Results for ARTHIST

This course surveys the history of Western painting from the start of the 14th century to the late 20th century and our own moment. Lectures introduce important artists (Giotto, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Goya, Manet, Matisse, Pollock, and others), and major themes associated with the art of particular periods and cultures. The course emphasizes training students to look closely at - and to write about - works of art. WIM Course.

An introduction to major monuments, themes, styles, and media of East and South Asian visual arts, in their social, literary, religious, and political contexts. Through close study of primary monuments of architectural, pictorial, and sculptural arts and related texts, this course will explore ritual and mortuary arts; Buddhist arts across Asia; narrative and landscape images; and courtly, urban, monastic, and studio environments for art from Bronze Age to modern eras.

From antiquity to the 20th century, mostly Western with some non-Western topics. Buildings and general principles relevant to the study of architecture.

"All photographs are accurate. None is the truth."nnRichard Avedon (1923-2004)nnnThe invention of photography inspired the belief that there could be a truthful and objective way to visually record the world. From portraits to travel photographs to documentary, photography has influenced how modern history is understood and remembered. Yet, a photograph is a manipulated image, shaped by the perspective of the photographer and further framed by its printing, presentation, and interpretation. The complex ethical and political issues associated with photography significantly impact how events and moments are recorded by history. Consider, for example, the US government's 18-year ban (ended in 2009) on photographing the flag-draped coffins of America's war dead as their bodies are returned to the United States. What matters most: protecting the privacy of military families or protecting American citizens from the death toll of war?nnOver the past decade, the number of photographers has increased exponentially, further blurring the boundary between what is truth and what is fiction. Even the concept of "gatekeepers" is obsolete: anyone with a smartphone is armed with a camera and can create their own stories, their own records, and their own truths. Further, the Internet grants nearly universal freedom to document and disseminate images that record, incriminate, illuminate, persuade, enrage, and glorify. In this course, we will examine the ethical parameters of photography and the many ways in which photography contributes to presenting powerful truths, creating compelling fictions, and recontextualizing history. nnOur discussions will be informed by course readings and opportunities to view photographs in museums and private collections throughout the Bay Area. Field trips will be arranged to meet with artists, collectors, photo editors, and advertising executives. In addition, a special session covering photographic techniques will familiarize students with the diversity of the medium.

Open to all Stanford students. Public speaking, inquiry methods, group dynamics, theme development, and art-related vocabulary. Introduction to museum administration; art registration, preparation and installation; rights and reproduction of images; exhibition planning; and art storage, conservation, and security. Students research, prepare, and present discussions on art works of their choice.

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. Why 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? Painted 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, vases depicting gods and heroes reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Ceramic sets with scenes of Dionysian excess were reserved for elite symposia from which craftsmen were excluded. Sculptors were less lowly but even those who carved the Parthenon's pediments and frieze were still "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon), "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch).nnnThe seminar addresses these issues. Students will read and discuss texts, write response papers and present slide lectures on aspects of the artist's profession.

The development of Greek art and culture from protogeometric beginnings to the Persian Wars, 1000-480 B.C.E. The genesis of a native Greek style; the orientalizing phase during which contact with the Near East and Egypt transformed Greek art; and the synthesis of East and West in the 6th century B.C.E.

The course explores the art and architecture of the Athenian Empire in the age of Pericles, and then considers the effects of civil war and plague on Greek art and society in the later 5th and early 4th centuries.

Chronological survey of Byzantine, Islamic, and Western Medieval art and architecture from the early Christian period to the Gothic age. Broad art-historical developments and more detailed examinations of individual monuments and works of art. Topics include devotional art, court and monastic culture, relics and the cult of saints, pilgrimage and crusades, and the rise of cities and cathedrals.

Studying the design and function of books in medieval society from the 7th to the 15th century, and the ways in which manuscripts are designed to meet (and shape) the cultural and intellectual demands of their readers. Major themes are the relationships between text and image, and between manuscripts and other media; the audience and production context of manuscripts; and changing ideas about pictorial space, figural style, page design, and progression through the book. Final project may be either a research paper or an original artist's book.

New techniques of pictorial illusionism and the influence of the humanist revival of antiquity in the reformulation of the pictorial arts in 15th-century Italy. How different Italian regions developed characteristic artistic cultures through mutual interaction and competition.

The course addresses the ways in which Venetian painters of the sixteenth century redefined paradigms of color, design, and invention. Themes to be examined include civic piety, new kinds of mythological painting, the intersection between naturalism and eroticism, and the relationship between art and rituals of church and statecraft.

Painting and graphic arts by artists in Flanders and Holland from 1600 to 1680, a period of political and religious strife. Historical context; their relationship to developments in the rest of Europe and contributions to the problem of representation. Preferences for particular genres such as portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life; the general problem of realism as manifested in the works studied.

Major developments in painting across Europe including the High Baroque illusionism of Bernini, the founding of the French Academy, and the revival of antiquity during the 1760s, with parallel developments in Venice, Naples, Madrid, Bavaria, and London. Shifts in themes and styles amidst the emergence of new viewing publics. Artists: the Tiepolos, Giordano, Batoni, and Mengs; Ricci, Pellegrini, and Thornhill; Watteau and Boucher; Chardin and Longhi; Reynolds and West; Hogarth and Greuze; Vien, Fragonard, and the first works by David. Additional discussion for graduate students.

The origins, development, and triumph of naturalist painting in Europe. The creative tensions that emerged between traditional forms of history painting and the challenge of modern subjects drawn from contemporary life. Emphasis is on the development of open-air painting as an alternative to traditional studio practice, and to the rise of new imaging technologies, such as lithography and photography, as popular alternatives to the hand-wrought character and elitist appeal of high art.

This course explores the relationship between art and politics in twentieth century Africa. Artistic production and consumption is considered in the context of various major political shifts, from the experience of colonialism to the struggle against Apartheid. Each week we will look closely at different works of art and examine how artists and designers responded to such challenges as independence, modernization and globalization. We will look at painting, sculpture, religious art, public and performance art, photography and film. How western perceptions and understanding of African art have shifted, and how museums have framed African art throughout the twentieth century will remain important points of discussion throughout the course.

This course examines the ways in which fashion has figured in the construction of modern experience and how it has been represented in the visual arts, primarily in Europe and the United States between about 1850 and 1965. Alongside the emergence of haute couture, the rise of the ready-to-wear industry during this period coincided with the consolidation of the department store; these institutions contributed to the development of a culture of consumption and display that continues to shape our lives today. Manet, Degas and other Impressionist painters were sensitive the nuances of fashion, which they, like Baudelaire, saw as an aspect of modernity indispensable to their art. Clothing was no less significant in the context of the Russian revolution, when Alexander Rodchenko, for example, outfitted himself in a home-made version of workers' overalls in order to reinforce his identification with factory laborers and thereby to suggest the breaking down of class distinctions. The course also explores the significance of fashion for an abstract painter like Piet Mondrian, but, more to the point, we look at how Mondrian's work was appropriated to the world of fashion by Yves Saint-Laurent, who assured that Mondrian's signature geometric style would become instantly recognizable and eventually function as a hugely popular brand. The circuits through which we can trace the historical trajectory of fashion will illuminate its importance for understanding many facets of modern culture.

The development of competing versions of modern and postmodern architecture and design in Europe and America, from the early 20th century to the present. Recommended: 141.

A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How these ideas are being transformed in today's globalized world.

This course examines social conflicts and political controversies in American culture through the lens of visual art and photography. We consider how visual images both reflect and participate in the social and political life of the nation and how the terms of citizenship have been represented¿and, at times, contested¿by artists throughout the first half of the 20th century. The class explores the relation between American art and the body politic by focusing on issues of poverty, war, censorship, consumerism, class identity, and racial division.

The development of modern art and visual culture in Europe and the US, beginning with Paris in the period of Haussmann, Baudelaire and Manet, and ending with Surrealism in the 1920s and 30s. Modernism in art, architecture and design (e.g., Gauguin, Picasso, Duchamp, Tatlin, Le Corbusier, Breuer, Dali) will be presented as a compelling dream of utopian possibilities involving multifaceted and often ambivalent, even contradictory responses to the changes brought about by industrialization, urbanization, and the rise of mass culture.

This course surveys the major movements, figures, and themes in American and European art during the Cold War, from the drop of the A-bomb in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It examines the formative relationship between art and politics in this explosive period. We will consider the changed role of the avant-garde after the catastrophes of World War II; the use and abuse of modern art as propaganda; spectacular postwar affluence and the rise of the culture industry; multimedia, intermedia, and the invention of new communications technologies; the burgeoning military-industrial complex and the Vietnam War; the revolutionary efforts of second-wave feminism, sexual liberation, and the counterculture; and the charged debates of the ¿culture wars¿ and the crisis of representation in the 1980s. What was art¿s social, cultural, and political function in the recent past¿and how is this role instructive in the present? Topics include Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Neo-Dada, Pop, Op, Fluxus, Happenings, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Performance, Institutional Critique, Process Art, Systems Art, Earth Art, Video Art, and theories of modernism and postmodernism. We will visit the Cantor Arts Center to view original works.

Examines the pivotal figures, movements, themes and practices of art in the United States and Europe, from the conclusion of World War 2 to the end of the 1960s. Emphasis is on the changed nature of the avant-garde after the catastrophic events of midcentury. Topics include: modern art, ideology and the Cold War; the rise of consumer society and the "Society of the Spectacle"; concepts of medium specificity; the impact of new media and technologies on postwar art making; the role of the artist as worker and activist. Movements include: Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Pop, minimalism, process, performance conceptual art. An introductory art history course is recommended.

This course investigates multiple histories of photography. It begins in early nineteenth-century Europe with the origins of the medium and ends in the United States on September 11, 2001, a day that demonstrated the limits of photographic seeing. Rather than stabilizing any single trajectory of technological iterations, the course is more interested in considering the ¿work¿ performed by photography. Through historical case studies, it considers how `to photograph¿ is to order and to construct the world; to incite action and to persuade; to describe and to document; to record and to censor; to wound; to heal.

This course concentrates on many important American photographers, from the era of daguerreotypes to near the end of the pre-digital era. We study photographs of the Civil War, western exploration, artistic subjects, urban and rural poverty, skyscrapers, crime, fashion, national parks, and social protest, among other topics. Among the photographers we study: Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus. Emphasis on developing students' abilities to discuss and write about photography; to see it.

An exploration of the dynamic relationship between technology and the ways we see and represent the world. The course examines technologies from the Renaissance through the present day, from telescopes and microscopes to digital detectors, that have changed and enhanced our visual capabilities as well as shaped how we imagine the world. We also consider how these technologies influenced and inspired the work of artists. Special attention is paid to how different technologies such as linear perspective, photography, cinema, and computer screens translate the visual experience into a representation; the automation of vision; and the intersection of technology with conceptions of time and space.

This course considers the complex and interdependent relationship between fashion and art. Topics covered will include: the ways in which artists have used fashion in different art forms as a means to convey social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer; the interplay between fashion designers and various art movements, especially in the twentieth century; the place of prints, photography, and the internet in fashion, in particular how different media shape how clothes are seen and perceived. We will discuss texts by Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige, and other theorists of fashion.

(Same as ARTHIST 176) The impact of second wave feminism on art making and art historical practice in the 70s, and its reiteration and transformation in contemporary feminist work. Topics: sexism and art history, feminist studio programs in the 70s, essentialism and self-representation, themes of domesticity, the body in feminist art making, bad girls, the exclusion of women of color and lesbians from the art historical mainstream, notions of performativity.

Changes marking the transition from medieval to early modern Japanese society that generated a revolution in visual culture, as exemplified in subjects deemed fit for representation; how commoners joined elites in pictorializing their world, catalyzed by interactions with the Dutch.

The cultural contexts in which art served religious, political, commercial, athletic, sympotic, and erotic needs of Greek life.

This undergraduate seminar introduces students to the architectural and urban history of Cairo (Egypt) one of the major political, cultural, and economic centers of the Islamic world. Beginning with the conquest of Egypt by Arab Muslims in the early seventh century CE, the seminar will show how the newly founded city was established, and subsequently became a crucial urban center in the Middle East. Discussing the history of the city from the initial conquest, to the breakup of central Abbasid power, the establishment of the Fatimid Shi`i caliphate in the 10th to 12th centuries, the return of Sunni rule under the Ayyubids in the late 12th century, and the rule of the Mamluks from the 1260s to the early sixteenth century based on existing monuments as well as medieval Arabic sources will provide a double perspective on this development. The final weeks will focus on the urban development of Cairo under Ottoman rule from 1517 until the 19th century, colonialism, and issues of preservation of the historical city since the mid-19th century.

This seminar focuses on the production of paintings, mostly but not exclusively miniatures in books, in the Islamic world. A particular focus lies on the Muslim Empires of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, namely the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal realms, together stretching from the Balkans to India. During this period, illustrated books were popular objects of high-level patronage, and numerous examples have survived that allow a detailed study of the implications of these images. Themes discussed include: figural representation in Islam, patronage and court culture; gender and the body; illustrations of literature and history; images of Sufis ceremonies; portraiture; images of animals and nature; the impact of European prints and paintings; space and landscape. A field-trip to the Museum of Asian Art in San Francisco to view Mughal paintings from India is planned.

By employing a methodology based in psychoacoustics, semiotics, and phenomenology, this course explores the relationship among sound, water, marble, meaning, and religious experience in the sixth-century church of HagiannSophia built by emperor Justinian in Constantinople. We will read medieval sources describing the interior and ritual, make short movies exploring the shimmer of marble in buildings on campus, and study the acoustics of domed buildings through computer auralization done at Stanford's CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics)

This course presents a comparative study of Christian and Islamic paradigms (sixth to the thirteenth centuries) in the construction of religious experience through the material fabric of the building, the interior decor, objects, and rituals. We will read medieval ekphrastic texts and poetry, which stirred the viewer/participant to experience the building/object as animate. Among the sites we will study are: Hagia Sophia, the Ka'ba, the Dome of teh Rock, the Mosque at Damascus and at Cordoba. We will read Byzantine and Arabic writers such as Paul the Silentiary, Patriarch Germanos, Maximus Confessor, Shahrawardi, and Ibn Arabi.

Notions of cultural superiority in light of changes in Florentine society as it went from being a republic to a duchy ruled by the Medici. Artists and architects such as Donatello, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Pontormo praised as having revived the arts and returned them to a level of ancient splendor. The role of the sacred in daily life and uses of the pagan past for poetic and scholarly expressions and as vehicles for contemporary experience.

Prints became vehicles for the spreading of artistic inventions as well as political and religious propaganda during the societal upheavals of the 16th century. How the new medium of reproducible images changed attitudes towards the visual. Prints as self-reflective performances of virtuosity. Class taught at the Cantor Arts Center.

This seminar focuses on the key themes, histories, and methods of architectural theory -- a form of architectural practice that establishes the aims and philosophies of architecture. Architectural theory is primarily written, but it also incorporates drawing, photography, film, and other media. nnnOne of the distinctive features of modern and contemporary architecture is its pronounced use of theory to articulate its aims. One might argue that modern architecture is modern because of its incorporation of theory. This course focuses on those early-modern, modern, and late-modern writings that have been and remain entangled with contemporary architectural thought and design practice. nnnRather than examine the development of modern architectural theory chronologically, it is explored architectural through thematic topics. These themes enable the student to understand how certain architectural theoretical concepts endure, are transformed, and can be furthered through his/her own explorations.

This seminar argues that architeccts are ultimately "placemakers," and questions what that means in the contemporary world. Part I investigates the meaning of the word "place." Additional background for understanding contemporary place making will include a critique of the history of modern place-making through an examination of modern form. Part II examines two traditional notions of place by scale: from "home" to "the city." What elements give these conceptions of space a sense of place? To answer this question, themes such as memory, mapping, and boundary, among others, will be investigated. part III presents challenges to the traditional notions of place discussed in Part II. Topics addressed include: What does it mean to be "out of place"? What sense of place does a nomad have, and how is this represented? What are the "non-places" and how can architects design for these spaces? Part IV addresses the need to re-conceptualize contemporary space. The role of digital and cyber technologies, the construction of locality in a global world, and the in-between places that result from a world in flux are topics discussed in this section of the seminar. nLearning goals: Specific goals include clsoe reading of texts, understanding of philosophical thinking and writing, argument under uncertainty, and developed concepts of place, space and architecture.

How does home front of WWII look now? What sort of meanings appear with the vantage of more than sixty years' distance? Examining Hollywood films from those years -films made during the war but mostly not directly about the war - the seminar focuses on developing students' abilities to write emotion-based criticism and history. Weekly short papers, each one in response to a film screening, are required. Among the films screened: Shadow of a Doubt, Gaslight, I Walked with a Zombie, The Best Years of Our Lives.

This course examines the intersection of art, business, and the law from a number of different angles, focusing on issues that impact our understanding of works of art and their circulation in the modern and contemporary periods. Topics range from individual case studies (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci; Richard Serra) to the consolidation of the art market, and include cultural heritage issues, problems of censorship, and conceptions of authorship and intellectual property.

This seminar examines art, photography, and other forms of cultural production (e.g. film, advertisements, postcards) in and about California from the middle of the 19th century to the present. It approaches California as a contested political, historical and geographical site and as a series of images and alternative "lifestyles." How have artists pictured the state's diverse landscapes, both natural and commercial, as well as its complex history of labor, immigration, ethnicity, tourism, and social division?

This seminar investigates all aspects of the work of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and its leader Rem Koolhaas. Topics for class research and inquiry include but are not be limited to: Koolhaas's early work at the Architectural Association and the founding of OMA, the publications of OMA and their style of presentation and theoretical foundations, the importance of AMO, and the architects who have left OMA and founded their own practices and how these differ from OMA. Each student completes an in-depth research paper and an in-class presentation.

This seminar explores the place of images in how we understand and imagine the universe. The course draws on art, science, and popular culture, and pays particular attention to the ways they inform each other. Examples include: star maps, science fiction films, appropriated astronomical images, and telescopic views of stars, planets, and nebulae. Using these representations as well as accompanying readings we will discuss the importance of aesthetics for conceptions of the cosmos; the influence of technology on representations; strategies for representing concepts that exceed the limits of human vision; and the ways that views of the universe reflect and shape their cultural context. Open to undergraduates and graduates.

Printed objects produced during the Edo period (1600-1868), including the Ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) and lesser-studied genres such as printed books (ehon) and popular broadsheets (kawaraban). How a society constructs itself through images. The borders of the acceptable and censorship; theatricality, spectacle, and slippage; the construction of play, set in conflict against the dominant neo-Confucian ideology of fixed social roles.

The tea ceremony, a premodern multimedia phenomenon, integrates architecture, garden design, ceramics, painting, calligraphy, and treasured objects into a choreographed ritual wherein host, objects, and guests perform roles on a tiny stage. Aesthetic, philosophical, and political dimensions. The evolution of tea taste including its inception in Zen monasteries, use for social control during the 16th century, the development of a class of tea connoisseurs, and 20th-century manipulation by the emerging industrialist class.

Contemporary Chinese ink painters are exploring new ground. They push the limits of the medium, creating installations and performances, mixing ink with other media, and advancing age-tested brushstrokes and compositions. The recent flurry of exhibitions attests to contemporary ink painting¿s increasing importance. nnnThis seminar introduces major figures (Xu Bing, Liu Dan, Zheng Chongbin, Li Huasheng, etc.) and movements in contemporary Chinese ink art. Emphasis is placed on improving writing abilities and on in-class reports and discussion. Topics for discussion include readings, individual works of art, and broad issues in contemporary art. Prerequisite: courses in Art History and/or Studio Art OR permission of instructor. open to undergraduates and graduates.

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.

Historiography and methodology.

May be repeated for credit.

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

The development of Greek art and culture from protogeometric beginnings to the Persian Wars, 1000-480 B.C.E. The genesis of a native Greek style; the orientalizing phase during which contact with the Near East and Egypt transformed Greek art; and the synthesis of East and West in the 6th century B.C.E.

The course explores the art and architecture of the Athenian Empire in the age of Pericles, and then considers the effects of civil war and plague on Greek art and society in the later 5th and early 4th centuries.

Chronological survey of Byzantine, Islamic, and Western Medieval art and architecture from the early Christian period to the Gothic age. Broad art-historical developments and more detailed examinations of individual monuments and works of art. Topics include devotional art, court and monastic culture, relics and the cult of saints, pilgrimage and crusades, and the rise of cities and cathedrals.

Studying the design and function of books in medieval society from the 7th to the 15th century, and the ways in which manuscripts are designed to meet (and shape) the cultural and intellectual demands of their readers. Major themes are the relationships between text and image, and between manuscripts and other media; the audience and production context of manuscripts; and changing ideas about pictorial space, figural style, page design, and progression through the book. Final project may be either a research paper or an original artist's book.

New techniques of pictorial illusionism and the influence of the humanist revival of antiquity in the reformulation of the pictorial arts in 15th-century Italy. How different Italian regions developed characteristic artistic cultures through mutual interaction and competition.

The course addresses the ways in which Venetian painters of the sixteenth century redefined paradigms of color, design, and invention. Themes to be examined include civic piety, new kinds of mythological painting, the intersection between naturalism and eroticism, and the relationship between art and rituals of church and statecraft.

Painting and graphic arts by artists in Flanders and Holland from 1600 to 1680, a period of political and religious strife. Historical context; their relationship to developments in the rest of Europe and contributions to the problem of representation. Preferences for particular genres such as portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life; the general problem of realism as manifested in the works studied.

Major developments in painting across Europe including the High Baroque illusionism of Bernini, the founding of the French Academy, and the revival of antiquity during the 1760s, with parallel developments in Venice, Naples, Madrid, Bavaria, and London. Shifts in themes and styles amidst the emergence of new viewing publics. Artists: the Tiepolos, Giordano, Batoni, and Mengs; Ricci, Pellegrini, and Thornhill; Watteau and Boucher; Chardin and Longhi; Reynolds and West; Hogarth and Greuze; Vien, Fragonard, and the first works by David. Additional discussion for graduate students.

The origins, development, and triumph of naturalist painting in Europe. The creative tensions that emerged between traditional forms of history painting and the challenge of modern subjects drawn from contemporary life. Emphasis is on the development of open-air painting as an alternative to traditional studio practice, and to the rise of new imaging technologies, such as lithography and photography, as popular alternatives to the hand-wrought character and elitist appeal of high art.

The development of competing versions of modern and postmodern architecture and design in Europe and America, from the early 20th century to the present. Recommended: 141.

A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How these ideas are being transformed in today's globalized world.

This course examines social conflicts and political controversies in American culture through the lens of visual art and photography. We consider how visual images both reflect and participate in the social and political life of the nation and how the terms of citizenship have been represented¿and, at times, contested¿by artists throughout the first half of the 20th century. The class explores the relation between American art and the body politic by focusing on issues of poverty, war, censorship, consumerism, class identity, and racial division.

The development of modern art and visual culture in Europe and the US, beginning with Paris in the period of Haussmann, Baudelaire and Manet, and ending with Surrealism in the 1920s and 30s. Modernism in art, architecture and design (e.g., Gauguin, Picasso, Duchamp, Tatlin, Le Corbusier, Breuer, Dali) will be presented as a compelling dream of utopian possibilities involving multifaceted and often ambivalent, even contradictory responses to the changes brought about by industrialization, urbanization, and the rise of mass culture.

Examines the pivotal figures, movements, themes and practices of art in the United States and Europe, from the conclusion of World War 2 to the end of the 1960s. Emphasis is on the changed nature of the avant-garde after the catastrophic events of midcentury. Topics include: modern art, ideology and the Cold War; the rise of consumer society and the "Society of the Spectacle"; concepts of medium specificity; the impact of new media and technologies on postwar art making; the role of the artist as worker and activist. Movements include: Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Pop, minimalism, process, performance conceptual art. An introductory art history course is recommended.

This course investigates multiple histories of photography. It begins in early nineteenth-century Europe with the origins of the medium and ends in the United States on September 11, 2001, a day that demonstrated the limits of photographic seeing. Rather than stabilizing any single trajectory of technological iterations, the course is more interested in considering the ¿work¿ performed by photography. Through historical case studies, it considers how `to photograph¿ is to order and to construct the world; to incite action and to persuade; to describe and to document; to record and to censor; to wound; to heal.

This course concentrates on many important American photographers, from the era of daguerreotypes to near the end of the pre-digital era. We study photographs of the Civil War, western exploration, artistic subjects, urban and rural poverty, skyscrapers, crime, fashion, national parks, and social protest, among other topics. Among the photographers we study: Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand, and Diane Arbus. Emphasis on developing students' abilities to discuss and write about photography; to see it.

An exploration of the dynamic relationship between technology and the ways we see and represent the world. The course examines technologies from the Renaissance through the present day, from telescopes and microscopes to digital detectors, that have changed and enhanced our visual capabilities as well as shaped how we imagine the world. We also consider how these technologies influenced and inspired the work of artists. Special attention is paid to how different technologies such as linear perspective, photography, cinema, and computer screens translate the visual experience into a representation; the automation of vision; and the intersection of technology with conceptions of time and space.

This course considers the complex and interdependent relationship between fashion and art. Topics covered will include: the ways in which artists have used fashion in different art forms as a means to convey social status, identity, and other attributes of the wearer; the interplay between fashion designers and various art movements, especially in the twentieth century; the place of prints, photography, and the internet in fashion, in particular how different media shape how clothes are seen and perceived. We will discuss texts by Thorstein Veblen, Roland Barthes, Dick Hebdige, and other theorists of fashion.

(Same as ARTHIST 176) The impact of second wave feminism on art making and art historical practice in the 70s, and its reiteration and transformation in contemporary feminist work. Topics: sexism and art history, feminist studio programs in the 70s, essentialism and self-representation, themes of domesticity, the body in feminist art making, bad girls, the exclusion of women of color and lesbians from the art historical mainstream, notions of performativity.

Changes marking the transition from medieval to early modern Japanese society that generated a revolution in visual culture, as exemplified in subjects deemed fit for representation; how commoners joined elites in pictorializing their world, catalyzed by interactions with the Dutch.

Focus is on the interrelation of art, architecture, verbal description, poetry, and music, including the singing of psalms and recitation of the Qur'an. How ekphrasis, the style of writing vividly intended to transform the listeners into spectators, structures the perception of and response to artistic production be it an art object, building, or a musical performance. The role of ekphrasis in animating the inanimate and the importance of breath and spirit, which become manifest in visual, acoustic, olfactory, and gustatory terms. Religious and courtly settings: Hagia Sophia, the Great Palace of Constantinople, the Dome of the Rock, the palaces of Baghdad and Samarra, the mosque at Cordoba, Medinat al-Zahra and the Alhambra. Greek and Arabic writers on ekphrasis in translation, juxtaposing the medieval material to the ancient theories of ekphrasis and modern scholarship.

The theoretical terrain of narrative studies in literary criticism and historiography. The critical implications of narrative analysis for the writing of history in general. Readings integrated with students' current research projects.

This seminar focuses on American art as a history of migration (of people but also of visual objects) across national and continental boundaries. We examine trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific dialogues and consider how anxieties about foreigners, immigrants, and political dissidents shaped American art and culture at particular moments in the 20th century. In the second half of the course, we consider a series of museum exhibitions that repositioned American art as a history of social conflict and exclusion.

This course taught by Professor Nancy J. Troy (aka Nancy de Wit) is designed to anticipate an exhibition, also entitled "Flesh and Metal" of works by major European and American modern artists, ca. 1914-1955, from the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that will be on loan to the Cantor Art Center from November 2013 to March 2014. Artists include Bellmer, Brancusi, Calder, Dali, De Kooning, Duchamp, Gorky, Moholy-Nagy, Mondrian, Picasso, Man Ray, Rodchenko, Sheeler, Taueber-Arp, among many others. Inspired by the concept of institutional critique, the seminar will examine theoretical and historical problems of exhibition installation, presentation, display, labeling, funding, etc. The reconstruction of historical works (e.g., Duchamp's Fountain and Dali's Surrealist object that functions symbolically- Gala's Shoe, both in the show) will also receive attention. The conventions and possibilities of museum-based art history will be interrogated in part through examination of museum records and research into the works of art to be included in the Cantor exhibition.

Following in sequence from the winter seminar ARTHIST 449, this course entails all aspects of research and planning for the loan exhibition from SFMoMA to take place at Cantor Arts Center from November 2013 to March 2014. Working with major early 20th century European artworks by painters, sculptors, and photographers including Brancusi, Dali, Duchamp, Mondrian, Picasso, Man Ray, and Rodchenko, students with the Cantor staff and other professionals will determine the exhibition's organization, themes, educational materials, programming, and installation. Pre-requisite ARTHIST449, or permission of instructor.

Can one write a history of lived experience, of ephemeral states that never were represented? Can one look at representations of paintings, photographs, and literature to see where these ephemeral states might be trapped, or might otherwise be pictured? Feeling that the real war did not get in the books (for the most part), the course examines those books and other representations and so many things that never attained so exalted a form to look at the war anew. Methodological readings as well as readings about the Civil War.

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 course focuses on taking connoisseurship out of the classroom and into the collecting world. With many classes being held at the Asian Art Museum and private collections in the Bay Area, students will learn not only what the role connoisseurship plays in the current art landscape, but how a museum works. Combines case studies in the field, reading material, eyes-on experience, and discussion, this class will address the topics of utilizing resources, conducting research, cultivating collectors, building collections, and curating exhibitions through the lens of connoisseurship.

This course introduces graduate students to a range of interpretive methods within art history and visual culture studies. In addition to scrutinizing multiple schools of thought and critical debates within the field, the seminar pays particular attention to the style and strategies of writing taken up by individual critics and scholars. How¿and to whom--does the art historian¿s voice speak in different moments, visual contexts, and interpretive communities?

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)

The most premeditated city in the whole world, according to Dostoevsky; created in 1703 by Peter the Great as a counterpoise to Moscow and old Russian culture; planned as a rational, west-European-appearing capital city of the Russian Empire. St. Petersburg's history through works of its artists, architects, urban planners, writers, and composers.

The most influential female figure in Christianity whose state cult was connected with the idea of empire. The production and control of images and relics of the Virgin and the development of urban processions and court ceremonies though which political power was legitimized in papal Rome, Byzantium, Carolingian and Ottonian Germany, Tuscany, Gothic France, and Russia.

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.

Major figures, themes, and movements of contemporary art from the 80s to the present. Readings on the neo-avant garde; postmodernism; art and identity politics; new media and technology; globalization and participatory aesthetics. Prerequisite: ARTHIST 155, or equivalent with consent of instructor.

Narratives of conflict, pacification, orthodoxy, nostalgia, and novelty through visual culture during the change of episteme from late medieval to early modern, 16th through early 19th centuries. The rhetorical messages of castles, teahouses, gardens, ceramics, paintings, and prints; the influence of Dutch and Chinese visuality; transformation in the roles of art and artist; tensions between the old and the new leading to the modernization of Japan.

The recent rapid urbanization and architectural transformation of Asia; focus is on the architecture of Japan and China since the mid-19th century. History of forms, theories, and styles that serve as the foundation for today's buildings and cityscapes. How Eastern and Western ideas of modernism have merged or diverged and how these forces continue to shape the future of Japanese and Chinese architecture and urban form.

The most influential female figure in Christianity whose state cult was connected with the idea of empire. The production and control of images and relics of the Virgin and the development of urban processions and court ceremonies though which political power was legitimized in papal Rome, Byzantium, Carolingian and Ottonian Germany, Tuscany, Gothic France, and Russia.

This course presents a comparative study of Christian and Islamic paradigms (sixth to the thirteenth centuries) in the construction of religious experience through the material fabric of the building, the interior decor, objects, and rituals. We will read medieval ekphrastic texts and poetry, which stirred the viewer/participant to experience the building/object as animate. Among the sites we will study are: Hagia Sophia, the Ka'ba, the Dome of teh Rock, the Mosque at Damascus and at Cordoba. We will read Byzantine and Arabic writers such as Paul the Silentiary, Patriarch Germanos, Maximus Confessor, Shahrawardi, and Ibn Arabi.

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.

Major figures, themes, and movements of contemporary art from the 80s to the present. Readings on the neo-avant garde; postmodernism; art and identity politics; new media and technology; globalization and participatory aesthetics. Prerequisite: ARTHIST 155, or equivalent with consent of instructor.

Narratives of conflict, pacification, orthodoxy, nostalgia, and novelty through visual culture during the change of episteme from late medieval to early modern, 16th through early 19th centuries. The rhetorical messages of castles, teahouses, gardens, ceramics, paintings, and prints; the influence of Dutch and Chinese visuality; transformation in the roles of art and artist; tensions between the old and the new leading to the modernization of Japan.

The recent rapid urbanization and architectural transformation of Asia; focus is on the architecture of Japan and China since the mid-19th century. History of forms, theories, and styles that serve as the foundation for today's buildings and cityscapes. How Eastern and Western ideas of modernism have merged or diverged and how these forces continue to shape the future of Japanese and Chinese architecture and urban form.

The seminar, which is largely methodological and historiographic, problematizes issues of periodization. The course examines different approaches to the question of "what is baroque," from Alois Riegl and Erwin Panofsky to Michel Foucault, Svetlana Alpers and Giovanni Careri.

Violence in the media and its effects upon viewers, especially thennyoung, is an issue of national concern that has produced legislationnnfor the ratings of movies, television shows, and computer/video games. Parental control software makes it possible to program cable boxes andnncomputers to censor what broadcasts or websites are accessible tonnchildren. These are political and technical fixes to a perceivednnsocial problem. They do not ask why one is drawn to watch violence innnthe first place, nor why certain kinds of violent imagery is compelling. Debates about how such measures should be implemented usually proceed from the given that images of violence are subjectspecific, with little or no consideration of their formal qualities or visual protocols. This seminar assumes that the tools and categories of visual analysis specific to the History of Art might enrich our thinking about the attraction and impact of violence across media andnnacross time. The seminar proposes to situate its topic at the intersection of social, philosophic, and visual traditions so as to allow productive points of view to emerge. Readings will include texts from the history of aesthetics, psychology, and moral philosophy. Research projects will encourage analysis of all forms of visual media: painting, sculpture, prints, photographs, film, video, and computer graphics.

Topics may include: workshop production such as that of the Kano and Tosa families; the meaning of the signature on objects including ceramics and tea wares; the folk arts movement; craft guilds; ghost painters in China; individualism versus product standardization; and the role of lineage. How works of art were commissioned; institutions supporting artists; how makers purveyed their goods; how artists were recognized by society; the relationship between patrons¿ desires and artists¿ modes of production.

Enrollment restricted to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. What is contemporary in African art and how does one curate the contemporary in and through African art? The course examines curatorial practices and activist projects. Topics include redefining museum exhibitions and collections of African art at the Cantor Arts Center and museums around the world; breaking away from stereotypical representations of the arts and cultures of Africa; controversial issues and dilemmas; curatorial activities directed toward cultural, social, and political activism; strategic modes of display and design; subjectivity vs. objectivity; and fostering critical dialogues about the arts and cultures of Africa.

For graduate students writing and researching dissertations and dissertation proposals. How to define research projects, write grant proposals, and organize book-length projects.