The Art History program at the Lamar Dodd School of Art supports the study of the history of art through visual objects across a wide range of media, cultures, and periods.

Courses stress the relationship between art and its historical context. This area of study develops the critical and rhetorical skills necessary for advanced work in the field.

Spring 2021

ARHI 2300: Art History I

TR | 11:00 AM- 12:15 | TBD

CRN 20261

ARHI 2300: Art History I

MWF | 1:25 PM - 2:15 PM | TBD

CRN 25009

ARHI 2400: Art History II

MWF | 10:10 AM - 11:00 AM | TBD

CRN 25021

ARHI 2400H: Art History II Honors

TR | 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM | Andrew

CRN 25023

ARHI 3035: Northern Renaissance & Baroque Art

TR | 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM | Zuraw

CRN 57493

The subject of this course is the history of art in northern Europe between ca. 1500 and 1700. Although exact dates vary according to location, by general agreement the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the North are associated with the periods known as the Renaissance and the Baroque. In this class, after a brief introduction addressing fifteenth-century developments in the Netherlands, we will consider the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Germany, Flanders, the Netherlands and, to some extent, England. Beginning in Germany we will commence with a consideration--both formally and contextually--of Dürer and his contemporaries. Special attention will be paid to the print medium and to the development of new genres including landscapes and still life painting. Moving across Europe, we will end with a discussion of the bourgeois art of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, as exemplified in the work of Rembrandt and Vermeer.

ARHI 3050: American Art

TR | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | Simon

CRN 53468

The colonial settlers who ventured to the shores of what would become these United States brought with them a European heritage; yet they struggled to create their own unique culture as they confronted the vast natural resources of the continent and its original native inhabitants. The forging of an American nationalist agenda and an identifiable artistic identity continued throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as American technological progress, immigrant traditions, European art movements and native arts intersected with the imagination of American artists. This course will provide a selected overview of American artistic production from the late 17th through the early 20th centuries with a focus on the cultural, social, and political meanings of the seminal American achievements in painting, photography, & sculpture. We will probe how the history of ideas in America profoundly intersects with the history of American art. Key themes will include: America's perpetual mythmaking, its preoccupation with divine providence, American exceptionalism, and Puritan ethics, America's shifting conceptions of nature, the dialogue between empiricism and imagination, the assimilation of European artistic and cultural styles, the battle between Anglo-American traditions and ethnic cultures. As we analyze the key artistic achievements of American visual culture we will be attuned to the changing attitudes regarding the role of art in society and the impact on culture of such extraordinary events as the American Revolution, the expansion westward, slavery and separatism, the Civil War, technological revolutions in transportation and communication, the influx of immigration and the fight for woman's suffrage. We will cautiously search for an American identity, cognizant that it is steeped in myth and may not exist. Two tests and a two-part final exam. Text is Reading American Art (Yale Press) and articles.

ARHI 3056: 19th Century European Art

MWF | 10:10 AM - 11:00 AM | Luxenberg

CRN 56989

This course will examine the artistic production (primarily painting) in Europe during the period 1800-1890, when radical and avant-garde art first appeared. It is a more specialized survey than ARHI 2300 and 2400, and will deepen students’ knowledge of European art produced in the 1800s, as well as sharpen their interpretative skills. Major styles and movements –Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism –will be studied in their particular formal qualities and subjects. Overarching themes –the role of the art exhibition and the art critic; the study of “nature,” the image of the artist; the ​expansion and internationalization of art markets –will interconnect the various movements, artists, and practices. For a richer historical context, students will read contemporary writers and critics as well as study relevant political, economic, and institutional conditions for these artists.

1

Gustave Courbet, The Painter's Studio, or A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Artistic and and Moral Life, 1855. oil on canvas, 361 x 598 cm. Paris, Musée d'Orsay.

ARHI 3080: Introduction to Contemporary Art

MWF | 11:15 - 12:05 PM | Geha

CRN 56990

Examination of a series of significant examples of art and architecture, primarily in the United States and Europe, from 1960 to the present. Works of painting, sculpture, photography, video, and electronic media as well as architecture and urban design will be studied as evidence of important trends.

ARHI 3090: Topics in Art History: Islamic Art & Architecture

Islamic Art & Arch

MWF | 3:35 PM - 4:25 PM | TBD

CRN 56991

This course introduces the art and architecture of the diverse lands where Islam has been the dominant religion from late antiquity to modern times. We will survey artifacts and monuments from the Taj Mahal to silk carpets and luster painting, from India to Spain, by situating them as much as possible within their contemporary socio-political, economic and intellectual contexts. The sacred status of Quranic language and the corresponding significance of the written word underlie the particular attention we will pay to the arts of the book—chiefly calligraphy and manuscript painting—including a visit to the Rare Book & Manuscript library to have a firsthand look at some examples of this exalted art form.

ARHI 4110 / 6110: Art & Architecture in the 11th & 12th Centuries

MWF | 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM | Klima

Undergrads: CRN 57913  | Grads: CRN 57914

This course will explore visual culture and architecture of Medieval Western Europe during the 11th and 12th centuries.  By mid-11th century a newly affluent feudal society, spurred on by religious zeal and a desire to dominate the landscape, built a remarkable network of secular and sacred spaces including castles, monasteries, and churches.  At the same time society was on the move, physically and spiritually.  Pilgrims traveled to holy sites, crusaders fought for the Holy Lands, Normans transformed new territories through cultural exchange, and monks reshaped devotional practice.  As a result, castle design included technologically advanced fortification systems influenced by Middle Eastern models and monasteries accommodated medieval tourists as well as nurtured learning, devotion, art production, and political authority.  Special attention will be paid to the design and function of monastic architecture as well as a variety of objects that were part of a monastic community including manuscripts, multivalent sculptural programs, wall paintings, liturgical and devotional objects, and textiles.

1

Eve, Former North Portal, Church of St. Lazarus Autun, France, c. 1120-32

ARHI 4130 / 6130: Late Gothic Italy

TR | 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM | Zuraw

Undergrads: CRN 56995  | Grads: CRN 57002

This course is focused on the art produced in Italy, with special attention to Tuscany, in the period known variously as late Medieval, proto-Renaissance, or late Gothic. This course, however, will begin with a consideration of important developments across thirteenth-century Italy, with special attention to the so-called Tuscan Romanesque. Towards the end we will consider the Black Death, the plague that decimated the careers and ambitions of artists and patrons in the middle of the fourteenth century. In between we will address architecture, painting and sculpture in Tuscany and the Veneto as well as in Rome, Naples, and other, smaller centers of activity.

ARHI 4500 / 6500: Realism & Impressionism

MF | 1:25 PM - 2:40 PM | Luxenberg

Undergrads: CRN 57006 | Grads: CRN 57007

This course introduces and explores the innovative 19th-century artistic styles and movements known in France as Realism and Impressionism by examining the forms and techniques, subjects and themes that characterized them, as well as exhibition practices, market circumstances, and critical reception. It will review the institutional structure and training that these artists largely rejected, as well as the aesthetic, cultural, and economic forces behind the development of plein-air painting (painting out of doors) that became a sign of modernity and a hallmark of Impressionism. Special emphasis will be given to Paris, an art capital and a major subject of not only French art after 1850, as well as women artists, artists’ organizations, and new exhibition practices.

ARHI 4540 / 6540: European Art Between The Great Wars

TR | 11:00 AM - 12:15 PM | Andrew

Undergrads: CRN 57004 | Grads: CRN 57005

This course focuses on Europe during the period between the First and Second World Wars and aims to understand the powerful and often conflicting new values about art and culture that were brought about by this unprecedented political climate. The 1920s and 30s included immense political, social, and intellectual upheaval. Russia’s 1917 October Revolution, World War I’s end in 1918, the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany and the eventual rise to power of the Nazi party in 1933, took place as America fell from its 1920s economic boom into the 1930s Great Depression. This period is marked by trauma, loss and insecurity following WWI, as well as great hopes for a new society through communism. Artists actively responded to the world events and their aftermaths. Avant-garde activity can be seen to shift from the pre-WWI influence of Cubism and Futurism to the opposite poles of Classicism on the one hand and complete abstraction on the other. We will see artists respond to war and class struggle in equally diverse ways, through conservatism, satire and nihilism. Investigating examples of the production and ideas behind art making in Germany, France, Italy, Russia, and the Netherlands, we will ideally cover works from the movements of Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism, New Objectivity, Pittura metafisica, Strapaese, Purism, DeStijl, and Bauhaus. In each case we will look for continued avant-garde activity as well as for the rear-guard and conservative effects of Europe’s post-WWI “Return to Order.”

Nell

El Lissitzsky, Kurt Schwitters, 1924

ARHI 4800: Senior Seminar

Methods of Art History

M | 3:35 - 6:35 PM | Abbe

CRN 25119

This undergraduate seminar examines the importance and functions of color in ancient Mediterranean art from the Bronze Age (3000 BC) to the end of Classical Antiquity (AD 330). In addition to providing a critical overview of the changing cultural interpretations of color in antiquity, this course will investigate our deeply established ‘Western’ aesthetic prejudices and assumptions concerning color (chromophobia: the fear of color), the languages of describing color, ancient and modern color theory, the materials and techniques employed in polychromy, and the complex post-antique reception of color (or lack thereof) on ancient artworks. New scholarship will be critically read and evaluated and the methods of recognizing and characterizing the (inevitably fragmentary) remains of ancient polychromy will be examined. Students from a wide variety of backgrounds – art history, fine arts, classical philology, and the physical sciences – are encouraged to develop research according to their background and experience. The aim is no less than to begin to see the art of antiquity in full color.

simon

ARHI 4916 / 6916: Topics in 18th & 19th Century Art

American Landscape

TR | 2:00 PM - 3:15 PM | Simon

Undergrads: CRN 53474 | Grads: CRN 53476

American art began with practical needs such as portraiture but by the 19thC its greatness was identified with landscape painting. This coincided with an increasing identification of individuals and the nation with the American environment and a consciousness of the idea of place. Tourism, spurred by an expansion of railroad and steamboat travel, as well as an increasing environmental consciousness fueled a taste for landscape images in American culture. How American artists and viewers conceived of, visually represented, and emotionally responded to specific places associated with America’s national identity will be the central over-riding question of our investigation of American landscape painting in the nineteenth century.

After an introduction on the beginnings of American landscape imagery in the aesthetics of the sublime, the picturesque, and the beautiful, we will focus on the artists most associated with 19thC American landscape painting, the members of the so-called Hudson River School. We will examine how artists like Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Martin Johnson Heade, Sanford Gifford, John F. Kensett, George Inness and others used nature to convey political, social, scientific, cultural, philosophical and spiritual ideas. The creation of tourist spots like Niagara Falls, the Catskills, Newport Beach, the Adirondacks, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and other places (including a fascination with South America and Italy) will be examined especially regarding how artists played a part in their formation as desirable vacation spots, cultural and national emblems, and the development of the state and national park systems. The use of nature as testament to American national destiny will be studied as well the emerging interest in a more subjective, emotive and poetic response to nature visible in the so-called “luminists” and the art of George Inness. This course will have a Writing Intensive Assistant to guide students in their various writing assignments. Students will participate in frequent in-class image analyses as well as each student will have their own American place they will be responsible for throughout the semester, conducting research on their place resulting in a series of short papers and an oral presentation to the class including on seminal images from both landscape painting and popular culture as seen in magazines and advertisements. Readings will involve primary and secondary sources including writings by the American transcendentalists, geologists, literary figures, tour guides, and art critics of the time. In addition to short papers and an oral presentation on student’s researched place, there will be a cumulative take home essay exam permitting a creative synthesis of the lecture course material.

ARHI 8700: Seminar in Greco-Roman Art

W | 3:35 PM - 6:35 PM | Abbe

CRN 56978

The allegedly pure, white aesthetics of ancient Greek and Roman statuary are familiar and common mythologies. In truth, both applied color, often richly varied, and the use of a wide range of materials were defining aspects of Greek and Roman statuary and the aesthetics of their intended viewing in antiquity. This seminar reexamines the polychromies and materialities of sculpture in the ancient Mediterranean world, c. 600 BC-AD 600. In addition to detailed studies of painted marble and patinated bronze statuary, we will examine sculpture in a diverse array of colored stones, precious metals, luxurious gemstones, wood, plaster, and other artistic media. We will undertake detailed, object-oriented case studies of these different kinds of sculptures with an emphasis on their ancient display contexts, framed viewings, and lighting, as well as ancient viewers’ psychological expectations and responses to them. Discussions will explore the materials and working techniques of ancient artists, the colorful spectrum of ancient pigments and their symbolism, and the archaeological excavation, cleaning, and current state of preservation of such objects. New methods of digital imaging and examination will be highlighted. This seminar will guide graduate students to new ways of viewing the often assumed visual cultures of the Greeks and Romans, often in ways quite removed from widespread inherited art historical assumptions regarding “classical” art. Thereby, we can come to a greater self-awareness of deeply established "Western" aesthetic prejudices and assumptions concerning color (or the idea of a lack of it) and materials both in sculpture and in art more broadly.

mark

Seated temple-statue of a goddess (“Minerva”). Alabaster, basalt, marble, and modern plaster. From Rome (discovered Piazza dell' Emporio, 1923), c. first century AD with post-antique additions. Rome, MNR Palazzo Massimo

ARHI 8870: Seminar in Asian Art

M | 3:35 PM - 6:35 PM | Morrisey

CRN 56979

Focus on a single genre of Greco-Roman art (e.g., freestanding Greek sculpture from the sixth century B.C.), or on a single aspect (e.g., Roman historical reliefs).

GRSC 7770: Pedagogy

T | 3:30 - 6:15 PM | Kirin

CRN 56980

Provides graduate teaching assistants with knowledge of pedagogical approaches and available support systems. Special sections are reserved for international students, with focus on use of language, pedagogy, and cultural aspects of teaching in this country.

Summer 2021

ARHI 2300E: Art History I

Thru Session

Abbe

CRN 59756

The first half of a year-long survey of the history of art, this course examines the rich and diverse traditions of art from the Paleolithic period (75,000 BCE/BC) to the Renaissance (1560 CE/AD). This lecture class focuses on key monuments of sculpture, architecture, and painting from the Ancient Near East, ancient Egypt Classical Antiquity, Byzantium, the Islamic and Medieval worlds, and the Northern and Italian Renaissance. As an electronic course, students listen to online lectures, read the textbook and other readings, and are tested online. Students are encouraged to engage in the direct, first-hand examination of artworks in regional collections for extra credit. The aim is to offer students the ability to quickly develop skills in the perception, comprehension, and interpretation of visual art forms across diverse historical and cultural eras. Critical methodological issues, recent important archaeological discoveries, and on-going debates are highlighted.

ARHI 2400E: Art History II

Thru Session

TBD

CRN 63121

ARHI 4520 / 6520: Spirituality in Modern Art

Thru Session

MTWRF | 2:15 - 3:15 PM | Simon

Undergrads: CRN 65087  | Grads: CRN 65088

The development of abstract art in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been intrinsically linked to the desire for a metaphysical language -- for an art that would address the most profound spiritual yearnings and inward revelations of the modern individual. Indeed, a number of modern western artists sought an art that would transcend merely material or aesthetic concerns, often by turning to non-western artistic and religious traditions, and in the process they created a radically abstract art. In 1912 Wassily Kandinsky called for a new epoch of art, one that would rise out of the "nightmare of materialism" to directly improve and refine the human soul -- "to send light into the darkness of men's hearts." His text, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, influenced generations of twentieth-century artists to invest abstract form with inner meaning. Our aim in this course will be to understand the spiritual quest Kandinsky and other artists took as they liberated the means of visual representation and artistic invention. We will examine how in their creation of a new epoch of spiritual art such artists turned to tribal ethnology, esotericism and the occult, classical and so-called "primitive" mythologies, transcendental and existential philosophies, Freudian and Jungian psychologies. Many artists could be examined but THIS IS NOT A SURVEY COURSE. Instead, we will focus on seven visual artists, including one filmmaker, who represent the many creative individuals who explored the question of spirituality and abstraction throughout the modern period. Each student will supplement these artists with their own artist to research who will be their guide as we journey through the spiritual in modern art.

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 Wassily Kandinsky, Painting with White Border (Moscow), May 1913 owned by the Guggenheim Museum, NY.

Our intellectual journey will begin with the fin de siécle's experimentation with abstraction, tribal mythologies, and esotericism as epitomized in the art of Paul Gauguin. From our extensive examination of Gauguin’s art we will then investigate not only Kandinsky's radical, spiritual abstraction by examining its origins in Siberian shamanism, Russian icons and folk art, Theosophy, and Secessionist art BUT ALSO the surprising avant-garde abstract spirituality of Hilma af Klint who ventured into abstraction years before Kandinsky. Af Klint will provide a clear example of an artist employing Theosophy, Spiritism, and Abstraction in large imposing works that were alas not exhibited during her lifetime! After an extended study of Kandinsky's art and theories and Af Klint’s innovations, we will turn to Kasimir Malevich, Constantin Brancusi, and Paul Klee, and the importance of occultism, Nietzsche, musical correspondences, Asian and tribal arts, Rumanian folk culture, Buddhism, and the politics of the two World Wars on their art. The filmmaker Ingmar Bergman will be studied with a required viewing of The Seventh Seal and then we will meet for a special discussion of its imagery for this extraordinary film will serve as a summation of the themes of the entire course. A planned excursion to Atlanta during a Saturday in mid July will lead us to see an extraordinary private collection of modern and contemporary art that holds 15 paintings by Kandinsky! Although this is not a course for the intellectually faint of heart, most students find their thinking expanded and their studio art or art history knowledge transformed. Papers and Visual Essay Project will be the required assignments instead of tests and a final. Readings focus on artists’ writings and interpretation of their art as well as related philosophers.