This course will approach the art of the Roman empire from two vantage points. In its first half, it will consider it from the inside. Through a regional survey of the art and architecture produced in the provinces of the Roman empire between the 2nd c. BCE and the 4th c. CE, it will focus on the mechanisms by which models emanating from Rome were received andadapted in local contexts (so-called “Romanization”), as well as on the creative responses that the provincials’ incorporation into the empire
elicited. The second half of the course will consider the art of the Roman empire from the outside, i.e., from the perspective of its neighbors in the
Middle East and in Africa, as well as its self-proclaimed successors andimitators. On the one hand, we will see how ancient states such as the
kingdom of Meroë and the Parthian empire, or regions such as the Gandhara, interacted with the visual culture of Rome and its empire. On the other, we
will explore the degree to which the classical roots of the modern colonial empires in Asia, Africa, and the Americas both managed and failed to shape the visual cultures that these empires developed.
The course will survey Renaissance art in Hapsburg Spain, considered in the wide geographical context of the extended and dispersed dominions of the different crowns of the Spanish monarchy, which connected the Iberian Peninsula with Italy, Flanders and the New World. It will concern visual art in its various media, mainly painting, sculpture and architecture, but also tapestries, prints, armor, goldsmithery and ephemeral decoration, among others. Works of the main artists of the period will be introduced and analyzed, giving attention to the historical and cultural context of their production and reception. The course will particularly focus on the movement of artists, works and models within the Spanish Hapsburg territories, in order to understand to what extent visual arts contributed to shaping the political identity of this culturally composite empire.
How do you represent a revolution? What does it mean to picture the world as it “really” is? Who may be figured as a subject or citizen, and who not? Should art improve society, or critique it? Can it do both? These are some of the many questions that the artists of nineteenth-century Europe grappled with, and that we will explore together in this course. This was an era of rapid and dramatic political, economic, and cultural change, marked by wars at home and colonial expansion abroad; the rise of industrialization and urbanization; and the invention of myriad new technologies, from photography to the railway. The arts played an integral and complex role in all of these developments: they both shaped and were shaped by them. Lectures will address a variety media, from painting and sculpture to the graphic and decorative arts, across a range of geographic contexts, from Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid to St. Petersburg, Cairo, Haiti, and New Zealand. Artists discussed will include Jacques-Louis David, Francisco Goya, Théodore Géricault, J.M.W. Turner, Adolph Menzel, Ilya Repin, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, James McNeill Whistler, C. F. Goldie, Victor Horta, and Paul Cézanne.
The course will examine a variety of figures, movements, and practices within the entire range of 20th-century art—from Expressionism to Abstract Expressionism, Constructivism to Pop Art, Surrealism to Minimalism, and beyond–situating them within the social, political, economic, and historical contexts in which they arose. The history of these artistic developments will be traced through the development and mutual interaction of two predominant strains of artistic culture: the modernist and the avant-garde, examining in particular their confrontation with and development of the particular vicissitudes of the century’s ongoing modernization. Discussion section complement class lectures. Course is a prerequisite for certain upper-level art history courses.
Introduction to the arts of Africa, including masquerading, figural sculpture, reliquaries, power objects, textiles, painting, photography, and architecture. The course will establish a historical framework for study, but will also address how various African societies have responded to the process of modernity.
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.
This course introduces twenty-seven significant monuments and objects comprising a selective overview of 4000 years of traditional Chinese culture. Through these twenty-seven objects, we will think about historical currents, consider materials (clay, stone, bronze, lacquer, paper, silk, ink, and wood), how things were made, how these objects were used among the living, and why some of them were buried with the dead. Because analogy and metaphor is fundamental to Chinese language, we will examine visual symbols, auspicious imagery and rhetoric of resistance that had their origins in literature. The goal of the course is to raise awareness of visual clues in Chinese art and to establish basic visual literacy. After successfully completing this course you will be better able to articulate a research question, read more critically, write a visual analysis, and impress friends and family as you name a painting used in restaurant décor.
The Western Hemisphere was a setting for outstanding accomplishments in the visual arts for millennia before Europeans set foot in the so-called “New World.” This course explores the early indigenous artistic traditions of what is now Latin America, from early monuments of the formative periods (e.g. Olmec and Chavín), through acclaimed eras of aesthetic and technological achievement (e.g. Maya and Moche), to the later Inca and Aztec imperial periods. Our subject will encompass diverse genre including painting and sculpture, textiles and metalwork, architecture and performance. Attention will focus on the two cultural areas that traditionally have received the most attention from researchers: Mesoamerica (including what is today Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras) and the Central Andes (including Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia). We will also critically consider the drawing of those boundaries—both spatial and temporal—that have defined “Pre-Columbian” art history to date. More than a survey of periods, styles, and monuments, we will critically assess the varieties of evidence—archaeological, epigraphic, historical, ethnographic, and scientific—available for interpretations of ancient Latin American art and culture.
Introduction to 2000 years of art on the Indian subcontinent. The course covers the early art of Buddhism, rock-cut architecture of the Buddhists and Hindus, the development of the Hindu temple, Mughal and Rajput painting and architecture, art of the colonial period, and the emergence of the Modern.
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.
Prerequisites: the departments permission. Required for all thesis writers.
How do maps construct, rather than represent, territories, identities, pathways, and temporalities? From esoteric personifications of the continents to portolan nautical charts, this seminar investigates maps of the Mediterranean Sea and its borderlands from 1300-1700. We will probe cartographic visualization systems to understand what kinds of perspectives and orientations specific maps presumed, invited, or denied. Topics include port city commerce, wayfinding and navigation, the rise of Mercator's projection, and mapping shifting boundaries. At the heart of this course is the Mediterranean itself, which we will trace west with colonial expeditions beyond the present-day strait of Gibraltar.
This course examines the critical approaches to contemporary art from the 1970s to the present. It will address a range of historical and theoretical issues around the notion of the contemporary (e.g. globalization, participation, relational art, ambivalence, immaterial labor) as it has developed in the era after the postmodernism of the 1970s and 1980s.
This seminar will explore a range of individual works of Western art from the 16th century to late 20th century in which the tension between illusionism and reflexivity is foregrounded. It will focus on well-known paintings and films in which forms of realism and verisimilitude coexist with features that affirm the artificial or fictive nature of the work or which dramatize the material, social and ideological conditions of the work’s construction. Topics will include art by Durer, Holbein, Velazquez, Watteau, Courbet, Morisot, Vertov, Deren, Godard, Varda, Hitchcock and others. Readings will include texts by Auerbach, Gombrich, Brecht, Jameson, Barthes, Didi-Huberman, Bazin, Lukacs, Mulvey, and Daney
For the unrepentant sins of their inhabitants God had Sodom and Gomorrah, the ignominious twin cities from Genesis, shattered to smithereens. Throughout the Middle Ages, the tale was invoked to justify harsh judgment of mortal sins of the flesh and “unnatural” sex acts, in particular those occurring between members of the same sex. This bridge seminar focuses on the church’s desire to control the potential of human sexuality to subvert its order of “natural” law. Through historical texts and artworks from the period, we will analyze the wide diversity of medieval attitudes toward non-normative sex and eroticism in a variety of contexts, from the construction of the phenomenon of sodomy in early and high medieval exegesis, the eradication of pre-Christian fertility rituals in northern and eastern Europe, the playful undermining of gender roles in secular medieval romances, to illicit accounts of public sex in pleasure gardens and bath houses, and monumental hellscapes rendered with graphic visualizations of sexual violence. Moving chronologically through the Middle Ages, we will end by addressing modern questions surrounding the sexuality of Jean the Duke of Berry and Albrecht Dürer, and Hieronymus Bosch’s fixation with butt play. Discussion will be informed by critical readings in queer theory, feminism, and gender studies by Jack Halberstam, David Halperin, Susan Stryker, to name a few, and by medievalists employing these methods, such as Roland Betancourt, Caroline Walker Bynum, Michael Camille, Dyan Elliott, and Robert Mills.
“Pictures of the Floating World” (Ukiyo-e) constitute one of the most significant developments in the history of Japanese art, and one that would have a profound impact on the history of art in Europe and the west in the early modern period. These images were created on all pictorial formats, from scroll paintings and painted fans to woodblock prints, wooden posters, lanterns, and kites. Because these images pervaded so many different media, Ukiyo-e images offer a unique lens through which to examine the role art in an early modern society as well as the very nature of that society. Our course will focus primarily on the woodblock print, a popular pictorial form that was accessible to broad sectors of society, and will focus on woodblock prints created in the city of Edo between 1700 and 1860. The course will be shaped around three approaches: brief weekly lectures to introduce prominent images and themes; discussion of readings that offer critical perspectives; and if possible, direct examination of works of art in the collections of Columbia University and other institutions and collections in New York.
The Curatorial Colloquium is taken in the second semester of study and is required for the completion of the M.A. in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies. The course introduces students to the history, theory and practice of object collection and display as well as to exhibitions such as Documenta and the various international biennials. The course is designed to allow for guest presentations on particular issues by curators and museum professionals, 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 in the exhibition and display of modern and contemporary art. In addition to department faculty, curators from MoMA, the Whitney, the International Center for Photography, and other institutions regularly participate in the colloquium.
AHAR MA/MODA STUDENTS ONLY. INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED.
AHAR MA/MODA STUDENTS ONLY. INSTRUCTOR PERMISSION REQUIRED.
The MODA Thesis Prep is a required course for MODA students who plan to commence their thesis in the Fall of the following semester. The course introduces students to the fundamentals of an MA thesis; the process of identifying and developing an appropriate topic; the distinctions between a written/scholarly, or an exhibition-based thesis; formulating a proposal; and an introduction to the research and writing process that will be undertaken during the thesis year. As a central aspect of modern and contemporary art historical writing is determining one’s methodological approach––i.e. the “how” of the argument––during the course of the semester, key methodologies used in modern and contemporary art history will be reviewed, helping students to identify an appropriate approach to pursue with their select topic.
Minimalism, which developed in the 1960s, has been widely recognized as one of the most important aesthetic movements, styles, or tendencies of the later half of the twentieth century. More than simply of interest for itself, minimalism has served as a pivotal reference or turning point for nearly all the developments in the visual arts that have come after it (including postminimal sculpture, conceptual art, performance art, process art, and institutional critique) and remains a major touchstone for contemporary artistic practices. This course considers minimalism within a historical and interdisciplinary perspective (including related developments in music, dance, and film) and follows its development into postminimalism. In addition to providing important historical information, the course and topic allow for important investigations into questions of artistic formalism and its challengers and notions of art’s critical and political role within the pivotal moment of the 1960s.
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With the advent of Abstract-Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism, the center of the avant-garde shifted from Europe to New York; then, in what is sometimes identified as Marshall Plan Modernism, the New York school was exported to Pari, sponsored by the International Section of The Museum of Modern Art, and the USIS.
The objective of this graduate seminar is to bring a historiographical dimension to the training of archaeology students, by providing them with the keys to various readings of ancient Greek societies and their material culture and the way these have been constantly renewed since the nineteenth century. Through class presentations of both classical and recent texts, the seminar will develop ways of better identifying the interpretive models—most often implicit in the practice of archaeologists—which have shaped classical scholarship up to now. The seminar will offer the opportunity to discuss these models, be they supplementary or conflicting, in order to move towards an ever more explicit reasoning on archaeological interpretations of the past.
In The Stroke of the Brush (1989), David Rosand introduced the authoriality of Titian’s pictorial brushwork by discussing it in the light of contemporary painting processes, such Willem de Kooning’s abstract expressionism. In the exhibition Titian: Loves, Desire, Death, currently at the National Gallery of London, Matthias Wivel presents the Renaissance Venetian painter as the “father of modern painting”. To what extent a Renaissance painter can be modern and how his modernity is to be conceptualized? Through a critical examination of sources and technical data, the seminar will reconsider the paradigm of Titian’s modernity, focusing on some main issues of recent scholarship and presenting distinct methodologies. Investigating what defined painting as modern in Titian’s own period, as well as its reception in modern time, we will also discuss the perspectives of analyzing Titian’s work in the light of the theorization of contemporary societal issues. 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. Each student will also be asked to carry out a research project, culminating in a class
presentation and a final paper (10/ 15 double-spaced typed pages + illustrations).
This hybrid lecture/seminar course will consider major developments and figures in French architectural theory and practice from the eve of the Revolution to the eve of the First World War. Lectures alternately by Bergdoll and Garric will be interespsed with discussion sessions devoted to major theoretic statements including Rondelet, Quatremere de Quincy, the Saint-Simonians, Viollet-le-Duc, Charles Garnier and Julien Guadet.
This graduate seminar will interrogate real signs and signs of the real through three loosely related phenomena: intellectual property (esp. trademarks), fiat money, and trompe l'oeil. Special attention will be paid to legal history and theory, philosophy of money, and semiotics. Case studies and artworks will traverse the early modern period to the present, including c. 1700 England, late 19C America, Cubism, and Pop. Graduate students from all disciplines are encouraged to apply.
Song dynasty painters produced some of the most famous images of the Chinese tradition. Many of those paintings are preserved because they were carried to Japan where they were carefully preserved. Scholars, priests, and artists looked to mainland China for culture and inspiration. We will first establish key moments in the development of painting in the Northern Song, the phenomena of numbering scenes and the interest in poetry. We will study a selection of influential twelfth and thirteenth century masters that were reinterpreted in Japanese painting of the late Kamakura and Muromachi eras.
This graduate seminar is designed to explore the disciplinary overlaps—as well as the methodological and theoretical chasms—between the fields of art history (especially “Pre-Columbian” or “ancient American”) and archaeology (especially in the Americas). Our semester-long investigation will center questions around images: What are they? How are they “read”? What do they do? What do they “want”? What role have they had and do they continue to have—as subjects, objects, and proxies for something else—in practices of art history and anthropological archaeology of the last century or so? We will divide the course into three parts: the first a series of engagements with now-classic texts in these two fields, the second an exploration of new and emerging scholarship on the horizons, and the third the presentation of original research by seminar members.