1 - 10 of 34 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.

This new interdisciplinary seminar explores challenges and avenues for furthering protection of the cultural heritage rights enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Using an innovative combination of in-class lectures and videos of interviews with renowned experts, including Indigenous leaders, scholars, artists and performers and museum professionals from around the world, this seminar will analyze current and potential tribal, domestic and international legal and ethical frameworks for indigenous cultural heritage protection and repatriation. Among other subjects, we will discuss and problematize: the impact of colonialism, urbanization and other political, legal, economic, religious and cultural forces on understandings and definitions of "indigenous" and "cultural heritage"; the development of international law relating to Indigenous peoples¿ cultural rights; tribal and domestic heritage protection and repatriation laws/initiatives including the 1990 US Indian Arts and Crafts Act and Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; past and present Western museum practices relating to display, preservation, provenance research and repatriation of Indigenous peoples' cultural material; the meaning of repatriation to Indigenous peoples and other stakeholders; and resolving repatriation disputes, including by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes. While case studies will relate primarily to Indigenous peoples of North America, including the Arizona Hopi and Northwest Coast First Nations, comparisons will be drawn with the situation of Indigenous peoples in other regions, such as Oceania and Russia. The overall seminar experience will involve discussions of lectures and video content, assigned readings, a class visit to the Cantor Center Native Americas collection, and visits to our classroom by renowned experts, including Dr. Morten Rasmussen, who participated in the recent DNA analysis of Kennewick Man/The Ancient One. Students who have taken this course are eligible to join a guided weekend trip to Hopi territory tentatively planned for Spring Quarter 2016. Elements used in grading: class participation, attendance and a final project (one-day take-home exam; or research paper or film project with instructor's consent). Registration: Students may seek the instructor's consent via email (sjdenant@stanford.edu).

In the decades 480-460, just before work began on the Parthenon, the sculptor Myron, creator of the Discus-Thrower, was even more celebrated for his bronze cow. Ancient authors describe an image so palpably alive that shepherds threw stones at her, thinking that she had strayed from the herd, and bulls vied for her attention. A century later, the quest for mimesis prompted a contest between two artists. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes seductive enough to attract hungry birds; Parrhasios then added a linen curtain, which Zeuxis asked to be removed from his painting. Zeuxis conceded defeat since he had fooled only birds, whereas Parrhasios had deceived an artist. nnThis course explores the art and culture of the ancestors of these men. The Greeks of the archaic period (1000-480) would have understood the painters¿ competitive zeal, but only toward the end of the period would they have recognized naturalism as an artistic aim. nnEarlier Greek art is more abstract than life-like, closer to Calder than Michelangelo. In the eighth century Homer¿s descriptions of the rippling muscles (and egos) of his heroes, and the grief of Achilles¿ horses, evoke living men and sentient animals, but his fellow sculptors and painters prefer abstraction.nnThis changes in the seventh century as a result of commercial contacts with the Near East and Egypt. Imported bronzes, ivories and other Near Eastern exotica alerted Greek artists to a wider range of subjects, techniques and intentions, including naturalism. Later in the century, Greek expatriates learned the art of carving hard stone from Egyptian masters and soon marble sculpture and architecture spread throughout Greece. nnIn the course of the sixth and early fifth centuries Greek artists assimilate what they had borrowed, compete with one another, obey and disobey their teachers, test the tolerance of the gods and eventually produce works of art that speak with a Greek accent. When the Persians invaded the Acropolis in 480 and 479, they encountered artifacts with little trace of alien influence or imprint and, at Salamis and Plataea, fought decisive battles in which the Greeks prevailed. In the aftermath of the war, as the Greeks rebuilt their cities and their lives, Myron¿s cow reminded them of their debts to other cultures and their resolve to remain true to their own.

This course explores the experience and imagination of medieval journeys through interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and skills-based approaches. As a foundations class, this survey of medieval culture engages with an array of written texts from the period. Narratives of medieval journeys are studied across a wide range of categories, including pilgrimages, crusades, quests, and sagas. The journey as metaphor, along with the resulting and very real cultural interactions, will provide a main focus for examining this rich tradition of literature. Students will have the opportunity to produce a creative project that brings medieval ideas about travel into dialogue with modern conceptions. The course will satisfy the Ways-Creative Expression requirement as well as one of the following two: Ways-Analytical Interpretive or Ways-Engaging Difference.

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 primarily concerns how French artists, writers, and filmmakers have explored the intersecting themes of fashion and modernity in various media ¿ including painting, sculpture, architecture, the decorative arts, poetry, novels, film, dance, and mass advertising. Using modern France as a case study, we will think critically about how the fashion, design, and luxury industries have influenced the production and reception of modern art - and vice versa. While the course is organized thematically, we will move chronologically from the late-18th century to the 1950s, conducting a survey of some of the major developments in French visual culture along the way. Finally, we will consider the ways that fashion-minded artists, designers, and entrepreneurs have helped to create, reflect, and critique modern French identities.

The Song dynasty (mid-10th to late 13th c.) was a period of extraordinary diversity and technical accomplishment in Chinese painting, ceramics, calligraphy, architecture and sculpture. Artistic developments emerged within a context of economic dynamism, urban growth, and competition in dynastic, political, cultural and social arenas ¿ as between Chinese and formerly nomadic neighboring regimes, or between reformers and conservatives. This course will consider major themes and topics in Song art history, including innovations in architectural and ceramic technologies; developments in landscape painting and theory; the rise of educated artists; official arts and ideologies of Song, Liao and Jin court regimes; new roles for women as patrons and cultural participants; and Chan and popular Buddhist imagery.

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.

The seminar considers Greek artifacts in the context of Greek life (including the life of the workshop), and the endless ways in which craftsmen served the needs of Greek society. Their foundries, factories and ceramic studios produced the material goods that defined Greek life: temples, statues and other offerings for the gods; arms and armor for warriors; sporting equipment and prizes for athletes; houses, clothing and crockery for the family; ships and sailcloth, wagons and ploughs, wine and oil-presses for a thriving domestic and overseas economy; gravestones and funeral vases for the dead. (Formerly CLASSART 109.) nMost of the antiquities exhibited in museums, or purchased by private collectors from galleries and auction houses, survive because they were buried with people who used and cherished them. The Greeks¿ belief that the artifacts they valued in life would serve them in the afterlife informs the second part of the seminar, which is devoted to the recent history of tomb looting and the illicit trafficking in antiquities.