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.

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.

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 is an introduction to western medieval art approached primarily through distinctions of materials and media. We work with a combination of medieval and later sources, often engaging with the modern objects and spaces available for study on campus in order to create new perspectives on the historical material. Medieval case studies are chosen that raise particularly complex issues of materiality, mixed-media form, and cross-media citation.

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.

Survey of European painting bracketed by the French Revolution and the end of the Napoleonic conquest. Against this background of social upheavel, the visual arts were profoundly affected by shifts in patronage, public, and ideas about the social utility of image making. Lectures and readings align ruptures in the tradition of representation with the unfolding historical situation, and trace the first manifestations of a "romantic" alternative to the classicism that was the cultural legacy of pre-Revolutionary Europe.

Writing in 1829, the French author Honoré de Balzac celebrated the acute visual attention of the flâneur, a character he closely associates with modern life: "To flâne is to take pleasure, to collect flashes of wit, to admire sublime scenes of unhappiness, of love, of joy as well as graceful or grotesque portraits, to thrust one's attention into the depths of a thousand lives." In July 2012 the Huffington Report pointed to a fact of modern life: "On city streets, in suburban parking lots and in shopping centers, there is usually someone strolling while talking on a phone, texting with his head down, listening to music, or playing a video game. The problem isn't as widely discussed as distracted driving, but the danger is real." These two very different ways of circulating in urban space suggest that a major shift in how we humans relate to our environment has occurred over the course of nearly two centuries--especially in the densely populated spaces of modern cities. Where the great spectacle of urban life was a marvel of the nineteenth century, today's inhabitants want mainly to block it out by insulating themselves in a cocoon of favorite music or personal conversation, whether by voice or text, that they risk stepping into traffic, colliding with lightposts, or bumping into others similarly self-absorbed. This seminar proposes to think about the hows and whys of that important shift from the unique perspective of art history, a field of study especially attuned to the limits and exigencies of visual acuity. We will explore the topic across a range of media, from daguerreotypes to stereoscopes, from paintings to films, from television screen to the hand-held displays of our smartphones.

The visual arts and literature of the U.S. from the beginnings of European exploration to the Civil War. Focus is on questions of power and its relation to culture from early Spanish exploration to the rise of the middle classes. Cabeza de Vaca, Benjamin Franklin, John Singleton Copley, Phillis Wheatley, Charles Willson Peale, Emerson, Hudson River School, American Genre painters, Melville, Hawthorne and others.

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 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.

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.

A mixture of lecture and discussion, this course presents a chronological introduction to some of the defining monuments in the history of Japanese visual culture from prehistory to the mid-19th century. This introductory class presumes no prior knowledge of art history or of Japan. We will emphasize certain overarching themes like religious life; notions of decorum appropriate to various classes (court, warrior, and commoner); the relationship between and among the arts, such as the visual and the verbal, or the symphonic assemblage arts as seen in the tea ceremony; pervasive cultural tropes like nostalgia, seasonality, or the sense of place; and broader issues such as censorship, patronage, gender issues, and the encounters between Japanese and foreign cultures.

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

Onassis Seminar "Icons of Sound: Architecture, Acoustics and Ritual in Byzantium". This year-long seminar explores the creation and operations of sacred space in Byzantium by focusing on the intersection of architecture, acoustics, music, and ritual. Through the support of the Onassis Foundation (USA), nine leading scholars in the field share their research and conduct the discussion of their pre-circulated papers. The goal is to develop a new interpretive framework for the study of religious experience and assemble the research tools needed for work in this interdisciplinary field.

The seminar takes place in the Cantor Arts Center and provides a unique opportunity to study original works of art from the museum's storage. Beginning in the fifteenth century new techniques of reproduction changed the pictorial culture of Europe. Some engravings called attention to the engraver's virtuosity, and the private nature of the medium was explored for erotic imagery. By the sixteenth century printed images were used for political and religious propaganda during the societal upheavals.

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.

Both cars and the landscape are fundamental to American identity. This seminar will consider the relationship between them: how they have shaped each other, how one mediates the experience of the other, and how American artists such as Ansel Adams, Edward Hopper, and Ed Ruscha have represented both. We will discuss the relationship between nature and technology; the aesthetics of highways and parkways; the phenomenology of driving and road trips; maps and way finding; and the future of cars, mapping, and the landscape.

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. nnThis 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 is an introduction to western medieval art approached primarily through distinctions of materials and media. We work with a combination of medieval and later sources, often engaging with the modern objects and spaces available for study on campus in order to create new perspectives on the historical material. Medieval case studies are chosen that raise particularly complex issues of materiality, mixed-media form, and cross-media citation.

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.

Survey of European painting bracketed by the French Revolution and the end of the Napoleonic conquest. Against this background of social upheavel, the visual arts were profoundly affected by shifts in patronage, public, and ideas about the social utility of image making. Lectures and readings align ruptures in the tradition of representation with the unfolding historical situation, and trace the first manifestations of a "romantic" alternative to the classicism that was the cultural legacy of pre-Revolutionary Europe.

The visual arts and literature of the U.S. from the beginnings of European exploration to the Civil War. Focus is on questions of power and its relation to culture from early Spanish exploration to the rise of the middle classes. Cabeza de Vaca, Benjamin Franklin, John Singleton Copley, Phillis Wheatley, Charles Willson Peale, Emerson, Hudson River School, American Genre painters, Melville, Hawthorne and others.

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 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.

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.

A mixture of lecture and discussion, this course presents a chronological introduction to some of the defining monuments in the history of Japanese visual culture from prehistory to the mid-19th century. This introductory class presumes no prior knowledge of art history or of Japan. We will emphasize certain overarching themes like religious life; notions of decorum appropriate to various classes (court, warrior, and commoner); the relationship between and among the arts, such as the visual and the verbal, or the symphonic assemblage arts as seen in the tea ceremony; pervasive cultural tropes like nostalgia, seasonality, or the sense of place; and broader issues such as censorship, patronage, gender issues, and the encounters between Japanese and foreign cultures.

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.

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.

Onassis Seminar "Icons of Sound: Architecture, Acoustics and Ritual in Byzantium". This year-long seminar explores the creation and operations of sacred space in Byzantium by focusing on the intersection of architecture, acoustics, music, and ritual. Through the support of the Onassis Foundation (USA), nine leading scholars in the field share their research and conduct the discussion of their pre-circulated papers. The goal is to develop a new interpretive framework for the study of religious experience and assemble the research tools needed for work in this interdisciplinary field.

This course will explore concepts of animacy, performance, and presence in the art of Byzantium, focusing on the concept of image understood as the living bodies of the saints, the space of Hagia Sophia and its Eucharist ritual, the polymorphism of the mixed-media icon, and the interaction with these objects in prayer and recitation of epigrams.

A re-examination of American art of the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on works in the collection of the de Young Museum, San Francisco. The class will meet weekly at the de Young, where we will be joined by Professor Margaretta Lovell and students from the University of California, Berkeley. Each student will pursue an in-depth study of a single work in the Museum's superb American collections, using documents of social and cultural history. We will pay particular attention to recent scholarship, questions of genre (landscape, portrait, still life and images of everyday life), and the "biography of objects" (the way works of art shift in context and interpretation over time).nnGraduate seminar open to advanced undergraduates with the instructor¿s approval.

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.

Description is a prime skill for an art historian.  How to make a reader (or listener) see a work, whether it is illustrated or not, is arguably the most fundamental and important task and pleasure in this discipline.  How to make a world--both for oneself and for one's audience--is the larger purpose of such imagistic writing.  Considering historical and more recent examples of ekphrasis, the course will concentrate on works of art in the Cantor Arts Center, requiring each student to select a work that will become the basis for a quarter-long writing project.

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 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)