Results for ARTHIST

This lecture course surveys the history of architecture and urbanism, from the first societies to the present, in Europe, West and East Asia, the Americas, and Africa. The course progresses by case studies of exemplary monuments and cities, and examines the built environment as both cultural artifact and architectural event. It considers the social and political circumstances of architectural invention as well as plumbing the depth of artistic context by which particular formal choices resonate with an established representational culture.

Given the importance of art to all aspects of their lives, the Greeks had reason to respect their artists. Yet potters, painters and even sculptors possessed little social standing. n nWhy did the Greeks value the work of craftsmen but not the men themselves? Why did Herodotus dismiss those who worked with their hands as "mechanics?" What prompted Homer to claim that "there is no greater glory for a man¿ than what he achieves with his own hands," provided that he was throwing a discus and not a vase on a wheel?n nPainted pottery was essential to the religious and secular lives of the Greeks. Libations to the gods and to the dead required vases from which to pour them. Economic prosperity depended on the export of wine and oil in durable clay containers. At home, depictions of gods and heroes on vases reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Ceramic sets with scenes of Dionysian excess were reserved for elite symposia from which those who potted and painted them were excluded.n nSculptors were less lowly but even those who carved the Parthenon were still regarded as "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon) "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch).n nThe seminar addresses these issues. Students will read and discuss texts, write response papers and present slide lectures and gallery talks on aspects of the artist's profession.

(Formerly CLASSART 106/206.) This course explores the art and architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean: Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Damascus, Thessaloniki, and Palermo, 4th-15th centuries. Applying an innovative approach, we will probe questions of phenomenology and aesthetics, focusing our discussion on the performance and appearance of spaces and objects in the changing diurnal light, in the glitter of mosaics and in the mirror reflection and translucency of marble.

How conceptual models from language, literature, new technologies, and scientific theory affected picture making following the collapse of the radical naturalism of the 1860s and 1870s. Bracketed in France by the first Impressionist exhibition (1874) and the first public acclamation of major canvases by Matisse and Picasso (1905), the related developments in England, Germany, Belgium, and Austria. Additional weekly discussion for graduate students. Recommended: some prior experience with 19th-century art.

The American West is characterized by frontier mythology, vast distances, marked aridity, and unique political and economic characteristics. This course integrates several disciplinary perspectives into a comprehensive examination of Western North America: its history, physical geography, climate, literature, art, film, institutions, politics, demography, economy, and continuing policy challenges. Students examine themes fundamental to understanding the region: time, space, water, peoples, and boom and bust cycles.

Over the past half-century, the U.S. has seen profound demographic and cultural change. But racial progress still seems distant. After the faith of the civil rights movement, the fervor of multiculturalism, and even the brief euphoria of a post-racial moment, we remain a nation divided. Resegregation is the norm. The culture wars flare as hot as ever.nnThis course takes a close examination of visual culture¿particularly images, works, and ideas in the contemporary arts, justice movements, and popular culture¿to discuss North American demographic and cultural change and cultural politics over the past half-century. From the Watts uprising to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, from multiculturalism through hip-hop to post-identity art, we will deeply explore the questions: How do Americans see race now? Do we see each other any more clearly than before?

The cave temples of Dunhuang in far northwest China are the greatest repository of Chinese and Central Asian Buddhist arts from the medieval period of 5th to 14th centuries. This seminar will focus on caves that will be exhibited as full-scale replicas as part of the Getty Malibu Museum's International Dunhuang exhibition, which we will visit in a seminar field trip to Los Angeles. We will explore the spatial arrangement of sculptures and wall paintings, the imagery of Pure Land paradise scenes and narrative story cycles, and the embodied experience of movement around the caves. Through readings, discussions, VR simulation viewings, and exhibition visits we will also explore varied approaches to understanding the patronage, artistic styles, production techniques, devotional practices, and significance of these sacred spaces.

In what ways does contemporary art address the slowly unfolding catastrophes of melting ice and thawing permafrost in the Arctic due to climate change? How might contemporary art and experimental cinema help us come to grips with the emotional disturbance of living amidst the deep-seated changes that are happening in our environment? These are the key questions this course attempts to answer.nThe first part of the class attempts to outline the complex history of Arctic visual and cultural representations through an interdisciplinary lens. The second part focuses on the more recent artistic and cinematic responses to climate change in the arctic. For their final projects, students will be able to combine analytical writing with creative projects that could take the form of photography, installation art, web-based art, fiction, video or poetry.

Gain hands-on curatorial experience redesigning the African galleries at the Cantor Arts Center. Explore and debate strategies for presenting diverse art forms, including a mummy from Ancient Egypt, early twentieth-century masks, and contemporary photography. Conduct research, prepare wall texts and labels, and participate in designing a new exhibition space in collaboration with fellow students, faculty, and community members.

Students will open the "black box" of museums to consider the past and present roles of institutional collections, culminating in a student-curated exhibition. Today, museums assert their relevance as dynamic spaces for debate and learning. Colonialism and restitution, the politics of representation, human/object relationships, and changing frameworks of authority make museum work widely significant and consistently challenging. Through thinking-in-practice, this course reflexively explores "museum cultures": representations of self and other within museums and institutional cultures of the museum world itself.n3 credits (no final project) or 5 credits (final project). May be repeat for credit

The Japanese tea ceremony, the ultimate premodern multimedia phenomenon, integrates architecture, garden design, ceramics, painting, calligraphy, and other treasured objects into a choreographed ritual wherein host, objects, and guests perform designated roles on a tiny stage sometimes only six feet square.. In addition to its much-touted aesthetic and philosophical aspects, the practice of tea includes inevitable political and rhetorical dimensions. This course traces the evolution of tea practice from its inception within the milieu of courtier diversions, Zen monasteries, and warrior villas, through its various permutations into the 20th century, where it was manipulated by the emerging industrialist class for different-but ultimately similar-ends.

Professional experience in a field related to the Visual Arts for six to ten weeks. Internships may include work for galleries, museums, art centers, and art publications. Students arrange the internship, provide a confirmation letter from the hosting institution, and must receive consent from the faculty coordinator to enroll in units. To supplement the internship students maintain a journal and write a research paper related to the experience and their area of academic interest. Evaluations from the student and the supervisor are submitted at the end of the internship. Restricted to declared majors and minors. May be repeated for credit.

May be repeated for credit.

For approved independent research with individual faculty members. Letter grades only. May be repeated for credit.

(Formerly CLASSART 106/206.) This course explores the art and architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean: Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Damascus, Thessaloniki, and Palermo, 4th-15th centuries. Applying an innovative approach, we will probe questions of phenomenology and aesthetics, focusing our discussion on the performance and appearance of spaces and objects in the changing diurnal light, in the glitter of mosaics and in the mirror reflection and translucency of marble.

How conceptual models from language, literature, new technologies, and scientific theory affected picture making following the collapse of the radical naturalism of the 1860s and 1870s. Bracketed in France by the first Impressionist exhibition (1874) and the first public acclamation of major canvases by Matisse and Picasso (1905), the related developments in England, Germany, Belgium, and Austria. Additional weekly discussion for graduate students. Recommended: some prior experience with 19th-century art.

This course explores the relationship of spirit and matter in medieval art and architecture, more specifically how the changing appearance of objects and spaces evokes the presence of the metaphysical as glitter, reverberation, and shadow. We will engage objects and monuments across the Mediterranean, studying the way they were staged in order to produce the perception of liveliness. The phenomenology of liveliness will be tied to the development of the theology of resurrection of the body.

Is history a form of ghost story? Historians summon the past--making it live in the present. Even the most empirical history is a kind of necromancy: the historian conjures the past, making it appear before our eyes. Tables and figures and other statistical data, no less than other other objective information, flutter in front of the reader like other sorts of ectoplasm in the crystal ball. In this course we will consider ghost stories and ghost paintings for what they reveal about the historian's occult craft. We will devote special attention to Stanford's campus as a haunted place, and students will write their final papers on some ghostly aspect of the university.

Enrollment restricted to graduate students. Globalization as the most important paradigm for the production, circulation, and reception of contemporary art since the 1990s. The expanding terrain of the art world; biennial culture; new economies of scale and the art market along with its critique in the discourses of empire and multitudes. Debates on the thematics of hybridity; post-Fordism; the flat world and capital flows; exteriority and site specificity; and new models of collectivism in recent art.

This seminar will explore recent scholarly approaches to the visual arts of the Buddhist cave shrine complex at Dunhuang in northwest China between the 5th and 9th c. CE. Topics will include real and virtual spatiality of the cave shrines; questions of function (ritual, memorial, meditative, visualization); textual and doctrinal relationships of images and spaces; patronage and political contexts; production techniques; narrative and paradise iconographies; icons and illustrations. The seminar group will visit the concurrent major Dunhuang exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and focus especially on banner paintings, sculptures, and replica cave shrines (275, 285, 320) represented in the exhibition.

For Art History Ph.D. candidates. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

(Staff)

(Staff)

For graduate students only. Approved independent research projects with individual faculty members.

May be repeated for credit. (Staff)

CPT course required for international students completing degree. Prerequisite: Art History Ph.D. candidate.