Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Visual Murmurs Course Number: R1B Section 2 | CCN: 04956
Suzanne Li Puma
"I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence." – Plato, Phaedrus
Are visual experiences...
Introduction to Italian Renaissance Art/ The Italian Renaissance Course Number: HA 62 | CCN: 04995
Henrike Lange
This new survey will present examples from Italian art and literature from circa 1300 to circa 1600 as mirrors and motors of cultural change. Italy will be shown in its unique position...
Art and Architecture in Japan Course Number: HA 35 | CCN: 04983
This introductory lecture course poses a challenge: to look and think critically about the art and architecture of Japan. We will study a range of artistic/architectural works situated across a long historical span: objects and structures of the Neolithic and...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: The Medieval City Course Number: R1B Section 7 | CCN: 04971
Andrew Sears
This course will explore the rise of the great medieval cities of Western Europe. We will focus largely on architecture, learning how to discuss and analyze buildings and floor plans, though we will also learn about the overall visual culture...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Hauntings Course Number: R1B Section 2 | CCN: 14610
Ghosts, literal and metaphorical, are found in the blurry boundaries of understanding, memory and identification: on the fringes of science; between selves and histories both personal and cultural; between people and the objects they create or with which they surround...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Goya’s Pictorial Techniques of Reportage and Critique Course Number: R1B Section 1 | CCN: 14605
In 2013, the Pinacothèque de Paris exhibited a large selection of prints and paintings by the Spanish artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes as part of a series called “Painters, Witnesses of their Time.” Yet several of Goya’s compositions...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Representing Power, Rights and Liberty Course Number: R1B Section 10 | CCN: 04980
Keith Budner
The relationship between art and power is no secret. Go to any museum and you’re likely to see a host of artworks that depict a political leader, perhaps in celebratory glory, perhaps with critical derision. In this course, we’ll start...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: African Bodies in Film, Art, and Fashion Course Number: R1B Section 9 | CCN: 04974
In this course, we will explore the politicization of the African body in a variety of visual media, including film, photography, sculpture, and fashion. We will begin by examining how visual representations of the African body have worked to “other&rdquo...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: African Bodies in Film, Art, and Fashion Course Number: R1B Section 8 | CCN: 04974
In this course, we will explore the politicization of the African body in a variety of visual media, including film, photography, sculpture, and fashion. We will begin by examining how visual representations of the African body have worked to “other&rdquo...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: the Camera and the City Course Number: R1B Section 6 | CCN: 04968
This course will examine the often complex, often contradictory ways photography was used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to capture the development of the modern city. That is to say, the course will approach photography and modern urban...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: the Camera and the City Course Number: R1B Section 2 | CCN: 04956
This course will examine the often complex, often contradictory ways photography was used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to capture the development of the modern city. That is to say, the course will approach photography and modern urban...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Art and Architecture at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century Course Number: R1B Section 1 | CCN: 04953
Eva Hagberg
Art and architecture have long been bedfellows, to varying degrees of likelihood. Ever since Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened in 1998, put a small Basque town on the global culture map, and ushered in the era of the celebrity...
Introduction to Western Art: Renaissance to the Present Course Number: HA 11 | CCN: 04983
Lower Division Survey; western. An introduction to art and visual culture produced mainly in Europe and the United States between the fourteenth century and the present, this course will focus on broad themes explored in various artistic media and subjects....
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Music and the Visual Arts Course Number: R1B Section 5 | CCN: 04965
From fifteenth-century Flanders to present-day California, music has had a rich and varied relationship with the visual arts. This course will consider a range of topics in musical-artistic contact, including representations of music making, composers who painted and who sought...
Arts of China Course Number: HA 34 | CCN: 05013
Ping Foong
Lower Division Survey: non-western. An introduction to the arts of China, designed for newcomers to the history of art or to the study of Chinese culture. Lectures will survey six millennia of Chinese art thematically and chronologically, including the burial...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Ambiguities Course Number: R1B Section 3 | CCN: 04959
Caty Telfair
"As for myself, … I prefer to spend my time creating clouds rather than dispersing them, questioning opinions rather than forming them…" – Diderot
Much of the study of art history involves the identification and categorization of objects, and the resulting...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Spitting Image: the Avant-Gardes For/ Against the Image Course Number: R1B Section 4 | CCN: 04962
Caty Telfair
"As for myself, … I prefer to spend my time creating clouds rather than dispersing them, questioning opinions rather than forming them…" – Diderot
Much of the study of art history involves the identification and categorization of objects, and the resulting...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Strategies of Being: African American Artists of the 20th Century Course Number: R1B Section 10 | CCN: 04879
Elaine Yau
This class explores the multiple ways in which American artists of African descent have resisted, revised, contended with, and re-imagined how race defines the limits and possibilities artistic production and interpretation. We will investigate how race — as an ideology...
Introduction to Italian Renaissance Art Course Number: HA 62 | CCN: 04892
Lisa Regan
The Italian Renaissance is often considered to be the beginning of modernity. This is because the Renaissance is the first coherent articulation of a number of ideas–from the role of the individual within society to the rise of capitalism– that...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: African Bodies in Film, Art, and Fashion Course Number: R1B Section 9 | CCN: 04877
In this course, we will explore the politicization of the African body in a variety of visual media, including film, photography, sculpture, and fashion. We will begin by examining how visual representations of the African body have worked to “other&rdquo...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Spitting Image: the Avant-Gardes for/ Against the Image Course Number: R1B Section 8 | CCN: 04874
Maia Beyler-Noily
This course will help students develop their analytic and writing skills through the discovery/discussion of a few key manifestations of the avant-garde within the visual arts (painting, photography, cinema and architecture) in France, from the 1920’s through the 1970’s. We...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Re:Imagin[in]g Photography Course Number: R1B Section 7 | CCN: 04871
Laura Richard
This course will consider the rapidly changing role and implications of digitized images as medium and documentation–within the arts and as a social phenomenon. What does it mean to make and frame photographs in a world saturated with instantaneously dispersed...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Ambiguities Course Number: R1B Section 6 | CCN: 04868
Caty Telfair
The art world in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth was a tumult of controversy, debate, wild invention and stubborn reactionism that resulted in the radical transformation of centuries-long conventions of artistic...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: The American Landscape in Painting and Practice Course Number: R1B Section 5 | CCN: 04865
William Coleman
The art of landscape, including two-dimensional media, gardening, and contemporary earth art, has been particularly bound up with issues of national identity in the United States. For this reason, there has been a rich body of writing about the landscape...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: 15 Views of Manet’s Bar Course Number: R1B Section 4 | CCN: 04862
This course, a case study of sorts, is about a single painting, Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), and the multiple, often contradictory ways in which art historians have sought to describe and interpret it. It is course...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Greek Athletics in Ancient Art Course Number: R1B Section 3 | CCN: 04859
Erin Babnik
This course is intended to allow students with an interest in art history to develop the basic writing, reading, research, and analysis skills that are necessary for formulating or engaging with substantive ideas about visual media. As a means to...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: The Camera and the City Course Number: R1B Section 2 | CCN: 04856
This course will examine the often complex, often contradictory ways photography was used in the 19th and early 20th centuries to capture the development of the modern city. That is to say, the course will approach photography and modern...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Early Modern Dress and Fashion Course Number: R1B Section 1 | CCN: 04853
Elizabeth McFadden
This introductory course is designed to sensitize students to discourses on dress and fashion in early modern Europe. First coined in England in 1529, the term “fashion,” as a modern concept, gained currency only in the mid-1670s during the reign...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: The Body in Avant-Garde Art, 1850-1940 Course Number: R1B Section 4 | CCN: 14620
The art world in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth was a tumult of controversy, debate, wild invention and stubborn reactionism that resulted in the radical transformation of centuries-long conventions of artistic...
Arts of Latin America Course Number: HA 88 | CCN: 04892
An introduction to the arts and visual culture of what is now Latin America from the earliest monumental art traditions of prehistory to the present. This course is not a comprehensive survey of all traditions and movements of art and...
Visual Cultures of South Asia Course Number: HA 30 | CCN: 04892
South Asia brings to mind conflicting images of the glamour of Bollywood and abject poverty. Yet, this vast geographic terrain has a long history of complex political cultures, multivalent religious ideals, and diverse creative expressions. Our engagement with the visual...
Introduction to Greek, Roman, and Medieval Art Course Number: HA 10 | CCN: 04880
Andrew Stewart, Diliana Angelova
This introduction to the arts of ancient Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and Medieval Europe is designed for newcomers to the history of art and/or to the study of these cultures. The lectures will survey 2500 years of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and...
Histories of Photography Course Number: HA N182 | CCN: 14645
Camille Mathieu
This course is an introduction to the history of photography from its origins in the early nineteenth century to the present. While this course is structured chronologically, we will be thinking about photography thematically and conceptually, asking questions and raising...
Cities and the Arts : Beijing Course Number: HA 108.2 | CCN: 14635
This course focuses on the visual and material cultures produced in and around the Chinese capital Beijing from the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) to the present. While Beijing has served as the political center of China for much of the last...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Fifteen Views of Manet’s “Bar” Course Number: R1B Section 1 | CCN: 14605
This course, a case study of sorts, is about a single painting, Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), and the multiple, often contradictory ways in which art historians have sought to describe and interpret it. It is...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Public Sculpture and Memorial Culture Course Number: R1B Section 5 | CCN: 04865
Keerthi Potluri
This course interrogates the relationship between art and memory. How does art inspire, sustain, and foreclose memory, and in what ways does the impulse to remember influence the creation of art? In particular, what do minimalist and postmodern...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Greek Athletics in Ancient Art Course Number: R1B Section 3 | CCN: 04859
Erin Babnik
This course is intended to allow students with an interest in art history to develop the basic writing, reading, research, and analysis skills that are necessary for formulating or engaging with substantive ideas about visual media. As a means to...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: A Small World After All: World’s Fairs, Theme Parks, and the Politics of Display Course Number: R1B Section 1 | CCN: 04853
Livi Yoshioka-Maxwell
Reading and composition courses serve as introductions to textual analysis and as guides to the composition of well-argued essays. This will be accomplished by class discussion, by breaking down essay-writing into manageable components, and by extensive rewriting. With these practical...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Surreal Bodies Course Number: R1B Section 9 | CCN: 05288
Bonnie Ruberg
In this class, we’ll look at representations of the body, both visual and textual, from the heyday of the Western surrealist movement. In doing so, we’ll explore how the body came to function as a site for both enacting and...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: 15 Views of Manet’s Bar Course Number: R1B Section 4 | CCN: 04862
This course, a case study of sorts, is about a single painting, Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), and the multiple, often contradictory ways in which art historians have sought to describe and interpret it. It is...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Paris, Capital of the 19th Century Course Number: R1B Section 2 | CCN: 04856
What is a Metropolis? Or rather, what is meant by Metropolis? In 1973, Massimo Cacciari offered the following response: “the Metropolis,” he says, “is the general form assumed by the process of the rationalization of social relations.” ...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: A Home for the Eye/I: Reading Images/Writing visually Course Number: R1B Section 6 | CCN: 04868
Simona Schneider
“One must confront vague ideas with clear images”—Jean-Luc Godard (Il faut confronter des idées vagues avec des images claires)
This course sensitizes students to various analytical approaches to 20th century painting, photography and the moving image. Our main strategy will be...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Homemaking Course Number: R1B Section 8 | CCN: 04873
Katie Kadue
What do we mean when we say a place “feels like home”? What kinds of stories do we tell ourselves to feel at home, and what kinds of images and objects can turn a sterile room into a domestic heaven?...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Looking at Chinese Art from the South: Art of Canton Course Number: R1B Section 7 | CCN: 04871
William Ma
This introductory course is designed to teach students how to think, read, and write critically about Chinese art by focusing on visual materials (paintings, export art, ceramics, crafts, architectures, archaeological materials, video installations, etc.) produced in or around the region...
Freshman Seminar: Translating Pictures: Early Modern Cultural Exchange Course Number: HA 24 | CCN: 04894
The seminar will meet on the following dates: 1/23, 1/30, 2/6, 2/20, 2/27, 3/6 and 4/3/14. More information about Freshman Seminars can be found here: http://fss.berkeley.edu/
Pictures are often taken to be a universal language available to diverse linguistic communities. We assume...
Renaissance Italy and the Mediterranean World Course Number: HA 62 | CCN: 04907
This course will examine the impact of the Mediterranean sea on the visual culture of Renaissance Italy. Throughout the course we will examine how water unites and divides. How did trade develop, and what was traded? How did Italian artists...
Arts of China Course Number: HA 34 | CCN: 04895
An introduction to the arts of China, designed for newcomers to the history of art and/or to the study of Chinese culture. Lectures will survey six millennia of Chinese art thematically and chronologically, including the burial arts of the Neolithic...
Introduction to Western Art Course Number: HA 11 | CCN: 04874
This course is an introduction to visual art in Europe and North America since the 14th century. “Covering” European art and its global legacy over the centuries would result in superficial attention to an overwhelming number of images without regard...
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...
Introduction to Western Art: Renaissance to the Present Course Number: HA 11 | CCN: 14645
Session D (Second 6-week session): July 8– August 16, 2013
Three hours of lecture and one hour of discussion per week. Prerequisites: May follow 1B or 10, though neither is required. Formerly 10B. This course is an introduction to the historical...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Michelangelo Between Poetry and Art Course Number: R1B sect. 10 | CCN: 14640
Session D (Second 6-week session): July 8– August 16, 2013
This course will focus on a single artist’s work, both visual and aural/ textual: sculpture, painting, and poetry. The primary objective of the course will be to provide a venue for...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Art, Space, and Memory in the Art of China, India, and Korea Course Number: R1B sect. 9 | CCN: 14635
Session D (Second 6-week session): July 8– August 16, 2013
How is spatial meaning created? How does art help to create and sustain meaning within public spaces? How can we approach and write about the relationship between art, space and memory?...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: The Metropolis Course Number: R1B sect. 8 | CCN: 14630
Session D (Second 6-week session): July 8– August 16, 2013
The course will explore the development of the modern city and its relation to Modernism (art, architecture, film) and capitalism.
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Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Race, Gender & Sexuality in Contemporary Art Course Number: R1B sect. 2 | CCN: 14610
Session A (First 6-week session): May 28 – July 3, 2013
From Pop to postmodernism, contemporary art in the United States has often taken up issues of race, gender, and sexuality. In this course, we will study how artists from the...
Reading and Writing about Visual Experience: Battle Imagery and the Body in Ancient Art Course Number: R1B sect. 1 | CCN: 14605
Session A (First 6-week session): May 28 – July 3, 2013
In this course, students will engage with a fascinating and rich spectrum of warrior and battle imagery produced, circulated, and consumed within various contexts of the ancient Neo-Assyrian, Greek, and...
No graduate courses available.
