Spring 2022

ARHI 2300: Art History I

TR | Neely | CRN 20261 & MWF | Klima | CRN 25009

Pantheon, c. 118–128 CE, Rome, Italy

This course will offer an introduction to art and architecture from Prehistoric times to the European Renaissance with reference to select non-western topics. Through key works of architecture, sculpture, and paintings from diverse periods and geographies we will investigate the ways patrons and artists perceived spiritual, sociological, and political issues of their time and the materials and techniques they chose to express their ideas in visual forms. Our object-based inquiry will emphasize visual analysis and comparison in order to think critically about visual expression, human creativity, and diversity throughout history.

ARHI 2411H: Art History II Honors

Luxenberg | CRN 25023

Nattier Mlle de Clermont As a Sultana, 1733

This course provides an overview of predominantly Western art production circa 1600 to the later 20th century. It will examine a range of monuments, artists, traditions, innovations, and ideas during these periods, and lead students to understand the formal and cultural significance of these artworks in their historical context and relate them to certain current concerns. The skills developed in this course for looking at, thinking, reading, and writing about works of art will be relevant for study in other disciplines and future careers. The limited class size makes possible frequent discussion, museum or exhibition visits, and non-exam assignments.

ARHI 2400: Art History II

Klima | CRN 25021

Jay-Z in front of Raft of Medusa, Théodore Géricault, 1818, Louvre Museum

This course will introduce students to the Euro-American art tradition from the beginning of the 17^th century to the present. At the same time, select non-western examples from Mexico, India, Africa, and Japan will allow us to place the European tradition in the global context. Students will develop basic art historical methodology to examine select art by artists such as Caravaggio, Bernini, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Jefferson, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, F. L. Wright, Dalí, and Warhol. These examples will lead us to consider key issues such as the role of art and artists in society, patronage and the art market, preferred materials and techniques, devotional practice and ritual, political authority and revolution, and science and engineering throughout this period. We will reflect on the power and meaning of art throughout history as well as ideas that have shaped our contemporary understanding of the visual arts.

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ARHI 3030

Baroque Art: Southern Europe

Zuraw | CRN 60724

Agostino Tassi et al., Sala Regia, Quirinal Palace, Rome, 1616-1617

The subject of this course is the history of art in Catholic Europe during the period known as the Baroque. Although exact dates vary according to location, by general agreement the Baroque is associated with the seventeenth century. In this class we will consider the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Italy, Spain, France, and, to a lesser extent Flanders. Beginning in Italy we will commence with a review--both formally and contextually--of the Counter Reformation and the art it produced. We will essentially be tracing the spread of the Roman Baroque across Europe and her colonies. Discussion of the latter will expand our perception of Baroque art outwards beyond the borders of Europe. There will be two midterms and a final as well as a short oral or written assignment.

ARHI 3032

Art & Architecture of Russia

Kirin | CRN 60725

Left: V.A. Serov (1865-1911), Portrait of Countess Orlova, 1911 | Right: Theophanes the Greek (c.1340-ca.1410), The Mother of God, ca. 1410 | Top: architect Count Bartolomeo Franceso Rastrelli (1700-1771), Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, ca. 1750 | Bottom: Karl Bryullov, The last Day of Pompeii, 1833

While encompassing both the art and architecture of Russia, the chronological span of this class is from the eleventh through the early twentieth century. Three major themes will be traced throughout: Christianization of Kievan Rus’; Moscow as the Third Rome; and the westernization of the Russian Empire that began with the reforms of Peter the Great in the late seventeenth century. Because so many works of art illustrate famous Russian myths, stories and poems Russian literature and cinema will play an important role in this class.

The class will visit the Georgia Museum of Art in order to examine the three separate display of Russian art from the extensive permanent collection.

ARHI 3050

American Art

Simon | CRN 53468

Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Destruction, 1834-36

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 3077

Latin American Modern Art

Andrew | CRN 60726

This course will fulfill the 20^th-Century/Contemporary course requirement for Art History Majors & Minors

Tarsila do Amaral, Abaporu (The Man Who Eats), 1928

This course is a broad introduction to Latin American visual culture from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular attention to the art and history of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Cuba. Lectures will present works of art as witnesses, documents, and evidence of the legacies of the region’s revolutions, economic development, and of its diverse indigenous histories, colonial pasts, and post-colonial presents. Acknowledging the various constructions of indigenous, national, and global identities amid shifting political, social, and economic forces, we will identify artistic vanguards particular to Latin America that helped shape the history of International Modernism, including Social Realism, Indigenism, Mexican Muralism, Surrealism, Geometric Abstraction and Concrete art.

ARHI 4210 / 6210

High Renaissance & Mannerism in Italy

Zuraw

Undergrads: CRN 60727 | Grads: CRN 60728 

Sofonisba Anguissola, Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola, c.1559, oil on canvas, 1.1 × 1 m (during cleaning in 1996). Courtesy: Spannocchi Collection and Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena

This course is focused on the art produced in Italy during the sixteenth century, the period associated with styles commonly identified as the High Renaissance and Mannerism. The end of the century, in contrast, is often referred to as the Counter Reformation, a designation that depends not on style but on political and religious developments.  Works of painting, sculpture, and architecture will be studied for what they reveal, not only about the careers of the individual artists who made them (which in the sixteenth included women), but also in terms of the external forces that shaped their creation. In particular, the life (1475-1565) and career of Michelangelo will be an essential focus of this class. This is a WIP (Writing Intensive Program) course so emphasis will be placed, not on exams, but on research and writing. In particular, we will be taking full advantage of the exhibition of Florentine portraits that will be in the Georgia Museum of Art.

ARHI 4420 / 6420

American Art of the Fin de Sie`cle 1876-1913

Simon

Undergrads: CRN 60729 | Grads: CRN 60730 

Whistler, The Peacock Room

This upper level lecture-discussion course will examine the key period of transition in American art from Victorianism to early Modernism.  As an exploration of a period that has such various labels as "The Gilded Age," "The Mauve Decades," “The American Renaissance,” “The Age of Empire,” "The Age of Energy," "The Age of Incorporation," "The Age of Gentility," “Age of Speculation,” “The Age of Decadence,” and even, "The Age of Pain," this course will take a cultural history and thematic approach to the art of America from its Centennial to the eve of World War I.  Although such significant American artists as Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, James McNeil Whistler, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John F. Peto, Frederic Remington, George Inness, and Albert Pinkham Ryder among others, will be studied, our examination will not be monographic or chronological or consist of a survey of the art of the period.  Instead, we will explore individual artistic production within the broader framework of key ideas, trends and oppositions that permeated American life and culture as the nation progressed toward its modern status as an economic and international power.  Cultural artifacts such as photographs, decorative objects, advertisements, exhibition displays, illustrations, cartoons, and period writings will be examined as we study individual artistic achievements.  As we look at American art we will keep in mind the extraordinary intellectual, economic, social, political, scientific, and religious revolutions influencing fin de siècle thought and creativity.  Using the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 as our beginning and recurring referent, we will explore how Americans, especially artists, adapted to an age of polarities:  individualism and incorporation; expatriates and nationalism; tradition and ethnicity; innocence and experience; science and mysticism; empiricism and memory; deceptive illusionism and "the real thing”; naturalism and aestheticism; speed and repose; progress and decay; nature and urbanity; modern and primitive; strenuous masculinity and dandified effeminacy; motherhood and the "New Woman". Instead of exams, students will choose an artist to research to incorporate into their creative papers and visual essay exhibition project. Eric Larson’s Devil in the White City and Burns and Davis, American Art to 1900: A Documentary History will, along with articles on ELC, constitute the primary reading.

ARHI 4580 / 6580

Postmodern Visual Culture: Alternative Curatorial Practices

Geha

Undergrads: CRN 60731 | Grads: CRN 60732 

In this seminar, students will consider what it means to be a curator by examining a variety of curatorial models. Focusing on alternative histories of curation, students will study happenings of the 1960s, land art of the 1970s, and the downtown scene in Manhattan in the 1980s. Students will learn about the recent history of apartment galleries, the rise of the artist as curator, and the theories behind socially engaged art. Students will use the model of the Athenaeum, a new contemporary art space in downtown Athens, GA where the class will be held, to propose programming and events. Weekly readings will be assigned as well as a short writing assignment. For the final project, students will produce their own alternative exhibitions, projects, proposals, or final papers that critically exam themes presented in class.

By the end of the course, students should have a clearer idea of various curatorial models, both through the study of historical lens of alternative curatorial practices as well as through contemporary understandings of curation. Students should be able to critically assess curatorial choices as well as understand the basic philosophies behind the organization of exhibitions.

ARHI 4920 / 6920

Topics in Modern Art: Interdisciplinary Modernisms

Andrew

Undergrads: CRN 60734 | Grads: CRN 60735 

Marcel Duchamp, Box in a Valise, 1935-1941

This advanced seminar will explore European and American modernism across the arts—visual art, literature, music, performance, & film—during the years of the historical avant-garde (roughly 1880-1940). We will critically examine dominant ideas, actions, and aesthetic practices of modernism, alongside manifestos and artistic case studies from many media and archival materials from UGA’s special collections library to understand the complex histories that have located, defined, and mythologized modernism, and those that reveal its failure as a singular art historical category.

ARHI 4900

Senior Seminar: Biographical Narratives in South Asian Buddhist Visual Culture 

Morrissey | CRN 62294

As one of the most enduring and impactful innovations in the historical development of Buddhist visual culture throughout Asia, it is hardly surprising that the emergence of the figure of the Buddha persists amongst the most contested topics for historians of Asian art. This seminar will explore a variety of issues attendant to scholarly inquiries into the panoply of representations of the historical Buddha, with a primary focus on narrative and biography. Topics covered will take as their entry-point the current status of the foundational art historical debate surrounding aniconism, the complex dialectical nature of images and representation in South Asian religious and visual cultural contexts, the question of multiple conceptions or ‘bodies’ of the Buddha articulated in literary and epigraphic sources, and the power that biographical traditions exerted within South Asian Buddhist communities as a locus for practical and theoretical constructs manifested in both literary and visual modes. Materials for the seminar will be comprised of a carefully curated selection of art historical, textual and epigraphic sources, seeking to situate the production of Buddhist narrative imagery beyond the reductionist art historical discourses of past scholarship. 

ARHI 8650

Seminar in 18th Century European Art: Goya

Luxenberg | CRN 60736

Francisco de Goya, The Clothed Maja, c. 1800-05

This course centers on the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) who is not only considered a significant figure in the history of art, but one of the earliest artists of a “modern” temperament. His large and diverse oeuvre – paintings, drawings, and prints in various techniques - has received a wide range of interpretations, from the qualitative comparisons of connoisseurship, to iconographic studies filtered through social history, to the deconstruction of gender relations of feminist theory. Through careful reading, looking, and discussion, students will come to a deeper appreciation of the complex art of Goya, who straddled the 18th and 19th centuries and simultaneously looked back to the artistic past, reflected concerns of his era, and pioneered new aesthetic vocabulary, techniques, and content. In weekly readings and discussions as well as independent research projects that will focus on the historiography of an individual work (or group of works) by Goya, students will learn how to identify what constitutes an original interpretation, how it may be achieved through close examination of primary and secondary sources, and how the same resources may be approached differently and lead to distinct and enriching readings of the same work.

ARHI 8870

Seminar in Asian Art

Morrissey | CRN 60737

GRSC 7770

Graduate Teaching Seminar

Abbe | CRN 54086

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Summer 2022

ARHI 2300E: Art History I

Abbe | CRN 59756 | Thru Session 

  

Throne room of Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon. Glazed terracotta brick, c. 570 BCE. H. 46 ft. Berlin, Pergamon Museum

This course examines the rich and diverse traditions of art and visual culture from the Paleolithic period (75,000 BCE/BC) to the European Renaissance (1560 CE/AD). It will examine important and innovative key works of sculpture, architecture, painting, and the portable arts from the ancient Near East and Egypt, Greek and Roman antiquity, Byzantium and the Islamic and Medieval worlds, and the Italian and Northern Renaissance. Students will engage with lectures, readings, and online discussions. The direct, first-hand material examination of artworks in regional collections is encouraged. This course aims 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, new important archaeological discoveries, and current debates are highlighted.  

ARHI 2400E: Art History II

Andrew | CRN 63121 | Thru Session 

Edouard Manet, Bar at the Folies Bergère, 1882

This course is a selective survey of major works of European and American painting and sculpture from the 17^th through 20^th centuries. No survey course taught in the space of a semester could ever be comprehensive, nor could any approach be understood as the definitive survey of the discipline of art history. In this survey, we will not only study major works of art and written texts of Western art, but we will interrogate how they contribute to and shape a particular story of Western culture and its predominantly white, male, Judeo-Christian world view. Through lectures, discussion, and readings, students will be introduced to the interplay of history, interpretation, and reception, as well as to a range of methods and intellectual structures foundational to the study of Western art history. In particular, students will develop skills for finding and explaining meaning in works of art as we examine the influence of artistic and cultural movements, the context of historical events, and the dominant socio-political ideologies regarding empires, nations, race, and gender in the in the modern era. Most important, the course aims to foster in students the ability to recognize art as historical evidence, both visual and material, and to translate its significance into verbal expression, both oral and written. 

ARHI 4300/6300

Italian Baroque Art

Zuraw | Undergrads: CRN 68449 | Grads: CRN 68450 | Short Session 1

Orazio Mochi, Black Court Jester, 7 x 3 in, bronze, Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1600-1610

This course is focused on the art produced in Italy during the seventeenth century, the period commonly known as the Baroque. Works of painting, sculpture, and architecture will be studied for what they reveal, not only about the careers of the individual artists who made them, but also in terms of the external forces that shaped their creation. Attention will also be paid to the growing study of Baroque art, inspired by Rome, as it spread across the globe. Because this is an advanced course students will be asked to do more reading and writing in conjunction rather than focus on examinations based on lectures.