H101 History of Art and Visual Culture Fall, 2015

Lecture: T + TH 11:20 - 12:20 RISD Auditorium

Section: 1 ½ hour various times and locations. Consult your class schedule
Course Staff:

Lecturers: Professor Mary Bergstein, Professor Bolaji Campbell, Professor Daniel Harkett, Professor, Leora Malz Leca, Professor Ijlal Muzaffar and Professor Susan Ward

Section Instructors: Professor Katheryn Howley, Professor Pascale Rihouet, Professor Suzanne Scanlan, Professor Rachel Silberstein, Professor Esther Thyssen, Professor Elena Varshavskaya, Professor Fatimeh Abbas Zahed and the course lecturers.
Course Coordinator: Professor Susan Ward (slward@risd.edu)

Course Description

History of Art and Visual Culture 101 is an introduction to global issues in art and visual culture. The course does not and does not intend to provide comprehensive art historical coverage. Its goals are to present elements of the world visual traditions and to introduce basic methodology to interpret them. With these tools in hand, students will be in the position to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters.

15% Attendance & Participation

15% First paper. Deadline: due the week of Oct. 1

25% Midterm exam: the week of Oct. 15

15% Second paper. Deadline: due the week of Nov .19

30% FINAL EXAM: THURSDAY DEC 10 2015

Per RISD policy, each student is allowed a total of two unexcused absences from lecture or section meeting. Each unexcused absence beyond this limit will reduce your attendance grade by a third of a letter grade. To have your absence excused in case of a personal emergency, you must contact the instructor as soon as possible and provide documentation of your emergency.

Please arrive on time for section meetings and lectures. Late arrivals disrupt the class and will affect your grade negatively. A late arrival might count as an unexcused absence.

Class participation is a vital element of this course. Our goal is to have lively discussions of the images, readings, and relevant issues. You should see effective participation as both an aid to learning and a skill that can be learned.

Willet, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
If you have never taken an art history course there are several excellent art history textbooks. We recommend: Stokstad, Marilyn & Michael W. Cothren. Art: A Brief History. Boston: Pearson, 2012.

The books listed above are on reserve at the RISD LIBRARY.

Papers should be typed in twelve-point Times New Roman font and double-spaced. Margins should be one inch on all sides. Use the Chicago Manual of Style humanities style for citations. For a brief guide, with examples, go to:

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Assignments

All assignments should be completed in time and handed in on the date specified on the syllabus. Late papers will be downgraded by a third of a letter grade per day of delay. For example, a B paper that is one day late will get a B-; if it is three days late, it will receive a C. All papers should be submitted in print and stapled unless otherwise specified by the instructor.

Exams must be taken on the date and time specified on the syllabus. Students are not entitled to a make-up exam except in properly documented emergencies. If you have an emergency, you must contact the instructor as soon as possible. Students who fail both exams, fail the class regardless of grades in other assignments.

Students are expected to be honest in their work and not engage in cheating, plagiarism or other forms of academic dishonesty. For further specifics see RISD’s Academic Code of Conduct: http://www.risd.edu/Policies/Academic/Code_of_Conduct/

Reading: Alexandra Peers, “Canon Fodder.” http://www.artnews.com/2006/02/01/canon-fodder/

Week 2

Tues. Sept 15 Lecture 2: Classical Art, Professor Bergstein

Marguerite Yourcenar, That Mighty Sculptor,

Optional reading: Ingrid Rowland, "The Grandest Sculpture of the

Ancients", NewYork Review of Books, August2015. 

http://www.nybooks.com/shared/1aa754fc99e7cf3b62af9432f13aebab

Thurs. Sept 17 Lecture 3: Why won’t classical architecture go away? Professor Muzaffar

Reading: Sophia Psarra. “The Parthenon and the Erechtheion: the architectural formation of place, politics, and myth.” Journal of Architecture 9 (Spring 2004): 77-104.
Week 3

ART AND RELIGION

Tues. Sept 22 Lecture 4: The Christian Basilica, Professor Ward

Reading: Roger Stalley, “The Christian Basilica,” Chapter 1, Early Medieval Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 17-36
Thurs. Sept 24 Lecture 5: Rock Art: Professor Campbell

Reading: Willett, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002. Pp. 42-61

Week 4

Tues. Sept. 29 Lecture 6: Islamic Art and Architecture, Professor Ward

Thurs. Oct. 1 Lecture 7 Masking Traditions: Honoring Our Mothers Professor Campbell

Reading: Willett, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson,

2002. Pp. 130-149; 157-170

Week 5

Reading: Illene Forsyth, “The Ganymede Capital at Vézelay,” Gesta 15 (1976): 241-246.

Thurs. Oct. 8 Lecture 9 Sculptures of Ancient Nigeria: Nok, Igbo Ukwu, Ife, and

Benin, Professor Campbell

Reading: Willett, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002. Pp. 63-75; 97-103

Week 6

Reading: Maria Loh, “Outscreaming the Laocoön: Sensation, Special Effects and the Moving Image.” Oxford Art Journal, 34 (2011): 393-414.

Sorabella, Jean. "The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. (January 2008).

Department of European Paintings. "The Papacy and the Vatican Palace". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(October 2002).

Department of European Paintings. "The Rediscovery of Classical Antiquity". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(October 2002).

Bambach, Carmen. "Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(October 2002).

Readings: Patricia Fortini Brown, “Venezianità: The Otherness of the Venetians,” from Art and Life in Renaissance Venice. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. Map and pp. 1-37.

Carboni, Stefano, and Trinita Kennedy, and Elizabeth Marwell. "Islamic Art and Culture: the Venetian Perspective". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(March 2007).

Carboni, Stefano, and Trinita Kennedy, and Elizabeth Marwell. "Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(March 2007).

Carboni, Stefano, and Trinita Kennedy, and Elizabeth Marwell. "Venice's Principal Muslim Trading Partners: the Mamluks, the Ottomans, and the Safavids". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(March 2007).

Week 7

Reading: Félibien des Avaux, André. From the preface to Conférence de l’Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (1669), translated by Linda Walsh. In Art and Its Histories: A Reader, edited by Steve Edwards. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999: 34-36

“David Commemorates the Martyrs of the Revolution.” In Neoclassicism and Romanticism, 1750-1850, edited by Lorenz Eitner. Vol. 1. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970: 132-34.
Thurs. Oct. 22 Lecture 13 Representing the Modern City Professor Harkett

Reading Extract from Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life.” In The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne. New York: Da Capo Press, 1986: 5-15.

Tues. Oct. 27 Lecture 14 The Avant-Garde and the Female Nude, Professor Harkett

Reading: “Various authors on Manet’s Olympia.” In Art in Theory, 1815-1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, with Jason Gaiger. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, 514-519.

Thurs. Oct. 29 Lecture 15 Bauhaus and the Making of the Modern Subject,

Professor Muzaffar

Readings: Leah Dickerman, "Bauhaus Fundamentals." In Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity, edited by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Pp. 15-39.

Week 9

MODERNISM AND ITS OTHERS
Tues. Nov. 3 Lecture 16 The Social History of Photography, Professor Bergstein

Reading: Susan Sontag. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and

Giroux, 1977.
Thurs. Nov 5 Lecture 17 Modernism and Colonialism, Professor Maltz-Leca

Reading: Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Going Native.” Art in America 77(1989): 118-129.

Week 10

Le Corbusier, Professor Muzaffar

Reading (ONLINE RESOURCE): 
Loos, Adolf. “Ornament and Crime (1908).” In Programs and manifestoes on 20^th-century architecture, edited by Ulrich Conrads.
Thurs. Nov. 12 Lecture 19 Modernism and Abstraction, Professor Maltz-Leca

Reading: Malevich, Kazimir. Suprematism

Mondrian, Piet. Natural Reality and Abstract Reality (1919)

Week 11

Harkett No Reading

Professor Maltz-Leca

Reading: Anne M. Wagner, “Warhol Paints History, or Race in America.” Representations 55 (1996): 98-119.

Week 12

Capital Cities to Slums in the Third World, Professor Muzaffar

Reading: Rem Koolhaas, "Lagos: Harvard Project on the City," in

Mutations. Barcelona: ACTAR, 2000. Pp. 651-719.

Vikramaditya Prakash “Introduction,” in Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: the Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001.

Week 13

Professor Maltz-Leca

Reading: Hal Foster, "Postmodernism: 1984" Art Since 1900. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2005.
Thurs. Dec. 3 Lecture 24 Contemporary Art in and Out of Africa: Diasporic Resonance, Professor Campbell

Readings: Frank Willett. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson,

2002. Pp. 220-255

Week 14