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: WAY-A-II, GER:DB-Hum
Instructors:
Adams, A. (PI)
;
Chan, C. (PI)
;
Hassan, M. (PI)
;
Horan, S. (PI)
;
Nemerov, A. (PI)
;
Nguyen-Hoang, Q. (PI)
ARTHIST 97: Curatorial Internship (ARCHLGY 97A, ARCHLGY 297A)
Opportunity for students to pursue an internship at the Stanford University Archaeology Collections (SUAC) and receive training and experience in museum curation. Curatorial interns conduct focused object research in preparation for upcoming exhibitions to go on view at the Stanford Archaeology Center.
Terms: Aut, Win, Spr
| Units: 1-5
| Repeatable
6 times
(up to 15 units total)
Instructors:
Raad, D. (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, 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 119: Love at First Sight: Visual Desire, Attraction, and the Pleasures of Art (ARTHIST 319, FRENCH 149, FRENCH 349, ITALIAN 149, ITALIAN 349)
Why do dating sites rely on photographs? Why do we believe that love is above all a visual force? How is pleasure, even erotic pleasure, achieved through looking? While the psychology of impressions offers some answers, this course uncovers the ways poets, songwriters, and especially artists have explored myths and promoted ideas about the coupling of love and seeing. Week by week, we will be reflecting on love as political critique, social disruption, and magical force. And we will do so by examining some of the most iconic works of art, from Dante's writings on lovesickness to Caravaggio's Narcissus, studying the ways that objects have shifted from keepsakes to targets of our cares. While exploring the visual roots and evolutions of what has become one of life's fundamental drives, this course offers a passionate survey of European art from Giotto's kiss to Fragonard's swing that elicits stimulating questions about the sensorial nature of desire and the human struggle to control emotions.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 3-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Khoury, M. (PI)
;
Lugli, E. (PI)
ARTHIST 123: The Global Mughal World
This course will introduce early modern court cultures of South Asia focusing on Mughal art, architecture, and material culture between the 16th and 19th centuries. At the height of its rule, the Mughal Empire occupied a position of political, economic, and demographic dominance in the early modern period equaling and even surpassing the polities of the Iberian Peninsula, the Safavids and the Ottomans. A cosmopolitan Mughal "lndo-Persianate" court culture absorbed the intellectual heritage of Indic and Central Asian ideals, which filtered into imperial albums or muraqqas and Mughal material culture. The concurrent rise of European mercantile interests of the Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French East India Companies and interactions with China further contributed to a 'worlding' of Mughal aesthetics. By the end of the 18th century even as the Mughal State disintegrated under British colonial rule, its symbolic preeminence continued to inform a phase of modernization of Mughal art that revitalized commodity culture in the colony and the metropole alike.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Sharma, Y. (PI)
ARTHIST 133E: A Global History of Architecture and Engineering (CEE 33E)
An introduction to the history of architecture and engineering, and to basic concepts about how we construct the built environment. This course asks one simple question: what does it mean to "make place" during different moments in history? The class will attempt to answer this question through a series of case studies from around the world and from 3,500 BCE to the present. These buildings and sites will be examined through a global perspective that emphasizes the analysis of form, structure, and theory in their cultural contexts. The class will also establish connections, contrasts, and influences among different architectural movements and cultures.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4
Instructors:
Beischer, T. (PI)
ARTHIST 149: Introduction to Islamic Art (ISLAMST 149C)
This course surveys the art and architecture of societies where Muslims were dominant or where they formed significant minorities from the emergence of Islam until the present. It examines the form and function of architecture and works of art as well as the social, historical and cultural contexts, patterns of use, and evolving meanings attributed to art by the users. The course follows a chronological order, where selected visual materials are treated along chosen themes. Themes include the creation of a distinctive visual culture in the emerging Islamic polity; the development of urban institutions; key architectural types such as the mosque, madrasa, caravanserai, dervish lodge and mausoleum; art objects and the arts of the illustrated book; self-representation; cultural interconnections along trade and pilgrimage routes; westernization and modernization in art and architecture.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II
Instructors:
Blessing, P. (PI)
;
Cottignoli, E. (PI)
ARTHIST 186B: Asian American Art (AMSTUD 186D, ARTHIST 386B, ASNAMST 186B)
This lecture course explores the work of artists and makers of Asian descent from 1850-present. Rather than a discrete identity category, we approach 'Asian American' as an expansive, relational term that encompasses heterogenous experiences of racialization and migration. Key themes include the history of immigration and displacement; diasporic geographies; art, activism, and community; feminist/queer perspectives; and interethnic conflict and solidarity. The course is structured around the Asian American Art Initiative's Fall exhibition Spirit House: Haunting and the Asian Diaspora at the Cantor Arts Center; sections will be held in the museum and at Stanford Special Collections.
Terms: Aut
| Units: 4-5
| UG Reqs: WAY-A-II, WAY-EDP
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 208A: The Dome as an All-Seeing Eye: Theatre of Judgment in Byzantine Art (ARTHIST 408A, CLASSICS 119, CLASSICS 319)
As modern viewers we enter with confidence and detachment the interiors of medieval churches. We are rarely aware of their psychological impact, placing the viewer under the watchful eye of the divine Judge depicted in the apex of the dome. By contrast, medieval viewers responded to this gaze with fear, guilt, and an urgency to repent for their sinful selves. How is this experience of abjection created? We seek answers by analyzing the spatial structuring of the visual programs and by engaging with the role the liturgy (poetry and song) plays in producing medieval subjectivity. The geographical scope includes churches in the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. The medieval material is put in conversation with modern approaches to the concepts of subjectivity, surveillance, and control (Michel Foucault, Jean-Luc Marion, and Adriana Cavarero).
Terms: Aut
| Units: 5
Instructors:
Pentcheva, B. (PI)
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