UNITS)
Wednesdays 9:00-12:00
425 Doe, CCN 05667
Gregory Levine

Destruction and restoration of the Bamiyan collosal Buddhas; the Belvedere Torso and Renaissance art; medieval body-part reliquaries; manuscript/calligraphic fragments; the looting of Chinese Buddhist cave sites; Surrealism’s body parts...

“In Pieces” is a workshop that will examine fragments and fragmentation as ubiquitous in and indispensable to the visual arts and architecture and their study: in the formation of artistic movements, traditions; as resulting from iconoclasm; as negotiated and recuperated by devotional communities; in archaeology, collecting, and museum display; in reconstruction/restoration; as objects and conditions that press upon, are exploited in, or ignored by interpretive practice. We will organize a number of topics and work from writings that address (or manifest) specific fragments and conditions of fracture, such as (but not limited to): Barkan, Unearthing the Past; Gesta 36, no. 1 (1997; on body-part reliquaries); Stewart, Attalos, Athens, and the Akropolis: Davis, The Lives of Indian Images; Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India; Malraux, The Voices of Silence; Nochlin, The Body in Pieces; Atwood, Stealing History. The course is open to graduate students in all fields and, with consultation beforehand, advanced undergraduate students. Offered for 2 or 4 units.