A conceptual, cross cultural introduction to Amerind, Eskimo, African, and Oceanic arts: artists, sculpture, festivals, body decoration, masking, architecture, and painting will be seen in the context of social and religious values. Films, slides, and museum tours.
GE: F, NWC
A selective chronological survey of architecture and urban design in social and historical context. Individual buildings and urban plans from the past to the present will be used as examples.
GE: WRT, F.
A critical survey of the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century photography as an art form. The course will focus on the technical, social/historical and aesthetic aspects of the medium.
The text for the course is the third edition of Naomi Rosenblum's "A World History of Photography." Exams consist of slide identifications, comparison/contrasts and essays (all images are posed on the course website).
A research paper or photography project is required.
GE: WRT, F.
The dramatic developments in central-Italian art from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries are presented against a historical background: emergent capitalism, the gradual replacement of feudal authority with representative governments, popular religious movements and the first stirrings of humanism.
Painting and sculpture in Italy from the late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century examined in its cultural, political, and religious contexts, with emphasis on the relationship between the arts. Artists studied include Carracci, Caravaggio, Bernini, Cortona and Poussin. GE: F.
***note the first class meeting will be Wednesday, October 4th.
Painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe from 1750 to 1810. Topics will change but may include art and the French Revolution and neoclassicism.
Prerequisite: not open to freshmen.
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movement in France from 1863 through the first decade of the twentieth century and the advent of Cubism. Will include the work of Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin and Seurat.
By comparing the transformations visited upon these two great and ancient cities, this course aims to develop general insights into how modernity has transformed the idea of the city itself. Close attention to social, political, aesthetic, and economic contexts, as well as to specific monuments, town-planning initiatives, and individual architects and planners.
This course provides an introduction to African art through analysis of African visual culture and symbol systems. It evaluates African art in relation to the history and diversity of the continent and also in relation to perceptions and representation of Africa deriving from its encounter with occidental cultures both in antiquity and from the late 15th century into the contemporary era. African arts deploy sophisticated structures of symbolic communication whose meanings are not exhausted by an appeal to aesthetics defined in terms of European notions of "beauty and ugliness". For this and other reasons, an understanding of African aesthetic forms and structural languages are vital to any comprehension of African culture. This course thus provides a cross-cultural survey of aesthetic conventions and styles of African art using examples drawn from the entire continent Prerequisite: Not open to freshmen. GE: F, NWC.
Introduction to 2D/3D Visualizations in Architecture (late addition)
White
The course develops skills in reading, interpreting, and visualizing 3D objects and spaces by offering exercises in sketching, perspective, orthographic projections, isometric drawings, and manual rendering practices. Relevant for those interested in history of architecture, architecture, sculpture, and such spatial practices as installations and public art. Recommended for the Architecture and Environment Emphasis.
Under the supervision of art history faculty, students may obtain credit for work in a museum, gallery, or art related business. One hour/week/unit internship, plus weekly meetings and final evaluation session. Written report required. Prerequisites: Not open to freshmen. Consent of instructor. Department approval. 3.0 grade-point average. No more than 4 units applicable to the major.
This course will examine the emergence and development of museums of art in eighteenth-century Europe, tracing their origins to the private collections from which they evolved and studying the cultural practices, such as tourism, that stimulated their growth. Prerequisites: Not open to freshmen. GE: F
***note the first class meeting will be Wednesday, October 4th.
Study of central intellectual and aesthetic trends in the late Soviet period and in contemporary post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. Analysis of literary texts and the visual arts. Taught in English. Prerequisites: Upper-division standing. GE: F, WRT.
Irreverence and Iconoclasm
This seminar will focus on questions of defacement and iconoclasm, two issues characterizing many avant-garde movements of the 20th century. Whether attacking artistic conventions or political regimes, art movements such as Dada or Abstract Expressionism could be understood as iconoclastic in nature. However, iconoclasm is not unique to avant-garde movements -- witness the number of works that have been destroyed or suppressed by the State because they are thought to be morally unacceptable or even dangerous. Looking at some key examples across the 20th century, the class will examine the ways in which the "power of images" is understood by both
avant-gardes and the regimes they ostensibly threaten.
Requirements: Class participation is essential and attendance mandatory; weekly discussions will focus on readings and writing techniques, with a final paper or project that addresses the themes developed throughout the course.
In this seminar we will concentrate on a central issue of art museums: the permanent collection. We will proceed along two lines of inquiry and method, to arrive at some critical understanding of the ways museum collections shape the canon of art history. Along one path we will look at the historical evolution of collecting and museums, and the development of ideas of connoisseurship, from the nineteenth century to the present. Along the other path, we will go through a series of hands-on (or rather, eyes-on) workshops, looking at various kinds of material and considering questions of technique, conservation, attribution and quality-traditionally the answers that connoisseurship promised the faithful practitioner of this science. The goal of the seminar is three-fold: to give you some
practical experience in connoisseurship, to demystify it, and to place it
historically within the context of both academic art history and the art
museum. We will be working primarily with UCSB's University Art Museum collections, which have some depth in prints and drawings, but we will also take field trips to the Getty and to LACMA. Approximately half the time of the seminar will be spent in these collections.
Introduction to art-historical methods, with emphasis on the historical development of current practices, critical theory, debates within the field, and cross-disciplinary dialogues. Prerequisite: graduate standing.
Can Culture Count? Episodes from the 1930s in France
This seminar focuses on the strategies developed by competing avant-gardes in the 1930s in France. Of particular interest will be the ways in which various groups and artists -- e.g. Surrealists, Abstractionists, the School of Paris, Picasso and Matisse -- handled a moment of intense political crisis in France and ultimately, throughout Europe as a whole. A key issue to be addressed is the pervasive sense of powerlessness characterizing the period. In particular, the seminar will examine the concept of virility, a recurrent term featured in aesthetic and political discourse of the time. Looking at literature, popular magazines (such as the photojournal Vu), avant-garde publications and imagery, the seminar uses an interdisciplinary
approach to understand how, in this critical decade, artists and
intellectuals sought to make culture "count" in the formation of political and social structures. Readings will include Dudley Andrew and Steven Ungar's Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture; Michel Leiris's Manhood and a number of other selections from journals, artists and writers of the period. Reading knowledge of French is recommended.
Requirements include: weekly participation and three very short formal analyses of designated images; at the end of the quarter, an oral presentation of research, followed by a written paper of that research. Students will be called upon to act as editors and respondents to one another's work, and to weekly readings.
Prerequisite: Graduate standing.
Spatial Culture: Approaches to
the Study of Architecture and Space
Special research in the history of architecture.
This graduate seminar will explore different methodological approaches to the study of architecture, urbanism, and spatial practice. The emphasis will be on post-1800 theorization of history, material culture, and memory as key ingredients for our understanding of spatiality. We will begin with David Harvey's "New Imperialism" (2003) and read seminal works in historical materialism, material culture studies, literary studies, and post-colonial theory.
Requirement: Conscientious and intensive reading, weekly response papers, and dedicated class participation.
The expansion of printing, from Renaissance publications to the 19th-century penny press, has long been recognized as foundational to the modern world. Drawing on critical theory, historical scholarship, and primary sources, this seminar explores how printed texts and images, as well as the larger social transformations wrought by printing, have affected architectural thought and
practice. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.
From classical antiquity to the present, Western art has been preoccupied with the representation of the human body, whether in idealizing, abstracting or “realist” forms. But inasmuch as the human body—male or female—is dense with associations, always and already inscribed with meanings (both conscious and unconscious), its figural representation is a complex and multivalent affair. It is Western art alone that developed the concept of the nude (as opposed to the depiction of an unclothed or naked body) as a specific type of representation. In this sense, we might think of the nude as the aesthetic, and more or less idealized representation of the human. But its taken-for-granted status tends to make us think of “the nude” as a given, rather than a historically mutable, contested, and indeed, highly charged form of representation.
In this seminar, we will be considering the nature and terms of the nude (male and female) during three hundred years of French art, theory, pedagogy and criticism. In the post-Renaissance European world, it was arguably France that produced the greatest numbers of paintings and sculptures featuring male or female nudes. This was in part the consequence of the “hierarchy of genres,” codified by the Académie Royale des beaux arts (established in 1646) within which history painting occupied the summit. And because this genre required full scale figures, mastery of the nude was a sine qua non for the aspiring artist. Second, the prestige of classical antiquity fostered the emulation of classical art, in which the male nude was a central form. Third, the French state (and church) were major sources of commissions, thus providing opportunities for large-scale figure works. But in the 19 th century, even when history and religious art was gradually eclipsed, the nude (primarily the female nude) remained a central motif for artists of all stylistic stripes; realists, romantics, impressionists, symbolists, fauves, etc., etc. Nevertheless, and throughout this lengthy history, the nude was periodically a source of controversy or difficulty, be it on the grounds of “decorum” or “indecency.” Which is top say that Western Christian culture has always had its problems with the body, no matter how elevated or ideal, and these “problems” are as interesting to consider as are its celebrations.
The seminar will thus focus on three aspects of the nude in France: academic theories, Salon criticism, and official dictates about its “proper” representation; the significance of the historical shift from male to female nudes at the beginning of the 19 th-century, the “banalization” of the female nude in 19 th-century mass culture, and last, the psychoanalytic, social and cultural implications of this most durable form of representation and its relations to [changing] concepts of gender and sexuality.
Requirements for the seminar are reading knowledge of French and the production of a 12-15 page seminar paper at the end of the quarter After the first few meetings, students are required to give class presentations based on assigned readings. Graduate students from other disciplines are welcome, and may if they wish work with literary or textual sources instead of visual representation. Prerequisites: graduate standing.
