Global Arc

The 19th century in Europe and America saw the rise and fall of empires and unprecedented innovation in industry, technology, science, and the arts. Through a series of topics, including history, science, medicine, perception, and time, this course considers how intellectual revolutions in diverse disciplines, such as biology and philosophy, and the invention of new fields of knowledge, such as ethnography and psychology, shaped art-making. The work of David, Cole, Church, Eakins, Manet, Courbet, Tanner, Inness, Van Gogh, and Cézanne will offer unique perspectives onto the modes of seeing and knowing that defined 19th-century culture.

By focusing on six major figures (such as Stieglitz, Weston, Moholy-Nagy, Evans, Frank, Sherman), this course examines the ways that photography was transformed from a poor stepchild of the fine arts to a staple of museum exhibitions. Topics will include the impact of abstraction on photography; the interactions between art photography and the new print and cinematic mass media; and the development of photographic collections and criticism. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. Two 90-minute classes.

What are the environments, fictions, fantasies, and ideologies that condition the artist at work? This course takes as its investigative locus the artist's studio, a space of experimentation and inspiration, but also of boredom, sociability, exhaustion, and critique. Structured around visits to the studios of multiple practicing artists in New York City, the course tracks the trope of "the studio" from the Renaissance to the present, with emphasis on the concept's reconfiguration and reanimation in contemporary art. Lecture with discussion and field trips.

Thematic studies in Chinese film (Republic, People's Republic, Taiwan, Hong Kong), from the 1930s to the present with emphasis on recent years, viewed in relation to traditional and modern Chinese visual arts and literature, colonialism and globalism, Communist politics, gender and family values, ethnicity and regionalism, melodrama and the avant-garde, the cinematic market, artistic censorship, and other social issues. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 3 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar, one evening viewing session.

Thematic introduction to traditional Chinese architecture, urban design, and garden building, with attention to principles and symbolism of siting and design; building techniques; modularity of structures and interchangeability of palace, temple, tomb, and domestic design; regional variation. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 distribution requirement. Two 90-minute classes.

This course examines the arts in Japan during the brief yet pivotal Momoyama period, when artists and patrons in the newly reunified nation explored several--often contrasting--aesthetic ideals. We will survey developments in a range of mediums, including painting, architecture, ceramics, and lacquer. Themes treated include: the workshop in Japanese art; the art of tea; the impact of the first arrival of Europeans on Japanese visual culture; the synchronic cross-fertilization of mediums in Japanese art; and the role of the sacred.

Surveys the history of prints in Europe and the United States from 1400 to the present. It will combine two main approaches: first, the distinctive history of printmaking, including origins, evolution of techniques, and the political, religious, and cultural functions of prints; and second, individual artistic developments, with emphasis on the work of major printmakers, iconography, and formal innovations. For department majors, this course satisfies the Group 2 or 3 distribution requirement. One three-hour seminar.

This course examines the prodigious output of paintings in China and Japan that depict the landscape, with an emphasis on the pre-modern period. For over a millennium, even up to the present day, painters have employed the subject of landscape to explore not only ideas of the natural world, but also reclusion, poetry, power, the sacred, and the creative possibilities of making marks with a brush. The course will visit the Art Museum often to study actual paintings. Students are encouraged to explore their own interests, including themes not covered in class.

In this course, we will examine archaeological evidence for and art historical depictions of plagues and pandemics, beginning in antiquity and ending with the COVID-19 Pandemic. The course will explore bioarchaeological investigations of the Black Death, the Justinianic Plague, and other examples of infectious diseases with extremely high mortalities, and students will complete six "Pandemic Simulation" exercises throughout the semester. We will also consider the differing impact of plagues during the medieval, early modern, and modern periods: themes in art; the development of hospitals; and the changing ideas of disease and medicine.

This historical survey considers why photographs of models wearing the latest clothes replaced drawn illustrations starting in the late nineteenth century and how the styles and content of fashion photographs reflect changing camera, lighting, and printing technologies; the structure of the garments themselves; national ideals of beauty and gender presentation; and the economics of publishing and advertising. Topics also include the studio as theatrical space; fashion photography in the developing and non-Western worlds; and the recent expansion of the ethnicities, ages, body types, and gender identities of models in fashion spreads.