printer friendly pageARTHIST 1B: How to Look at Art and Why: An Introduction to the History of Western Painting
This course explores the relation of art to life - how and why works of art, even from hundreds of years ago, matter in a person's life. It trains students to find the words to share their thoughts about art with their peers, friends, and family. Some fundamental questions the course considers: How do we get beyond the idea that the study and making of art are elite, 'privileged' activities apart from the real world? How do we develop a sense of discernment - of deciding for ourselves which artists matter, and which don't - without being a snob? How can works of art teach us to feel the wonder of being alive and our deep debt to the past, to the dead? Focusing on painters such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Morisot, and Charlotte Salomon, this course will pursue these questions with the aim of challenging and encouraging students to develop their own ways of thinking and feeling - generously and ethically - about the past and the present. Sections will focus on original works of art at the Cantor Arts Center. No prerequisites required.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Chun, E. (PI)
;
Nemerov, A. (PI)
;
Chun, E. (TA)
;
Gonzalez Ho, C. (TA)
;
Hobbs, C. (TA)
;
Nguyen-Hoang, Q. (TA)
;
Silva, S. (TA)
ARTHIST 101: Introduction to Greek Art I: The Archaic Period (CLASSICS 161)
The class considers the development of Greek art from 1000-480 and poses the question, how Greek was Greek art? In the beginning, as Greece emerges from 200 years of Dark Ages, their art is cautious, conservative and more abstract than life-like, closer to Calder than Michelangelo. While Homer describes the rippling muscles (and egos) of Bronze Age heroes, his fellow painters and sculptors prefer abstraction. This changes in the 7th century, when travel to and trade with the Near East transform Greek culture. What had been an insular society becomes cosmopolitan, enriched by the sophisticated artistic traditions of lands beyond the Aegean "frog pond." Imported Near Eastern bronzes and ivories awaken Greek artists to a wider range of subjects, techniques and ambitions. Later in the century, Greeks in Egypt learn to quarry and carve hard stone from Egyptian masters. Throughout the 6th century, Greek artists absorb what they had borrowed, compete with one another, defy their teachers, tes
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The class considers the development of Greek art from 1000-480 and poses the question, how Greek was Greek art? In the beginning, as Greece emerges from 200 years of Dark Ages, their art is cautious, conservative and more abstract than life-like, closer to Calder than Michelangelo. While Homer describes the rippling muscles (and egos) of Bronze Age heroes, his fellow painters and sculptors prefer abstraction. This changes in the 7th century, when travel to and trade with the Near East transform Greek culture. What had been an insular society becomes cosmopolitan, enriched by the sophisticated artistic traditions of lands beyond the Aegean "frog pond." Imported Near Eastern bronzes and ivories awaken Greek artists to a wider range of subjects, techniques and ambitions. Later in the century, Greeks in Egypt learn to quarry and carve hard stone from Egyptian masters. Throughout the 6th century, Greek artists absorb what they had borrowed, compete with one another, defy their teachers, test the tolerance of the gods and eventually produce works of art that speak with a Greek accent. By the end of the archaic period, images of gods and mortals bear little trace of alien influence or imprint, yet without the contributions of Egypt and the Near East, Greek art as we know it would have been unthinkable.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Maxmin, J. (PI)
ARTHIST 102B: Coffee, Sugar, and Chocolate: Commodities and Consumption in World History, 1200-1800 (ARTHIST 302B, HISTORY 202B, HISTORY 302B, HISTORY 402B)
Many of the basic commodities that we consider staples of everyday life became part of an increasingly interconnected world of trade, goods, and consumption between 1200 and 1800. This seminar offers an introduction to the material culture of the late medieval and early modern world, with an emphasis on the role of European trade and empires in these developments. We will examine recent work on the circulation, use, and consumption of things, starting with the age of the medieval merchant, and followed by the era of the Columbian exchange in the Americas that was also the world of the Renaissance collector, the Ottoman patron, and the Ming connoisseur. This seminar will explore the material horizons of an increasingly interconnected world, with the rise of the Dutch East India Company and other trading societies, and the emergence of the Atlantic economy. It concludes by exploring classic debates about the "birth" of consumer society in the eighteenth century. How did the meaning of things and people's relationships to them change over these centuries? What can we learn about the past by studying things? Graduate students who wish to take a two-quarter graduate research seminar need to enroll in 402B in fall and 430 in winter.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-SI
Instructors:
Findlen, P. (PI)
ARTHIST 143A: American Architecture (AMSTUD 143A, ARTHIST 343A, CEE 32R)
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.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Beischer, T. (PI)
;
Jenks, L. (TA)
ARTHIST 182B: Cultures in Competition: Arts of Song-Era China (ARTHIST 382B)
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.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Vinograd, R. (PI)
ARTHIST 189: Word Image & Emotion in Medieval Manuscripts
This course explores the sight and sound of medieval manuscripts of the Eastern Roman Empire between the seventh and eleventh centuries. This is a transitional period when challenged by Islam, the portrayal of the divine in figural images underwent a re-evaluation in the Latin West and Greek East. Through relational analysis of word and image, we carve new pathways of understanding of what the icon is and how it mobilizes emotion and shapes identity in differentiation with the other cultures of the book. We will study facsimiles of the major manuscripts and explore their use in the public ritual in Rome, Constantinople, Sinai, Damascus, Baghdad, Cordoba, and Aachen.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
Instructors:
Terss, M. (PI)
ARTHIST 203: Artists, Athletes, Courtesans and Crooks (CLASSICS 163)
The seminar examines a range of topics devoted to the makers of Greek art and artifacts, the men and women who used them in life and the afterlife, and the miscreants - from Lord Elgin to contemporary tomb-looters and dealers - whose deeds have damaged, deracinated and desecrated temples, sculptures and grave goods. Readings include ancient texts in translation, books and articles by classicists and art historians, legal texts and lively page-turners. Students will discuss weekly readings, give brief slide lectures and a final presentation on a topic of their choice, which need not be confined to the ancient Mediterranean.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Maxmin, J. (PI)
ARTHIST 210: Great Minds of the Italian Renaissance and their World (HISTORY 240C, ITALIAN 140, ITALIAN 240)
What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Re
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What enabled Leonardo da Vinci to excel in over a dozen fields from painting to engineering and to anticipate flight four hundred years before the first aircraft took off? How did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel Ceiling? What forces and insights led Machiavelli to write "The Prince"? An historical moment and a cultural era, the Italian Renaissance famously saw monumental achievements in literature, art, and architecture, influential developments in science and technology, and the flourishing of multi-talented individuals who contributed profoundly, expertly, and simultaneously to very different fields. In this course on the great thinkers, writers, and achievers of the Italian Renaissance, we will study these "universal geniuses" and their world. Investigating the writings, thought, and lives of such figures as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccol¿ Machiavelli, and Galileo Galilei, we will interrogate historical and contemporary ideas concerning genius, creativity, and the phenomenon of "Renaissance man" known as polymathy. Taught in English. In 2023-24, this course is part of the Humanities Core, a collaborative set of global humanities seminars that brings all of its students and faculty into conversation. On Tuesdays you meet in your own course, and on Thursday all the HumCore seminars in session that quarter meet together:
https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Prodan, S. (PI)
;
Davidian, T. (TA)
ARTHIST 261: Black Aliveness (AFRICAAM 261, AMSTUD 261A)
Based on Kevin Quashie's 2021 book "Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being," this seminar will explore moments of possibility, love, and being in works of literature and art. With Quashie as our guide, we will look closely at poems, stories, photographs, and paintings by, among others, Lucille Clifton, Audrey Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Toi Derricotte, Gordon Parks, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. Featuring intense discussion and emphasis on developing powers of black aliveness in one's own writing.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Nemerov, A. (PI)
ARTHIST 264B: Starstuff: Space and the American Imagination (AMSTUD 143X, FILMEDIA 264B)
Course on the history of twentieth and twenty-first century American images of space and how they shape conceptions of the universe. Covers representations made by scientists and artists, as well as scientific fiction films, TV, and other forms of popular visual culture. Topics will include the importance of aesthetics to understandings of the cosmos; the influence of media and technology on representations; the social, political, and historical context of the images; and the ways representations of space influence notions of American national identity and of cosmic citizenship.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Cravens, M. (PI)
;
Kessler, E. (PI)
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