Greek Art and Architecture

Introduction to the art and architecture of the Greek world during the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods (11th - 1st centuries B.C.E.).

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Ioannis Mylonopoulos
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 3 points

18TH CENTURY ART IN EUROPE

This course will examine the history of art in Europe from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. This was a period of dramatic cultural change, marked by, among other things, the challenging of traditional artistic hierarchies; increased opportunities for travel, trade, and exchange; and the emergence of “the public” as a critical new audience for art. Students will be introduced to major artists, works, and media, as well as to key themes in the art historical scholarship. Topics will include: the birth of art criticism; the development of the art market; domesticity and the cult of sensibility; the ascension of women artists and patrons; and the visual culture of empire, slavery, and revolution. The emphasis will be on France and Britain, with forays to Italy, Spain, Germany, India, America, and elsewhere.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Frederique Baumgartner
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

History Painting and Its Afterlives

History Painting & Afterl

This course will study the problematic persistence of history painting as a cultural practice in nineteenth century Europe, well after its intellectual and aesthetic justifications had become obsolete. Nonetheless, academic prescriptions and expectations endured in diluted or fragmentary form. We will examine the transformations of this once privileged category and look at how the representation of exemplary deeds and action becomes increasingly problematic in the context of social modernization and the many global challenges to Eurocentrism. Selected topics explore how image making was shaped by new models of historical and geological time, by the invention of national traditions, and by the emergence of new publics and visual technologies. The relocation of historical imagery from earlier elite milieus into mass culture forms of early cinema and popular illustration will also be addressed.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan K Crary
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Twentieth-Century Architecture

20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE

This course examines some of the key moments of architectural modernity in the twentieth century in an attempt to understand how architecture participated in the making of a new world order. It follows the lead of recent scholarship that has been undoing the assumption that modern twentieth-century architecture is a coherent enterprise that should be understood through avant-gardist movements. Instead, architectural modernity is presented in this course as a multivalent, and even contradictory, entity that has nonetheless had profound impact on modernity. Rather than attempting to be geographically comprehensive, it focuses on the interdependencies between the Global North and the South; instead of being strictly chronological, it is arranged around a constellation of themes that are explored through a handful of projects and texts. Reading primary sources from the period under examination is a crucial part of the course.

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Zeynep Celik Alexander
  Info
• 4 points

DISC SEC Twentieth-Century Architecture

DISC SEC 20th C Architect

• T 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• T 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• W 11:10 a.m.-noon
• W 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Maya Wilson-Sanchez
  Info
• 0 points

ARTS OF JAPAN

Introduction to the painting, sculpture, and architecture of Japan from the Neolithic period through the present. Discussion focuses on key monuments within their historical and cultural contexts.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Matthew P McKelway
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

ARTS OF CHINA, JAPAN AND KOREA

Introduces distinctive aesthetic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea--their similarities and differences--through an examination of the visual significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other arts in relation to the history, culture, and religions of East Asia.

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Catherine M Zhu
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO LIT/METHODS OF ART HIST

Required course for department majors. Not open to Barnard or Continuing Education students. Students must receive instructors permission. Introduction to different methodological approaches to the study of art and visual culture. Majors are encouraged to take the colloquium during their junior year.

• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Meredith Gamer
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Michael Cole
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SENIOR THESIS

Prerequisites: the departments permission. Required for all thesis writers.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Barry G Bergdoll
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

ROMAN VILLAS: THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Blair Fowlkes Childs
  Info
• 4 points

THE ARCHITECT'S LIBRARY-LABORATORY

This seminar challenges the interpretation of architects libraries as static repositories of information, and it shows how they were in fact sorts of laboratories, in which architects experimented in both the creation of knowledge and the production of designs.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Eleonora Pistis
  Info
• 4 points

NINETEENTH-CENTURY CRITICISM

This course examines a diverse selection of social and aesthetic responses to the impacts of modernization and industrialization in nineteenth-century Europe. Using works of art criticism, fiction, poetry, and social critique, the seminar will trace the emergence of new understandings of collective and individual experience and their relation to cultural and historical transformations. Readings are drawn from Friedrich Schiller's Letters On Aesthetic Education, Mary Shelley's The Last Man, Thomas Carlyle's "Signs of the Time," poetry and prose by Charles Baudelaire, John Ruskin's writings on art and political economy, Flora Tristan's travel journals, J.-K. Huysmans's Against Nature, essays of Walter Pater, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and other texts.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan K Crary
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Ecology, Art, and Empire

Looking at material that speaks to historic encounters and legacies of European imperialisms, this course explores how visual practices manage natural relationships across colonial and postcolonial conditions (c.1800-present). Studying art and other visual material “ecologically” reveals interconnections of people, plants, living beings, and inorganic entities within their specific contexts. Each unit will expose students to contemporaneous thinking about ecology, empire, and the construction of the human across texts, artists, and key objects. We will study a wide range of visual material, including maps, decorative objects, surrealist films, 1970s performances, contemporary Caribbean art, and other artworks that emerge out of imperial entanglements between Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Part one of the course explores how 18th-century landscape imagery supported European imperial conquest around the globe and inspired indigenous resistance. Part two examines how 19th-century evolutionary theory and global botanical trade produced new ideas of hybridity in fin-de-siècle Europe. Lastly, part three examines how modern and contemporary art (20th century to present) has turned towards “elemental media” in a radical reframing of art’s human bias.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Aleksa Zivkovic
  Info
• 4 points

BEYOND EL DORADO

In this seminar, we will investigate ancient and indigenous art, materials, and aesthetics from areas of what is today Latin America. Taking advantage of New York’s unrivaled museum collections, we will research Pre-Columbian gold and silver work, as well as equally precious stone, shell, textile, and feather works created by artists of ancient Mexico, Central America, and Andean South America. We will also study latter-day histories of collecting, reception, display, appropriation, and activism that shape contemporary understandings of Pre-Columbian art.

• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Lisa Trever
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

Medieval Art I: ca. 280 1453 CE

• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Holger A Klein
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 4 points

MDVL ART I: LATE ANT-BYZ-DISC

• W 3:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• M 1:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Emma C Leidy
  Info
• 0 points

AFR AMER ARTISTS IN 20/21 CENT

This course is a survey of visual production by North Americans of African descent from 1900 to the present. It will look at the various ways in which these artists have sought to develop an African American presence in the visual arts over the last century. We will discuss such issues as: what role does stylistic concern play; how are ideas of romanticism, modernism, and formalism incorporated into the work; in what ways do issues of postmodernism, feminism, and cultural nationalism impact on the methods used to portray the cultural and political body that is African America?  There will be four guest lectures for this class; all will be held via zoom.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Kellie Jones
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

NEO-DADA AND POP ART

This course examines the avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, including assemblage, happenings, pop art, Fluxus, and artists' forays into film. It will examine the historical precedents of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneemann and others in relation to their historical precedents, development, critical and political aspects.

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Branden W Joseph
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Chinese Art: Center and Periphery

Chinese Art: Center& Peri

This course introduces you to the rich and diverse tradition of Chinese art by focusing on materials and techniques. We will discuss a wide array of artistic media situated in distinct cultural contexts, examining bronzes, jade, ceramics, paintings, sculptures, and textiles in the imperial, aristocratic, literary, religious, and commercial milieus in which they were produced. In addition to developing your skills in visual-material analysis, this course will also acquaint you with the diverse cultures that developed in China’s center and periphery during its five thousand (plus) years of history. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how native artistic traditions in China interacted with those in regions such as the Mongolian steppe, Tibetan plateau, and Central Asia.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Jin Xu
  Info
• 3 points

MODERN JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE

This course will examine Japanese architecture and urban planning from the mid-19th century to the present. We will address topics such as the establishment of an architectural profession along western lines in the late 19th century, the emergence of a modernist movement in the 1920's, the use of biological metaphors and the romanticization of technology in the theories and designs of the Metabolist Group, and the shifting significance of pre-modern Japanese architectural practices for modern architects. There will be an emphasis on the complex relationship between architectural practice and broader political and social change in Japan.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan Reynolds
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

The Routes of Charles V

In the public speech announcing his abdication, on October 25, 1555, emperor Charles V gave an impressive summary of the incessant travels that governed his political life: “I went nine times through Germany, six times to Spain, seven times to Italy, four times to France, twice to England, and twice to Africa, for a total of forty journeys or expeditions, not to mention the less important visits I paid over the years to islands and obedient provinces. I therefore have crossed the Mediterranean Sea eight times and sailed the ‘Hispanic Ocean’ three times”. Along these routes, the seminar will explore the sites of cross-cultural encounters in the world of Charles V and investigate their composite artistic productions. Retracing the cartography of the dynamic web of interconnections that was to shape the political and geographical "monster" of the Spanish Hapsburg Empire, as Fernand Braudel calls it, the seminar aims to discuss the paradigms of this early modern model of globalization. The course will be run as a seminar, with meetings devoted to discussions. Students will be responsible for the summary and introduction of the weekly readings for discussion.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Diane Bodart
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

GILLES DELEUZE:THINKING IN ART

The philosophy of Gilles Deleuze has emerged as one of the richest, most singular adventures in post-war European thought; Foucault considered it the most important in France, and more generally, in the 20th century. In all of Deleuze's work there is a search for a new 'image of thought.' But how did art figure in this search, and how did the search in turn appeal to artists, writers, filmmakers, architects, as well as curators or critics? In this seminar, we explore the complex theme of 'thinkin in art' in Deleuze, and its implications for art in the 21st century or for the global contemporary art of today.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: John Rajchman
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Modernity by Art: Materiality, Imaginati

This course will introduce students to epistemological and methodological questions about modernity, community, and artistic practice through case studies from the Middle East (particularly Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Turkey). The course bridges art history and anthropology to examine the material and imaginative ways that Middle Eastern communities produced the modern, experienced it, and became progenitors of it, yet often from its “outside.”

How did modernity become an urgent time frame and a call for social change? What did decolonizing communities want from “art,” and why was art important to many sociopolitical mobilizations of the 1920s-1960s? What new types of community, identity, economy, and spirituality did artists proffer? How do these relate to the maps, timelines, and categories we rely on to understand globalization and the contemporary today? What obstacles did artists face in their projects for social relevance, and what new entanglements did their negotiations create?

The course will provide students with original materials and non-canonical artwork to prompt discussions of how we think about modernity cross-culturally and the stakes in art research today. Thus, it will also encourage students to reflect on what modernity and art mean to them and how they locate themselves in our unequally shared political world.

• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Kirsten L Scheid
  Info
• 4 points

Art and Fashion: The Body, Architecture,

This bridge seminar examines topics in and tensions between

art and fashion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The course will first explore clothing’s relationship to the body. This course will consider how artists investigate and critique the materials of fashion and spaces of visual merchandising: textiles, shop windows, and the department store. Topics include but are not limited to: voguing/ball culture, Queer coding and clothing, fashion photography, and site-specific installation. We will investigate the museum through the practices of collecting, curating, and the rise of blockbuster fashion exhibitions. Indigenous perspectives on display and sacred storage will be discussed. Art and fashion are embedded within their historical, political, and social contexts, and throughout this course, we will consider topics from a global perspective. Admission is by application and permission of the instructor. Applications must be submitted to the department of Art History.

• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Leah E Werier
  Info
• 4 points

CRITICAL COLLOQUIUM

The structure of the colloquium combines reading and analysis of texts by major theorists and critics. Each week discussions focus on key terms and analytical lenses in the history of art and art criticism. The course is designed to allow for guest presentations on particular issues by critics and writers, just as it draws on the expertise and participation of Columbia faculty. The aim is to develop students critical thinking and for them to learn directly from leading practitioners writing about modern and contemporary art. In addition to department faculty, writers for Artforum, Grey Room, Parkett, Texte zur Kunst, and October, among other venues, regularly participate in the colloquium.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Leah E Werier
  Info
• 4 points

MA METHODS: COLLOQUIUM

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Frederique Baumgartner
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

ORNAMENT&ATTENTION

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Francesco de Angelis
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

The Real Picasso

Picasso’s work is the great kaleidoscope through which 20th-century art passes: from its beginnings in Cubism through which the world is given as though through cut crystal; to the commercial forms of collage; to the presage of surrealist anguish; and, finally, to an untoward neo-classicism. The result of this restless exploration is the invention of multiple formal languages, which need to be deciphered in spite of the perverse literature on the subject which insists on transposing this into the art-historical language of iconography. The literature is rich with the analytic struggles between the great Picasso scholars: William Rubin, Leo Steinberg, and Picasso’s biographer, John Russel. The skirmishes over the “iconography” of cubism extends to the interpretation of the work’s relation to “primitivism.” This controversy has given rise to yet a new vector on Picasso’s work: structuralism and semiotics.

• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Rosalind Krauss
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

PROSEM-INTRO-STUDY OF ART HIST

Required course for first-year PhD Students in the Art History Department.

• F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Zeynep Celik Alexander
  Info
• 4 points

MATERIALITY&THE SACRED

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Holger A Klein
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 4 points

Art and Reformation

Carlos Eire has recently argued that the history of Europe from 1450 to 1650 can be written as a history of reformations. Might a similar claim be made about the visual arts? This course will examine critiques of religious images emerging from various reform movements and practices that responded to these: at one extreme, censorship and iconoclasm, at the other, creative approaches that resulted in new forms of art. The course will center on Italy, though students are welcome to work on related material in other places.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael Cole
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Viollet-le-Duc & the Culture of Drawing

Viollet-le-Duc & 19th-C A

The seminar, focused on the architect, theorist, and restorer Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879), will explore the theory and practice of drawing central to his diverse activities in architecture, historical restoration, and art history and in interaction with other disciplines and graphic discourses of the 19th century. From the moment Viollet-le-Duc refused the canonical architectural training of the École des Beaux-Arts with its highly codified drawing practice sanctioned by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, he sought to advance his reputation and define his field of action by establishing distinctive modes of drawing, at first disseminated through the traditional Salon de Paris but soon through the channels of an inventive set of publications, whether polemical organs of the professional press, dictionaries, lecture courses, newspaper, or even children’s books. His dialogue with painters and with scientists – particularly in geology, botany and comparative anatomy – and more generally to the 19th-century visual culture with its new mode of diffusion will be central themes.

The seminar is conducted in parallel with one at McGill University led by Prof. Martin Bressani.  Barry Bergdoll and Martin Bressani are co-curators of an upcoming exhibition on Viollet-le-Duc’s drawing practices to be presented at the Bard Graduate Center in New York in Autumn 2025. Many of our sessions will be held hybrid – Columbia students together face-to-face in New York while the McGill seminar group in Montreal joins us via video-conference.   At the end of the semester the two seminars will present a joint symposium of the seminar research in New York.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Barry G Bergdoll
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

American Landscapes of Extraction

Amer Landscapes-Extractio

What should art history look like in the anthropocene? What is necessary to bring questions about how to define and analyze the ecological that have been developed in other disciplinary contexts—literature, anthropology, science studies—to art history?  How might we attend to the non-human forces contributing to the conceptualization, commissioning, creation, display, evolution and reception of works of art?  Do all kinds of objects invite this kind of critical investigation or only a select few?  What are the potential pitfalls of undertaking this approach?

In this seminar, we will investigate these questions through the exploration of works that engage the history of extraction in the Americas in their subject matter, use and/or materiality.  Combining theoretical readings with recent examples of ecocritical art history, we will discuss different models and motivations for this work and put these methods into use by producing object labels for works to be included in the Fall 2024 Wallach Art Gallery exhibition “The Hudson:  Art, Industry and Ecology.”  Students will also undertake independent research projects of their own devising.

Key questions will include, among others, the definition and limits of the term “human”; the agency of artists’ materials and the physical environments in which works are created and viewed; artists’ attempts to collaborate with the non-human through explorations of chance, time-based practice and other strategies; art works designed to document, inform about or forestall environmental damage; the relationship between colonial or neoliberal social formations and the environment as evidenced in works of art or their creation and reception; the place of the aesthetic in eco-criticism.

• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Elizabeth Hutchinson
  CULPA: 9 Info
• 4 points

Photography, Identity, Status

This graduate seminar will explore how photography has shaped, authenticated, and interrogated identity and status from the nineteenth century to the present. Topics include: the rise of mug shots, IDs, facial recognition software (including Artificial Intelligence / AI), and other repressive forms of photo-based identification; anthropological and other forms of photo-based typologies of race, ethnicity, nationality, and other identities; and a range of honorific studio practices that aim to consolidate social status. Special attention will be paid to August Sander and contemporary artists.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Noam M Elcott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 7 Info
• 4 points

Early Modern Japanese Ceramics

A hands-on graduate seminar to investigate the technical and stylistic revolution that occurred in Japanese ceramics around 1600. Topics to explore will include: the legacy of medieval ceramics, especially the “six ancient kilns” (rokkoyō); the role of the arts of tea (chanoyu) as a catalyst for technical innovation and stylistic invention; intraregional commerce in Japan and objects imported from China, Korea, and Southeast Asia; the role of modern archaeology; and the question of transmateriality, or whether and how the related arts of painting, lacquer, and textiles affected the conception and design of clay objects. We will conduct regular visits to local public and private collections throughout the semester to examine objects firsthand. Reading knowledge of Japanese strongly recommended.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 4 points

Pre-Columbian Art History Now

"""Pre-Columbian"" Art Hi

In this graduate seminar we will assess the state of the field of “Pre-Columbian” art history—that is the history of art and architecture of the region that is now considered Latin America until about 1550. We will read important recent and foundational texts and discuss the intellectual possibilities and ethical stakes of this field of Americanist art history moving into the twenty-first century. The final assignment will be a long-form review essay.

This course is designed for MA and PhD students in the art history of the Americas until about 1550, and is also open to students in affine areas of art history, archaeology, anthropology, and Latin American literature. Relevant coursework is a prerequisite for this advanced seminar.

Spanish reading ability is required. Enrollment is by application.

• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Lisa Trever
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

History, Heritage, Post-Disaster Preserv

Post-Disaster Preservatio

Post-disaster heritage preservation is becoming an increasingly urgent matters as a result of both wars and environmental catastrophes. This seminar introduces themes, issues, theories, methodologies and technologies of historical preservation and restoration of heritage architecture, monuments and historical landscapes in post-disaster situations. Centered on the historical landscapes and built environment of the region affected by the February 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and Syria, the seminar will explore the range of responses and approaches. Weekly meetings will discuss practical aspects of post-disaster response such as damage assessment surveys, uses of building materials, long-term maintenance and monitoring. They will also learn about the histories of the region, and analyze theoretical discussions around monuments, memory, development and urban environments, and the politics of heritage. Students will produce a final report about a region, site or city, assigned by the instructors. Open to Admission into the seminar is by application and permission of the instructors only. Applications for the seminar must be submitted to the Department of Art History by Monday, August 7th, 2023.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 4 points