ARTH 10100. Introduction to Art. 100 Units.

This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and appreciation when dealing with a variety of visual art forms. It encourages the close analysis of visual materials, explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given work of art, and examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study of art. Most importantly, the course encourages the understanding of art as a visual language and aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Examples draw on local collections.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, this course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 14105. Introduction to Roman Art and Archaeology. 100 Units.

This course offers a survey of the art and archaeology of the Roman world from the founding of Rome in the eighth century BC to the Christianization of the Empire in the fourth century AD. Students will witness the transformation of Rome from a humble village of huts surrounded by marshland in central Italy into the centripetal force of a powerful Empire that spanned mind-bogglingly distant reaches of space and time.Throughout the course, we will consider how the built environments and artifacts produced by an incredible diversity of peoples and places can make visible larger trends of historical, political, and cultural change. What, we will begin and end by asking, is Roman about Roman art?

Instructor(s): P. Crowley      Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 14113

ARTH 14200. From Missionary Images to Image Explosion: Introduction to Medieval Art. 100 Units.

This course explores the challenging world of medieval art. Beginning with the fourth-century fusion of Imperial and Christian images and ending with the advent of print, we trace how images and art-making took on new roles—and re-invented old ones—over the course of the Middle Ages. We consider architecture, sculpture, wall-painting, manuscript painting, stained glass, metalwork, and textiles in their historical contexts, questioning why medieval objects look the way they do and how they were seen and used by medieval viewers. Readings include medieval sources (in translation) and exemplary modern scholarship.

Instructor(s): A. Kumler     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 14307-14407. Greek Art and Archaeology I-II.

Greek Art and Archaeology

ARTH 14400. Italian Renaissance Art. 100 Units.

This course is a selective survey of the major monuments, personalities, and issues in the Italian art from around 1400 to 1550. At the same time, it attempts to introduce students with little or no background in art history to approaches, methods, or tools for looking at, thinking about, even responding to works of art. The origins and value of broad style groupings such as Late Gothic, Early Renaissance, High Renaissance and Mannerism are critically examined, though we concentrate on fewer artists and works rather than attempt a uniform survey of the vast body of material at the core of the Western tradition. We also examine the invention and development of distinctive artistic types and their association with particular moments in history ("sacred conversation" altarpiece, centrally planned church, landscape painting). A major theme of the course is the changing social context for the practice of art and with it the evolving nature of artistic creativity. Where possible, students are asked to supplement their close study of the imagery with contemporary written documents (e.g., contracts, letters, theoretical texts). The ability to talk critically and creatively about text and image is the focus of required biweekly section meetings.

Instructor(s): C. Cohen     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 14505. The Global Middle Ages: Visual and Intercultural Encounters. 100 Units.

Focusing on the art and architecture of the Mediterranean and Middle East, this course examines how the mobility of objects, people, and social practices remapped cultural boundaries. We will investigate cultures of contact through topics such as cultural cross-dressing, gift exchange, visual translation, and the reuse of objects. By combining case studies of artifacts with critical readings of comparative and theoretical work drawn from a variety of academic disciplines, we will also consider how work on modern cultures can inform interpretations of cultural production and experience before the modern “global age.”

Instructor(s): H. Badamo     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 15500. 19th Century Art. 100 Units.

This course provides a critical survey of the major developments in 19th-century European art. We will look at stylistic transformations in art of the period within their broader cultural, historical, and political contexts. A strong emphasis will be put on close examination of works of art in different media (painting, sculpture, drawing, print) and thinking about them through various interpretive models. While doing so we will be addressing questions of modernism, artistic innovation and relation to tradition, genre definitions, and public versus private settings of display. Artists to be discussed include Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault, Eugène Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, Honoré Daumier, Gustave Courbet, August Rodin, Eduard Manet, Edgar Degas, Adolph Menzel, Odilon Redon, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van-Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and others.

Instructor(s): T. Mayer     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 15600. Twentieth-Century Art. 100 Units.

Focusing on the interrelationships between avant-garde culture and the emerging mass cultural formations of industrializing societies in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America, our survey will address a wide range of historical and methodological questions: the impact of new technologies of production, the utopian projects of the Euro-American avant-gardes, the transformation of modernist conceptions of artistic autonomy, the changing roles of cultural institutions, the construction of social Others, the formation of new audiences, and the rise of “contemporary art.” Prior knowledge of art history not required.

Instructor(s): L. Lee     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 15780. Modern Art from the Enlightenment until Today. 100 Units.

Surveying the history of modern Western art from the 18th through the 21st century, this course will introduce students to the artists, art works, and issues central to the relationship between art and modernity: the rise of the self and identity politics, the growth of the metropolis, the questioning of the "real" and the invention of photography, the autonomous thrust and semiotic potential of abstraction, the political ambitions of the avant-garde, and the impact of consumer and media cultures. Most discussion sections will center around original works of art and take place in the Smart Museum of Art.

Instructor(s): C. Mehring     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 16100. Art of Asia: China. 100 Units.

This course is an introduction to the arts of China focusing on major monuments and artworks produced in imperial, aristocratic, literati, religious, and public milieus. Lectures will reconstruct the functions and the meanings of objects, to better understand Chinese culture through the objects it produced.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16100

ARTH 16413. Maya Art and Architecture. 100 Units.

This course provides an introduction to the art of the ancient Maya of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras from the first millennium BC to the time of the Spanish invasion. Beginning with the earliest developments of monumental art and architecture, studying through the competition between flourishing city-states, and examining moments of contact with other regions of Mesoamerica, this course examines topics such as architecture and urbanism, courtly and sacred arts, word and image, and the relationship between art and identity.

Instructor(s): C. Brittenham     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): LACS 16413

ARTH 16709. Islamic Art and Architecture, 1100 to 1500. 100 Units.

This course surveys the art and architecture of the Islamic world from 1100 to 1500. In that period, political fragmentation into multiple principalities challenged a deeply rooted ideology of unity of the Islamic world. The course of the various principalities competed not only in politics but also in the patronage of architectural projects and of arts (e.g., textiles, ceramics, woodwork, arts of the book). While focusing on the central Islamic lands, we consider regional traditions from Spain to India and the importance for the arts of contacts with China and the West.

Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): NEHC 16709,NEAA 10630

ARTH 16800. Arts of Japan. 100 Units.

This course surveys the arts of the Japanese archipelago through the study of selected major sites and artifacts. We will consider objects in their original contexts and in the course of transmission and reinterpretation across space and time. How did Japanese visual culture develop in the interaction with objects and ideas from China, Korea, and the West? Prehistoric artifacts, the Buddhist temple, imperial court culture, the narrative handscroll, the tea ceremony, folding screens, and woodblock prints are among the topics covered.

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16806

ARTH 16910. Modern Japanese Art and Architecture. 100 Units.

This course takes the long view of modern Japanese art and architecture with a focus on the changing relationships between object and viewer in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beginning in the late eighteenth century with the flowering of revivalist and individualist trends and the explosion of creativity in the woodblock prints of Hokusai and others, we will then turn to examine Western-style architecture and painting in the late nineteenth century; socialism, art criticism, and the emergence of the avant garde in the early twentieth century. Also covered are interwar architectural modernism, art during World War II, and postwar movements such as Gutai and Mono-ha. No familiarity with art history or Japan is required.

Instructor(s): C. Foxwell     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 14000 through 16999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 16910

ARTH 17107. Chinese Calligraphy and Civilization. 100 Units.

If the invention of writing is regarded a mark of early civilization, the practice of calligraphy is a unique and sustaining aspect of Chinese culture. This course introduces concepts central to the study of Chinese calligraphy from pre-history to the present. We discuss materials and techniques; aesthetics and communication; copying/reproduction/schema and creativity/expression/personal style; public values and the scholar's production; orthodoxy and eccentricity; and official scripts and the transmission of elite culture through wild and magic writing by "mad" monks.

Instructor(s): P. Foong     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 17107

ARTH 17205. Islamic Gardens in Landscape and Image. 100 Units.

Garden imagery is ubiquitous in the art and architecture of the Islamic world from the eighth century to the eighteenth, and from Spain to India. The poetic trope whereby a visually pleasing object or site is compared to the garden of paradise is equally ubiquitous. But does this imply any historical consistency in the significance of garden imagery, of actual gardens, or of the poetic trope? In this class we explore this question by examining both garden imagery and actual gardens from many different times and places in the Islamic world. How do their visual forms and cultural significance shift according to specific historical circumstances?

Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): NEAA 17205

ARTH 17207. Image and Word in Chinese Art. 100 Units.

The dynamic interplay between painting, poetry, and calligraphy in the Chinese tradition is encapsulated by Su Shi's observation that there is "poetry in painting, and painting in poetry." Further articulation of this truism requires us to examine developing modes of visual expression, and to define ways in which a painting might be "written," or a text "imaged." We consider case studies which demonstrate increasingly fluid negotiation between these mediums: from pictures that labor in "illustrative" juxtaposition with didactic texts (image vs. word), to representations of the natural world that are inscribed with poetry as sites of social and cultural identity (image cf. word), and which achieve formal and conceptual integration in expressive purpose (imageword).

Instructor(s): P. Foong     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): EALC 17207

ARTH 17310. Between the Agora and the Shopping Mall: The Social Construction of the City Square. 100 Units.

Centrally located open urban spaces have been dominant architectural and social features of western cities. By focusing on these urban gathering sites, this course explores a range of key historical moments in which different formations of the city square emerge (political, communal, royal, imperial, colonial, modernist, privatized, etc.). Its goal is to define a set of criteria for analyzing what constitutes a city square, how “public space” also has a history, how public monuments function over time, and how understanding the urban environment is always dependent on the intimate relationship between physical structures and spatial performances. It will consider, therefore, both the design morphology and the social configurations that infuse such spaces with meaning in any given context. Several site visits in the Chicago area will be scheduled.

Instructor(s): N. Atkinson     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 17410. Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago and Beyond. 100 Units.

This course looks at Wright's work from multiple angles. We examine his architecture, urbanism, and relationship to the built environment, as well as the socio-cultural context of his lifetime and legend. We take advantage of the Robie House on campus and of the rich legacy of Wright's early work in Chicago; we also think about his later Usonian houses for middle-income clients and the urban framework he imagined for his work (Broadacre City), as well as his Wisconsin headquarters (Taliesin), and spectacular works like the Johnson Wax Factory (a field trip, if funds permit), Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim Museum. By examining one architect's work in context, students gain experience analyzing buildings and their siting, and interpreting them in light of their complex ingredients and circumstances. The overall goal is to provide an introduction to thinking about architecture and urbanism.

Instructor(s): K. Taylor     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.
Equivalent Course(s): FNDL 20502

ARTH 17700. 19th Century Art in the Art Institute. 100 Units.

In this course, we will closely examine 19th century paintings and sculptures in the Art Institute of Chicago and seek to understand how and why art changed during this period. Topics to be considered include the meaning of stylistic innovation in the 19th century, the development and dissolution of the genres as landscape and portraiture, and varying conceptions of realism and abstraction. Most class sessions will be devoted to looking at works in the galleries of the Art Institute. Because attendance is mandatory, students should consider whether their schedules will allow time for traveling to and from the museum for class meetings. Assignments include three papers and a variety of written homework exercises.

Instructor(s): M. Ward     Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 17707. Materiality As Meaning: Art from 1950 to the Present. 100 Units.

This course investigates art after 1950 through specific ways artists have exploited non-traditional materials and their properties for symbolic significance and affective power. By working in chocolate or latex, urban detritus or industrial waste, painters and sculptors have not only pushed against conventional modes of art-making, but have responded to contemporary society. We will pay particular attention to the economic, political, and social contexts that give meaning to a given choice of artistic materials and means of production. Do such choices respond to post-war privation, to planned obsolescence in advanced capitalism, or to the impact of globalization on developing nations? Are they charged with private meaning or do they claim to have universal impact? How does exacerbated materiality alter viewer-object relations by eliciting affective responses like revulsion, alienation, identification, and attraction? This seminar will approach major American and European artistic movements after 1950—including arte povera, proto-pop, minimalism, process art, feminist performance, and installation art—through their expanded material repertoires.

Instructor(s): L. Lee     Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 17800. Leonardo and Michelangelo. 100 Units.

This course examines the art and personality of the two artists who are often considered the culminating figures of the Italian Renaissance with special attention to their identification as "High Renaissance" practitioners. We will try to understand the Florentine artistic and cultural context out of which these two near-contemporary, but very different, individuals emerged. Their careers will then be studied in the context of the other major centers in which they worked, especially Milan and Rome. We will concentrate on relatively few works, while taking seriously the attempt to introduce students with little or no background in art history to some of the major avenues for interpretation in this field including formal, stylistic, iconographical, psychological, social, and theoretical. Readings are chosen with this diversity of approach in mind. Special attention will also be given to the writings and drawings of the artists as means of thinking about their creative methods and the complex issue of artistic intention.

Instructor(s): C. Cohen     Terms Offered: Autumn

ARTH 17909. Sculptural and Spatial Practices in Modern and Contemporary Art. 100 Units.

This course will trace critical sculptural and spatial practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—from the readymade to the found object, from spatial construction to kineticism, and from site-specificity to installation art. These artistic practices amount to an interrogation of sculpture, which has resulted in the radical redefinition of its status, means, and meanings. We will attend to art historical discourse that grapples with sculpture’s transformation from relatively self-contained statuary to a range of artistic procedures that stress temporality, materiality, and interactivity. We will also consider the ways in which the sculptural discourse is entangled with theories regarding the commodity, collective and individual bodies, sites and places, architecture, and the public sphere.

Instructor(s): L. Lee     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): : Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 18109. Visual Style in Still and Moving Images. 100 Units.

The course surveys elements of styles and techniques common to the visual arts. We will discuss framing and editing, moment and movement, action and narration and other visual devices as used by artists, photographers, architects and filmmakers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Instructor(s): Y. Tsivian     Terms Offered: Spring
Note(s): Students must attend first class to confirm enrollment. For nonmajors, any ARTH 17000 through 18999 course meets the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 22609. Skills and Methods in Chinese Painting History. 100 Units.

This course aims to provide groundwork skills for conducting primary research in Chinese painting history. Emphasis will be on sinological tools and standard resources relevant to the study of early periods, especially the Song and Yuan Dynasty. To develop proficiencies in analyzing materials (silk, paper, mounting, ink, color) and investigating provenance (identifying seals, inscriptions). To gain familiarity with the scholarship on issues of connoisseurship, authenticity, and quality judgment. Weekly task-based reports. Final research paper.

Instructor(s): P. Foong     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 32609,EALC 20101,EALC 30101

ARTH 23300. Early Renaissance Art in Florence. 100 Units.

This course concentrates on two themes: (1) The origins of the Renaissance in Florence as seen in the painting and sculpture of the early fifteenth century, examined in the context of civic humanism and contemporary politics. (2) The diverse and often inconsistent responses of a second generation of artists to these radical ideas, especially in the linked areas of style and religious expression. Considerable attention will be given to the changing social status of the artist as manifested both in the theoretical writings and artists' working methods. The main personalities studied in the course are Masaccio, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Gentile da Fabriano, Lippi, Angelico, Uccello, Domenico Veneziano, Castagno, and Piero della Francesca. In addition to reading, students are expected to do a substantial amount of visual study.

Instructor(s): C. Cohen     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33300

ARTH 23601. Pre-Columbian Architecture in the Modern Imagination. 100 Units.

This seminar examines pre-Columbian architecture in the modern imagination (1521 to the present). One of the principal questions that this course addresses is: How and why is the architecture of the ancient Americas integral to the social, political, and cultural events of the modern period? To that end, we will analyze how this architecture is depicted in paintings, plaster molds, models, engravings, photographs, architectural drawings, archaeological illustration, and theater design. Through readings and discussions students will gain understanding of how each medium evokes ideas about the aesthetic character of pre-Columbian building forms and how these ideas support the theories and events of the modern period. Weekly readings and participation are required. A term paper will be due at the end of the quarter.

Instructor(s): J. Lopez     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 33601

ARTH 23903. Northern Renaissance Painting in Context. 100 Units.

The weekly seminar will be held at the Art Institute of Chicago. It will examine the activity of painters as designers and makers of works of art in northern Europe, particularly the Burgundian Netherlands, from about 1400 to 1530. Students will be introduced to the issues of historiography and documentation that surround the work of the pioneering painters of this period, notably Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden as well as their successors. Through discussion of workshop organization, painting process, and the connections between painting and other media including sculpture, tapestry design, and manuscript illumination, students will gain insight into the role of painting in this transitional period. The course will use the collections of the Art Institute and, when possible, the facilities of the Art Institute’s Conservation Department to trace the artist’s working process and to gain a sense of the degree to which paintings now displayed on the walls of a museum have been removed from their original context, either that of a larger, public multi-part work combining painting and sculpture, or a private object kept in a study and brought out for individual use.

Instructor(s): M. Wolff     Terms Offered: Spring

ARTH 24040. Making History, Painting in Eighteenth-Century France. 100 Units.

History painting is the object of our course. In particular, the crisis which affected history painting in eighteenth-century France: crisis of fable, crisis of narrative, crisis of pictorial verisimilitude. We focus on the genesis of history painting through the academic training and the artistic practice founded on imitation. We study the emergence of new features (lack of action, repetition, new temporality, hybridization) together with the emergence of a new conception of “novelty” or a new conception of painting as an object of sensual and sensitive pleasure. We consider material practices, theory of art, criticism, social and political involvements.

Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 34040

ARTH 24105. The Archaeology of Death in Ancient Rome. 100 Units.

This course serves as a general introduction to the commemoration of death in Roman funerary monuments, giving particular attention to the social bonds they were meant to express and reinforce through visual modes of address. Memorials dedicated by a socially diverse group of patrons including both elites and non-elites, metropolitan Romans and far-flung provincials, will be studied in relation to an equally diverse body of material evidence including tomb architecture and cemetery planning, inscriptions, sarcophagi and cinerary urns, and portraiture. The course will also take advantage of sites in Chicago such as Rosehill or Graceland Cemetery as important points of comparison with the ancient material.

Instructor(s): P. Crowley      Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): CLCV 24113

ARTH 24500. Arts in Italy and France in the 17th and 18th Centuries. 100 Units.

This course presents the evolution of the arts in Italy and France from the early 17th century through the 18th century, focusing on painting and sculpture. Through the lens of major artists and their works, we will examine a range of issues in the relations of art and society: the emergence of a new language in visual arts at the time of the Counter-Reform (from the Caracci reform and the Caravaggio naturalistic quest up to the establishment of Baroque), how art becomes an instrument of power under the absolutist government of Louis XIV, the increase in popularity of the genres mineurs during the 18th century, the development of the rococo figurative language (especially characterized by pleasant subjects and galant dimension), the emergence and establishment of a moral painting. Students will gain familiarity with the major artists and questions of the time; they will develop their ability to read critically, to look, and to analyze unfamiliar works of art.

Instructor(s): S. Caviglia-Brunel     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 34500

ARTH 24619. Visual and Material Perspectives on the Silk Road. 100 Units.

Arts and materials are always on the road, transferring and transforming. This material movement, along with customs, ideas, and beliefs, challenges modern national discourses of the history of art. As a superhighway of trade and of cultural exchange both on land and over sea, the Silk Road linked China and Japan to the Mediterranean World across Central Asia in ancient times. Following this famous road, this course explores how arts and materials move across space, from border to border, shaping and reshaping culture after culture over a long period of time. Focusing on the eastern part of the route that connects India, Central Asia, China, and Japan from antiquity to the medieval period, this course surveys a variety of artworks and visual materials not only in formal and iconographic terms but also in social, political, and particularly religious perspectives. Organized chronologically, geographically, and thematically, major works for study include cities, temples, caves, icons, relics, and tombs related to Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islamism that shaped the minds and lives of the people who spread along the route.

Instructor(s): J. Shi     Terms Offered: Autumn

ARTH 25005. Nineteenth-Century Prints. 100 Units.

Using a wide range of examples from the Smart Museum collection, this course will examine the various techniques, meanings, aspirations, and publics of nineteenth-century European printmaking, from the invention of lithography in 1798 to the color innovations of the 1890s. Among the topics to be investigated are prints as multiples; reproduction and originality; caricature; color in prints; the etching revival of the 1860s; and the practice of collecting. Students will not be expected to have any prior knowledge of prints or printmaking techniques but may benefit from a general acquaintance with nineteenth-century art. Major artists to be considered include Delacroix, Daumier, Whistler, Meryon, Buhot, Fantin-Latour, Tissot, Bonnard, and Toulouse-Lautrec. In part a history of nineteenth-century art told through prints, this course will give students the tools to recognize and identify traditional print media and to explore broader themes such as the illustrative and narrative function of prints; their relationship to other art forms; and their participation in discourses of scarcity and value. In concert with other course requirements, the class will make a visit to a local print dealer, propose an acquisition, and help prepare a small exhibition drawn from the Smart Museum’s holdings.

Instructor(s): A. Leonard     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 35005

ARTH 25608. History of Video Art. 100 Units.

Artist and critic Gregory Battcock wrote in the early 1970s, “Video art is art that will stretch the boundaries of the art world.” This course will take up Battcock’s polemic as a question: How did video promise to transform postwar art practice and criticism? We will focus primarily on the U.S. context during the period now described as early video: 1960s–1980s. Of particular interest will be video’s separation from (and continual return to) television—from transmissions of art on television to notions of artists' television. Additional topics include the influence of civil rights protest; expanded cinema and multi-channel environments; the circulation of early video in print formats; video collectives; exhibitions such as Software and Information; feminist performance; appropriation; installation and the rise of projection; and video as a paradigmatic instance of “social media.” We will also consider the particularity of early video in Chicago, from video synthesizers to the Video Data Bank.

Instructor(s): S. Nelson     Terms Offered: Autumn

ARTH 25800. 20th Century Performance Art. 100 Units.

Though encompassing a variety of activities, the term performance art generally refers to event-based practices in which the artist’s body functions as a medium. This course will introduce students to a number of performance art’s developmental trajectories, along with an equally expansive range of historical and conceptual frameworks through which to understand them. Focusing on performances both within and outside of major art centers throughout Europe and America, we will survey canonical movements and practitioners while also investigating less familiar practices. Special attention will be paid to the ways in which specific performances intersect with and, in some cases, productively complicate topics central to the study of modern and contemporary art, including spectatorship; presence and the body; materiality and dematerialization; participation and collectivity; spectacle and mass culture; autonomy and alienation; and the politics of representation. Artistic practices will be framed through readings drawn from the fields of art history, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and performance studies.

Instructor(s): M. Maydanchik     Terms Offered: Autumn

ARTH 27330. The White Cube. 100 Units.

Over roughly the past 80 years, the display of modern and contemporary art has become synonymous with the “white cube,” which may be broadly defined as an uncluttered gallery space with white or neutral walls; single-row displays of paintings or other two-dimensional artworks; flexible interior architecture (e.g., movable walls); and, oftentimes, natural overhead lighting. While the rough strokes of the white cube’s history are well known, this course asks questions in order to chart a more rigorous history and conceptualization of the white cube paradigm. To what extent, for example, did the white cube’s roots extend back before the late 19th century? How should we situate the white cube in relation to other display practices that emerged at roughly the same time? To what extent did the white cube paradigm and art-making practices dynamically reshape one another after World War II? And finally, despite the seeming reification of the white cube in art museums and galleries, how have artists, critics, and curators over the last three decades attempted to transform or otherwise problematize the white cube?

Instructor(s): M. Tymkiw     Terms Offered: Winter

ARTH 27404. Mapping the City: Avant-Garde Itineraries in Twentieth-Century Europe. 100 Units.

Taught in conjunction with the Smart Museum exhibition and events series, Interiors and Exteriors: Avant-Garde Itineraries in Postwar France, this course will examine the history of European avant-garde movements from their nineteenth-century origins through the postwar era. We will investigate how artists map social and psychological experience in their cities to forge collective subcultures that outline ideals for social transformation in journals, manifestos, and public interventions. This course will focus on the relationship between art, politics, and movements for social change as artists reach beyond painting and sculpture to adopt film, mass media, poetry, and performance into their work to articulate new relations between their public and their cities. We will visit local collections at the Art Institute of Chicago and Smart Museum and students will be encouraged to participate in two re-enacted performances that will be held on campus during Winter Quarter 2014.

Instructor(s): M. Sarvé-Tarr     Terms Offered: Winter

ARTH 28002. Islamic Art and Architecture of the Medieval Perso-Turkic Courts (11th–15th Centuries) 100 Units.

This course considers art and architecture patronized by the Seljuk, Mongol, and Timurid courts from Anatolia to Central Asia from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. While the princes of these courts were of Turkic and/or Mongol origin, they adopted many of the cultural and artistic expectations of Perso-Islamicate court life. Further, many objects and monuments patronized by these courts belong to artistic histories variously shared with non-Islamic powers from the Byzantine Empire to China. Questions of how modern scholars have approached and categorized the arts and architecture of these courts will receive particular attention. Each student will write a historiographic review essay with a research component.

Instructor(s): P. Berlekamp     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 38002,NEHC 28002,NEHC 38002

ARTH 28008. The Fifth Dimension. 100 Units.

The course is conceived to function as a research unit for the exhibition The Fifth Dimension, which unfolds at the Logan Center Gallery December 17, 2013, to February 16, 2014. During these two months, works by seven international artists will be introduced into the Logan Center Gallery and the Logan Center building in a sequence rather than simultaneously, opening up the temporal conventions of an exhibition and attempting the gradual build-up of an atmosphere. Also appearing as ghosts or inspirations are Lorado Taft, Marcel Duchamp, Constantin Brancusi, and Sun Ra. The question of time—often understood as the fourth dimension—or what it means to render time paradoxical, to “pass it” (Taft by way of Henry Austin Dobson) or to “forget it” (Sun Ra)—will continue to surface. But rather than agree on the properties of the fifth dimension, the seminar will attempt to extend the atmosphere of the exhibition. The proceedings of the seminar will be recorded. Weekly seminars will involve lectures, discussions, and critiques; trips to several key sites that serve as inspiration for the exhibition; and visits by participating artists. Assignments will explore various forms of research and writing to open up the process of speculation to critical scrutiny and processes of critical scrutiny to forms that expand the conventions of art/historical practice. Exhibition making—as a means of engaging with artists and foregrounding their works as distinct forms of knowledge and inquiry—will serve as a model.

Instructor(s): M. Szewczyk     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTV 28008,ARTH 38008,ARTV 38008

ARTH 28606. Early Twentieth-Century Urban Visions. 100 Units.

It is hard to understand contemporary architectural debate about how cities should develop without knowing its origins in the influential city planning proposals developed by architects and planners in pre–World War II Europe and North America. This course studies those foundations, looking at the period when modernist architects and intellectuals proclaimed the obsolescence of the metropolis just as it came to dominate the modern landscape. We will examine a variety of strategies devised to order or replace the metropolis during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ranging from the City Beautiful movement in Chicago, Camillo Sitte’s influential critique of Vienna’s Ringstrasse, and the English garden city alternative Lewis Mumford championed for the New York region, to Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City model displayed in New York’s Rockefeller Center. We conclude with urban renewal in New York and Chicago, and Jane Jacobs’s reaction. Course readings are in primary sources. Focusing on particular projects and their promulgation in original texts and illustrations, as well as in exhibitions and film, we will be especially concerned with their polemical purposes and contexts (historical, socio-cultural, professional, biographical) and with the relationship between urbanism and architecture.

Instructor(s): K. Taylor     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 38606

ARTH 28800. Art and Religion in Late Antiquity. 100 Units.

This course will explore the ways art helped to form and articulate religion in the late antique period, taking as its focus traditional forms of state and civic polytheism, the so-called mystery cults, late ancient Judaism, and the rise of Christianity. The material is vibrant and the problems profound—both empirically and as a heavily invested ancestral basis for many issues of current concern in the construction of modern identities. The theoretical prism through which the investigation will take place will be simultaneously an archaeologically nuanced art history of actual objects and sites, and a critical historiography of the constructions of religion in the period, awake to varieties of apologetic and ideological agendas (Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, secularist) in the approaches of modern scholarship. The course will not require reading in languages outside English (although knowledge of ancient languages and a command of modern European languages will be helpful), and it will be taught as a three-hour seminar on a speeded-up twice-a-week model over five weeks in the Spring Quarter.

Instructor(s): J. Elsner     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 38800

ARTH 29400. Feminine Space in Chinese Art. 100 Units.

“Feminine space” denotes an architectural or pictorial space that is perceived, imagined, and represented as a woman. Unlike an isolated female portrait or an individual female symbol, a feminine space is a spatial entity: an artificial world composed of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, color, fragrance, light, and sound, as well as selected human occupants and their activities. This course traces the construction of this space in traditional Chinese art (from the second to the eighteenth centuries) and the social/political implications of this constructive process.

Instructor(s): Wu Hung     Terms Offered: Spring
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 39400,EALC 27708,EALC 37708

ARTH 29503. Mexican Murals. 100 Units.

This course examines three vital moments of mural production in Mexico: ancient, colonial, and modern. We will begin by looking at indigenous Mesoamerican wall painting traditions of Teotihuacan, the Maya, Cacaxtla, and the Aztecs, and then consider how these traditions were transformed by the encounter with Spanish colonialism to provide decoration for the walls of monastic churches. Finally, we will examine the modern Mexican muralist movement, looking at the work of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others, with a particular focus on Rivera’s murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Throughout the course, we will consider mural paintings in relationship to architecture and other media, paying special attention to the different methodologies and kinds of evidence that have been used to interpret these works. The course will also focus on developing research, writing, and presentation skills.

Instructor(s): C. Brittenham     Terms Offered: Winter
Equivalent Course(s): ARTH 39503,LACS 29503,LACS 39503

ARTH 29600. Junior Seminar: Doing Art History. 100 Units.

The aim of this seminar is to deepen an understanding of art history as a discipline and of the range of analytic strategies art history affords to students beginning to plan their own BA papers or, in the case of students who are minoring in art history, writing research papers in art history courses. Students read essays that have shaped and represent the discipline, and test their wider applicability and limitations. Through this process, they develop a keener sense of the kinds of questions that most interest them in the history and criticism of art and visual culture. Students develop a formal topic proposal in a brief essay, and write a final paper analyzing one or two works of relevant, significant scholarship for their topics. This seminar is followed by a workshop in Autumn Quarter focusing on research and writing issues for fourth-year students who are majoring in art history, which is designed to help writers of BA papers advance their projects.

Terms Offered: Winter
Note(s): Required of third-year students who are majoring in art history; open to nonmajors with consent of instructor. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 29700. Reading Course. 100 Units.

This course is primarily intended for students who are majoring in art history and who can best meet program requirements by study under a faculty member's individual supervision. The subject, course of study, and requirements are arranged with the instructor.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of Instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. Must be taken for a quality grade. With adviser's approval, students who are majoring in art history may use this course to satisfy requirements for the major, a special field, or electives. This course is also open to nonmajors with advanced standing. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 29800. Senior Seminar: Writing Workshop. 100 Units.

This workshop is designed to assist students in researching and writing their senior papers, for which they have already developed a topic in the Junior Seminar. Weekly meetings target different aspects of the process; students benefit from the guidance of the workshop instructors, but also are expected to consult with their individual faculty advisers. At the end of this course, students are expected to complete a first draft of the senior paper and to make an oral presentation of the project for the seminar.

Terms Offered: Autumn
Note(s): Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in art history. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.

ARTH 29900. Preparation for the Senior Paper. 100 Units.

This course provides guided research on the topic of the senior paper. Students arrange their program of study and a schedule of meetings with their senior paper adviser.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and Undergraduate Program Chair
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. May be taken for P/F grading with consent of instructor. This course may not count toward the twelve courses required in the major. This course does not meet the general education requirement in the dramatic, musical, and visual arts.