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.

Fall 2020

ARHI 2300: Art History I

TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM / Neely

CRN 25733

ARHI 2300: Art History I

MWF 1:25 PM-2:15 PM / Dopp

CRN 25735

ARHI 2311H: Art History I Honors

MWF 9:05 AM-9:55 AM / Zuraw

CRN 25738

ARHI 2400: Art History II

MWF 10:10 AM-11:00 AM / TBD

CRN 25755

ARHI 3002: Greek Art and Architecture

TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM / Abbe

CRN 46388

Sculpture, architecture, and painting of the ancient Greek world from the beginning of the Protogeometric Period (1050 BC) to the end of the Hellenistic Period (31 BC) in its historical, social, and cultural context. Critical methodological issues, recent archaeological discoveries, and on-going debates are highlighted.

ARHI 3054: 18th Century European Art

TR 12:30-1:45 PM / Luxenberg

CRN 46390

This course will examine the artistic production in Europe from 1700-1800, an era that included the rise of the art academy, the public art exhibition, art criticism, and the myth of the artist as misunderstood genius. Major styles and movements will be introduced, including the Rococo, the Reform style, and Neoclassicism, as well as new pictorial concepts such as the picturesque and the sublime.  

ARHI 3065: Modern Art

TR 2:00-3:15 PM / Andrew

CRN 42518

This course will address the visual arts from the first half of the 20th century (roughly 1880-1942).  We will cover artists, works and critical debates surrounding the historical avant-garde in Europe and the Soviet Union. With close analysis of individual works of art, we will visually engage the conversation surrounding the avant-garde, modernism, and modernity, as well as the definitions of realism, abstraction, and the nature of the art object. This period was witness to sweeping changes in the of institutions of art making and marketing, and the emergence of new audiences for art. Through critical readings and lectures we will explore the influences of new technologies, popular culture, colonial expansion, politics, war and genocide. These contexts along with the issues of originality, identity, utopian visions and alienation will help us to define artistic production during this dynamic period.

ARHI 3530: Modern Photography

MWF 11:15 AM-12:05 PM / Simon

CRN 42521

This course attempts an overview of the development of modernist “art” photography from its beginnings in “pictorialism” through its absorption of cubist aesthetics, theories of abstraction, surrealist principles and mystical beliefs.  It will explore as well the revolutionary redefinition of documentary photography, the transformation of street photography and the appearance of avant-garde film in the 1920s-30s.  Rather than offer a superficial survey of fifty plus photographers with only an image or two by each, this course will focus on the seminal American figures in the formation of modernist photography and key European photographers who profoundly influenced their work and the development of twentieth century modernism.  Arranged around a selected group of major figures beginning with the French documentarian Eugene Atget and continuing to the art of Walker Evans, Cartier-Bresson, and Diane Arbus, the course will be essentially monographic but with an awareness that many of these photographers overlap chronologically and artistically.  The intersection between photography and the other modern arts will also be considered as we come to terms with what was understood as a modernist photographic aesthetic from the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. The role of film on modernist photographers will also be considered. Students will learn to distinguish individual photographic styles and to understand how photography conveys profound meanings through the use of light, imagery, focus, cropping, and other techniques. Comparative art historical analyses of photographers will be an important component of this course as will the historical, social & political contexts of modernist photography—students will be expected to relate photographers and their work to the broader historical events of their creation.

ARHI 4008 / 6008: Ancient Roman Sculpture

TR 2:00-3:15 PM / Abbe

CRNs 47125/47126

Sculpture produced in Rome and the Roman Empire from 200 BC to AD 330 with an emphasis on portraiture, mythological statuary, and state reliefs. Topics of interest include materials and techniques, ancient display and function, literary descriptions of statuary, Roman viewers, and the modern historiography and reception of Roman marble statuary. Recent discoveries, current methodological approaches, and new research are critically examined. This course will pay particular attention the diverse range of sculpture from the Eastern Mediterranean in the imperial period, especially in the culturally complex Levant.

ARHI 4100 / 6100: Early Medieval Art

MWF 10:10-11:00 AM / Klima

CRNs 46391/46392

This course will cover Western art and architecture from the disintegration of the Roman Empire to its reinvention under the Holy Roman Empire of the Carolingian and Ottonian Dynasties (c. 500-1000 CE).  During these so-called “Dark Ages” influential leaders, both political and spiritual, employed complex systems to convert, dominate, instruct, and generally communicate Christian dogma through innovative visual programs.  This course will study the array of brilliant objects and spaces made by multicultural craftsmen and masons, including manuscripts, metalworks, sculptures, paintings, and architecture, during this dynamic time in European history.

ARHI 4200 / 6200: 15th Century Italy

CRNs 46439/46454

MWF 11:05 AM-12:15 PM / Zuraw

This course will address major artist, themes, stylistic and technical developments of the Quattrocento. Also to be considered will be issues of geography (why some places developed different languages and responses), gender, communication (ie books and prints) and patronage. Neither the undergraduate nor the graduate class will require exams. Instead the emphasis will be on reading, short responses, and research. The research project undertaken for this class will be presented both orally and in written form. This is the century that includes Massacio and Ghiberti, Donatello and Piero della Francesca, and Botticelli and Bellini and the ideas we associate with the beginnings of the early modern period were defined in this period, making familiarity with these artists and ideas essential.

ARHI 4510 / 6510: Modern Art in Europe from 1886 to 1918

TR 11:00 AM-12:15 PM / Andrew

CRNs 46399/46400

This course will examine painting and sculpture in Europe from the turn-of-the-century to WWI. Europe’s colonial, industrial, and scientific developments during this period catalyzed new understandings of time, space, vision, and experience that changed the role of artists and the works they created. Powerful existential questions emerged alongside a new notion of the “Modern”, the “Independent,” and the Avant-Garde artist. By analyzing a range of artists and their works of large-scale Decoration, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, and Abstraction, we will examine the relationship of art to the concepts of time and space and to key questions such as:  How is avant-garde art influenced by modern experience and mass culture? To what extent did the aesthetically radical art of the European avant-garde re-inscribe conservative ideologies of gender and ethnicity? What are the social and economic implications the challenge in this period to notions of ‘high’ art, originality, authenticity in art? The course will end with a consideration of the aesthetic, moral and political sphere of art beneath the approaching shadow of the Great War.

ARHI 4530 / 6530: Nineteenth Century Photography

TR 9:30-10:45 AM / Luxenberg

CRNs 46401/46402

Forms, functions, and meanings of photographic production in Europe and America during the 1800s.  Issues to be addressed are: the nature of the medium, its relationship to "reality," its various techniques and technology, its role in art and science, and its publics and patronage.

ARHI 8400: Seminar Byzantine Art and Architecture

Modernism Foretold: Late Antique Art from Egypt and Its Place in the History of Western Visual Culture

M 3:35-6:35 PM / Kirin

CRN 47123

This class is dedicated to the amalgamation of the classical pagan and the Christian visual traditions in the eastern Mediterranean region between the 3rd and the 8th century. The focal point of the discussion will the original late antique objects which we will be examining in person, on display at the Georgia Museum of Art. These works will from the exhibition “Modernism Foretold: The Nadler Collection of Late Antique Art from Egypt.” The show includes 56 objects dating from the 2nd to the 9th century CE, among them a marble Corinthian capital with crosses and eagles from the Monastery of St. Menas, the martyr saint and great miracle-worker of Egypt; two sections of large tapestries used as wall hangings in churches or homes; small textile fragments that originally embellished tunics used in burials; 19 works of sculpture derived from funerary sites; and miniature bone carvings that were embedded into pieces of furniture, bridal caskets and small chests for storing jewelry and other precious items.

The exhibition and this graduate seminar will awaken a collection of art that has remained dormant since 1986 when it was last displayed publicly. Throughout the following thirty-four years, only a small number of works could be seen by visitors to the New York City home of Emanuel Nadler. It has been more than a half century since the Nadler Collection of Coptic Art totaling 116 works was introduced to the American audience in a major exhibition titled, “Six Centuries of Coptic Art,” and mounted at the Gallery of Modern Art at 2 Columbus Circle, New York City in 1966. There is a great deal of knowledge to be gained from revisiting this collection and its maiden display in America. Before all else, we can start the reexamination of these works and begin to assess them in light of recent scholarship, thus situating them among other related examples of late antique art located in major museums around the world. Furthermore, for the very first time here, the history of the Nadler Collection itself constitutes an object of study. We endeavor to reveal the motivations of the collection’s founder, Maurice Nadler, who amassed these works in Egypt and Germany between 1920 and 1941. Three times in its history the collection was relocated, the first two times under considerable duress (1936, 1953 and 1960). The examination of the Nadler Collection’s history casts light on a family’s struggle to survive, uphold a sense of identity, and salvage at least a small part of their property.

 

ARHI 8990: Seminar American Art

America’s Promise: The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893

W 3:35-6:35 PM / Simon

CRN 46396

This graduate level seminar will examine the extraordinary cultural event America created at the end of the nineteenth century during the country’s Gilded Age and as it embarked on imperialist agendas: The World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan in 1893 from May 1-October 30. Over twenty-seven million people traveled to Chicago, often by railroad, to attend the spectacle, including the nation’s first serial killer, H. H. Holmes. It was a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World, and a recognition that Chicago had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of the Chicago Fire of 1871. Two hundred buildings were temporarily erected full of displays not only of American cultural objects and inventions, but also of the world’s image. Many artists contributed to the fair whether in architecture, decorative arts, sculpture, painting, or photography, and women emerged as an aesthetic voice demanding to be heard with their own building.

The World’s Fair of 1893 is a perfect prism to examine American cultural aspirations and achievements at the end of the nineteenth century as the country and its artists move from nineteenth century Victorian mores to a more liberated, modernist vision in all aspects of life. We will examine how the Fair embodied the concerns of its period as well as its origins in the Centennial held in Philadelphia and the full-fledged display of modernist art (notably the first exhibition of the Italian Futurists in the country) at the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. We will immerse ourselves in the buildings and displays of the Fairs including the reactions to the works on display by American artists and Europeans, and what their art and the critical response says about American aesthetics and culture at the fin de siècle. Students interested not only in American art and culture but also traditions turned to for inspiration, including the Italian Renaissance and Baroque arts, Asian art, the emergence of indigenous arts and cultures, and the rise of European modernist visions, will find this seminar useful. Students will work on research projects tied to the fairs but also related to their individual interests. Many archival materials will be consulted as well as the fun read, Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City.