Western Art from the Renaissance to the Present Course Number: HA 11 | CCN: 04827
This course is an introduction to visual art in Europe and the USA since the 14th century with the main emphasis on painting and sculpture. Rather than attempting to offer a sweeping synthetic narrative of the development of art during...
Freshman and Sophomore Seminar: Vermeer and Dutch Painting: The Mauritshuis Collection Course Number: HA 39F | CCN: 04868
This spring the Mauritshuis is sending to the De Young Museum in San Francisco some of the highlights of its collection, including Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and paintings by Rembrandt, Steen, Hals, Ruisdael, Ter Borch and De Hooch....
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Art and Space: Tian’anmen Square Since 1949 Course Number: R1B sect. 8 | CCN: 04824
Since 1949, the area of Tian’anmen Gate and Square has gone through major spacial and architectural renovations. Along with these physical changes, the area has developed into a highly charged space for political theatre and protest. This class will consider...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Reading and Writing About American Art Course Number: R1B sect. 7 | CCN: 04821
By means of intensive looking, thinking, reading, speaking, and writing, this course introduces the student to a series of problems and issues in the description and analysis of works of art. Each week we shall read, summarize in written form...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Installation Art: Here Today, Gone to Market? Course Number: R1B sect. 6 | CCN: 04818
Once seen as an avant-garde thumb in the eye of the commodified objet d’art, installation art is now a standard fare in museum and biennial exhibitions. This course will consider historical precedents and early pioneers of installation art before moving...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Institutions of Art Course Number: R1B sect. 5 | CCN: 04815
This course will focus on writing by artists, critics, art historians, and theorists about the meaning and function of the museum from its first public manifestations in the 18th century to recent debates about the form and function of the...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Art Work: Authorship and Ownership Course Number: R1B sect. 4 | CCN: 04812
The literary critic and theorist, Terry Eagleton, wrote that the emergence of the aesthetic as a theoretical category in the eighteenth century was closely bound up with the material processes of early capitalism, which freed art from many of the...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Topic 19th Century French Sculpture Course Number: R1B sect. 3 | CCN: 04809
This course will focus on a single method of art-historical inquiry, the social history of art. Our goal, in large part, will be to develop an understanding of the historical trajectory of the social history of art and to unpack...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Writing about Portraiture, 18th Century to the Present Course Number: R1B sect. 2 | CCN: 04806
“There is no more fascinating surface on earth than that of the human face.” – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
The portrait is one of the most common forms of depiction in Western art history. From era to era, its basic formats have...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Twentieth-Century Sculpture Course Number: R1B sect. 1 | CCN: 04803
Around the late 1950s, American painter Ad Reinhadt defined sculpture as “something you bump into when you back up to look at a painting.” Summing up a centuries-old prejudice against sculpture, Reinhardt’s quip also emphasized the medium’s defining feature: its...
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