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11 - 20 of 214 results for: ARTHIST

ARTHIST 100N: The Artist in Ancient Greek Society (CLASSICS 18N)

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 vessels from which to pour them. Economic prosperity depended on the export of wine and oil in durable clay containers. At home, depictions of gods and heroes on vases reinforced Greek values and helped parents to educate their children. Vases depicting Dionysian excess were produced for elite symposia, from which those who potted and painted them were excluded. Sculptors were less lowly but still regarded as "mechanics," with soft bodies and soft minds (Xenophon), "indifferent to higher things" (Plutarch). The seminar addresses such issues as we work to acknowledge our own privilege and biases. Students will read and discuss texts, write response papers and present slide lectures on aspects of the artist's profession.
Terms: Spr | Units: 3 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II
Instructors: Maxmin, J. (PI)

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, 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 102: Introduction to Greek Art II: The Classical Period (CLASSICS 162)

The class begins with the art, architecture and political ideals of Periclean Athens, from the emergence of the city as the political and cultural center of Greece in 450 to its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404. It then considers how the Athenians (shell-shocked from war and three outbreaks of plague) and the rest of 4th century Greece rebuild their lives and the monuments that define them. Earlier 5th century traditions endure, with subtle changes, in the work of sculptors such as Kephisodotos. Less subtle are the outlook and output of his son Praxiteles. In collaboration with Phryne, his muse and mistress, Praxiteles challenged the canons and constraints of the past with the first female nude in the history of Greek sculpture. His gender-bending gods and men were equally audacious, their shiny surfaces reflecting Plato's discussion of Eros and androgyny. Scopas was also a man of his time, but pursued different interests. Drawn to the interior lives of men and woman, his tormented Trojan War heroes and victims are still scarred by memories of the Peloponnesian War, and a world away from the serene faces of the Parthenon. His Maenad, who has left this world for another, belongs to the same years as Euripides' Bacchae and, at the same time, anticipates the torsion and turbulence of Bernini and the Italian Baroque. The history and visual culture of these years remind us that we are not alone, that the Greeks grappled as we do with the inevitability and consequences of war, disease and inner daemons.
Terms: Win | 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 103S: Introduction to American Art (AMSTUD 103S)

How do images tell stories about the people who made them and the places they depict? How can we encounter the histories of America in works of art and why should we care about encountering them? This course will explore such questions by surveying some of the most compelling paintings, sculptures, films, photographs, prints, and decorative arts produced in the United States from the Colonial period to our present moment. In class lectures and discussions, our goal will be to articulate how pictures from the past shape and construct our sense of American history. Works by important artists such as Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kara Walker, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Jacob Lawrence, among others, will help students to understand and express how Images have power, and how art continues to matter today.
Last offered: Summer 2018

ARTHIST 104A: The Secret Lives of Statues from Ancient Egypt to Confederate Monuments (ARCHLGY 96, CLASSICS 96)

Statues, human-shaped sculptures, walk a fine line between being inert matter and living entities. Throughout human existence, humans have recognized that statues are not alive even as they understand that statues are capable of becoming potent allies or enemies. They are capable of engendering profound emotional responses, embodying potent ideas, and co-opting the past in service of the present. However, the same materiality that endows statues with these exceptional capacities also makes them vulnerable to humans intent on acquiring otherwise-expensive materials cheaply, commiting sectarian violence by proxy, and obliterating the material manifestations of others¿ memories.nnIn this course, we will study sixteen (groups of) statues thematically. To do this, we will draw on a wide variety of disciplines, including archaeology, art history, history, law, media studies, museum studies, and religious studies, to articulate how people in diverse places and times have revered and reviled statues precisely because they are uncanny objects that seem to have an all-too-human kind of agency. In so doing, we will gain appreciation for and insight into how and why the statues in our own lives are significant.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-SI

ARTHIST 105B: Medieval Journeys: Introduction through the Art and Architecture (ARTHIST 305B, DLCL 123)

The course explores the experience and imagination of medieval journeys through an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and skills-based approaches. As a foundations class, this survey of medieval culture engages in particular the art and architecture of the period. The Middle Ages is presented as a network of global economies, fueled by a desire for natural resources, access to luxury goods and holy sites. We will study a large geographical area encompassing the British Isles, Europe, the Mediterranean, Central Asia, India, and East Africa and trace the connectivity of these lands in economic, political, religious, and artistic terms from the fourth to the fourteenth century C.E. The students will have two lectures and one discussion session per week. Depending on the size of the class, it is possible that a graduate student TA will run the discussion session. Our goal is to give a skills-oriented approach to the Middle Ages and to engage students in creative projects that will satisfy either the Ways-Creative Expression requirement or Ways-Engaging Difference. NOTE: for AY 2018-19 HISTORY 115D Europe in the Middle Ages, 300-1500 counts for DLCL 123.
Last offered: Spring 2020 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom, WAY-CE, WAY-EDP

ARTHIST 106: Byzantine Art and Architecture, 300-1453 C.E. (ARTHIST 306, CLASSICS 171)

This course explores the art and architecture of the Eastern Mediterranean: Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Damascus, Thessaloniki, and Palermo, 4th-15th centuries. Applying an innovative approach, we will probe questions of phenomenology and aesthetics, focusing our discussion on the performance and appearance of spaces and objects in the changing diurnal light, in the glitter of mosaics and in the mirror reflection and translucency of marble.
Last offered: Spring 2021 | UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 110: French Painting from Watteau to Monet (ARTHIST 310, FRENCH 110, FRENCH 310)

This course offers a survey of painting in France from 1700 to around 1900. It introduces major artists, artworks, and the concepts used by contemporary observers and later art historians to make sense of this extraordinarily rich period. Overarching themes discussed in the class will include the dueling legacies of coloristic virtuosity and classical formalism, new ways of representing visual perception, the opposing artistic effects of absorption and theatricality, the rise and fall of official arts institutions, and the participation of artists and artworks in political upheaval and social change. The course ends with an interrogation of the concept of modernity and its emergence out of dialogue and conflict with artists of the past. Students will learn and practice formal analysis of paintings, as well as interpretations stressing historical context.
Last offered: Winter 2019 | UG Reqs: WAY-A-II

ARTHIST 114A: The Dome: From the Pantheon to the Millennium (ARTHIST 314A, CLASSICS 121, CLASSICS 221)

This course traces the history of the dome over two millennia, from temples to the gods to Temples of the State, and from cosmic archetype to architectural fetish. The narrative interweaves the themes of the dome as image of the Cosmos, religious icon, national landmark, and political monument. It examines the dome not only as a venue for structural innovation, but also metaphysical geometry and transcendent illusionism.nIndividual case studies will familiarize you with major architects from Hadrian to Richard Rogers and historical milestones from the Dome of the Rock to the Capitol in Washington DC. May be repeat for credit.
Last offered: Autumn 2020 | Repeatable for credit
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