Art History and Archaeology
Art history provides the opportunity to explore the fine arts, architecture, and visual culture as well as the social, aesthetic, and personal values that helped to shape these disciplines.
Students are introduced to the study of art history and archaeology through general introductory courses that focus on American, Asian, and European art as well as world archaeology. In more advanced courses, students enjoy studying original works of art owned by Washington University's Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and local private collectors. Students are also invited on annual field trips organized by the faculty to visit cities with major museum collections.
A variety of career paths are available to majors in art history and archaeology. Many graduates earn advanced degrees in both related and unrelated fields and work in museums or academia or for art publishers, commercial art galleries, auction houses, nonprofit organizations, and other arts-related organizations.
Contact Info
Contact: | Brad Parton |
Phone: | 314-935-5270 |
Email: | artarch@wustl.edu |
Website: | https://arthistory.wustl.edu/ |
Chair
William E. Wallace
Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History
PhD, Columbia University
Director of Graduate Studies
Nathaniel Jones
Associate Professor
PhD, Yale University
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Kristina Kleutghen
David W. Mesker Associate Professor
PhD, Harvard University
Department Faculty
Nicola Aravecchia
Assistant Professor
PhD, University of Minnesota
Elizabeth C. Childs
Etta and Mark Steinberg Professor of Art History
PhD, Columbia University
David Freidel
Professor Emeritus of Archaeology, Department of Anthropology
PhD, Harvard University
Esther Gabel
Lecturer
PhD, University of Cambridge
John Klein
Professor
PhD, Columbia University
Angela Miller
Professor
PhD, Yale University
Susan Rotroff
Jarvis Thurston & Mona Van Duyn Professor Emerita
PhD, Princeton University
Ila Sheren
Associate Professor
PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Claudia Swan
Mark Steinberg Weil Professor in Art History & Archaeology
PhD, Columbia University
Sarantis Symeonoglou
Professor Emeritus
PhD, Columbia University
Affiliated Faculty
Rebecca Messbarger
Professor of Italian; History; and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies
PhD, University of Chicago
Eric Mumford
Rebecca and John Voyles Professor of Architecture
PhD, Princeton University
Affiliated Directors and Curators, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University
Sabine Eckmann
Director and Chief Curator
PhD, University of Erlangen–Nürnberg
Meredith Malone
Curator
PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Dana Ostrander
Assistant Curator
PhD, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Affiliated Curators, Saint Louis Art Museum
Nichole Bridges
PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison
David Conradsen
MA, University of Delaware
Philip Hu
MA, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Simon Kelly
PhD, University of Oxford
Clare Kobasa
PhD, Columbia University
Eric Lutz
PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara
Judith Mann
PhD, Washington University in St. Louis
Alexander Brier Marr
PhD, University of Rochester
Amy Torbert
PhD, University of Delaware
Melissa Venator
PhD, Rice University
Melissa Wolfe
PhD, Ohio State University
Affiliated Directors and Curators, Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Cara Starke
Director
MA, Williams College
Tamara Schenkenberg
Curator
PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Stephanie Weissberg
Curator
MA, New York University
Visit online course listings to view semester offerings for L01 Art-Arch.
L01 Art-Arch 1002 Colloquium: How to Work with Art
This course offers an introduction to the many different ways we interact with art in our daily lives, and explores a spectrum of ways in which we all "work with art," whether as a student on campus or as a career. Learn to articulate an argument based on visual evidence, with case studies drawn from around the world and across millennia. Issues examined will include public art and monument removal, looting and repatriation, Nazi-era provenance, conservation and curatorial practices, legal issues, art investment, and more. Very light course preparation such as short videos, blog posts, podcasts, and newspaper articles provided the basis for weekly discussion. Biweekly guest speakers will offer professional insights from different fields in conversation with students. This discussed-based class is aimed at students who want to learn more about how to look at and think about art in the twenty-first century globalized world, and learn how to apply those skills to diverse careers including business, law, medicine, academia, museums, and more. Prerequisite: none.
Credit 1 unit. Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 1040 First-Year Seminar: The Trojan War in Myth, Art, and Reality
The Trojan War was one of the most significant events in the history of the world. It was also, almost certainly, fictional. The goal of this class will be to examine the wide-ranging and varied evidence for the story of the Trojan War and its long-lasting cultural influence, from antiquity to the present day. Ultimately, we will seek to understand how every reflection on the Trojan War as a past event - whether poetic, artistic, or archaeological - has also been a reflection of a contemporary society - Iron Age Greece, Imperial Rome, Modern Europe - and an attempt to situate that society within a global history. In doing so, the class will also address questions of pressing contemporary relevance: including how civilizations form and collapse, how fact and fiction are intertwined in the construction of civic and ethnic identities, and how certain kinds of evidence may be alternately privileged or suppressed in the creation of historical narratives. Prerequisites: none
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1050 First-Year Seminar: Topics in Art History: Islamic Art
Credit 3 units.
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L01 Art-Arch 106 First-Year Seminar: Van Gogh and the Avant Garde
This first-year seminar focuses on the art and career of Vincent Van Gogh and his relationship to artists of the 1880s in France. We explore his art in connection with the movements of Immpressionism, Japonism and Symbolism. We examine the avant-garde world of Paris as well as Van Gogh's relationship to such figures as Gauguin, Bernard, and Toulouse-Lautrec. The larger current of fin-de-siecle nostalgia for the countryside informs our study of Van Gogh's work in the south of France. Van Gogh's life and the critical reception of his art offer an excellent opportunity to study how the legends of modern art are formed. Visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum will complement our study. Readings include the artist's letters, critical studies, and biographies of Van Gogh and key figures in his circle. There are no prerequisites for this course, but completion of L01 113 or co-enrollment in L01 215 is recommended.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS Art: AH BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 1061 First Year Seminar: Pleasure and Pain: European Fashion as (Art) History
In the words of Louis XIV, "fashion is the mirror of history." This first-year seminar will explore what fashion in (art) history can tell us about gender, sexuality, class, race, and revolution. Incorporating a global perspective (although concentrating primarily on the West), further themes to be considered include the textile trade, commerce and empire, identity politics and nation-building. From the chopine to the corset, the pannier to the Pompadour pump, we will incorporate surviving examples of material culture as we explore the art and history of European fashion from the 15th to the 19th century. Course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 107 First Year Seminar: Public Art/Art and Its Publics in St. Louis
The course will consider the history and functions of public art, with special attention to public art in St. Louis. Part of our investigation will be to inquire into the conditions that seem to be necessary for visual art to be considered public. So we'll consider not only the obvious forms of public art in urban sculpture and murals, but also less traditional intersections of art and public in such sites as video and the internet. We'll also examine the operations of institutions--national and local arts agencies, international exhibitions, non-profit centers and the like--that foster a public engagement with contemporary art. After studying aspects of the history of public art, we'll proceed to selected case studies today, many of them in St. Louis, including projects for Arts in Transit (the Metrolink), the Regional Arts Commission, Grand Center, and Missouri SOS (Save Outdoor Sculpture). This will lead us, finally, to theorize the function of public art in a variety of contemporary forms. Local field trips to study important public art; visiting speakers from arts agencies; student projects proposing a work of public art in St. Louis, which will acquaint students with procedures in arts administration. 3 units.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS Art: AH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1071 First-Year Seminar: Whose Art Is It Anyway?: St. Louis Art Museums and Their Audiences
Art museums in the United States today face a daunting set of challenges: budget shortfalls, a lack of diversity with regard to both staff and collections, and maintaining visibility in an inundated, ever-changing virtual world. These struggles are undoubtedly unique to an era defined by COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, but at their core they are long-standing debates about audience, accessibility, and function. What is a museum's mission? To preserve art or serve the community? Which communities does the museum serve? What is the museum's relationship to power and nationhood? What are the politics and ethics of collecting objects of art, culture, and nature? How is a museum's mission reflected in its architecture? This first-year seminar offers an opportunity to consider such issues within the context of art museums across St. Louis. Through weekly discussions and in-person visits, students will become acquainted with foundational texts in museum theory and history, then apply those ideas to local art institutions. Although art museums are our particular focus, the ideas and issues are relevant to a variety of collecting institutions, from history to the biological sciences. This course is therefore useful to any student interested in art history and museums, as well as those seeking a better understanding of the St. Louis region.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1075 First-Year Seminar: What's New? Contemporary Art in St. Louis and Beyond
This course will introduce a broad range of practices within the field of contemporary art (i.e., art of the last two to three decades), paying particular attention to museum collections and exhibitions in St. Louis at the Kemper Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art. Works in both new and traditional media will be discussed and will range from photography and sculpture to installation, performance, film, and mixed media. Readings will include artist statements, theoretical texts, art criticism, and art historical essays. Students with little or no background in art history are encouraged to register. Class meetings will be complemented by local field trips and visits to the studios of local artists.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1076 A Big Beautiful Wall: Contemporary Art of the U.S.-Mexico Border and Beyond
Over the course of the last U.S. election cycle, the nation's border with Mexico proved to be a galvanizing issue. The exhortation to build a "big, beautiful wall," however, is nothing new in the history of U.S.-Mexican international relations. Since its establishment by the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, the border has loomed large in both the U.S. and Mexican cultural imaginaries, and in the post-Chicano period, spurring the production of politically engaged art. This course considers the U.S.-Mexico border and its artistic production in-depth, as well as the art of other border regions around the world.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HT Art: AH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1095 First-Year Seminar: Art in the Golden Age of Venice
The art and architecture of Venice are inextricably linked to the city's distinct socio-political structure, cultural past and geography. This freshman seminar will consider the arts in Renaissance Venice within the city's unique context. Exploring the influence of the "Myth of Venice", we will examine the styles of painting, sculpture and architecture that were specific to Venice - and very different from contemporaneous developments in Rome or Florence. We will also study the unique physical characteristics of Venice, its economy and society, its political and religious life and cultural culture. We'll also learn about its food and music while we study the magnificent works of its most celebrated artists, Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, to name a few. The course will address issues such as the family workshop, the introduction of oil paint, the role of Antiquity in a city without ancient ruins, domesticity and the ceiling painting. From the private patronage of its confraternities, or scuole, to public programs sponsored by the Great Council, the course will examine the reflections of the "ideal state" in the art and architecture of the Serenissima, the most serene Republic. Course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1096 First-Year Seminar: Spectacle! Popular Entertainment in Ancient Greece and Rome
The grand spectacles of the Greco-Roman world still resonate today as some of the most familiar and celebrated images of antiquity, including Athenian tragedy, the Olympic Games, chariot-racing, and gladiatorial combat, among many other forms of visually arresting rituals staged before public audiences. In this seminar students will analyze a range of paintings, mosaics, sculpture, coins, graffiti and other media depicting these spectacular performances, as well as their specific archaeological and cultural contexts, in order to reach a better understanding of how each society defined themselves through such complex and ephemeral phenomena. Drawing on recent work in history, media studies, and political theory, we will also explore together scholarly debates about the function of spectacles in each society, from moral instruction or expressions of communal identity to social control or negotiations for power. By the end of the semester students will be equipped to compare the highly artificial and theatrical aesthetics characteristic of Julio-Claudian Rome with spectacular modes of expression in our own age of mass production and global telecommunications, including modern protest movements and blockbuster films such as Ben-Hur and Gladiator.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 111 Introduction to Asian Art
Beginning with the birth of the Buddha and continuing through the present, this course introduces the most influential art and architecture from all across Asia. Each class covers both historic and modern works to emphasize the continuing dialogue between past and present in Asian art today. Classroom lectures; smaller, bi-weekly discussion sections. NO PRE-REQUISITE.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H UColl: CD
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L01 Art-Arch 113 History of Western Art, Architecture & Design
This course presents a history of the visual arts -- including architecture, sculpture, painting, and design -- from the ancient world to the present, with emphasis on the relationship of art to society and to political and cultural events. Classroom lectures and smaller, biweekly discussion sections.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1135 Freshman Seminar: The World of Cleopatra
Cleopatra -- the last queen of ancient Egypt -- captivated her contemporaries and has fascinated the Western world ever since her famous suicide by asp in 31 BCE. She was a woman of contrasts: Pharaoh of Egypt and Greco-Macedonian queen; seductive woman and shrewd political strategist; a ruthless monarch using every means available to consolidate her position in the face of the encroaching power of the Roman Empire. Through texts and material culture, the seminar will seek to understand Cleopatra in the context both of her native Egypt and of the wider Mediterranean world. We will thus examine the traditions of Pharaonic Egypt; the historical events that brought Egypt under the control of the Macedonian Ptolemies (Cleopatra's dynasty); the wider stage of East-West tension and conquest in which Cleopatra struggled to maintain her power; her relationships (political and personal) with famous men of her day (Caesar, Herod, Mark Antony); her capital city of Alexandria, the largest metropolis of its day; Cleopatra's brilliant court and its luxury arts; and finally the many Cleopatras that have populated art and literature of later times. We will emerge with a sense of Cleopatra, both as a unique individual and as a product of her time.
Same as L08 Classics 1135
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: CPSC BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 116 Pompeii: Uncovering the Past
This course examines the Roman city of Pompeii from archaeological, art historical, and literary perspectives. Topics include the city's public spaces and religious sanctuaries, its grand mansions and common houses, its political systems and leisure activities. Class discussions probe the problems inherent in the interpretation of a city captured in a moment of crisis, and how ancient literary tropes have affected our understanding of the archaeological remains. Students also investigate modern interpretations of the site in the form of novels, exhibitions, and documentaries. Freshmen and sophomores only. No prereqs.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1171 First Year Seminar: Beethoven and Van Gogh: Myths of Creativity, Genius and Madness
This course draws into dialogue the creative ambitions, artistic production, critical reception and the historical construction of personae and oeuvres of two exceptionally productive and iconic artists who worked in different media: Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827) in music and Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) in painting. We will introduce students to methods of musical and art historical analysis, and then build on those skills to examine the historical contexts within which these artists worked, as well as the ways in which their reputations were established. This course will also consider how Beethoven and Van Gogh became exemplars of creativity and genius for later audiences and artists, leading us to explore fundamental and provocative questions in the humanities. Course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 118 Introduction to Illuminated Manuscripts
Illuminated manuscripts are some of the most complex, intriguing, and beautiful works of art to survive from the medieval period. Not only were they often hugely expensive and highly prized by their owners, but they are also some of the most illuminating (pun intended) documents regarding artist production, patronage, devotion, and transmission of knowledge in the period we roughly define as the Middle Ages. The goal of this course is to investigate the history of illuminated manuscript production between the years 800 and 1500. However, this course intentionally takes a non-chronological approach to the study of these objects, to more comprehensively explore connections across time, geography, technical practices, and patronage circles. It similarly aims to look broadly across Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions. This course will investigate this material through engagement with primary sources, workshops on the physical aspects of making manuscripts, visits to Special Collections and the Saint Louis Art Museum's Print Study Room. The overarching goal is to foster strong critical reading and thinking skills, while also developing specialized knowledge in the field of manuscript studies. No prerequisite. Note: this course is for first-year non-transfer students only
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 125 First-Year Seminar: Body Images in the Ancient Americas
In this seminar, students will examine how the human body was understood, manipulated, and represented in a variety of ancient American cultures, including the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, Moche, and Inka. Through analysis of various arts (e.g., stone sculpture, ceramics, murals, metalwork, textiles, architecture) and archaeological evidence, we will explore the physical body as locus for culturally specific ideals, political ideologies, and the maintenance of social order. Discussion and scholarly readings will cover topics including facial piercing, cranial modification, bloodletting, costume, gender, and disease. Assignments and class meetings will incorporate multisensory, digital, and active learning methods in recognition of the diverse ways that individuals and ancient cultures accumulated knowledge. The course includes an in-depth research project of an object of the student's choice on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: BA EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 1250 St. Louis and the Documentary Image
From magazines to maps to documentary movies and TV, we look to pictures to tell us the truth. But no image is ever completely objective; every visual reflection of the real world is mediated by technology, culture, politics, and memory. How do we-as viewers, as creators, as people-sort out the complicated claims pictures make on the world around us? Drawing on collaborations between four areas in two schools-Visual Arts, English, American Culture Studies, Film and Media Studies-this class will introduce students to theories and practices of visual nonfiction within the city of Saint Louis. Through immersive, site-specific course units focused on a variety of approaches to visual nonfiction in different media, students will engage with the tumultuous history, material culture, and landscapes of St. Louis. The course will introduce first-year students both to their city and their university, preparing them to explore existing coursework in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School. This course is for first-year (non-transfer) students only. Students who are not first year students will be unenrolled from this course.
Same as I60 BEYOND 125
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Art: FAAM
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L01 Art-Arch 144 FYS: Collecting Art/Excluding People: The Contradictions of Chinese Art in U.S. Museums
Tomb raiders, curators, archaeologists, politicians, dealers, and collectors all contributed to the arrival of Chinese art in the United States since the late nineteenth century. But at the same time as Chinese objects arrived in great quantities, Chinese people were actively excluded from the U.S. In this course we consider the contradiction between U.S. enthusiasm for collecting Chinese art and negative U.S. responses to Chinese immigrants, from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act to contemporary anti-Asian racism. Through the lens of museums, private collections, and public exhibitions, we study what the movement of Chinese art into the United States says about changes in U.S.-China relations from the nineteenth century through today. No prerequisite: enrollment limited to first-year students.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: BA, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 146 First Year Seminar: Beijing and the Forbidden City
The Forbidden City has been the heart of Beijing for nearly six hundred years, and continues to influence both China and its capital today. Through art, architecture, and urban design, this seminar examines the intertwined relationship of the palace and its surrounding city: their origins and constructions, the coded symbolisms of their plans, their most influential characters, their modern identities as the backdrops to major political events, and their roles in contemporary art and the Olympics. This discussion-based seminar also aims to help students develop their skills in writing and critical analysis as a foundation for future classes. No previous experience with Art History or Asian Studies required. Course is for first-year students only.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 175 Mythologies of Modern Art: Fact, Fiction and Film
The history of art -- and its translation into other media -- has celebrated the cutting-edge, the experimental, and the controversial, especially in its examination of modern artists and their work. This course introduces students to the life and work of modern artists Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. From this introduction, students will then interrogate the representation of these artists' lives and works in multiple media, including fiction literature and film. This course includes visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum and required film screenings. Students will work to collaboratively transform their research into a dramatization of two artists' lives and works as part of their final project.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 185 First-Year Seminar: American Monuments: Memory, Identity, and Ideology
This seminar examines public monuments in the United States through the lenses of collective memory, identity, and ideology. It surveys an evolving tradition from Americans' early and short-lived reluctance to fund public monuments -- John Quincy Adams famously declared that "democracy has no monuments" -- up to the recent controversies over Confederate monuments. The course defines "monument" broadly to encompass a range of commemorative forms, including traditional structures like statues, arches, and obelisks; utilitarian "living memorials" like parks and libraries; and "countermonuments" that challenge core premises of the monument, such as its fixed meaning and permanence. Readings and class discussions will explore how these projects have shaped Americans' cultural beliefs and social relations as well as how they failed to achieve consensus or to reconcile the diverse and competing points of view of varied groups and individuals. We will interrogate the impact of monuments on the nation's historically disempowered communities, including those of African Americans, Native Americans, women, immigrants, and the poor. We will also consider more inclusive modern memorials and evaluate strategies for grappling with outmoded monuments in changing times. This course is for first-year, non-transfer students only.
Credit 3 units. A&S: FYS A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 190B Introduction to Archaeology
Archaeology plays a critical and unique role in understanding the human past. Through study of the methods and theories of archaeology, and a survey of important firsts in the human past, this course introduces students to the way archaeologists use material culture to reconstruct and understand human behavior. Chronologically ordered case studies from around the globe are used to look at social, ecological, and cultural issues facing humans from the earliest times to the present. Students gain practice reconstructing the past through hands-on participation in two 1-hour labs focusing on lithics and animal bones. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to think critically about how the past is presented, and why, and the importance of the past as it relates to the present and future.
Same as L48 Anthro 190B
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: LCD, SSC Arch: SSC Art: SSC BU: BA EN: S
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L01 Art-Arch 214 American Art and Material Culture of the Gilded Age
This sophomore seminar explores American art and material culture from the aftermath of the Civil War to the dawn of the 20th century. Readings and classroom discussions consider the interplay between artworks and complex cultural and historical developments of the period, including the rise of international travel and trade, rapid industrialization and urbanization, mass consumerism, growing income inequality, immigration, the crisis of faith, the closing of the West, and the changing status of women and African Americans. Key artists to be considered include James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. We will end the semester with a sustained consideration of the work of Winslow Homer, in which major concerns of the Gilded Age -- about truth and falsehood, the boundaries of citizenship, and the power of art -- converge.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 215 Introduction to Modern Art, Architecture and Design
This course provides an introduction to major developments in modern art, architecture and design in Europe, the Americas, and across the globe, from the mid-19th century to the present. Focus will be on the history and theories of modernism and its international legacies as well as the relationship of the visual arts, architecture and visual culture more generally to the social, cultural and political contexts of the modern era. Although the precise topics covered may vary from one instructor to another, foundational movements and trends to be discussed will typically include the Beaux-Arts style, the Arts and Crafts Movement, Impressionism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Purism, Art Deco, the Bauhaus, the International Style, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism and Post-Modernism. Cross-currents in various media will be emphasized as we seek to understand the origins and complexity of modern visual forms in relation to political and cultural history and to critical theory. Students will engage a wide range of readings in historical sources; theories composed by artists, architects and designers; critical responses to the arts; and secondary critical literature. Classroom lectures; smaller biweekly discussion sections.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HT, HUM Art: AH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 2153 Topics in African American Studies: Afro-Latin America on Camera
In this course, we will see how the camera, in still and moving photography, has served to register blackness in Latin America as a structure, experience, and representation frequently neglected in popular media. Starting with the images of enslavement and freedom in the form of painting, sketches, prints, daguerrotypes, and other early photographs in nineteenth-century Latin America, we will explore how the camera has marked the passing of time and created racial histories-actual and fictional-that educate us, move us, and influence how governments make policy. We will view an array of films, video, and still photography, across multiple genres, that center the histories and present-day joys and struggles of black people in Latin America while actively considering how our own consumption of media informs our racial perceptions of Latin America. The work that we view and read about will be used to question Latin America's perceived racial exceptionalism narratives, such as mestizaje, mulatismo, and racial democracy, and how they depend on sugarcoated histories of race mixture during slavery and colonization. This course will also focus heavily on how image-making becomes a persuasive means to make one's blackness known in the framework of the Latin America nation-state, to stake claims to rights, and to document black life in productive, pleasurable ways that do not always center the ongoing gentrification, annihilation, and genocide of black communities.
Same as L90 AFAS 2153
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: HUM, VC BU: BA, ETH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 232 Myths and Monuments of Antiquity
An introduction to the ancient world (circa 3500 B.C. to A.D. 400) based on masterpieces of art and architecture from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire. The monuments are accompanied by a selection of myths and documents representing the cultural life of these ancient societies and constituting their legacy to our modern world.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 236 Cities and Towns of the Ancient World
This course is an introduction to ancient urbanism in the Mediterranean region, the Near East, and the Indus Valley. The chronological span is wide, ranging from the Neolithic era to the Late Roman/Early Byzantine period. The archaeological evidence of some of the earliest known cities will be presented and discussed, with the aim of understanding the formation process of urban centers and how these shaped and influenced their sociopolitical, economic, and cultural life. Broad issues that will be considered in class concern the origin of urban life and its different manifestations; the relationship between the natural landscape and the built environment and how the former affected the development of the latter; and the ways in which ancient civilizations constructed and used space in order to shape social relations. The course will also highlight the available evidence of monuments and artworks in context as integral parts of the urban landscape of ancient cities and towns. When available, ancient documentary sources will be introduced in order to present a more comprehensive picture of those urban centers and of the communities that created and inhabited them. The readings assigned for each session (and discussed in class) will also provide a broad sample of primary and secondary sources, the latter consisting of relevant scholarship on the topic of ancient urbanism.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 238 Gothic Art: Patronage, Piety, and Power
In the twelfth century, a new style of art and architecture flourished in Europe. Known since the sixteenth century as the Gothic, this aesthetic pervaded visual culture from towering architecture to stained glass, monumental sculpture, panel paintings, and jewelry. Primarily focusing on art made in Northern Europe, this course explores the making of images in the period 1200 to 1500 and how issues of patronage, devotion, political power, and collaboration were part of this process. In addition to serving as a foundation in the history of medieval art, this course also functions as an introduction to art-historical method. Attention will be paid to the cultivation of visual analysis skills and academic writing, as well as the synthesis of course themes through the final "Virtual Exhibition" project. Prerequisites: none
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 2396 The "Orient": Europe and Islamic Art from 1851 to Today
In the 19th century, the expansion of British and French colonial rule in North Africa, the Middle East, and India facilitated a variety of cultural exchanges, including the movement of Islamic carpets, textiles, manuscripts, ceramics, metalwork, and other artforms to European collections. These collections, both public and private, presented a new repertoire of forms, motifs, and techniques that dramatically transformed cultural production in the west. Taking the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London as its starting point, this course explores the relationships between Islamic art, European modernism, and the artistic currents that traverse the globe today by examining the ways in which Islamic art has been circulated, acquired, understood, appreciated, utilized, and imitated in the west. As a result, students will gain a better understanding of the particular relationship between modern cultural production, museology, and colonialism, and obtain a good overall grasp of the artistic phenomena associated with the interaction between Islam and the West from the Modern Era to the present day. Prerequisite
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 280 Picturing Race
This course offers an introduction to the cultural roots of cultural roots of modern Western conceptions of race and of racism. It traces a history of visual constructions of race and ethnicity in Europe and America-by way of paintings, sculpture, prints, caricature, photography, public art, maps, and other forms of visual depiction of racial difference. Together we analyze visual representations of race and racial difference from their origins in the classical Mediterranean world to the present. How have images of racial difference been produced, circulated, and understood in different historical periods and according to western notions of beauty and the ideal? How does visualization relate to concepts and practices and politics? Readings, discussion, and visual and critical analyses are formulated to consider how visual cultures of race have been shaped by the histories of colonization, enslavement, nation-building, and immigration. From the fine arts to popular imagery and public monuments, we aim to trace how the visual construction of race has translated human difference into hierarchies of power. Prerequisites: none
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: BA EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 290 Latinx Art
What is Latinx art? This seemingly simple question holds a number of complicated, contradictory answers. Latinx art is art created by (and often for) Latinx communities in the United States, but who determines the scope of representation? Is Jean-Michel Basquiat, the famed Haitian-Puerto Rican-American of 1980s NYC, a Latino artist? How about the Cuban-born Ana Mendieta, who lived and worked primarily in the United States? This course will consider who gets counted as Latinx in the art world and why. Topics covered include the Chicano/a movement in the 1970s, the Border Art movement in the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of "multiculturalist" rhetoric in the United States, and the contemporary global art market and its relationship to the category "Latinx." We will also consider issues of gender, sexuality and race, as they pertain to Latinx artists. This is an introductory course, and requires no prior knowledge of Art History or Latinx Studies. Prerequisites: none
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 299 Internship in the Art Community
Prerequisite, a major or minor in Art History; permission of the undergraduate advisor requested in advance; and a letter from the sponsoring institution stating the nature of the internship. Variable credit, 1-3 units.
Credit variable, maximum 3 units.
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L01 Art-Arch 3001 Writing Intensive Topics
TBD
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, WI Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 307 Northern Renaissance Art
A survey of the major artistic developments in Northern Europe, c. 1400-1575. The course looks at the production of painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, manuscript illumination and architecture in social, political, and religious contexts. The major artists to be covered include Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein, Hieronymus Bosch, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3090 African Art in Context: Patronage, Globalisms, and Inventiveness
This course offers an introduction to principal visual arts from Africa, pre-historic to contemporary. It explores traditions-based and contemporary arts made by African artists from across the continent in conjunction with their various contexts of creation, use, understanding, and social history. Theoretical perspectives on the collection, appropriation, and exhibition of African arts in Europe and North America will be examined. Coursework will be complemented by visits as a group or independent assignments at the Saint Louis Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and possibly a local private collection.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD BU: HUM, IS EN: H UColl: CD
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L01 Art-Arch 311C Ancient Civilizations of the New World
An examination of the Inca empire in Peru, and the Maya and Aztec empires in Mexico through the inquiry into the roots, development, form, and evolutionary history of pre-Colombian civilization in each region from its earliest times to the rise of the classic kingdoms. Examples of respective artistic accomplishments will be presented and discussed.
Same as L48 Anthro 310C
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: SSC BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 320 Independent Study
This course permits students to pursue upper-level research and reading programs with individual faculty at the 300-level.
Credit variable, maximum 6 units.
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L01 Art-Arch 3212 Art & Archaeology of Cleopatra's Egypt
This course is an introduction to the art and archaeology of Egypt from its conquest by Alexander the Great (332 BCE) to the early fourth century CE. It will examine the rich and multi-faceted history and artistic legacy of Egypt under the Ptolemies and their last queen Cleopatra, followed by the Roman conquest under Emperor Augustus up to the flourishing of Egyptian Christianity. Students will become familiar with a wide range of ancient sources, including documentary and literary texts, coins, architecture, paintings and sculpture. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215), or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 325 Pompeii: Cultural Mosaic of the Ancient Mediterranean
This course will provide an in-depth survey of artistic, architectural, and archaeological material from the ancient town of Pompeii, a river port of middling size and importance in southern Italy with remains that were remarkably well preserved by the ash and pumice stones of Mt. Vesuvius during the eruption of 79 CE. Starting with an overview of its development -- an Oscan settlement under Greek and Etruscan influence that expanded after the conquest of the Samnite and then Roman armies -- students will explore all aspects of urban life through Pompeii's uniquely rich archaeological record, with a particular focus on the social, cultural, and ethnic diversity that can be difficult to detect and appreciate even in the much larger, wealthier, and more cosmopolitan capitals of the Roman Empire. Over the course of the semester, students will learn various methods for applying different types of material evidence (including wall paintings, sculpture, architecture, furniture, and graffiti) to a series of scholarly questions about key points of conflict and tension within society, such as local attitudes toward foreign cultures, resistance to imperialism, the marginalization of women and slaves, opportunities for social mobility, and religious censorship. By the end of the course, a dynamic and colorful mosaic of Pompeii will have emerged, far removed from the image of a static Roman town supposedly frozen in time. Prerequisite: L01 113 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 326 Archaeology of Roman Slavery
Slavery was a fundamental part of the ancient Roman world. In this course, we will survey various ways in which the institution of slavery played a critical role in shaping Roman society. Through an exploration of social, economic, legal, and cultural aspects of Roman slavery, we will pose questions of what it means to be a slave society, how the ubiquity of forced labor impacted the lives of ancient Romans, and the extent to which we can recover the experiences and subjectivities of enslaved people. Throughout the course, we will confront the interpretive problems posed by biased and/or scarce evidence and by assumptions we may carry as the inheritors of modern slaveries. A recurring theme we will explore is the extent to which evidence of slavery and the material traces of enslaved people's lives are visible in the archaeological record. At the end of the term, we will contextualize Roman slavery by comparing it with modern examples and by considering the legacy of ancient slavery in modern visual culture and representations of enslaved people. Prerequisites: Any 100- or 200-level course in art history or archaeology; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3261 Design within Context: Scroll to Screen
This course traces the history of graphic design from the origins of ancient writing systems to the turn of this century, with content that is organized both chronologically and thematically. We will examine the work and methodologies of design movements and participants, and we will critically consider the reciprocal relationship with cultural shifts, sociopolitical factors, and technologies. Focus will lie heavily upon Western European tradition in the 20th century. This course counts toward the degree program as an Art History/Visual Culture elective, and and it also counts toward the design minor.
Same as I50 INTER D 3261
Credit 3 units. Art: FADM, VC
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L01 Art-Arch 331 Greek Art and Archaeology
A survey of the artistic achievements and material culture of the Greeks in the first millenium BCE (Iron Age through the Hellenistic period). Development of architecture, sculpture, and painting, as well as minor arts and utilitarian objects, with emphasis on the insights they offer into Greek society and interactions with the wider Mediterranean world.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3321 African American Design History
This course surveys African American contributions to the design arts and professions from 1619 to now, from media of print and textiles to ceramics and architecture, from the scale of community crafts and protest to corporate business enterprise and mass social movements, from the diaspora to outer space. African American history not only offers a critical perspective on design history but also challenges us to reconsider what design is and what it can do as a medium of cultural expression, social transformation, and political change. While learning this history via lectures, readings, and hands-on archival research, students will develop their own artifact-based public history project. No prerequisite
Same as I50 INTER D 3321
Credit 3 units. Art: VC
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L01 Art-Arch 3330 Greek and Roman Painting
This course provides a survey of the major achievements of ancient Greek and Roman painting, broadly understood and encompassing wall painting, panel painting, painted pottery, and mosaic. We will study monuments ranging over a millennium in time and located throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Particular attention will be paid to the social, political, and religious aspects of ancient Greco-Roman painting and to questions of innovation in artistic practice. Special emphasis will be placed on students' cultivation of the tools of art-historical analysis and of the presentation of that analysis in written form. Prerequisite: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215) or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3412 Japanese Art
Surveying the arts of Japan from prehistory to present, this course focuses especially on early modern, modern, and contemporary art. Emphasizing painting, sculpture, architecture, and print culture, the course will also explore the tea ceremony, fashion, calligraphy, garden design, and ceramics. Major course themes include collectors and collecting, relationships between artists and patrons, the role of political and military culture or art, contact with China, artistic responses to the West, and the effects of gender and social status on art.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3415 Early Chinese Art: From Human Sacrifice to the Silk Road
How does ancient and medieval Chinese art inspire contemporary artists? This course examines Chinese art, architecture, and material culture from the prehistoric period through the end of the medieval Tang dynasty to demonstrate how the past continues to affect contemporary Chinese art and the art of its future. Topics covered include Neolithic ceramics and jades, the early bronzecasting tradition, the Terracotta Army and its predecessors, early brush arts and Buddhist sites, and the varied exotica of the Silk Road. Each class teaches early and contemporary works side by side to demonstrate how artists today continue to look to the past as they create the art of the future. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3422 Art of the Islamic World
This course surveys the art and architecture of societies in which Muslims were dominant or in which they formed significant minorities from the seventh through the 20th centuries. 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, and 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, palace, and mausoleum; art objects and the art of the illustrated book; cultural interconnections along trade and pilgrimage routes; and Westernization and modernization in art and architecture.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: IS EN: H UColl: CD
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L01 Art-Arch 3425 Classical to Contemporary Chinese Art
Surveying Chinese art and architecture from the 10th century through today, this course examines classical and imperial works as the foundation for modern and contemporary art. By engaging with the theoretical issues in art history, we will also pay particular attention to questions of gender, social identity, cultural politics, and government control of art.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3426 Modern & Contemporary Chinese Art
This course will explore the ways in which Chinese artists of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have defined modernity and tradition against the complex background of China's history. By examining art works in different media along with other documentary materials, we will also engage with theoretical issues in art history, such as modernity, cultural politics, and government control of art.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3442 Chinese Painting, Then and Now
Tracing the unbroken history of Chinese painting from the 1st through 21st centuries, we explore the full evolution of its traditions and innovations through representative works, artists, genres, and critical issues. From its ancient origins to its current practice, we will cover topics such as classical landscapes by scholar painters, the effects of Western contact on modern painting, the contemporary iconography of power and dissent, and theoretical issues such as authenticity, gender, and global art history. Prerequisites: Intro to Asian Art (L01 111) or one course in East Asian Studies recommended.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3482 The Floating World of Japanese Prints
The relationship between Japanese printmaking and popular culture from 1600 to 1900. Woodblock and copperplate printmaking techniques, key masters, kabuki drama, pleasure quarters, fiction, travel, modernization will be explored. Prerequisite: L01 111, Intro to Asian Art, or background in printmaking or Japanese culture.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3533 Pilgrimage and the Medieval City
In this course we will explore one of the primary ways people traversed Europe and beyond: pilgrimage: Specifically, this course will explore the material culture of pilgrimage in the context of the urban environment, considering the role of art in guiding, encouraging, and visualizing pilgrimage to and through some of the important religious centers in the medieval Christian world. We will begin in Jerusalem and move outwards to Constantinople as a gateway to holy sites across the Byzantine Empire. We will then move to Paris and London to explore the different ways that pilgrimage could be undertaken, both physically and in the mind's eye. Finally, we will move to the conceptual, considering how the Heavenly Jerusalem was manifested in art and architecture across the medieval world. This course will investigate this subject through engagement with primary sources, object-focused study, and visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum. The overarching goal is to foster strong critical reading and thinking skills, while also developing specialized knowledge in the history of medieval art. Emphasis will lie in critical interpretation and analysis, in engaging in rigorous class discussion, and in writing coherently at a high academic level. Prerequisite: any 100- or 200-level course in art history
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3545 The Art and Architecture of Ancient Mesoamerica: Objects of Ritual, Places of Power
This course will examine the artistic and architectural achievements of the civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica, a cultural region that covers most of modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. From the emergence of complex societies during the second millennium BC through the rise of the spectacular cities of the Maya and ending with the violent fall of the Aztec Empire in the 16th century AD, rulers of ancient Mesoamerica relied on a consistent set of themes, images, and media to proclaim their religious and political authority. This course will explore how artists, farmers, priests, elites, kings, and other community members created a vast array of images and objects that expressed cultural ideals, political and religious narratives, and distinct ethnic and civic identities. Prerequisites: L01 113; A46 200; L48 335; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3549 The Art of Mexico: From Aztec to Contemporary
This survey course draws from selected examples of art and architecture to tell the changing story of Mexico. Beginning with the Aztec and ending with contemporary works, this course chronologically traces artistic manifestations of beliefs, politics, and placemaking. Through movements, revolutionary moments, individuals, and trends, the course creates a portrait of Mexico that is multicultural, dynamic, and creative. Course themes include international relationships, diversity, identity, and politics. Prerequisites: L01 113, Intro to Western Art; L01 215, Intro to Modern Art; L45 165; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 360 Renaissance Architecture
The modern concept of the architect as creator and genius began with Filippo Brunelleschi, the great innovator of fifteenth-century Florentine art. The course explores the spread of architecture and architectural theory as it begins in the hands of the innovator and is expressed and changed by other men of genius such as Leon Battista Alberti, Donato Bramante, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Andrea Palladio.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 3602 Italian Renaissance and Baroque Architecture
This course will survey the development of architecture in Italy from 1400 to 1700. From long-established medieval models, we will explore the reintroduction and reinterpretation of Antiquity from the late 14th century onward. The course will then explore how these foundational Renaissance ideals evolved to become Mannerism and found their ultimate expression in Bernini's Baroque. Following a chronological progression, the course will address the structures and theories of the period through its leading architects: Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, Palladio, and Bernini, among others. The course will explore a wide range of architectural types, from the centralized church to private palaces and villas. Further themes to be considered will include the development of the architect as a professional, regional styles and their relationship with antiquity, patterns of patronage, and the interior. Prerequisite: L01 113.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 361 Art of the Early Italian Renaissance
This course is a survey of Italian Renaissance art, from its origins to the end of the 15th century. It includes an examination of artists such as Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci. Prerequisite: L01 113.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3612 Rome in the Renaissance
Renaissance Rome, called by many the Caput Mundi or capital of the world, was the cultural capitol of Europe. It was a tumultuous, vibrant city characterized by ancient structures, medieval foundations and new artistic and architectural projects that were bigger and more luxurious than anywhere else in Europe. These new structures and masterpieces were incorporated into, and built on top of, the extant classical and medieval city. We will take a journey through the Renaissance city, using Andrea Palladio's two guidebooks of Rome, written in the 1550s. Maps, guides and artists' renderings of the city will contribute to the journey. We will discuss chapels, churches, palaces, monuments and piazzas as we encounter them. In addition to works of art and architecture, we will encounter legends (ranging from feasible to preposterous) and popular traditions associated with specific sites. Prerequisites: L01 113, Intro to Western Art; L01 215, Intro to Modern Art; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3613 Women of the Renaissance: Artists, Patrons, and Subjects
This course will examine the varied roles of women in the production of Renaissance art: as makers of art; as commissioners, collectors, and patrons of art; and as subjects of the artistic gaze. In conjunction with the courts of Europe, we will also address women in the arts through a global lens. Using a variety of primary sources, including painting, sculpture, print material, textiles, and archival documents, we will explore both the historical spaces women occupied as well as contemporary scholarship situating women within the history of art. In the process, students will gain a deeper understanding of women's agency in Renaissance art, cultivate tools of art-historical analysis, and hone skills in presenting such analysis in written form.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3625 Global Renaissance
This course provides an overview of transcultural encounters within and beyond Europe circa 1450 to 1650. During this period, visual forms and artistic practices linked places in disparate corners of the world, such as Venice and Istanbul, Mexico City and Florence, Manila and Acapulco, Amsterdam and Agra. Focusing on cities as cosmopolitan centers of artistic production, the course will consider the mercantile networks, imperial strategies, and artistic technologies that heightened the mobility of art, as well as the local manifestations and native traditions that continually reshaped it. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the diversity of art and architecture during this period of increased cultural exchange, cultivate tools of art-historical analysis, and hone skills in presenting such analysis in written form. Prerequisites: One course in Art History or permission of instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3627 By Sea and Sand: Modern Art in the Mediterranean
This course surveys the representation of Mediterranean spaces and cultures in the visual arts from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century during which time transformations across economies, governance, society, and technology took place alongside the expansion and subsequent deterioration of French and British colonial rule in the Middle East and North Africa. In this course, the modern Mediterranean will be viewed from multiple vantage points along its shores and through a range of media, including popular culture, visual culture, material culture, and fine art. In addition to obtaining a strong grasp of the artistic phenomena associated with the Mediterranean during the modern era, students will come to understand the region as a place possessing a remarkably diverse and polymorphous identity, and as a place of fracture, confrontation, mutual incomprehension, innovation, and exchange.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3634 Pleasure and Pain: European Fashion as (Art) History
In the words of Louis XIV, "Fashion is the mirror of history. It reflects political, social and economic changes, rather than mere whimsy." This course will survey the history of dress in early modern Europe, using art and material culture to explore the relationship between society and style. Beginning with the Renaissance, we will explore what fashion in (art) history can tell us about gender, sexuality, class, race, and revolution. To incorporate a global perspective (although concentrating primarily on the West), further themes to be considered include the textile trade, commerce and empire, identity politics, and nation-building. From the chopine to the corset, the pannier to the Pompadour pump, we will incorporate surviving examples as we explore the art and history of European fashion from the 15th to the early 19th century. This course is open to students who have previously taken or are currently enrolled in Intro to Western Art. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 365 Baroque Art
This course is a survey of the development of painting and sculpture in 17th-century Europe. Emphasis is on the works of Caravaggio, Bernini, Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt, and Velazquez. Prerequisite: L01 113 or permission of department.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3654 Baroque Art: Materiality and Experience
The materiality of art is evident-and central to how art looks, how it means, and how it endures. This course is intended as an introduction to the materiality of objects and works of art made during the Baroque era (c. 1550-1700) and to concepts for understanding and interpreting them. Works in a variety of materials-ivory, wax, woods, feathers, shells and mother-of-pearl, oil paint, lacquer, metal, fresco, stone, porcelain and earthenware-populate a series of case studies drawn from European, Mesoamerican, and East Asian workshops. In addition to learning about what goes into making these works, students will trace the geographies of materials, and the ways in which materials, format, and durability all affect the viewer's experience. Students will read, analyze, and discuss current research on the makings of art, on theories of the materiality of art, and problems in art conservation-and will participate in close examination of works in local museums and special collections. This course will introduce students to some of the central topics in early modern art history as it is practiced by scholars/historians *and* by archaeologists, museum curators, archivists, and conservators. Students will be introduced to a wide data set of objects and art works, and will learn how to analyze, articulate, discuss, and research aspects of their materiality. Rather than focusing on memorization, this course encourages using concepts from a set of assigned readings to reflect on the objects we discuss together. Students will work in small groups and as a class to advance their own vocabulary for and understanding of early modern materiality and experience. Prerequisites: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3655 The Baroque: Art in an Age of Crisis
The late 16th century was a time of crisis and conflict, and change echoed across Europe and its empires. Religious reform, scientific discovery, and political upheaval shook the foundations of early modern society. Yet from this turbulent time, an era of extraordinary artistic achievement emerged, defined by a dynamic new visual language. This course will examine how "the Baroque" became a global language, from its early beginnings in Rome to Spain, France, Flanders and the Dutch Republic, even extending beyond the borders of Europe to Asia and the Americas. In addition to studying leading artists such as Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, Vermeer and Velázquez, important themes to be considered will include space and spectacle in urban planning; the mundane and profane in still life and genre; collections and curios; the church triumphant; and the portrait. Prerequisite: Intro to Western Art (L01 113).
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3671 Michelangelo: Painter, Sculptor, Architect
This course presents an examination of the life, work, and time of Michelangelo. It considers the artist's painting, sculpture, and architecture in relation to his contemporaries and to the broad historical, political, and artistic currents of his day. Prerequisite: L01 113.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 3682 Mirrors of Nature, Dreams of Art: Northern Renaissance Art
This course surveys the visual culture of the Netherlands and Germany from approximately 1400 to 1550: from Burgundian court culture around the time of Jan van Eyck to the fantastic works of Hieronymous Bosch to the international renown of imperial artist Albrecht Durer and later Flemish urban culture as represented by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Works in a variety of media will be presented in light of broader consideration of the role of art within devotional practice and the Reformation, courtly culture and the cultivation of artistic imagination, and the rise of print and "popular" culture. We will consider the power of images to mediate religous experience; the representation of folly and death; the social position of the artist; and the relevance of naturalism. We will also survey the predominant interpretive models that have been developed to analyze the significance of these works. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3683 Global Baroque: Art and World-Making
Europe and along Eurasian contact routes between 1500 and 1700 is a primary focus. The course will open with an examination of the significance of the early modern category of "the exotic" and the role of the exotic or foreign in shaping artistic and collecting practices during a period that tends to be studied with Europe at the center of the world. Throughout the semester, we will explore different modalities of "otherness," and the political stakes of representations of self and other within the context of early modern empire- and nation-building. We will analyze paintings, prints, drawings, sculptural objects, naturalia, featherwork, ceramics, porcelain, and textiles alongside primary sources, early modern history and art history, cultural and material history, the history of science, and maritime and diplomatic history. The course attends to the atrocities of slavery in the early modern world and trace the relationship of enslavement to procuring and appreciation of exotic materials. Lectures will incorporate contemporary art (installations, photography, collage, and painting) that actively engages the modern era. The course involves close study of works of art in local collections, and will include visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum, where students will be introduced to the extraordinary holdings, in particular the Phoebe Dent Weil and Mark S. Weil collection of early modern prints, drawings, and sculpture. Prerequisites: One 100- or 200-level course in Art History; or permission of the instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3684 Picturing Race in the Early Modern World
Many social and cultural roots of modern Western European and American conceptions of race and ethnicity lie in the early modern era, when enslavement came integrally to be linked with Blackness and ideas-and representations-of power relied on a hierarchical politics of racialization and othering. Throughout the early modern era, in Renaissance and Baroque visual art, iterations of racialized identity took hold, in ways and by means this seminar will explore in depth. Through close analysis of paintings, sculptures, architectural and urban design, and the graphic arts, and with frequent reference to chronicles, literature, and legal language of the time, we will trace visual representations of racialized difference throughout the early modern (European) world and to the present. How did early modern European images participate in and help to form a visual culture of race? This seminar will explore fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European representations of racialized others by artists Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and others. We will also consider ethnographic imagery, maps, and other forms of representation-as well as responses by contemporary (20th- and 21st-century) artists to the conventions of "race-crafting" laid down in the early modern era. Geographically, the materials we study issue from western Europe and focus on encounters with Western Africa, but the seminar considers European engagement in the American colonies, Melanesia/Indonesia, the Atlantic and Brazil-and with the Islamic world. Prerequisites: One 100-level Art History course or permission of the instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 370 The American West: The Image In History
Examines representations of the American West and of the frontier encounter between Euro- and Native American cultures, from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. We will consider travel accounts, fiction painting, ledger drawings, photography, and film in order to analyze the ways in which historical circumstances have shaped artistic and literary representations. At the same time, we will look at how images and texts have shaped formative myths about the West that in turn leave their impact on history.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 371 American Art to 1900
This course is a survey of the broad social, cultural, and nationalist themes in the visual arts from European contact with the New World to 1900. Topics include the encounter of New World cultures with European colonizers and the ongoing relationship between America and Europe; the changing image of the artist; and the role of art in the formation of national identity. Prerequisite: L01 113 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3712 Art and Culture in America's Gilded Age
This course covers developments in American culture from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, including the novels, buildings, images, and public and private spaces of this transitional period. The Gilded Age was a time of new class formation, of unparalleled social diversity, and of new urban forms. The connections between art, literature, and social experience will be addressed. Representative figures include Henry James, Henry Adams, Louis Sullivan, Stanford White, Thomas Eakins, and Louis Tiffany.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH BU: BA, HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 372 American Art to 1970
From the beginnings of modernism in the visual arts of the United States, around 1900, to Abstract Expressionism and the Beat aesthetic. Focus on the cultural reception and spread of modernism, native currents of modernist expression, from organicism to machine imagery, the mural movement and the art of the WPA, the creation of a usable past, abstraction and figuration, regionalism and internationalism, photography and advertising.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: SSC Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 376 American Modernism, 1900-1940
American modernism: What is it? What is the nature of its encounter with mass culture? What happened to modernism as it migrated from its "high" European origins to its "middlebrow" version in America between the turn of the century and the eve of World War II? What was the rhetoric of modernism in everyday life, and what was its impact on design, photography, and advertising? In addition to the fine arts, we will look at popular media, film, and photography. Lecture/discussion. Prerequisite: L01 215 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, WI Art: AH, HUM BU: ETH, HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 3763 Bodymorph: Fantasy Worlds of American Visual Culture, Animation, and Product Design
This lecture and discussion-based course engages students in media beyond the fine arts, which shaped in fundamental ways how ordinary Americans experienced life during decades of dynamic change and modernization over the first half of the 20th century. We consider cartooning and animation, film, advertising, product design, department stores and the visual strategies of consumer culture, jazz aesthetics, the skyscraper city, and more. We set these new forms within broad changes in the rhythms of everyday life driven by industrialization and new technologies, as well as how filmmakers, animators, and artists both expressed these new realities, as well as how they turned in response to the handmade, the "primitive," and the embodied. We look at the uneasy exchanges between high art and mass media; and at the open borders between surrealism, advertising, and art. Prerequisites: Any introductory or 300-level course in Art History or American Culture Studies, History, or literature
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3782 Modern Art 1905-1960
This course investigates topics in European painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and film. Lectures and readings will address major artistic developments, including Cubism, De Stijl, Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Constructivism, Surrealism, the Bauhaus, and Art Brut. Prerequisite: L01 215 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 3783 The Modernist Project: Art in Europe and the United States, 1905-1980
This course surveys major tendencies in painting and sculpture, from Fauvism in France and Expressionism in Germany to the beginnings of Postmodernism in photo-based work in the United States. About two thirds of the course will treat European art, and about one third will treat American art. Photography, architecture, and work in other forms will be considered selectively when pertinent to the individual class topics. Within the lecture topics, emphasis is on avant-garde innovation; the tension in modernist art between idealism and critique; reaction by artists to current events; the relationship between art and linguistics, philosophy, literature, economics, and science; the role of geopolitics in art production; the intersections of art and society; the role of mass culture; issues of race and gender in the production and reception of art; and the challenge to the concept of authorship and creativity posed by Postmodernism at the end of this period. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3785 Photography in America
This course will consider the practice and use of photography in America, from its invention up to the present, and it will offer various ways of thinking about the medium and its relation to society and culture. Students will come to understand the ways photographic practices shape public perceptions of national identity, ethnicity and gender, nature, democratic selves, and a host of other concerns. We will discuss famous practitioners such as Matthew Brady, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank. We consider not only the social and public uses of the medium (through such episodes as the New Deal/FSA and photojournalism) but also the private explorations of "fine art" photographers and the everyday practices of the snapshot. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3795 Global Contemporary Photography
This course explores contemporary photographic traditions from around the world. We begin by grappling with a few of the theoretical issues that lie at the heart of the medium's power, such as the aura of a photograph and its potential evidentiary value. We examine how photography emerged as distinct from other artistic forms such as painting and was deployed in unique ways across the globe to assert power, counter claims of hegemony, and express identity. The scope of the class is not limited to high-art photography, but also explores the family photography and vernacular traditions, focusing on a range of genres including portraiture, narrative, and performance. Finally, we end by exploring how contemporary photographers have stretched the potential of the medium by experimenting with digital technology and non-traditional modes of display. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215), or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3810 Mexican Visual Culture
This course will explore the ways in which different aspects of visual culture were used to construct national, regional, political, social and cultural identities in Mexico. The omnipresence of the visual in the everyday life of Mexicans -including state-sponsored muralism, cinema, photography, graphic press, wide-circulating comic books and nationalist architecture- allows for the study of different ways in which citizens become embedded both in official national projects and in projects of political dissidence. The class will thus use the Mexico in the 20th and 21st centuries to introduce students to the study of the visual as a social practice, through theoretical discussions that will run parallel to the study of different visual manifestations. The course will discuss the changing social and political role of art, the influence that Mexican visual culture exerts in other parts of the world and the way in which visual culture allows Mexicans to think about their identity.
Same as L45 LatAm 381
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM, VC EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3815 Rococo to Revolution: Art in Eighteenth-Century Europe
The Long Eighteenth Century serves as a bridge between two fundamentally different times. The Europe of 1700 was dominated by absolutism and the ancien régime. The Europe of 1800 was in an age of revolution. This course will explore the dramatic shift in artistic representation and individual self-conception that occurred throughout the century to usher in our modern age. Important topics to be considered include: the rise of the Academy; the Enlightenment and the Encyclopédie; the Grand Tour; Art and Science; and the French Revolution. Focusing on the development of artistic trends, the course will address transformations in painting, sculpture and architecture throughout Europe.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3830 Topics in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: Spectacular Blackness, Race, Gender, and Visual Cult
Topic varies. See semester course listings for current offering.
Same as L77 WGSS 383
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC, SD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: BA EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3831 Art in the Age of Revolution: 1789-1848
This course covers European painting, sculpture, and printmaking from the French Revolution to the mid-19th century. French, English, German, and Spanish artists are discussed in a social and aesthetic context, with a focus on links between art and ideology in times of political turmoil. The styles of Classicism and Romanticism, the rise of history painting, and the development of Realism in both landscape and genre painting are also addressed. Prerequisite: L01 113 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 3833 Realism and Impressionism
This course examines the development of European art from approximately 1848 to the mid-1880s, with a focus on the development of Realism and Impressionism in England and France. Issues to be explored include the breakdown of academic art, the rise of landscape and naturalist themes, the emergence of alternative exhibition spaces and new dealer systems, and the relationship between gender and avant-garde practice. Prerequisites: L01 113 and L01 215 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 3836 The Art Museum from the Louvre (Paris) to the Louvre Abu Dhabi
This course explores the cultural politics of modern and contemporary art museums in the nexus of London-Paris-New York from the late 18th century to today. It analyzes important works of art collected, displayed, and studied in the museum context as well as the politics, philosophies, and people who shaped the history of modern and contemporary art via museums and exhibitions. Students will interrogate institutions and spaces that condition the experience and reception of modern and contemporary art. Prerequisites: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3838 Modern Art in Fin-de-Siecle Europe, 1880-1907
This course examines artistic production at the turn of the century in France, Belgium, England, and Scandinavia. Beginning with the reevaluation of impressionism and naturalism in France, we examine Neo-Impressionism (Seurat and Signac) and Symbolism (Moreau, Van Gogh, Gauguin, the Nabis, Rodin, and Munch), as well as later careers of Impressionists (Cassatt, Monet, Degas, and Renoir). We will consider cross-national currents of Symbolism in Belgium and Scandanavia; the Aesthetic Movement in Britain; the rise of expressionist painting in French art (particularly with the Fauvism of Matisse and Derain), and the juncture of modernist primitivism and abstraction in early Cubism (Picasso). Prerequisite: L01 113 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM
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L01 Art-Arch 3862 The Mediterranean and French Modernism
This course will survey the development of the Mediterranean region as an important site of modernist artistic practice. Among the artists to be considered are Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Yves Klein. Excursions to museums and other artistic sites.
Credit 1 unit. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3874 The Modern and Contemporary Art Market, 1863 - Present
The modern and contemporary art market is a strange and irrational entity, seemingly ungoverned by traditional economic laws of supply and demand. In 2019, Rabbit, a sculpture by Jeff Koons, sold for $91.1 million at auction, setting a record for the most expensive artwork by a living artist ever sold. A few months later, at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair, Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian, an installation artwork featuring a fresh banana duct-taped to a wall, sold for $120,000. More than just a source for headlines, today's art market is also a growing art historical subfield, one that offers crucial insight into artistic production, shifts in the sociopolitical landscape, and even the practice of art history itself. This course offers a historical overview of the modern and contemporary art market, from 1863 to the present. In this thematic survey, students will chart the art market's development by examining key concepts, personalities, and events, including the 1863 Paris Salon des Refusés, the Galerie Durand-Ruel and Impressionism, the avant-garde myth, Nazi-era art crime, the 1997 Sensation exhibition, and international biennials. Students will also become acquainted with basic art market research methods and resources. Prerequisites: Any 100- or 200-level course in art history; L01 215, Intro to Modern Art, recommended; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3875 Rejecting Reason: Dada and Surrealism in Europe and the United States
In this multimedia interdisciplinary course, we will consider the history, theory, and practice of Dada and Surrealism, from its Symbolist and Expressionist roots at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century through its late expressions in the beat culture and pop art of the 1950s and 1960s. Dada's emergence in Zürich and New York in the midst of World War I set the tone for its stress on irrationality as an oppositional strategy. Surrealist research into the domain of the unconscious continued this extreme challenge to dominant culture but in a revolutionary spirit that proposed new possibilities for personal and collective liberation. The international character of the movements -- with substantial cross-transmission between Europe and the United States -- will be emphasized. Prerequisites: L01 113, Intro to Western Art; L01 215, Intro to Modern Art; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3877 Cubism and Its Global Legacies
During the early 20th century, Cubism marked a radical break in the European representation of three-dimensional space in painting through a bold reconsideration of atmospheric and linear perspective. Early Cubists such as Pablo Picasso achieved this formal breakthrough in part through studying African and Oceanic art. Between the summer of 1908 -- when Braque and Picasso developed the style collaboratively in France -- and the advent of WWI in the summer of 1914, Cubism became the most influential style in the international art world. This course examines the development of Cubism in France, and it analyzes how artists throughout Europe and the world adapted Cubism for their own purposes. Of particular interest will be how artists from outside Europe and the United States have responded to Cubism's appropriation of non-Western art. Class format is lecture and discussion. Prerequisites: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 388 Contemporary Art
This course is a survey of global contemporary art from 1970 to the present. Topics include happenings, minimalism, body art, and neo-expressionism as well as their placement in their social and political contexts. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3884 Modern Design and Modern Culture
This course explores key issues of modernity (industrialization, consumerism, mass culture, nationalism, etc.) through the study of material culture. Focusing primarily on modern design in Europe and North America from William Morris to Charles Eames and Aleksander Rodchenko to Bruce Mau, we will examine major developments in design thinking and practice as both reactive to and generative of broader political, economic, and social concerns. The course will be organized around important and influential exhibitions, from World's Fairs to storefront shows, where design professionals, institutions, and publics came together to reflect on topics of urgency, identify alternatives, and imagine the implications of design on everyday life. Wherever possible, class discussions/lectures and assignments will make use of objects and archives in area collections. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215) or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3888 Museum Theory and Practice
This course explores the history of fine art museums and related debates on the nature of collecting and modes of display. Using historical and theoretical texts as well as select case studies, we will focus on how the evolving structure and mission of the museum impact our understanding of art. Topics will include the Renaissance "cabinet of curiosities," the Salon controlled by the French Academy, the rise of the modern art museum, and the proliferation of contemporary curatorial strategies in today's global art world. In addition to the study of the history of exhibitions and the role of the museum, the course will investigate the various jobs and responsibilities that people hold within museums. Guest speakers will include members of the curatorial, publications, registration, education, and installation staff at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. We will also take advantage of exhibitions and permanent collection displays at the Kemper Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, and the Contemporary Art Museum. Prerequisite: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3892 Modern Sculpture: Canova to Koons
This course will survey sculpture in Europe and the United States from about 1800 to the present, with an emphasis on the period from 1890 to 1980. A rapid traverse of Neoclassicism, Realism, and the rage for statuary during the later 19th century will take us to the work of Rodin and to a more systematic exploration of developments in the sculpture of the 20th century. Particular emphasis will also be placed upon the work of Brancusi, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Giacometti, Oppenheim, David Smith, Serra, Morris, Judd, Hesse, and Bourgeois. An important theme running through the course as a whole -- from an age of nationalism and manufacturing to our own time of networks and information -- is the changing definition of sculpture itself within its social and political context. We will also explore various new artistic practices (e.g., video, performance, installations, body art) and interrogate their relationship to sculptural tradition and innovation. Prerequisite: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3961 Art & Ecology
This course provides an overview of the twentieth-century history and contemporary debates concerning art and ecology. It begins with the nuclear age in the postwar United States and the Pacific, on through the techno-utopian "hippie modernist," Land Art, and early ecological movements of the 1960s. We situate contemporary "eco art" within this longer historical context, as well as climate science and politics. This course takes a case study approach, with one "key" artwork each class period, around which we will build context and trace relevant connections. Students will be responsible for identifying key artworks and articulating their significance on the exams. We will also locate eco art discourse within our St. Louis context, undertaking a site-specific project during the course of the semester. Undergraduate Prerequisites: one introductory Art History course or permission of the instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3972 Alterna-Art
Can contemporary art be truly alternative? What does the term even mean, when the channels for distributing art are available to all? This course will present a survey of art created outside of institutions and official channels. Students will be exposed to a variety of different media, from graffiti and muralism to performance and Internet art. The course will also deal with questions of agency, "authenticity," and co-optation of street art by commercial means. Classes will consist of a hybrid lecture/discussion format, with weekly readings. Prerequisites: Intro to Western, Intro to Modern or permission of the instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3973 New Media, New Technologies
In the summer of 2013, Random International's "Rain Room" was installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lines to experience the sensation of being rained on without getting wet ranged up to seven hours at times. This merging of new technology with the gallery space proved irresistible, but it also raises questions as to the uses of technology in contemporary art and whether or not this could be much more than a gimmick. As one Yelp reviewer put it, "The Rain Room is definitely an experience. Let's be honest... I'm mostly upset that I didn't get a cool, new Facebook profile pic out of it." This course will consider technological developments in modern and contemporary art -- including photography, video and new media, and digital and Internet art -- as well as forays into new technology that blur the lines between art and science. Prerequisite: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 3975 Art and Activism
This course will examine political and social activism in art and visual culture, focusing on the role that visual representation has played in social movements and how artists/activists have employed visual media to challenge and resist dominant visual representations and political formations. We explore key theoretical developments in activist discourse as well as the role of art practices and aesthetic commitments in these developments. This course seeks to represent the development of the relation of art and activism in its broadest intellectual and cultural context within the 20th century and to encourage an appreciation of the complex array of disciplinary perspectives that are implicated in this development. Prerequisite: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4000 Topics in Art History and Archaeology
Prereqs: L01 113, L01 215; one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4002 The Decorative Aesthetic in Modernism, 1860-1960
In the criticism of modern art, "decoration" and "decorative" have often been used as pejorative terms, designating art that has no intellectual basis but is merely pleasing, intended to fill space and delight the eye. However, in the late 19th century, these terms carried important cultural value and opened the door to significant experiments in abstraction. Moreover, the decoration of a public space or surface may have political implications. This course will investigate decoration and theories of "the decorative" in modern art in Europe and the United States, with special attention paid to the evolution of ideas of modernism in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional environments. We will also consider some of the political meanings that may be borne by both public mural painting and domestic decoration as well as easel painting that aspires to conditions of the decorative. Key figures include Puvis de Chavannes, Morris, the Nabis, Van de Velde, Monet, Matisse, the Mexican muralists, Pollock, and Shapiro. Prerequisites: L01 215; any 300-level course in Art History; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4013 The Digital Art Historian
Within the digital humanities, it has often been asserted that art history lags behind other disciplines when it comes to technology adoption. But in fact, art historians are among the earliest adopters of technologically mediated academic practices, though the breadth of methodologies utilized within the digital humanities are not always suitable to or capable of fully accommodating the added layer of visual culture intrinsic to art history. While this course will explore all of the significant facets of the digital humanities and how they can be adapted to art history, it also more broadly aims to create technologically astute and nimble students and future professionals capable of "learning to learn" technologies as they emerge; determining when and how a technology may be useful in research, scholarship, instruction, and other professional work; assessing both data and the tools that represent it with a critical mind; and understanding how to effectively apply technology in a broad range of academic and professional contexts.
Credit 1 unit. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4015 Theories of Modern Art and Architecture
This course will present theories of art and architecture from the 19th to the 21st centuries in their historical contexts through a set of in-depth investigations of selected topics. Some knowledge of history and theory is integral to contemporary understandings of the disciplines of art, art history, and architecture. To foster a historical understanding of theories of modern art and architecture, we will discuss a selection of key texts, divided into three sections: theoretical sources of modern art and architectural history in the 19th century; theories of modernism, from the formalist to the Marxist; and postmodern critiques of modernism, in such areas as feminist theory and poststructuralism. Class visits to Sullivan and Adler's Wainwright Building (1890-91), Saarinen's Arch at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (completed 1964), Ando's Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (2001), and Maki's Kemper Museum of Art (2006) will be integral to the work of the course. Prerequisite: Either L01 113 or L01 215 plus any 300-level course in art history, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4045 Beyond Painting: Innovation in Prints and Sculpture in Early Modern Europe
Prints and sculpture are frequently overlooked in the study of early modern European art, yet the issues they raise are critical to our understanding of the period. Both categories, too often seen as secondary to painting, entail frequently complex technical and intellectual innovations that were fundamental to their time. This course will focus on these two important media in order to offer a fuller and richer picture of how artists of the Renaissance and baroque periods reinterpreted and expanded their visual vocabularies in response to, and in participation with, changing technologies and ideologies. Beyond Painting is based on direct interaction with works of art with the aim of facilitating enhanced looking and evaluation skills essential to the study of art history. Held at the Saint Louis Art Museum, each session will focus on the Museum's collection as well as the objects in the exhibition "Learning to See: Renaissance and Baroque Masterworks from the Phoebe Dent Weil and Mark S. Weil Collection." Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215); one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4230 The Reception of Egypt in the Graeco-Roman World
Ancient Greeks and Romans found Egypt to be an exceptionally enthralling world, in terms not only of its physical features but also of its people, monuments, and traditions. This course will explore how different views of Egypt emerged in the Graeco-Roman world; it will also investigate the possible reasons for the remarkable popularity and allure of Egypt and things Egyptian as reflected in the writings of Greek and Roman authors as well as in the art and architecture of the Mediterranean world in Classical antiquity. In this seminar, we will read primary literary sources (in translation) that focus on the reception of ancient Egypt and, more specifically, its history, religion, and customs. Several of these sources also offer a privileged viewpoint to investigate how the perception of notable Egyptian figures -- chiefly Cleopatra -- was shaped by Rome to suit a specific agenda. In addition to the written sources, we will look at the artistic and archaeological evidence that best showcases the impact of Egypt's legacy on Graeco-Roman traditions. The readings assigned for each class will also provide a broad sample of secondary sources, consisting of some of the most significant scholarship on the image of Egypt in Classical antiquity.
Same as L08 Classics 4230
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4235 Rome in Egypt: The Archaeology of an Oasis City
This seminar will focus on the results of the archaeological fieldwork carried out at Trimithis / Amheida, a Graeco-Roman city in Egypt's Western Desert. It will investigate the available documentary and archaeological evidence, including a wealthy house with paintings inspired by Classical themes, a public bath built in the Roman tradition, a rhetorical schoolroom, pyramid-shaped Roman tombs, remains of a temple, and one of the earliest churches discovered in Egypt so far. We will explore how this evidence compares with that from neighboring sites in Egypt's Western Desert as well as in the Nile Valley. The goal is to develop an appreciation and understanding of Romano-Egyptian architecture, Classical and late antique art in Egypt, and Egypt's religious, social, and cultural history. Students will also have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with notions of archaeological methods and practice, as adopted in the context of an Egyptian excavation project. Prerequisites: One course at the 100- or 200-level in Art History, Classics, or Archaeology recommended
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4250 The Archaeology of Christian Monasticism
Same as L08 Classics 4250
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 428 The Invention of the Image: From Classical Art History to Modern Visual Studies
The scholarly field of Image or Visual Studies has developed in response to the widespread proliferation of images, both still and moving, in contemporary life. It distinguishes itself from traditional art history by examining visual representations of all types, not only works of high art, and by concentrating on the role those representations play in the formation of culture. Though most of the scholarship produced in this field focuses on the modern world, it depends upon ideas first developed in Mediterranean antiquity. This course has two primary goals. We will conduct an historical examination of practices and theories of image making from Near Eastern antiquity to modernity. In so doing, we will also carry out an historiographical survey of the major works in Image/Visual Studies, thereby gaining an appreciation for the wide range of methods of inquiry employed in this important field of research. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215); one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 429 Art and Death in Ancient Rome
Perhaps more than any other phenomenon, death spurred the creation of art in the ancient Roman world. The practice of materially commemorating the deceased -- of perpetuating the memory of the dead through the creation of funerary monuments designed to appeal to both intimate familial relations and the public at large -- stretched across Roman social boundaries and endured for many centuries. But death also frequently provided the subject matter of art even outside the confines of the funerary realm. The goal of this course will be to explore the complex relationship between art and death in the Roman world. It will range from early Rome to the end of the empire and the changes brought about by widespread conversion to Christianity. In conjunction with historical readings, the course will also engage with theoretical texts in the anthropology and philosophy of death. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215); one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4375 Ancient Greek Sculpture in Context
Sculpture counts among one of the greatest artistic achievements of ancient Greece, and one that has had the greatest impact on the art of later periods. This course will focus on original works of art of the Archaic and Classical periods (600-300 BCE), placing emphasis on how study of their contexts - the places in which they were produced, displayed, and found - contributes to our understanding of their place in the ancient world. Background material, to be covered at the beginning of the semester, will include the origins of monumental Greek sculpture at the beginning of the Archaic period (late 7th-early 6th c. BCE), and the stylistic development of the Archaic and Classical periods. We will then proceed to discussion of various types of sculpture (architectural, cult statue, votive, commemorative, funerary) and how these works functioned within the context of the Panhellenic sanctuary, the city sanctuary, the secular center of the city, and the necropolis. In a different view of context, we will also consider sculpture recovered from ancient shipwrecks, looted art on its way to the ancient Roman art market. Prereqs: L01 331 or permission of the instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4376 Pictorial Illusion in the Ancient Mediterranean
Among the many accomplishments in the history of Greco-Roman art, ancient writers especially valued the development of pictorial illusion. Pictorial illusion refers to the techniques of reproducing or approximating aspects of the visual perception of the material world on a two-dimensional surface. These include foreshortening, the application of highlights, and the indication of multiple points of depth in space relative to the picture plane. The purpose of the course is to explore the material, stylistic, and technical history of illusionistic painting practices in the ancient Mediterranean world from Classical Greece to Late Antique Rome and to seek to understand the cultural and social significance of those practices. In addition to examining specific historical questions in the development of ancient painting, the course will investigate trans-historical connections between vision, visuality, and methods of representation. Prerequisites: Either L01 113 or L01 215, or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 439 Greek Art in Rome: Discourse, Dedication, and Reflection
Throughout the modern period, Ancient Greek art has been perceived as a genuinely original and creative tradition in which both individual artists and regional schools made some of the most significant advances in the long development of European art. Roman art, by contrast, has been seen as derivative and secondary; Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the founder of modern art history, classified it among the "style of the imitators." However, this traditional dichotomy rests in large part on the Romans' own reactions to their encounters with the arts of Greece. Through the analysis of textual sources, architecture, statuary, and painting, this course will investigate the status and influence of Greek art in the city of Rome from the third-century BCE until the late Imperial period, and it will seek to understand how Roman responses to and uses of Greek art have come to shape the modern perception of both traditions. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215, or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4395 Rome: The First 2,000 Years
Weaving together the ancient and the early modern, this course offers students an overview of the history, topography, art, and architecture of the city of Rome. Rome has been continuously inhabited for more than three millennia, and its urban fabric both reveals and conceals a unique history of occupation, destruction, reconstruction, revival, and excavation. The course will move between the ancient and Renaissance periods of Roman history, and will examine the city's most important and lasting contributions to the history of art and architecture. It will center especially around a week-long trip to Rome over Spring Break, during which students will present on-site research reports. The trip, and the course as a whole, will be limited to fourteen students. Flights, lodging, ground transportation and two meals will be paid for by the Department's West Bay View Travel Seminar endowment. Travel plans are subject to change due to changing pandemic restrictions. The course is limited to graduate students, majors, and possibly minors in the Department of Art History & Archaeology, and admission is contingent on an interview with the faculty shortly after registration.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 444 The Forbidden City
Home to 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), the Forbidden City today occupies the heart of Beijing and comprises the largest ensembles of premodern architecture in China. This seminar examines the origins of the palace; its construction in the early Ming; the coded symbolisms of its plan and decoration; the rituals of court; and the lives of its denizens, from emperors (including Pu Yi, the "last emperor") to concubines and from Jesuit missionaries to eunuchs. The course also considers the 20th-century identity of the site as a public museum and a backdrop to major political events, as well as its role in the urban design and contemporary art of 21st-century Beijing. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215, or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4482 Japanese Prints: Courtesans, Actors and Travelers
Woodblock prints of the 18th and 19th centuries and their relationship to literature and popular culture. Topics include the life of the pleasure quarters, sexuality and the "erotic," parody, kabuki theater, and the representation of women. Prerequisite: 3 units in Japanese painting, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4489 The Three Emperors: Redefining Chinese Art in the Golden Age
Ruling imperial China during its last Golden Age, the Qing emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong patronized the arts during an unprecedented period of prosperity and international exchange. Many of the works they commissioned are now icons of Chinese culture, but in their time these three Manchus redefined Chinese art with ideas and styles from Baroque Europe, Tibet, Mongolia, and even Islamic Central Asia. This seminar focuses on the ethnically and culturally diverse art, architecture, and material culture patronized by these three emperors to examine how they and their multi-ethnic empire changed the definition of Chinese art during the long eighteenth century. Prerequisites: Intro to Asian Art (L01 111); or one 300-level course in Asian Art History, History or Literature; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4490 Art, Vision, and Science in China
After China and Europe began sustained contact, the introduction of Western science, math, and technology often affected Chinese art more than anything else. New optical devices and ways of visually understanding the world produced a range of positive and negative responses. Often expressed in art, these works demonstrate how new ideas affected Chinese conceptions of vision, looking, cognition, and visuality. Covering the seventeenth through mid-twentieth centuries, this course discovers how Chinese art became entwined with vision and modern science, covering prints, paintings, objects, and photographs across medicine, astronomy, cartography, optics, and mathematics. Prerequisite: L01-111, one course in Art History or Asian Studies, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HT Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 4494 East, Meet West: Asia Encounters Europe
This seminar, which is grounded in cross-cultural aesthetics, examines East Asian visual responses to European art and science from the 16th through 19th centuries.The same Western ideas and works that were first introduced by Jesuit missionaries, that were continued by merchants, and that culminated with colonial enterprises left very different impressions on China and Japan. An introduction to cross-cultural aesthetics from both Western and East Asian perspectives lays the theoretical foundation to engage these works of art before the course proceeds thematically through time to cover painting, cartography, woodblock prints, ceramics, and photography within transregional and transcultural contexts. One upper-level course in Art History is recommended but not required before taking this course.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4496 Porcelain and Lacquer Abroad: Europe Encounters Asia
From 1500 to 1800, Europeans primarily used exported porcelains and lacquers to engage with China and Japan, which were neither under colonial control, nor easily accessible by travel. Collected first in kunstkammers by rulers and nobles as emblems of power, these initially rare, exotic luxuries retained their prestige even as they became more widely available and explicitly gendered. Combining deep object studies with collectors' case studies from across Europe, this course examines how early modern Europeans used porcelains and lacquers to satisfy their curiosity about and material desire for China and Japan. In addition to practical training in essential primary sources such as inventories, it will also introduce theories of luxury and consumption, gift exchange, cross-cultural interaction, material culture, and the global movement of objects. Prerequisites: L01 111 preferred; one art history course or permission of instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4615 Caricature: The Culture and Politics of Satire
This course examines the golden age of caricature. Beginning with the prints of William Hogarth, we will look at the caricatural traditions in France and England from the late 18th century through the early 20th century. Special emphasis will be placed on visual satire as a vehicle for social and political critique; on theories of humor (particularly Baudelaire and Bakhtin); and on the development of a mass market for this imagery. Other figures to be discussed include Rowlandson, Cruikshank, Daumier, Gavarni, Philipon, and Gil. We will take advantage of a major collection of French caricature in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University as well as collections available for study in Olin Library and at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Prerequisites: L01 113, L01 215, or a 300-level course in modern European history or literature; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4616 Lasting Impressions: Early Modern Print Culture
The advent of movable type (the Gutenberg press) in western Europe heralded a new era, and this enabled the dissemination of information in text and image that was fundamental to the Renaissance and early modern culture in all sorts of ways, not least artistic. Alongside the use of the printing press for public ends, the early modern era witnessed some of the most remarkable artistic achievements in relief (woodblock) and intaglio (copper plate) printmaking. This seminar will study a series of charged moments in the production and consumption of printed artefacts, attending to the aesthetic, material, and epistemological significance of printed images between roughly 1480 and 1650. We will focus on the printed works of artists Lucas van Leyden, Albrecht Dürer, Marcantonio Raimondi, Hercules Segers, and Rembrandt as well as the role of printed images in the sciences. A variety of media and techniques-from early stipple engravings to chiaroscuro woodcuts and from Naturselbstdruck to sugar-lift- populate the course, as do theories of impression and the role of prints in transcultural, early modern global encounters. Students in this seminar will be directly involved in research towards an exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum co-curated by Dr. Swan and Dr. Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator at SLAM, slated for spring 2024. Class meetings will take place in the Study Room at the museum, where students will have ongoing access to works in the collection and discussions with museum professionals. Prerequisites: One 300-level art history course *and* permission of the instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4621 Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci is universally recognized to be one of the greatest artists of all time. But who was Leonardo? Artist or scientist? Master, magus or myth? This seminar explores the reality and fiction of a fascinating, yet enigmatic genius, as well as placing this unique individual in the contexts of Renaissance Italy and the modern imagination.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4624 Michelangelo
An examination of the life and works of Michelangelo. The most important developments in his architecture, painting, and sculpture; with special attention to his assistants, friends, family, and contemporaries. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4625 Venice
A seminar focusing on the art of Venice, in particular on Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian. Special attention to the international reputations of these three artists and to problems of patronage, connoisseurship, and interpretation. PREREQUISITE: ART-ARCH 361 or 362, OR PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4629 Caravaggio: Master and Murderer
Michelangelo Merisi (Michael Angelo Merigi or Amerighi) da Caravaggio (29 September 1571 - 18 July 1610) was one of the most important and influential painters of the Seventeenth Century, in Italy and throughout Europe. He was active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between ~1592 and 1610. But who was Caravaggio? What do we really know about his tempestuous life, and how it factors in the art he created? Caravaggio was a powerful, brilliant, brutish, and hugely influential artist; a belligerent personality, brawler, and murderer. He was a man of contradictions: a devout Christian and bi-sexual sodomite; a Knight of Malta and a fugitive from the law. This seminar explores the reality and fiction of this fascinating and influential genius, and places him in his historical, social and artistic contexts -- from Baroque Italy to the modern imagination. Prerequisites: L01 113; one 300-level course in Art History; and permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HT Art: AH, GFAH BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4652 Worldly Goods: Early Modern Art, Trade, Knowledge, Possession
The history of the early modern era has in recent decades been reconceived and rewritten as a history of things and goods. Global trade vectors in particular have shaped new histories of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Material goods -- many of them newly available on a global scale -- shaped aesthetics, scientific investigation, political relations, identity formation, and devotional practices. This seminar studies the circulation of worldly goods between approximately 1500 and 1700, charting encounters around the globe by studying objects and persons in circulation. In orientation, the seminar is European, with a focus on the Dutch Republic in the world. Through secondary source readings and encounters with primary source materials, students will gain an understanding of how early modern objects relate to a newly "global" economy and horizon. Works of art, luxury trade goods, and pirated treasures are the principal sorts of "worldly goods" under consideration. We will consider the movement of individuals and the slave trade in the context of early modern colonialism as well as how the biographies of objects involve shifts in status and value over geographical space and time. Prerequisites: L01 113 and one 300-level course in Art History or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4662 Michelangelo the Architect
When, why, and how did the great Renaissance sculptor, painter, and poet Michelangelo Buonarroti become and architect? This seminar will survey Michelangelo's built and unbuilt architecture, his methods and extant drawings, and the process and influence of his creations.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 4675 Picturing Race in the Early Modern World
Many social and cultural roots of modern Western European and American conceptions of race and ethnicity lie in the early modern era, when enslavement came integrally to be linked with Blackness and conceptions-and representations-of power relied on a hierarchical politics of racialization and othering. Throughout the early modern era, in Renaissance and Baroque visual art, iterations of racialized identity took hold, in ways and by means this seminar will explore in depth. Through close analysis of paintings, sculptures, architectural and urban design, and the graphic arts, and with frequent reference to chronicles, literature, and legal language of the time, we will trace visual representations of racialized difference throughout the early modern (European) world and to the present. How did early modern European images participate in and help to form a visual culture of race? This seminar will explore fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European representations of racialized others by artists Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and others. We will also consider ethnographic imagery, maps, and other forms of representation-as well as responses by contemporary (20th- and 21st-century) artists to the conventions of "race-crafting" laid down in the early modern era. Geographically, the materials we study issue from western Europe and focus on encounters with Western Africa, but the seminar considers European engagement in the American colonies, Melanesia/Indonesia, the Atlantic and Brazil-and with the Islamic world. Prerequisites: One 300-level course in Art History or permission of the instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4677 Early Modern Art, Science, Collecting
Encyclopedic or microcosmic early modern collections also known as Wunderkammers or Cabinets of Curiosities brought together all manner of artifact and natural object, and offered an arena for aesthetic contemplation and natural historical or scientific investigation alike. A space of knowledge-production and a highly socialized domain as well, the early modern collection responded to and activated the senses; some called the sorts of objects assembled in Wunderkammers-rhinoceros horns, ivory lathework carving, resins and gems, instruments, feather work, paintings, and carved coconuts and shells set in elaborate filigree-"sensualities." This seminar examines early modern collections in Spain and Portugal, at Hapsburg and Medici courts, and in Dutch and Flemish cities. Intended as both an introduction to the ways in which the practices of art and science depended on and informed one another in the early modern period in Europe, this seminar will also offer students the opportunity to engage with and make interventions in an ongoing scholarly discussion about art, science, wonder, and the social order of objects in early modern Europe. Prerequisites: One 100- or 200-level course, and one 300-level course in Art History; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4721 Hydrogen Jukebox: American Art and Culture, 1945-1960
The rise and 'triumph' of Abstract Expressionism has long dominated the story of American art following World War II. This new seminar will put Abstract Expressionism into context with parallel developments in the arts, photography, and film. Among the topics we will consider: the conversation between émigré artists and American culture during and after the war; the emergence of a 'noir' aesthetic in film and literature; the early work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and the so-called 'aesthetic of indifference' in relation to Ab. Ex.; artistic collaborations at Black Mountain College; New York school photography and photojournalism; and the cultural impact of the A bomb. PREREQUISITES: A 300-LEVEL COURSE ON 20TH CENTURY ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, OR HISTORY, OR PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 473 Art and Culture in Fin-de-Siecle America
The particular climate of the fin-de-siècle and its expression in art, architecture, and letters. Concurrent development in Vienna, Paris, and London as basis for comparison. Themes include new theories of mind and perception, the fate of rationalism, the "crisis in bourgeois values," and redefinitions of gender. Prerequisite: permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 4744 TransAmerica: The United States and Mexico Between the Wars
Many areas of 20th-century U.S. culture between World Wars I and II were inspired by postrevolutionary Mexico. The Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) profoundly reoriented modern Mexico, introducing new cultural and aesthetic forms and historical themes over subsequent decades. Mexican artists contributed to a new national consciousness drawing on indigenous Mexico and on the new politics of workers and peasants, which were given monumental expression in mural painting. The bidirectional exchange between U.S. and Mexican artists was of great importance for the cultural revitalization of the New Deal and after in the United States. Among artists, writers, anthropologists, and tourists, the vogue for things Mexican was fed by many sources, including increasing travel, diplomatic exchange, and a yearning for alternatives to U.S. modernity. This seminar will support travel to Mexico City, funded by the Department of Art History and Archaeology. Students in this course must be graduate students or undergraduate majors or minors in Art History and Archaeology or Latin American Studies. Recommended prerequisite courses include one 300- or 400-level course in 20th-century U.S. art or history or one relevant course in the Latin American Studies program.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4745 Cahokia to Contemporary: Native American Arts, Past(s) and Future
The arts of Native American communities demand a primary place in both American and global art histories. The historic depth, variety of cultural expression, and circumstances of the collection, exhibition and interpretation of native arts continue to demand our careful and critical attention. We are well situated in St Louis to consider both the indigenous artistic cultures of our own region, and to observe the vitality of native modern and contemporary art practice. Key concerns include the artists' relationship to space and place, their presentation of identities, politicized and activist dimensions of their practices, their negotiation of issues of race and gender, and their conscious relationships to both historic traditions and to contemporary culture. Through the study of local collections and special exhibitions on view in 2023, we will examine a significant range of works-from the Mississippian cultures exemplified by the nearby sites of Cahokia and Sugar Loaf Mound, to the collection of historic materials we will study at the Kemper Art Museum, to the modern and postmodern works on view locally by such artists as Fritz Scholder, Edgar Heap of Birds, Juane Quick-to-See Smith, Faye HeavyShield, Wendy Red Star, Rose Simpson, and others. Class field trips to Cahokia, to the CounterPublic Triennial in St. Louis, and on a spring weekend to Washington DC to visit the National Museum of the American Indian are funded by a generous grant from the Mark S. Weil and Joan M. Hall Endowment for Art History & Archaeology. Prerequisites: One 300-level course in Art History or permission of instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SC Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4746 California Dreamin': Los Angeles Culture and the Making of the 20th Century
"California Dreamin' delves into the many cultures of Los Angeles, a dynamic global city with its cultural origins in the early 20th century. Over its decades of development and transformation we will explore continuities and new directions. The region has always been an encounter zone: between indigenous cultures, colonizers from Mexico, Pacific rim, and Anglo settlers. How has this cultural richness taken different shapes over the course of the 20th century? LA offers an especially cogent site for understanding how a city with a very specific if layered urban identity has been constituted by and through representation. Over the semester we traverse a range of cultural texts--the arts and architecture, film, literature, and urbanism--where the image of the city has been shaped. The course asks how Los Angeles culture at various points struggled to find new articulations and avenues into the future, against the weight of its own defining histories. A week-long trip to Los Angeles -supported through our dedicated travel fund in AHA-will give students an opportunity to see firsthand how the presentday city and its many sectors find expression in the arts and visual culture, or give evidence of different realities. Prerequisite: Minor or major status in AHA; Any course in 20th c. American arts, literature, or film. Or permission by instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 475 The City in American Arts and Popular Culture
From the mid-nineteenth century forward, artists, writers, sociologists, and cultural critics have identified the city as the primary site of a vast array of historical changes associated with modernization. This course will explore the range of cultural responses to the new 20th century city up to World War II. The American city was seen as both an incubator of difference, and of mass conformity and manipulation; a dynamic space in which to form fluid networks that catalyzed new forms of creativity, and a place of strangers and social alienation. We will trace the history of these polarized responses in the 20th century arts and literature of the city, looking at the vibrant popular culture of film, vaudeville, and cross-dressing; new aesthetic forms such as collage and expressionism; and new urban subjects. Prereqs: 300-level course in American 20th c. Cultural History, American Art, Literature, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4770 Native and Cosmopolitan Modernisms: American and European Art Between the Two World Wars
This seminar focuses on two contrasting currents within American and European modernism between the two world wars: native and cosmopolitan. Alternating between the United States and France, the content of this course begins in the years before World War I and concludes with the rise of virulent forms of cultural nationalism during the late 1930s. We consider the subjects, personalities, aesthetic strategies, and political and social investments associated with these alternative modernisms, which are linked to a search for roots on the one hand and to a desire for forms of spatial and social mobility on the other. By comparing the "homegrown" and expatriate experiences, we will consider divergent attitudes toward identity, gender, nation, time, and nature, analyzing these two fundamental responses to modernity in relation to one another. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215, or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4774 The Age of Gatsby: American Art and Culture from World War I to the Great Crash
Mass consumption and the expansion of mass culture; mechanization; and the birth of a new visual culture that turned on animation, advertising, photography, and film. Taking our cues from the cultural contradictions and historical tensions embedded in F. Scott Fitzgerald's great novel of 1925, and the 2013 film inspired by it, this seminar will trace what many at the time called the "Rediscovery of America" and its tribulations. American artists, writers, and cultural theorists embraced the possibilities and pitfalls of American modernity, the nation's mythic promise and its historical dilemmas in the face of growing commercialization and standardization. This seminar is a interdisciplinary look at the art, visual culture, music, literature, and cultural essays of the 1920s through the lens of nation, race, region, and cultural identit(ies). Prerequisite: 300-level 20th-century American art, history, or literature course, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4776 The Arts of Cultural Democracy: America in the 1930s
What does democratic access to the arts look like? Over the past decade the question of distributive justice has taken on new urgency in our nation. This seminar will look at an earlier period in the nation's history--the 1930s, from the stock market crash of 1929 to the beginning of World War II--when the ideal of cultural democracy was put into practice on a variety of fronts, from dance to the fine arts to public murals and the collecting and inventorying of the nation's material and cultural legacies. We will also consider the possibilities and limits of political art, the impact of John Dewey on future generations of artists and culture-makers; the relationship between leftist politics and modernism; regionalism and internationalism; debates over the nature of documentary photography, and efforts to create a 'useable past.' Prerequisite: one 300-level course in European or American twentieth-century art, literature, or cultural history; or permission of the instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, SC Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4782 Modern Architecture in St. Louis
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4785 Art and Culture in 1920s America
This interdisciplinary seminar examines the relationship between art and 1920s culture in the United States, including how artists and critics thought about the nature of our cultural heritage (both its rich possibilities and its limitations); the potential of technology and urbanization as well as the threats they pose to older cultural values; the nature of a multicultural society and the contributions of minority traditions to the evolution of American culture; the lure of the Southwest; early criticism of popular media; and the conversation between popular culture and high art. Prerequisite: L01 113 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 4800 Roman Coins and Their Stories
This course will provide insights into everyday life in Rome and its territories through the evidence of the coins minted from the Roman Republic until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476 and beyond. We will discuss general numismatics, starting with the history of coins and coinage, and we will understand how these small objects became an intrinsic part of the Roman way of life and what evidence they provide for daily life in Rome, from ideology to religion and from politics and culture.
Same as L08 Classics 480
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 481 Topics in Modern Art
The sources, styles, influences, and content of the art of such artists as Gauguin and Cézanne examined in the context of contemporary movements in art and literature. Prerequisite: art history major, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 4815 Constructing the Canons of Modern Art: 1860-1960
From textbooks to museums to private collections, we experience histories of modern art though selections that present narratives of which art matters the most -- to artists, to critics, to the general public, and, supposedly, to history as a whole. How have established canons come to be, who are they for, and how do they resist or engage revision over time? This course examines narratives of modernism and its relationship to rhetorics of criticism, the power of the art market, sensationalized biographies, the practices of collectors and museums, nationalistic interests, and histories of exclusion. Who rises to the top in significance? In what ways have women artists, artists of color, and LGBTQ artists been included or excluded? Key art critics and art historians include Fry, Barr, Pollock, Nochlin and Saslow. Artists may include but are not limited to Manet, Monet, Morisot, Cassatt, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Bell, Modersohn-Becker, Claudel, Tanner, Sickert, Valadon, Duchamp, Cahun, Picasso, Beckmann and Krasner. Students will research comparative case studies and create their own alternative timelines of modern art from 1870-1950. Prerequisites: L01 215, Intro to Modern Art; and one 300-level Art History course.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4816 Art and Culture in Fin-de-Siecle Europe
This course presents an examination of painting, photography, and the decorative arts in France during the period between the two World's Fairs of 1889 and 1900. Artistic movements include Symbolism (Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Redon), later Impressionism (Monet and Morisot), Neo-Impressionism (Seurat and Signac), and Art Nouveau. Thematics include urban leisure and cafe culture, the agrarian ideal, the promises and threats of science and technology, the lure of the primitive, and the impact of nationalism and feminism on the arts. Prerequisites: L01 215 and any 300-level course in 19th-century art, literature, or history; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 4817 Paris ca. 1900: Art, Leisure and Spectacle
Paris at the turn of the 20th century was a vibrant international center for the development of the visual arts, including painting, photography, film, and the graphic arts, particularly in the exploding domains of posters and illustrated journals. In this seminar, we study the period from 1880 to 1910, and we examine how diverse modes of urban visuality were at the heart of the development of French modern art. The place of graphic arts in promoting popular entertainments (e.g., ballet, opera, café concerts) is considered. Another focus is the powerful role of Parisian satirical journals and caricature in debating matters of class, race, and national identity. We examine diverse modes of displaying and selling the visual arts, particularly in the spheres of World's Fairs, annual salons, and in the avant-garde spaces of gallery and café exhibitions. Artists of central concern include Lautrec, Cheret, Mucha, Degas, Pissarro, the Nabis, Vallotton, and early filmmakers such as the Lumière brothers and Méliès. Prerequisite: L01 215 or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in modern art history or a course in modern French history or literature is preferred. French language reading skills are not required.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4818 Matisse and Modernisms
Certain artists generate enormous interest during their lifetimes and long after. Over time, the work of such artists is subjected to a variety of interpretive approaches in light of changing trends in art criticism and art history; the influence of contemporary art; the ebb and flow of interest in different aspects of the artist's production; changes in the political landscape; and the changing sense of how the artist's work intersects with contemporary cultural developments. This set of intersecting concerns is especially fluid in the modern period, when there is no single dominant idea of the role of art in society. The variety of interpretive strategies developed from and applied to the work of Henri Matisse demands a critical reading of the extensive literature on the artist as well as an understanding of the variety of modernisms through which to assess his artistic project. Students will gain a thorough familiarity with the work of one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and they will engage aspects of the historiography of 20th-century art through a survey of developments in the Matisse literature. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215, or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4819 The Century of Picasso
The art of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) spanned three-quarters of the 20th century, and posthumous critical response to his work shows no sign of abating. Picasso was a leading figure in the European primitivist trends at the beginning of the last century, and with Georges Braque, he developed the aesthetic system of Cubism, which rewrote the rulebook of artistic representation. Although he was not an activist, his art routinely engaged momentous political events. Toward the end of his career, he strove to shape his legacy through artistic dialogues with artists of the past by appropriating their styles or subjects, and making them his own. Such eclectic activity, coupled with his creativity and prolific output, has ensured his place among the most influential artists of his century. Prerequisites: one 300-level course in modern art or permission of instructor; junior, senior or graduate standing.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4850 Romanticism to Realism: French Art 1830-1871
This course traces the flourishing of romanticism and the emergence of various forms of Realism in nineteenth-century French modernism, opening with the Revolution of 1830. Artistic tendencies ranging from the official and the academic to emergent romantic and avant-garde alternatives are addressed, as well as the unresolved social and aesthetic tensions that support the demand for an art that addresses modern times. The political idealism and the rhetoric of Republicanism in the Second Republic (1848 to 1852) intertwine with the emergence of a critical modernism that seeks truth in form, in materiality, and in political philosophy. Under the authoritarian regime of the Second Empire (1852-1870), the mandates of realism and idealism continue to vie in a period that sees both the flourishing of the academic system and the art dealer system, and the emergence of a critical avant-garde. The course closes with the emergence of Impressionism and the crisis of the Franco-Prussian war. Artists to be discussed include Delacroix, Ingres, Millet, Daumier, Courbet, Corot, Manet, Bonheur, Bayre, Clesinger, and the early careers of Bazille, Degas, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas, Morisot and Cassatt. Pre-requisites: limited to graduate students in Art History); advanced undergrads only with permission of instructor. Some prior knowledge of French modernism required; some facility with French language useful but not required.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4854 Gauguin In Polynesia: The Late Career
This seminar focuses on the late career of Paul Gauguin, in Tahiti and the Marquesas. This course examines closely the colonial context of fin-de-siecle French Polynesia, Gauguin's reponse to indigenous culture, his ongoing interests in European currents of theosophy and anarchism, the development of his primitivist style in response to the French avant-garde, and Gauguin's legacy to modern art and culture in the early twentieth century. Readings will range from primary texts (literature and journals read by the artist, his letters, his satirical articles and caricatures produced for a Tahitian newspaper, his treatises on religion), to post-colonial theory and recent critiques of primitivism. French reading skills are useful, but not required for the course. We will visit the St. Louis Art Museum to view both the Oceanic collection, and prints and paintings by Gauguin. PRE-REQUISITE: AT LEAST ONE UPPER-LEVEL COURSE IN MODERN ART HISTORY, OR PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4856 French Art and Politics in the Belle Epoque
This interdisciplinary seminar addresses the rich intersection of politics, fine arts and visual culture in modern France from the Franco-Prussian War (1870) to the First World War (1914). We will study the political trends, historical events, and cultural conditions of the era, and their direct influence on the production and reception of a wide range of visual arts, ranging from official paintings and monuments to popular culture such as tourist and documentary photography, commercial posters and political caricature. We also examine the question of what it meant in the Belle Epoque to be an avant-garde artist, and how such artists expressed political sentiment in their work. Prerequisites: permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4859 Visualizing Orientalism: Art, Cinema and the Imaginary East 1850-2000
This seminar examines film and modern art within the framework of "Orientalism" Reading foundational texts by Said, and incorporating theory and historical discourse concerned with race, nationalism, and colonialism, we explore artistic practice in European photography, painting, and decorative arts from 1850 to recent times and European and Hollywood Film. We study how power and desire have been inscribed in western visual culture across the bodies of nations and peoples through conventions such as the harem, the odalisque, the desert, and the mysteries of ancient Egypt. To that end, we will look at artists such as Delacroix, Ingres, Gérôme, Beardsley, and Matisse and will screen films such as _The Sheik_, _The Mummy_, _Salome_, _Cleopatra_, _Pepe le Moko_, _Naked Lunch_, _Shanghai Gesture, Thief of Bagdad, Princess Tam Tam_ and _The Sheltering Sky_. Subjects include the representaion of gender, sexuality, desire, race, and identity as well as the cultural impact of stereotype and "exotic" spectacle. Students will study methods of visual analysis in film studies and art history. All students must attend film screenings. 3 credits
Same as L53 Film 485
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, SD EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4860 Van Gogh: Creativity, Mythology, and Commodity
Among the most famous artists of the canon of European modern art is Vincent van Gogh, known for his expressive paintings, his famous letters that chart his tumultuous career, and a short creative life marked by intense work, passionate interests in the modern art and literature of his time, and the challenges of a mental illness. This seminar will examine his art and literature in three sections: the first devoted to studying the art itself throughout his short career; the second devoted to the mythologies surrounding his art and its relationship to such notions as genius and madness; and the third looking at how his art has become a popular commodity, reproduced internationally by methods varying from precise painted replicas to commercially popular goods marked with his most famous paintings. The history and theory of modern commodity culture on a global scale and its intersection with a burgeoning art market for postimpressionist art will be explored in this final section. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215 and one advanced course in art history, or permission of the instructor
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4861 Gauguin Then and Now: Art, Myth, and Controversy
This course is an examination of the art and career of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and the artistic, social, and political milieu of colonialism in which he worked in France, Polynesia, and the Caribbean. Topics include avant-garde Impressionist and Symbolist cultures, the power of the art market/dealer system, the artist's writings (in translation), French colonial culture and pervasive myths of island paradise, and the pressing critiques offered today by postcolonial and feminist theory. The final third of the course will focus on the varied global reception of his work in the 20th and 21st centuries as well as controversies surrounding his art, writings, and legacies, particularly among contemporary Pacific Islander artists and artists of color. We will consult local museum collections as possible and perhaps take a class trip to Chicago to see essential collections. Prerequisite: L01 215 or any 300-level course in art history, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4863 The Photographic Muse: The Modern Artist and the Camera
An examination of the interplay of photography with painting and sculpture in European art from 1850 to the First World War, with an emphasis on the fin-de-siecle. Readings address the history of the medium; the critical debates (starting with Baudelaire ) over photography as a tool of science or of art; the rise of ethnographic photography; the Symbolist ambivalence toward technology; and the development of Pictorialism at the turn of the century. Artists to be studied include Nadar, Moreau, Degas, Rodin, Steichen, Gauguin, Munch, the Nabis, Brancusi and Picasso. Prerequisite, graduate standing.
Credit 3 units. Art: AH
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L01 Art-Arch 4864 Exoticism and Primitivism in Modern Art
An interdisciplinary investigation of the development of exoticism and primitivism in European and American Art from the Enlightenment to the Second World War. Topics include exoticist representations of non-western cultures; the links between colonialism and orientalism; the intersection of discourses on race and gender with exoticism; and the anti-modernist impulse of modernist primitivism. Sample artists and authors include Delacroix, Flaubert, Gauguin, LaFarge, Segalen, Picasso, and Matisse. PREREQUISITE: ANY 300 LEVEL COURSE IN ART HISTORY, PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4867 The Impressionist Landscape: Style, Place and Global Legacies 1870-1920
We will consider Impressionism as a dominant style of the Parisian art world, first undertaken as an extension of Barbizon naturalism, but soon expanded into an avant-garde style that objectified sensation and emotion in the name of truth in representation. We will examine the place of individual perception, the physiology of sight, and theories of the natural in the development of the Impressionist landscape, through the consideration of style, genre, artistic theory, and these artists' investment in particular sites. Furthermore, the social, commercial and critical networks that supported the movement will be analyzed. Particular attention will be given to Monet, and a special exhibition of his water lily paintings on view at the St Louis Art Museum. Other key artists include Degas, Morisot, Renoir, and Cassatt. We will also discuss the relationship of the Impressionist landscape to the development of modernist abstraction, and the aesthetic and nationalist motivations for its appropriation across the globe. Prerequisite: Introduction to Western Art; Introduction to Modern Art, or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4868 Impressionism and the Nation in France and Beyond: Painting and Photography 1860-1920
We will consider Impressionism as a dominant style of the Parisian art world, first undertaken as an extension of Barbizon naturalism, but expanded into an avant-garde style that objectified sensation and emotion in the name of truth in representation. Our central question will be the relationship of individual perception, the physiology of sight, and theories of the natural in relation to the importance of place-both region and nation -- in the political imagination of the era. We also address the relationship of the Impressionist landscape to the development of modernist abstraction, and the aesthetic and nationalist motivations of its adaptation as a modernist style around the globe. Prerequisite: senior major in art history, or graduate student standing and permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4869 Global Impressionism
How and why Impressionism has achieved its global reputation -- both positive and negative, as well as the nuanced positions between those poles -- has not been thoroughly or systematically interrogated. However, this is precisely what this seminar proposes to do. This course maps the global dissemination, exhibition, reception, and publication of French Impressionism in tandem with the rise of local Impressionisms worldwide. Globalization must be understood as concomitant with localization. This course attends to especially critical exhibitions, publications, and places that must be understood to underscore that there always remains more work to be accomplished in the production of a truly global art history. It scrutinizes how the physical translation of French Impressionist art works foreshadowed, coincided with, and fostered its stylistic translation into local Impressionisms and its literary translation into histories of Impressionism. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215, or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4877 Critical Studies in Portraiture, Ancient to Contemporary
To study portraiture is to confront the complexity of human identity. The central theoretical question of this course is how identity can be expressed in a portrait. Following the consideration of theories of portraiture, identity, and artistic representation, we will treat specific historical and cultural instances of portrait-making, from ancient Greece to the present. Non-Western cultural examples will broaden the scope beyond the conventional conceptions of portraiture. We will conclude by trying to understand the continuing allure of the portrait today as digital media challenge our conventional ideas of visuality and perhaps even the urgency of portraiture in the post-human age. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215; or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in art history preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4879 Marking History: Painting and Sculpture After World War II in the U.S., France, and Germany
This seminar focuses on the aesthetic, cultural, and philosophical reactions to the devastating events surrounding World War II and its later reception. We consider artistic developments within a network of international exchange -- biennials as well as gallery and museum exhibitions -- in which France, Germany, and the United States participated equally within a field of visually similar aesthetic responses to a seismic shift in historical consciousness. What distinctive artistic languages emerged after the war to express transformations in historical consciousness and in older ideas about an unfettered subjectivity? In what ways did concepts of trauma with which we live today reshape collective memory and leave their trace on painting and sculpture? Looking at abstraction and semi-abstract works in painting and sculpture, we analyze the works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Alberto Giacometti and Jean Dubuffet, Wols, K.O. Götz, Emil Schuhmacher, and Hans Hartung. Students with reading skills in German or French are encouraged. Prerequisite: L01 215 or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4905 Greenberg Curatorial Study
The Arthur Greenberg program offers undergraduate students the experience of curating an exhibition. A small team of two or three is selected through a competitive application process the year before enrollment in the course. Under the supervision of a faculty mentor in the Art History & Archaeology Department and a curator in the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, students plan and curate an exhibition for the museum's Teaching Gallery. They also research and write a short brochure, prepare educational materials, and offer related programs for the exhibition, which usually opens in April. The fall 3-unit course fulfills a departmental capstone requirement for the major; 1 unit of additional course work is completed in the spring.
Credit variable, maximum 4 units. A&S IQ: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4914 Beyond Limits: Transgression, Controversy, and Censorship in Modern Art
This course will examine some of the public controversies that surrounded the development of modern art over the last 150 years to probe the question of the social and political functions of transgressive art. After reviewing key theories of the avant-garde, we analyze both the persona of the modern artist (e.g., Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock) and the place of women artists in the revolutions of modernism (e.g., Cassatt, Hoch, Kahlo). A key issue to address is how modernism tests limits by asking what is (and is not) art (e.g., Duchamp, Brancusi). Some of the most controversial exhibitions in this time frame, from the Salon des Refuses in 1863 to Mirroring Evil in 2002, highlight the challenges raised by modern artists' treatment of the body. Controversies over public funding of contemporary art, debates waged over public art in St. Louis, and the recent episodes of iconoclasm with respect to Confederate monuments and memorials will close the course. Prerequisites: L01 215 and any 300-level course in Art History or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4918 Modern War in Art
Art and war have always been intertwined, whether in glory or revulsion. But modern art and modern war are qualitatively different from their counterparts in the past in ways that ensured that their relationship would become more problematic and oppositional. The challenge of finding new artistic languages to express the new conditions of mechanized combat led many artists to explore abstraction, fragmentation, absurdity or arbitrariness to convey the energy, impersonality and nihilism of modern war. When the British soldier and poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) wrote of the human devastation of World War I as "obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud," he strained for metaphoric language appropriate to its magnitude. We will consider the same challenge to visual artists throughout the modern period. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215); one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4922 From the Death of the Author to the Birth of YouTube: Identity in Contemporary Art
What constitutes an artist today, when anyone can upload his or her musings to the entire world? Is the question even relevant? This course will introduce students to the construction of artistic identity in contemporary art. Students will consider major themes governing the production of contemporary art. We will cover such topics as the death of the author and the end of art, identity politics and "authenticity," and the effects of new media on the construction of artistic persona. This course assumes a basic familiarity with the methods of art history, as well as general knowledge of art history before 1960. Prerequisites: Introduction to Western Art or Introduction to Modern Art and one 300-level course in art history, or permission of the instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4923 Globalization and Contemporary Art
What does globalization mean for contemporary art? And what do we even mean when we use the term? This upper-level seminar course considers recent art (1985-present) in the context of theories of development, postcolonialism, and globalization. We will focus on the tensions between the global and the local, as well what it means for an artist to be national or international. We will also consider the impact of neoliberal economic policies on art production and the art market, as well as role museums play in this international context. Finally, we will consider the Internet and social networks as globalizing influences that affect the production and distribution of contemporary art. Prerequisites: Introduction to Western Art or Introduction to Modern Art and one 300-level course in art history, or permission of the instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4924 1968 and Its Legacy
The events of 1968 -- including the May riots in Paris, the Tucuman Arde exhibition in Argentina, the Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City, and the Prague Spring (and Russian winter) in the Czech Republic, just to name a few -- ushered in a new political and social imperative for artists. This course will start with 1968 and trace its legacy to the social and cultural movements of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. We will seek to understand the historical underpinnings of contemporary activist art and determine the roles of socially motivated art in the current political and intellectual climate. Prerequisites: L01 113; L01 215; or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4926 Contemporary Art of the U.S.-Mexico Border and Beyond
The question of the materiality of borders has attained new urgency with the resurgence of nationalist and anti-globalist movements. Calls for a "big, beautiful wall" on the U.S.-Mexico border are but one striking example of this phenomenon. A wall, a fence, a line, or a zone may focus attention on a narrow space, but it does so at the expense of broader narratives of structural inequality, the lingering violence of colonialism, and the rapid scale of climate change. The simplicity of a barrier is a particularly damaging fiction, one that avoids examinations of the larger forces that divide us. This upper-level and graduate seminar will delve into the history of "border art" as a category -- whether public art, sculpture, installation, new media, or performance -- using the U.S.-Mexico border as an extended in-depth case study. Analysis will not be limited to this region, as the course encourages a comparative approach that places disparate regions into dialogue with each other. In addition, we will also consider the issue of divides and borders locally, within the St. Louis area and its suburbs. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art or Intro to Modern Art, plus one 300-level course in Art History.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4930 Picturing the Anthropocene: Landscape, Land Art, and Eco Art
Without a doubt, questions concerning environmental crisis and the habitability of our planet are among the most pressing of our time. This course will cover the history of 19th-century landscape and its legacy today, the 1960s Land Art movement and its relationship to modern environmentalism, and the nuances of contemporary eco art. In addition, we will go in depth into some of the most prolific media within eco-art, including photography and film, and we will explore the contemporary debates specific to these fields. There will be a required field trip to the Western U.S. desert (UT, NV) to visit key sites of land art prior to the start of classes (4-5 days, approximately the third week of August). Possible visits may include Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Double Negative, Las Vegas Piece and the Center for Land Use Interpretation. The trip will be limited to eight students. Flights, lodging, ground transportation and some meals for graduate students and majors in the Department of Art History and Archaeology will be paid for by the West Bay View Travel Seminar endowment. Travel plans are subject to change due to changing pandemic restrictions. The course is limited to graduate students, majors, and possibly minors in art history and archaeology. Prerequisites: L01 113, Intro to Western Art; plus one 300-level Art History course.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4975 Collecting Cultures: Taste, Passion and the Making of Art Histories
This seminar examines the theory and the cultural history of the collecting of art objects and artifacts from a range of cultures and periods, and it considers how and why both individuals and institutions create collections. What social and psychological factors drive this passion? What are the various cultural, political, and aesthetic priorities that have driven this practice historically? How is cultural patrimony defined, and how do law, the art market, and cross-cultural ethics impact the placement, study, and display of a culture's material heritage? We will build the seminar around the history of collecting in America, with a focus on Midwestern examples and particularly important case studies in St Louis. We will consider, for example, the significant local collections built by Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer (modern art) and Morton May (modern and Oceanic art), as well as the histories of both modern European and non-Western collections now owned by St. Louis-area museums. This course will be complemented by various local field trips, including to the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, and Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Prerequisites: L01 113; L01 215; or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4977 Mapping Art, Race, & Community in the US-Mexico Borderlands
This upper-level undergraduate seminar will delve into the history of "border art" as a category, whether in terms of public art, sculpture, installation, new media, or performance, using the U.S.-Mexico border as an extended in-depth case study. Students will collaborate to add to an ongoing mapping project of community engaged art on the border and create multimedia materials to augment or interpret the data as they see fit. As such, this course builds Digital Humanities practices and methodologies throughout the semester. Students in the course will also work to map race and population data along with their chosen artworks. In doing so, the course challenges students to think beyond U.S.-centric concepts of race and ethnicity and explore how the "third space" of the border shapes artistic practices and approaches to community. Prerequisites: One introductory Art History course or permission of the instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 4982 Public Art: History, Practice, Theory
The course will consider the history and functions of public art, with special attention to public art in St. Louis. We will survey not only the obvious forms of public art in urban sculpture and mural painting but also less traditional intersections of art and public in such sites as the internet. We will also examine the operations of institutions -- national and local arts agencies, international exhibitions, nonprofit centers and the like -- that foster a public engagement with contemporary art. Finally, we will consider new priorities and projects in public art, especially socially oriented and environmentally sustainable initiatives. Prerequisites: L01 113, Intro to Western Art; or L01 215, Intro to Modern Art; one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 499 Honors Art History and Archaeology
A major research paper acceptable to the department. Prerequisite: permission of the department. Max. 6 units.
Credit 3 units. EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5000 Topics in Art History: Rethinking Matisse
Prereqs: L01 113, L01 215; one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4000
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5001 Writing Intensive Topics: The Age of Augustus: Ancient Rome from Republic to Empire
TBD
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3001
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD, WI Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 505 Graduate Internship in the St. Louis Art Community
Graduate students will work on advanced research projects under the joint supervision of a curator at the Saint Louis Art Museum or the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and a Washington University faculty member. Prior agreement on a research project and internship duties required. Permission of instructor required.
Credit variable, maximum 3 units.
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L01 Art-Arch 510 Graduate Seminar: Methods in Art History
The purpose of this seminar is to introduce graduate students to some of the most important methodological approaches to the study of works of art. Students will acquire an enhanced understanding of these methods in historical terms as well as insight into how such methods can be applied in the research questions posed by art historians today. The course may include guest presentations by a range of faculty in the department. Prerequisite: Graduate standing in Art History and Archaeology.
Credit 3 units.
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L01 Art-Arch 513 The Digital Art Historian
Within the humanities, the perceptions exists that art history lags behind other disciplines when it comes to technology adoption. And while the "digital humanities" are now widely embraced, the definition of the field remains mutable and even contested. Is it practical, theoretical, or a combination of approaches and methodologies? This course operates under the premise that what constitutes digital art history is less about rigid interpretations and practices, and more about creating a technologically astute and nimble professional capable of "learning to learn" technologies as they emerge; determining when and how a technology may be useful in research, instruction, and other professional work; and understanding how to effectively apply technology in a broad range of contexts. "The Digital Art Historian" will emphasize experiential learning though the use of digital tools and analysis of a range of digital projects, grounded in a rubric of critical reflection. By the end of the course, students will have a significantly more thorough understanding of how to be an art historian in an increasingly digital world. Meets for 8 sessions, typically held every other week. Prereq: Graduate standing in Art History and Archaeology Dept.
Credit 1 unit.
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L01 Art-Arch 5212 Art and Archaeology of Cleopatra's Egypt
This course is an introduction to the art and archaeology of Egypt from its conquest by Alexander the Great (332 BCE) to the early fourth century CE. It will examine the rich and multi-faceted history and artistic legacy of Egypt under the Ptolemies and their last queen Cleopatra, followed by the Roman conquest under Emperor Augustus up to the flourishing of Egyptian Christianity. Students will become familiar with a wide range of ancient sources, including documentary and literary texts, coins, architecture, paintings and sculpture. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215), or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3212
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5230 The Reception of Egypt in the Graeco-Roman World
Ancient Greeks and Romans found Egypt to be an exceptionally enthralling world, in terms not only of its physical features but also of its people, monuments, and traditions. This course will explore how different views of Egypt emerged in the Graeco-Roman world; it will also investigate the possible reasons for the remarkable popularity and allure of Egypt and things Egyptian as reflected in the writings of Greek and Roman authors as well as in the art and architecture of the Mediterranean world in Classical antiquity. In this seminar, we will read primary literary sources (in translation) that focus on the reception of ancient Egypt and, more specifically, its history, religion, and customs. Several of these sources also offer a privileged viewpoint to investigate how the perception of notable Egyptian figures -- chiefly Cleopatra -- was shaped by Rome to suit a specific agenda. In addition to the written sources, we will look at the artistic and archaeological evidence that best showcases the impact of Egypt's legacy on Graeco-Roman traditions. The readings assigned for each class will also provide a broad sample of secondary sources, consisting of some of the most significant scholarship on the image of Egypt in Classical antiquity.
Same as L08 Classics 4230
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5235 Rome in Egypt: The Archaeology of an Oasis City
This seminar will focus on the results of the archaeological fieldwork carried out at Trimithis / Amheida, a Graeco-Roman city in Egypt's Western Desert. It will investigate the available documentary and archaeological evidence, including a wealthy house with paintings inspired by Classical themes, a public bath built in the Roman tradition, a rhetorical schoolroom, pyramid-shaped Roman tombs, remains of a temple, and one of the earliest churches discovered in Egypt so far. We will explore how this evidence compares with that from neighboring sites in Egypt's Western Desert as well as in the Nile Valley. The goal is to develop an appreciation and understanding of Romano-Egyptian architecture, Classical and late antique art in Egypt, and Egypt's religious, social, and cultural history. Students will also have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with notions of archaeological methods and practice, as adopted in the context of an Egyptian excavation project. Prerequisites: One course at the 100- or 200-level in Art History, Classics, or Archaeology recommended
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4235
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 526 Archaeology of Roman Slavery
Slavery was a fundamental part of the ancient Roman world. In this course, we will survey various ways in which the institution of slavery played a critical role in shaping Roman society. Through an exploration of social, economic, legal, and cultural aspects of Roman slavery, we will pose questions of what it means to be a slave society, how the ubiquity of forced labor impacted the lives of ancient Romans, and the extent to which we can recover the experiences and subjectivities of enslaved people. Throughout the course, we will confront the interpretive problems posed by biased and/or scarce evidence and by assumptions we may carry as the inheritors of modern slaveries. A recurring theme we will explore is the extent to which evidence of slavery and the material traces of enslaved people's lives are visible in the archaeological record. At the end of the term, we will contextualize Roman slavery by comparing it with modern examples and by considering the legacy of ancient slavery in modern visual culture and representations of enslaved people. Prerequisites: Any 100- or 200-level course in art history or archaeology; or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 326
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5330 Greek and Roman Painting
This course provides a survey of the major achievements of ancient Greek and Roman painting, broadly understood and encompassing wall painting, panel painting, painted pottery, and mosaic. We will study monuments ranging over a millennium in time and located throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Particular attention will be paid to the social, political, and religious aspects of ancient Greco-Roman painting and to questions of innovation in artistic practice. Special emphasis will be placed on students' cultivation of the tools of art-historical analysis and of the presentation of that analysis in written form. Prerequisite: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215) or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3330
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5361 Art of Early Italian Renaissance
This course is a survey of Italian Renaissance art, from its origins to the end of the 15th century. It includes an examination of artists such as Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci. Prerequisite: L01 113.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 361
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5412 Japanese Art
Surveying the arts of Japan from prehistory to present, this course focuses especially on early modern, modern, and contemporary art. Emphasizing painting, sculpture, architecture, and print culture, the course will also explore the tea ceremony, fashion, calligraphy, garden design, and ceramics. Major course themes include collectors and collecting, relationships between artists and patrons, the role of political and military culture or art, contact with China, artistic responses to the West, and the effects of gender and social status on art.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3412
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5415 Early Chinese Art: From Human Sacrifice to the Silk Road
How does ancient and medieval Chinese art inspire contemporary artists? This course examines Chinese art, architecture, and material culture from the prehistoric period through the end of the medieval Tang dynasty to demonstrate how the past continues to affect contemporary Chinese art and the art of its future. Topics covered include Neolithic ceramics and jades, the early bronzecasting tradition, the Terracotta Army and its predecessors, early brush arts and Buddhist sites, and the varied exotica of the Silk Road. Each class teaches early and contemporary works side by side to demonstrate how artists today continue to look to the past as they create the art of the future. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3415
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5422 Art of the Islamic World
This course surveys the art and architecture of societies in which Muslims were dominant or in which they formed significant minorities from the seventh through the 20th centuries. 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, and 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, palace, and mausoleum; art objects and the art of the illustrated book; cultural interconnections along trade and pilgrimage routes; and Westernization and modernization in art and architecture.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3422
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: IS EN: H UColl: CD
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L01 Art-Arch 5426 Modern & Contemporary Chinese Art
This course will explore the ways in which Chinese artists of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have defined modernity and tradition against the complex background of China's history. By examining art works in different media along with other documentary materials, we will also engage with theoretical issues in art history, such as modernity, cultural politics, and government control of art.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3426
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5444 The Forbidden City
Home to 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), the Forbidden City today occupies the heart of Beijing and comprises the largest ensembles of premodern architecture in China. This seminar examines the origins of the palace; its construction in the early Ming; the coded symbolisms of its plan and decoration; the rituals of court; and the lives of its denizens, from emperors (including Pu Yi, the "last emperor") to concubines and from Jesuit missionaries to eunuchs. The course also considers the 20th-century identity of the site as a public museum and a backdrop to major political events, as well as its role in the urban design and contemporary art of 21st-century Beijing. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215, or permission of instructor. One 300-level course in Art History preferred.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 444
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5482 Topics in Japanese Prints: The Floating World of Japanese Prints
The relationship between Japanese printmaking and popular culture from 1600 to 1900. Woodblock and copperplate printmaking techniques, key masters, kabuki drama, pleasure quarters, fiction, travel, modernization will be explored. Prerequisite: L01 111, Intro to Asian Art, or background in printmaking or Japanese culture.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3482
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5533 Pilgrimage and the Medieval City
In this course we will explore one of the primary ways people traversed Europe and beyond: pilgrimage: Specifically, this course will explore the material culture of pilgrimage in the context of the urban environment, considering the role of art in guiding, encouraging, and visualizing pilgrimage to and through some of the important religious centers in the medieval Christian world. We will begin in Jerusalem and move outwards to Constantinople as a gateway to holy sites across the Byzantine Empire. We will then move to Paris and London to explore the different ways that pilgrimage could be undertaken, both physically and in the mind's eye. Finally, we will move to the conceptual, considering how the Heavenly Jerusalem was manifested in art and architecture across the medieval world. This course will investigate this subject through engagement with primary sources, object-focused study, and visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum. The overarching goal is to foster strong critical reading and thinking skills, while also developing specialized knowledge in the history of medieval art. Emphasis will lie in critical interpretation and analysis, in engaging in rigorous class discussion, and in writing coherently at a high academic level. Prerequisite: any 100- or 200-level course in art history
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3533
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5549 The Art of Mexico: From Aztec to Contemporary
This survey course draws from selected examples of art and architecture to tell the changing story of Mexico. Beginning with the Aztec and ending with contemporary works, this course chronologically traces artistic manifestations of beliefs, politics, and placemaking. Through movements, revolutionary moments, individuals, and trends, the course creates a portrait of Mexico that is multicultural, dynamic, and creative. Course themes include international relationships, diversity, identity, and politics. Prerequisites: L01 113, Intro to Western Art; L01 215, Intro to Modern Art; L45 165; or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3549
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Art: AH, GFAH BU: IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5602 Italian Renaissance and Baroque Architecture
This course will survey the development of architecture in Italy from 1400 to 1700. From long-established medieval models, we will explore the reintroduction and reinterpretation of Antiquity from the late 14th century onward. The course will then explore how these foundational Renaissance ideals evolved to become Mannerism and found their ultimate expression in Bernini's Baroque. Following a chronological progression, the course will address the structures and theories of the period through its leading architects: Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, Palladio, and Bernini, among others. The course will explore a wide range of architectural types, from the centralized church to private palaces and villas. Further themes to be considered will include the development of the architect as a professional, regional styles and their relationship with antiquity, patterns of patronage, and the interior. Prerequisite: L01 113.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3602
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5616 Lasting Impressions: Early Modern Print Culture
The advent of movable type (the Gutenberg press) in western Europe heralded a new era, and this enabled the dissemination of information in text and image that was fundamental to the Renaissance and early modern culture in all sorts of ways, not least artistic. Alongside the use of the printing press for public ends, the early modern era witnessed some of the most remarkable artistic achievements in relief (woodblock) and intaglio (copper plate) printmaking. This seminar will study a series of charged moments in the production and consumption of printed artefacts, attending to the aesthetic, material, and epistemological significance of printed images between roughly 1480 and 1650. We will focus on the printed works of artists Lucas van Leyden, Albrecht Dürer, Marcantonio Raimondi, Hercules Segers, and Rembrandt as well as the role of printed images in the sciences. A variety of media and techniques-from early stipple engravings to chiaroscuro woodcuts and from Naturselbstdruck to sugar-lift- populate the course, as do theories of impression and the role of prints in transcultural, early modern global encounters. Students in this seminar will be directly involved in research towards an exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum co-curated by Dr. Swan and Dr. Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator at SLAM, slated for spring 2024. Class meetings will take place in the Study Room at the museum, where students will have ongoing access to works in the collection and discussions with museum professionals. Prerequisites: One 300-level art history course *and* permission of the instructor
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4616
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5620 Venice
A seminar focusing on the art of Venice, in particular on Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian. Special attention to the international reputations of these three artists and to problems of patronage, connoisseurship, and interpretation. PREREQUISITE: ART-ARCH 361 or 362, OR PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4625
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5624 Michelangelo
An examination of the life and works of Michelangelo. The most important developments in his architecture, painting, and sculpture; with special attention to his assistants, friends, family, and contemporaries. PREREQUISITE: PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4624
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5627 By Sea and Sand: Modern Art in the Mediterranean
This course surveys the representation of Mediterranean spaces and cultures in the visual arts from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century during which time transformations across economies, governance, society, and technology took place alongside the expansion and subsequent deterioration of French and British colonial rule in the Middle East and North Africa. In this course, the modern Mediterranean will be viewed from multiple vantage points along its shores and through a range of media, including popular culture, visual culture, material culture, and fine art. In addition to obtaining a strong grasp of the artistic phenomena associated with the Mediterranean during the modern era, students will come to understand the region as a place possessing a remarkably diverse and polymorphous identity, and as a place of fracture, confrontation, mutual incomprehension, innovation, and exchange.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3627
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5634 Pleasure and Pain: European Fashion as (Art) History
In the words of Louis XIV, "Fashion is the mirror of history. It reflects political, social and economic changes, rather than mere whimsy." This course will survey the history of dress in early modern Europe, using art and material culture to explore the relationship between society and style. Beginning with the Renaissance, we will explore what fashion in (art) history can tell us about gender, sexuality, class, race, and revolution. To incorporate a global perspective (although concentrating primarily on the West), further themes to be considered include the textile trade, commerce and empire, identity politics, and nation-building. From the chopine to the corset, the pannier to the Pompadour pump, we will incorporate surviving examples as we explore the art and history of European fashion from the 15th to the early 19th century. This course is open to students who have previously taken or are currently enrolled in Intro to Western Art. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3634
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: BA, HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5652 Worldly Goods: Early Modern Art, Trade, Knowledge, Possession
The history of the early modern era has in recent decades been reconceived and rewritten as a history of things and goods. Global trade vectors in particular have shaped new histories of the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Material goods -- many of them newly available on a global scale -- shaped aesthetics, scientific investigation, political relations, identity formation, and devotional practices. This seminar studies the circulation of worldly goods between approximately 1500 and 1700, charting encounters around the globe by studying objects and persons in circulation. In orientation, the seminar is European, with a focus on the Dutch Republic in the world. Through secondary source readings and encounters with primary source materials, students will gain an understanding of how early modern objects relate to a newly "global" economy and horizon. Works of art, luxury trade goods, and pirated treasures are the principal sorts of "worldly goods" under consideration. We will consider the movement of individuals and the slave trade in the context of early modern colonialism as well as how the biographies of objects involve shifts in status and value over geographical space and time. Prerequisites: L01 113 and one 300-level course in Art History or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4652
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5654 Baroque Art: Materiality and Experience
The materiality of art is evident-and central to how art looks, how it means, and how it endures. This course is intended as an introduction to the materiality of objects and works of art made during the Baroque era (c. 1550-1700) and to concepts for understanding and interpreting them. Works in a variety of materials-ivory, wax, woods, feathers, shells and mother-of-pearl, oil paint, lacquer, metal, fresco, stone, porcelain and earthenware-populate a series of case studies drawn from European, Mesoamerican, and East Asian workshops. In addition to learning about what goes into making these works, students will trace the geographies of materials, and the ways in which materials, format, and durability all affect the viewer's experience. Students will read, analyze, and discuss current research on the makings of art, on theories of the materiality of art, and problems in art conservation-and will participate in close examination of works in local museums and special collections. This course will introduce students to some of the central topics in early modern art history as it is practiced by scholars/historians *and* by archaeologists, museum curators, archivists, and conservators. Students will be introduced to a wide data set of objects and art works, and will learn how to analyze, articulate, discuss, and research aspects of their materiality. Rather than focusing on memorization, this course encourages using concepts from a set of assigned readings to reflect on the objects we discuss together. Students will work in small groups and as a class to advance their own vocabulary for and understanding of early modern materiality and experience. Prerequisites: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3654
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5682 Mirrors of Nature, Dreams of Art: Northern Renaissance Art
This course surveys the visual culture of the Netherlands and Germany from approximately 1400 to 1550: from Burgundian court culture around the time of Jan van Eyck to the fantastic works of Hieronymous Bosch to the international renown of imperial artist Albrecht Durer and later Flemish urban culture as represented by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Works in a variety of media will be presented in light of broader consideration of the role of art within devotional practice and the Reformation, courtly culture and the cultivation of artistic imagination, and the rise of print and "popular" culture. We will consider the power of images to mediate religous experience; the representation of folly and death; the social position of the artist; and the relevance of naturalism. We will also survey the predominant interpretive models that have been developed to analyze the significance of these works. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3682
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5683 Global Baroque: Art and World-Making
Europe and along Eurasian contact routes between 1500 and 1700 is a primary focus. The course will open with an examination of the significance of the early modern category of "the exotic" and the role of the exotic or foreign in shaping artistic and collecting practices during a period that tends to be studied with Europe at the center of the world. Throughout the semester, we will explore different modalities of "otherness," and the political stakes of representations of self and other within the context of early modern empire- and nation-building. We will analyze paintings, prints, drawings, sculptural objects, naturalia, featherwork, ceramics, porcelain, and textiles alongside primary sources, early modern history and art history, cultural and material history, the history of science, and maritime and diplomatic history. The course attends to the atrocities of slavery in the early modern world and trace the relationship of enslavement to procuring and appreciation of exotic materials. Lectures will incorporate contemporary art (installations, photography, collage, and painting) that actively engages the modern era. The course involves close study of works of art in local collections, and will include visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum, where students will be introduced to the extraordinary holdings, in particular the Phoebe Dent Weil and Mark S. Weil collection of early modern prints, drawings, and sculpture. Prerequisites: One 100- or 200-level course in Art History; or permission of the instructor
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3683
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5684 Picturing Race in the Early Modern World
Many social and cultural roots of modern Western European and American conceptions of race and ethnicity lie in the early modern era, when enslavement came integrally to be linked with Blackness and ideas-and representations-of power relied on a hierarchical politics of racialization and othering. Throughout the early modern era, in Renaissance and Baroque visual art, iterations of racialized identity took hold, in ways and by means this seminar will explore in depth. Through close analysis of paintings, sculptures, architectural and urban design, and the graphic arts, and with frequent reference to chronicles, literature, and legal language of the time, we will trace visual representations of racialized difference throughout the early modern (European) world and to the present. How did early modern European images participate in and help to form a visual culture of race? This seminar will explore fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European representations of racialized others by artists Albrecht Dürer, Hans Burgkmair, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt van Rijn, and others. We will also consider ethnographic imagery, maps, and other forms of representation-as well as responses by contemporary (20th- and 21st-century) artists to the conventions of "race-crafting" laid down in the early modern era. Geographically, the materials we study issue from western Europe and focus on encounters with Western Africa, but the seminar considers European engagement in the American colonies, Melanesia/Indonesia, the Atlantic and Brazil-and with the Islamic world. Prerequisites: One 100-level Art History course or permission of the instructor
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3684
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5720 Hydrogen Jukebox: American Art and Culture, 1945-1960
The rise and 'triumph' of Abstract Expressionism has long dominated the story of American art following World War II. This new seminar will put Abstract Expressionism into context with parallel developments in the arts, photography, and film. Among the topics we will consider: the conversation between émigré artists and American culture during and after the war; the emergence of a 'noir' aesthetic in film and literature; the early work of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and the so-called 'aesthetic of indifference' in relation to Ab. Ex.; artistic collaborations at Black Mountain College; New York school photography and photojournalism; and the cultural impact of the A bomb. PREREQUISITES: A 300-LEVEL COURSE ON 20TH CENTURY ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, OR HISTORY, OR PERMISSION OF THE INSTRUCTOR.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4721
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5746 California Dreamin': Los Angeles Culture and the Making of the 20th Century
"California Dreamin' delves into the many cultures of Los Angeles, a dynamic global city with its cultural origins in the early 20th century. Over its decades of development and transformation we will explore continuities and new directions. The region has always been an encounter zone: between indigenous cultures, colonizers from Mexico, Pacific rim, and Anglo settlers. How has this cultural richness taken different shapes over the course of the 20th century? LA offers an especially cogent site for understanding how a city with a very specific if layered urban identity has been constituted by and through representation. Over the semester we traverse a range of cultural texts--the arts and architecture, film, literature, and urbanism--where the image of the city has been shaped. The course asks how Los Angeles culture at various points struggled to find new articulations and avenues into the future, against the weight of its own defining histories. A week-long trip to Los Angeles -supported through our dedicated travel fund in AHA-will give students an opportunity to see firsthand how the presentday city and its many sectors find expression in the arts and visual culture, or give evidence of different realities. Prerequisite: Minor or major status in AHA; Any course in 20th c. American arts, literature, or film. Or permission by instructor
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4746
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5763 Bodymorph: Fantasy Worlds of American Visual Culture, Animation, and Product Design
This lecture and discussion-based course engages students in media beyond the fine arts, which shaped in fundamental ways how ordinary Americans experienced life during decades of dynamic change and modernization over the first half of the 20th century. We consider cartooning and animation, film, advertising, product design, department stores and the visual strategies of consumer culture, jazz aesthetics, the skyscraper city, and more. We set these new forms within broad changes in the rhythms of everyday life driven by industrialization and new technologies, as well as how filmmakers, animators, and artists both expressed these new realities, as well as how they turned in response to the handmade, the "primitive," and the embodied. We look at the uneasy exchanges between high art and mass media; and at the open borders between surrealism, advertising, and art. Prerequisites: Any introductory or 300-level course in Art History or American Culture Studies, History, or literature
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3763
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5783 The Modernist Project: Art in Europe and the United States, 1905-1980
This course surveys major tendencies in painting and sculpture, from Fauvism in France and Expressionism in Germany to the beginnings of Postmodernism in photo-based work in the United States. About two thirds of the course will treat European art, and about one third will treat American art. Photography, architecture, and work in other forms will be considered selectively when pertinent to the individual class topics. Within the lecture topics, emphasis is on avant-garde innovation; the tension in modernist art between idealism and critique; reaction by artists to current events; the relationship between art and linguistics, philosophy, literature, economics, and science; the role of geopolitics in art production; the intersections of art and society; the role of mass culture; issues of race and gender in the production and reception of art; and the challenge to the concept of authorship and creativity posed by Postmodernism at the end of this period. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3783
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5785 Photography in America
This course will consider the practice and use of photography in America, from its invention up to the present, and it will offer various ways of thinking about the medium and its relation to society and culture. Students will come to understand the ways photographic practices shape public perceptions of national identity, ethnicity and gender, nature, democratic selves, and a host of other concerns. We will discuss famous practitioners such as Matthew Brady, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, and Robert Frank. We consider not only the social and public uses of the medium (through such episodes as the New Deal/FSA and photojournalism) but also the private explorations of "fine art" photographers and the everyday practices of the snapshot. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3785
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5815 Rococo to Revolution: Art in Eighteenth-Century Europe
The Long Eighteenth Century serves as a bridge between two fundamentally different times. The Europe of 1700 was dominated by absolutism and the ancien régime. The Europe of 1800 was in an age of revolution. This course will explore the dramatic shift in artistic representation and individual self-conception that occurred throughout the century to usher in our modern age. Important topics to be considered include: the rise of the Academy; the Enlightenment and the Encyclopédie; the Grand Tour; Art and Science; and the French Revolution. Focusing on the development of artistic trends, the course will address transformations in painting, sculpture and architecture throughout Europe.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3815
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5860 Van Gogh: Creativity, Mythology, and Modern Art
Among the most famous artists of the canon of European modern art is Vincent van Gogh, known for his expressive paintings, his famous letters that chart his tumultuous career, and a short creative life marked by intense work, passionate interests in the modern art and literature of his time, and the challenges of a mental illness. This seminar will examine his art and literature in three sections: the first devoted to studying the art itself throughout his short career; the second devoted to the mythologies surrounding his art and its relationship to such notions as genius and madness; and the third looking at how his art has become a popular commodity, reproduced internationally by methods varying from precise painted replicas to commercially popular goods marked with his most famous paintings. The history and theory of modern commodity culture on a global scale and its intersection with a burgeoning art market for postimpressionist art will be explored in this final section. Prerequisites: L01 113 or L01 215 and one advanced course in art history, or permission of the instructor
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4860
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM, LCD Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5875 Rejecting Reason: Dada and Surrealism in Europe and the U.S.
In this multimedia interdisciplinary course, we will consider the history, theory, and practice of Dada and Surrealism, from its Symbolist and Expressionist roots at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century through its late expressions in the beat culture and pop art of the 1950s and 1960s. Dada's emergence in Zürich and New York in the midst of World War I set the tone for its stress on irrationality as an oppositional strategy. Surrealist research into the domain of the unconscious continued this extreme challenge to dominant culture but in a revolutionary spirit that proposed new possibilities for personal and collective liberation. The international character of the movements -- with substantial cross-transmission between Europe and the United States -- will be emphasized. Prerequisites: L01 113, Intro to Western Art; L01 215, Intro to Modern Art; or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3875
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 588 Contemporary Art
This course is a survey of global contemporary art from 1970 to the present. Topics include happenings, minimalism, body art, and neo-expressionism as well as their placement in their social and political contexts. Prerequisite: One course in Art History at the 100 or 200 level.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 388
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM, IS EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5892 Modern Sculpture
This course will survey sculpture in Europe and the United States from about 1800 to the present, with an emphasis on the period from 1890 to 1980. A rapid traverse of Neoclassicism, Realism, and the rage for statuary during the later 19th century will take us to the work of Rodin and to a more systematic exploration of developments in the sculpture of the 20th century. Particular emphasis will also be placed upon the work of Brancusi, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, Giacometti, Oppenheim, David Smith, Serra, Morris, Judd, Hesse, and Bourgeois. An important theme running through the course as a whole -- from an age of nationalism and manufacturing to our own time of networks and information -- is the changing definition of sculpture itself within its social and political context. We will also explore various new artistic practices (e.g., video, performance, installations, body art) and interrogate their relationship to sculptural tradition and innovation. Prerequisite: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3892
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, GFAH BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5914 Beyond Limits: Transgression, Controversy, and Censorship in Modern Art
This course will examine some of the public controversies that surrounded the development of modern art over the last 150 years to probe the question of the social and political functions of transgressive art. After reviewing key theories of the avant-garde, we analyze both the persona of the modern artist (e.g., Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock) and the place of women artists in the revolutions of modernism (e.g., Cassatt, Hoch, Kahlo). A key issue to address is how modernism tests limits by asking what is (and is not) art (e.g., Duchamp, Brancusi). Some of the most controversial exhibitions in this time frame, from the Salon des Refuses in 1863 to Mirroring Evil in 2002, highlight the challenges raised by modern artists' treatment of the body. Controversies over public funding of contemporary art, debates waged over public art in St. Louis, and the recent episodes of iconoclasm with respect to Confederate monuments and memorials will close the course. Prerequisites: L01 215 and any 300-level course in Art History or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4914
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, GFAH, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5918 Modern War in Art
Art and war have always been intertwined, whether in glory or revulsion. But modern art and modern war are qualitatively different from their counterparts in the past in ways that ensured that their relationship would become more problematic and oppositional. The challenge of finding new artistic languages to express the new conditions of mechanized combat led many artists to explore abstraction, fragmentation, absurdity or arbitrariness to convey the energy, impersonality and nihilism of modern war. When the British soldier and poet Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) wrote of the human devastation of World War I as "obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud," he strained for metaphoric language appropriate to its magnitude. We will consider the same challenge to visual artists throughout the modern period. Prerequisites: Intro to Western Art (L01 113) or Intro to Modern Art (L01 215); one 300-level course in Art History preferred; or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4918
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: AH, GFAH, HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 595 Qualifying Papers for the MA degree
Every student fulfilling the requirements of the MA degree in the Department of Art History and Archaeology will prepare two Qualifying Papers (QP), each 25-30 pages. Together the QPs will constitute the capstone experience of the MA degree, and a demonstration of potential for more advanced graduate work. Prereq: Art History graduate status in good standing.
Credit 3 units.
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L01 Art-Arch 5961 Art & Ecology
This course provides an overview of the twentieth-century history and contemporary debates concerning art and ecology. It begins with the nuclear age in the postwar United States and the Pacific, on through the techno-utopian "hippie modernist," Land Art, and early ecological movements of the 1960s. We situate contemporary "eco art" within this longer historical context, as well as climate science and politics. This course takes a case study approach, with one "key" artwork each class period, around which we will build context and trace relevant connections. Students will be responsible for identifying key artworks and articulating their significance on the exams. We will also locate eco art discourse within our St. Louis context, undertaking a site-specific project during the course of the semester. Undergraduate Prerequisites: one introductory Art History course or permission of the instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3961
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5973 New Media, New Technologies
In the summer of 2013, Random International's "Rain Room" was installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lines to experience the sensation of being rained on without getting wet ranged up to seven hours at times. This merging of new technology with the gallery space proved irresistible, but it also raises questions as to the uses of technology in contemporary art and whether or not this could be much more than a gimmick. As one Yelp reviewer put it, "The Rain Room is definitely an experience. Let's be honest... I'm mostly upset that I didn't get a cool, new Facebook profile pic out of it." This course will consider technological developments in modern and contemporary art -- including photography, video and new media, and digital and Internet art -- as well as forays into new technology that blur the lines between art and science. Prerequisite: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3973
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5975 Art and Activism
This course will examine political and social activism in art and visual culture, focusing on the role that visual representation has played in social movements and how artists/activists have employed visual media to challenge and resist dominant visual representations and political formations. We explore key theoretical developments in activist discourse as well as the role of art practices and aesthetic commitments in these developments. This course seeks to represent the development of the relation of art and activism in its broadest intellectual and cultural context within the 20th century and to encourage an appreciation of the complex array of disciplinary perspectives that are implicated in this development. Prerequisite: L01 113, L01 215, or permission of instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 3975
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Art: AH, CPSC, HUM BU: HUM EN: H
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L01 Art-Arch 5977 Mapping Art, Race, & Community in the US-Mexico Borderlands
This upper-level undergraduate seminar will delve into the history of "border art" as a category, whether in terms of public art, sculpture, installation, new media, or performance, using the U.S.-Mexico border as an extended in-depth case study. Students will collaborate to add to an ongoing mapping project of community engaged art on the border and create multimedia materials to augment or interpret the data as they see fit. As such, this course builds Digital Humanities practices and methodologies throughout the semester. Students in the course will also work to map race and population data along with their chosen artworks. In doing so, the course challenges students to think beyond U.S.-centric concepts of race and ethnicity and explore how the "third space" of the border shapes artistic practices and approaches to community. Prerequisites: One introductory Art History course or permission of the instructor.
Same as L01 Art-Arch 4977
Credit 3 units. A&S IQ: HUM Arch: HUM Art: HUM EN: H
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