Art & Western History: Survey of European and American Art since the 16th Century
Course Proposal
Image 1: Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510)
Image 2: Eastman Johnson, Old Kentuky Home – Negro Life in the South (1859)
Image 3: Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)
The objective of this course is to empower students to meaningfully engage with the art and visual materials of Western culture in ways that are sensitive to students’ own internal life and the work’s formal qualities, materials, historical context, and political significance. When students finish this course, they will be able to do the following:
Driving questions for the course
Weekly Reading Assignments
Text Book: Adams, Laurie. A History of Western Art. 1994.
Additional readings listed below (approx. 10-20 pages) – these texts will serve as the discussion material for weekly sections; students are also required to reference these texts in their final papers and quotes from these texts will be included on the final exam.
Assignments & Grading
Students must complete all assignments to get a passing grade in the course.
The following percentages will apply only once all assignments have been completed.
Journals, Participation & Attendance: 20%
Midterm Exam: 25%
Final Paper: 30%
Final Exam: 25%
Discussion Sections
In preparation for the discussion section of our weekly class meetings, students are asked (required) to read one article. Read with a pen in hand and identify the main claims of the article and when you are finished reading, look at the images from lecture and write two to three sentences describing how this reading has informed your understanding of the image. The first two-thirds of section will be dedicated to discussing these texts relative to images from lectures that TAs will make available to students.
The last third of each section will be dedicated to discussing students’ journal responses. Because time is limited, this will happen in pairs, and students will exchange their journals with each other and write comments in the other’s journals. Students will write their names along with their comments, as they will be graded according to their feedback given to others as well as their own journal entries.
Journal Assignments
Students are required to respond to the prompts listed below. These assignments are designed to make personal the stakes of this course and make the methodologies we employ relevant to students’ personal existences. Your journal entries will be graded not on aesthetic quality but on the level of investment demonstrated in your response.
Week 1: Please choose an image that has personal meaning to you, preferably a family photograph or a work of art someone you know produced (requires approval) and conduct a mini-version of the paper guidelines outlined below. The purpose of this is first to offer you the opportunity to see the visual materials of your own life as consequential and historically and politically meaningful, and, second, to familiarize you with the essay format and understand its stakes.
Week 2: Please pair an image with a song or poem of your choosing. These images and poems do not have to be from the same time period, but you must articulate the historical context of each. The purpose of this exercise is to experiment with identifying and describing tonal differences across media and to open your awareness to unexpected resonances between art forms. This assignment will also give you I will provide a list of potential poets and poems for comparison, but you are free to choose your own poem (approval will be required).
Week 3: I will have you draw one primary image from lecture. I don’t care what your drawing looks like, rather I want to give you the opportunity to experience a little bit of what it is like to produce an image. I want you to spend at least an hour with the image, drawing details, giving texture and making multiple drawings if necessary.
Week 4: Write a short narrative or poem that relates to a primary image from lecture. Your interpretation should be imaginative, but it must engage with the historical context of the image and reference what visual materials are available in the image.
Week 5: Draw again or write a poem or story referencing another work of art from lecture.
Week 6: No prompt – Select three possible images for final paper
Week 7: No prompt – Midterm Exam
Week 8: No prompt – Break
Now I want to know how you would answer my opening questions:
Week 9: Why do we make images?
Week 10: Why are some images deemed more important than others?
Week 11: Which exercises have been helpful to you and which were not? Please explain.
Course Calendar:
Week 1: Art as Social Critique
Primary Images:
Textbook: 1-20
Albert Cook. "Change of Signification in Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights"" Oud Holland 98, no. 2 (1984): 76-97.
Week 2: Art as Document
Primary Images:
Textbook: 318-332
Watkins, Eric W. "Point of View in Depictive Representation." Noûs 13, no. 3 (1979): 379-84.
Week 3: Portraiture and the Evolution of Individual Identity
Primary Images:
Textbook: 333-367
Wolfgang Kemp’s Introduction: Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999.)
Week 4: Picturing Slavery and Its Aftermaths - Descriptive Practice Due
Primary Images:
Textbook: 367-383
WEB Dubois – Souls of Black Folk “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”
Bruce, Dickson D. "W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness." American Literature 64, no. 2 (1992): 299-309.
Week 5: Art and Revolution
Primary Images:
Textbook: 385-396
Bell, Clive. "Art and War." International Journal of Ethics 26, no. 1 (1915): 1-10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2376731.
Week 6: Constructing Images as Encounters with Others
Primary Images:
Textbook: 398-414
Introduction: Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
Week 7: Midterm Exam
Week 8: Break
Week 9: Indigeneity and Imperialism in Landscape Images - Paper Progress Due
Primary Images:
Textbook: 415-451
Introduction: W. J. T. Mitchell, ed., Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
Week 10: Art, Affect & World War II
Primary Images:
Textbook: 452-499
Neumeyer, Alfred. "The Arts and Social Reconstruction." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 3, no. 9/10 (1944): 79-90.
Week 11: Technology, Capitalism and Commodification in 20th-Century Art
Primary Images:
Textbook: 500-549
Chapters 1 & 2: Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” 1970
Week 12: Queerness and Visibility in Contemporary Identity
Primary Images:
Textbook: 550-581
Judith Butler, “Critically Queer” in Bodies that Matter
Week 13: Peer Reviews of Final Papers
Week 14: Final Papers Due & Student Presentations
Week 15: Student Presentations
Week 16: Final Exam
Image 2: Eastman Johnson, Old Kentuky Home – Negro Life in the South (1859)
Image 3: Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)
The objective of this course is to empower students to meaningfully engage with the art and visual materials of Western culture in ways that are sensitive to students’ own internal life and the work’s formal qualities, materials, historical context, and political significance. When students finish this course, they will be able to do the following:
- Approach any work of art and know it is not just some painting or sculpture, but a point of access to a particular ideological, historical or political moment, and second, research and argue their opinions on the significance of that particular work
- Recognize that there is no one “art history,” rather art is woven throughout canonical historical narratives
- Use the historical texts to deepen understanding of art objects
- Interrogate the ways that dominant political ideologies are used to shape social discourse
- Articulate the dramatic effects of work that is produced in resistance to such limiting principles
Driving questions for the course
- Why do we make images?
- How can we use them to broaden our understandings of common historical narratives?
- What roles do images and objects have in the formation and continuation of communities and identities?
- What does the importance given to these images in a particular place and time say about that particular historical location and moment?
- What are the stakes of studying and preserving these images?
Weekly Reading Assignments
Text Book: Adams, Laurie. A History of Western Art. 1994.
Additional readings listed below (approx. 10-20 pages) – these texts will serve as the discussion material for weekly sections; students are also required to reference these texts in their final papers and quotes from these texts will be included on the final exam.
Assignments & Grading
Students must complete all assignments to get a passing grade in the course.
The following percentages will apply only once all assignments have been completed.
Journals, Participation & Attendance: 20%
Midterm Exam: 25%
Final Paper: 30%
Final Exam: 25%
Discussion Sections
In preparation for the discussion section of our weekly class meetings, students are asked (required) to read one article. Read with a pen in hand and identify the main claims of the article and when you are finished reading, look at the images from lecture and write two to three sentences describing how this reading has informed your understanding of the image. The first two-thirds of section will be dedicated to discussing these texts relative to images from lectures that TAs will make available to students.
The last third of each section will be dedicated to discussing students’ journal responses. Because time is limited, this will happen in pairs, and students will exchange their journals with each other and write comments in the other’s journals. Students will write their names along with their comments, as they will be graded according to their feedback given to others as well as their own journal entries.
Journal Assignments
Students are required to respond to the prompts listed below. These assignments are designed to make personal the stakes of this course and make the methodologies we employ relevant to students’ personal existences. Your journal entries will be graded not on aesthetic quality but on the level of investment demonstrated in your response.
Week 1: Please choose an image that has personal meaning to you, preferably a family photograph or a work of art someone you know produced (requires approval) and conduct a mini-version of the paper guidelines outlined below. The purpose of this is first to offer you the opportunity to see the visual materials of your own life as consequential and historically and politically meaningful, and, second, to familiarize you with the essay format and understand its stakes.
Week 2: Please pair an image with a song or poem of your choosing. These images and poems do not have to be from the same time period, but you must articulate the historical context of each. The purpose of this exercise is to experiment with identifying and describing tonal differences across media and to open your awareness to unexpected resonances between art forms. This assignment will also give you I will provide a list of potential poets and poems for comparison, but you are free to choose your own poem (approval will be required).
Week 3: I will have you draw one primary image from lecture. I don’t care what your drawing looks like, rather I want to give you the opportunity to experience a little bit of what it is like to produce an image. I want you to spend at least an hour with the image, drawing details, giving texture and making multiple drawings if necessary.
Week 4: Write a short narrative or poem that relates to a primary image from lecture. Your interpretation should be imaginative, but it must engage with the historical context of the image and reference what visual materials are available in the image.
Week 5: Draw again or write a poem or story referencing another work of art from lecture.
Week 6: No prompt – Select three possible images for final paper
Week 7: No prompt – Midterm Exam
Week 8: No prompt – Break
Now I want to know how you would answer my opening questions:
Week 9: Why do we make images?
Week 10: Why are some images deemed more important than others?
Week 11: Which exercises have been helpful to you and which were not? Please explain.
Course Calendar:
Week 1: Art as Social Critique
Primary Images:
- Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510)
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder/Pieter van der Heyden, Big Fish Eat Little Fish (1557)
Textbook: 1-20
Albert Cook. "Change of Signification in Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights"" Oud Holland 98, no. 2 (1984): 76-97.
Week 2: Art as Document
Primary Images:
- Martin Waldseemuller's World Map (1507)
- Jacques Le Moyne, Rene Laudonniere and Chief Anthore of Timucua Indians at Ribault's Column (1564)
- Jan van Eyck, Arnolfini Portrait (1434)
Textbook: 318-332
Watkins, Eric W. "Point of View in Depictive Representation." Noûs 13, no. 3 (1979): 379-84.
Week 3: Portraiture and the Evolution of Individual Identity
Primary Images:
- Diego Velasquez, Las Meninas (1656)
- Geertgen Tot sint Jans, Legend of the Relics of St. John The Baptist (1484)
- Rembrandt, Self-Portrait: (1640s)
Textbook: 333-367
Wolfgang Kemp’s Introduction: Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999.)
Week 4: Picturing Slavery and Its Aftermaths - Descriptive Practice Due
Primary Images:
- Slave daguerreotypes
- George Morland, The Slave Trade (originally Execrable Human Traffic, or The Affectionate Slaves) (1789)
- John Singleton Copley, Watson and the shark (1778)
Textbook: 367-383
WEB Dubois – Souls of Black Folk “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”
Bruce, Dickson D. "W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness." American Literature 64, no. 2 (1992): 299-309.
Week 5: Art and Revolution
Primary Images:
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Swing (1767)
- Paul Revere, The Bloody Massacre (1770)
- Francisco Goya, Horrors of War (1810-20)
Textbook: 385-396
Bell, Clive. "Art and War." International Journal of Ethics 26, no. 1 (1915): 1-10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2376731.
Week 6: Constructing Images as Encounters with Others
Primary Images:
- Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Snake Charmer (1879)
- Unknown artist, Portrait of Sir John Caldwell (1785)
- Eastman Johnson, Old Kentuky Home – Negro Life in the South (1859)
Textbook: 398-414
Introduction: Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
Week 7: Midterm Exam
Week 8: Break
Week 9: Indigeneity and Imperialism in Landscape Images - Paper Progress Due
Primary Images:
- John White, Village of Secotan (1585)
- Thomas Cole, View on the Catskill – Early Autumn (1836-7)
- Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem w Bleaching Fields (1670)
Textbook: 415-451
Introduction: W. J. T. Mitchell, ed., Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
Week 10: Art, Affect & World War II
Primary Images:
- Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937)
- Charlotte Salomon Paintings, (1941-43)
- Henry Sugimoto, Mother in Jerome Camp, (1943)
Textbook: 452-499
Neumeyer, Alfred. "The Arts and Social Reconstruction." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 3, no. 9/10 (1944): 79-90.
Week 11: Technology, Capitalism and Commodification in 20th-Century Art
Primary Images:
- Richard Hamilton, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956)
- Ed Ruscha, Standard Station (1960)
- Margarita Cabrera, Brown Blender (2011)
Textbook: 500-549
Chapters 1 & 2: Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” 1970
Week 12: Queerness and Visibility in Contemporary Identity
Primary Images:
- Felix Gonzalez Torres, Portrait of Ross in LA (1991)
- Greer Lankton, It’s All About ME, Not You (1996)
- Lyle Ashton Harris & Thomas Allen Harris, Brotherhood, Crossroads and Etcetera #2 (1994)
Textbook: 550-581
Judith Butler, “Critically Queer” in Bodies that Matter
Week 13: Peer Reviews of Final Papers
Week 14: Final Papers Due & Student Presentations
Week 15: Student Presentations
Week 16: Final Exam