Art and Art History

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MAJOR IN ART HISTORY

The Art History major provides an effective focus for a general education, encouraging students to range broadly in their undergraduate curricula. The major can also provide pre-professional training for those who seek advanced degrees in the subject and plan careers as professors or teachers or as gallery and museum administrators and curators. The study of Art History can also directly underpin careers in Studio Art, city planning, and architecture and landscape design.

The art history major guides students as they interpret visual imagery critically and historically, providing them with: 1) knowledge of the theory, history, and philosophy of art; 2) knowledge of a large set of art objects from cultures and periods stretching from the present to the past; 3) instruction on how to communicate effectively about art works in both written and oral forms; 4) the skills to carry on effective research in art history; and 5) the general skills and knowledge to pursue a productive career or further education in art history.

During their senior year, art history students write a sustained research paper on a subject of their choice that they demonstrate has disciplinary interest. During the fall semester faculty direct student research in a senior seminar that meets once each week. During the spring semester students collaborate closely with their faculty advisors to produce their final written thesis.

Faculty in art history, plus one other expert from outside the department, read the senior theses. The outside expert and the department faculty also gather during mid-May to hear the graduating seniors defend their theses in public orally. Together the faculty and outside expert examine both performances, written and oral, for specific content indicating the graduating seniors’ attainment of the relevant departmental learning objectives stated above.

Required courses are as follows:

1. Lower-division work: Art History 51A or 51B; 51C;
2. One course in Studio Art (upper or lower division);
3. Upper-division work: One course in African, African Diaspora, Native American or Asian art; six additional art history courses approved by the adviser, at least one of which is a seminar, plus a senior thesis (191a,b taken in both semesters of the senior year).

Art History majors who intend to study Art History at the graduate level should attain proficiency in German, French, and Italian or Spanish. Some should add Greek or Latin, Chinese or Japanese. Majors are also encouraged to explore the possibilities of study abroad for their junior year, as well as summer internships in museums, galleries, restoration facilities and art studios.

Requirements for a Minor in Art History

All courses for the minor must be taken for a letter grade:

1. Lower-division work: two Art History courses from the following: 51aA 51B, 51C.
2. Upper-division work: Four courses in Art History, one of which must be a seminar and one of which must concern African/African Diaspora, Native American or Asian art.

Course Descriptions

Art History (ARHI) courses satisfy Area 1 of the Breadth of Study Requirements.

51A,B,C. Introduction to the History of Art. Mr. Emerick, Mr. Gorse, Ms. Pohl. Asks how the visual cultures of past times relate to those of the present. Critically examines the modern notion of “Art.” Proceeds chronologically and globally with examples from Europe, Africa, the Americas and Asia. Courses may be taken in any order. 51A: Prehistory through Ancient times in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent; Fall 2008; offered alternate years. 51B: European Middle Ages; Fall 2009; offered alternate years. 51C: From ca. 1200 to the present; each semester.

PZ MS 88. Mexican Visual Cultures. Mr. Lerner.  A survey of both popular and elite visual arts in Mexico from the time of Independence to today, including painting, prints, murals, sculpture and, more recently, film and video.  Emphasis will be placed on the interchanges between media and the understanding of visual culture as a reflection of social changes. Spring 2010.

PZ 137. Tradition and Transformation in Native North American Art. Mr. Anthes. An introductory survey treating the visual and material culture of the Native peoples of North America in terms of material, technique, cultural, historical and philosophical/spiritual contexts.  This class will also consider patterns of cultural contact and transformation, the collection of Native American art, Federal government Indian policy and educational institutions and modern and contemporary Native American art and cultural activism. Fall 2009.

PZ 139. Seminar: Topics in Native American Art History. Mr. Anthes. Examines indepth one or more themes or critical issues in Native American Art History, or collection of artworks from a local collection or cultural center. Native California, To be announced.

140 AF. Arts of Africa. Ms. Jackson. To be announced.

141A AF. Seminar:(Re)presenting Africa: Art, History and Film. Ms. Jackson. The seminar centers on post-colonial African films to examine (re)presentations of the people, arts, cultures and socio-political histories of Africa and its Diaspora. Course critically examines the cinematic themes, aesthetics, styles and schools of African and African Diasporic filmmakers. Recommended: one prior Art History or Black Studies or Media Studies course. Letter grade only. To be announced.

141B AF. Africana Cinema: Through the Documentary Lens. Ms. Jackson. Fall 2010; offered alternate years.

144B AF. Daughters of Africa: Art, Cinema, Theory, Love. Ms. Jackson. Examines visual arts and cultural criticism produced by women from Africa and the African Diaspora (Nrth America, Caribbean and Europe).  Students analyze aesthetic values, key representational themes, visual conventions, symbolic codes and stylistic approaches created from feminism’s spirited love of Blackness, Africaness and justice.  Complement to AFRI 144A, Black Women Feminism(s) and Social Change.  PRerequisite: Gender and Women’s STudies course.  Spring 2010.

MS 147B. Topics in Media Theory 1. Ms. Friedlander. A close examination of theories of media analysis, with an emphasis on the visual arts (painting, photography, film, video, installation art, performance art, conceptual art, art museums).  Topics change from year to year.  Course may be repeated for credit as topics vary.  Prerequisite: one media studies or art history course.  TOpic for SPring 2010: Body, Representation, Desire.

148. Theories of the Visual. Ms. Friedlander. To be announced.

SC 150. The Arts of China. Mr. Coats. Survey of artistic traditions from Neolithic to Modern times. Architecture, sculpture, painting, calligraphy, ceramics and metal work in their cultural contexts. Fall 2010; offered alternate years.

SC 151. The Arts of Japan. Mr. Coats. THe development of Japanese art and civilization from the prehistoric through the Meiji periods.  Major art forms examined in their cultural context. Fall 2009.

SC 154. Seminar: Japanese Prints. Mr. Coats. To be announced.

SC 155. The History of Gardens, East and West. Mr. Coats. From sacred groves to national parks, this survey focuses on the functions and meanings of gardens, on the techniques of landscape architecture, and on the social significance of major parks and gardens in Asia, Europe and North America. Prerequisite: 51A,B,C, or 52. Spring 2011; offered alternate years.

159. History of Art History. Mr. Emerick. Theories of art history in modern times, from Winckelmann and Hegel to Burckhardt, Riegl and Wolfflin, to Warburg and Panofsky.  Postmodern challenges to traditional art historiography, especially Foucault’s.  Not open to first-year students.  Spring 2011..

PZ CLAS 161. Greek Art and Archaeology. Mr. Glass. AN introductory survey of Greek sculpture, archtiecture and vase painting from their beginning to ca. 350 B.C.E.  Considerable attention is given to the major archaeological problems and sites and their historical position. Fall 2009

163. Hellenistic and Roman Art. Mr. Emerick.  Treats art in the Ancient Mediterranean from the end of the Periclean era in Athens (ca. 430 B.C.E.) to the reign of Augustus Caesar (27 B.C.E.-C.E. 14) in Rome.  Asks how the public art of the Ancient Greeks and Romans incorporated the world views of its users.  Charts the shifting meanings of standard forms or symbols over time and place. Spring 2010.

165. Holy Men, Holy Women, Relics and Icons. Mr. Emerick. Art from the reign of Constantine (313-337) to the end of the Carolingian empire (9th century). Treats the classical world in its Christian phase and its slow transformation under the pressure of invading Germans and Arabs. Fall 2010.

166. Pilgrimage and Crusade. Mr. Emerick. Early Medieval art in Europe from the later ninth to the mid-12th centuries during the rise of the German empire, of the Anglo-Norman monarchy, of the Christian Spanish Kingdom of Oviedo and Leon (and the crusade versus the Muslims), of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and of the great reformed Benedictine monastic orders of Cluny and Cliteaux. Fall 2011.

167. Town, Castle and Cathedral in France. Mr. Emerick. Early and High Gothic cathedral building in and around the ÃŽle-de-France from the reigns of Louis VI (1106-37) to Louis IX (1226-70). Church decoration in sculpture and stained glass. Letter grade optional. Spring 2009; Fall 2011.

168. Tyrants and Communes in Italy. Mr. Emerick.  Art of the new mendicant orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, in central-and north-Italian communes of the later 13th and 14th centuries.  Focuses mainly on painting in Tuscany and Umbria–in Florence, Siena and Assisi. Fall 2009; Spring 2012.

170. Early Renaissance in Italy. Mr. Gorse. Spring 2010.

171. High Renaissance. Mr. Gorse. To be announced.

172. Northern Renaissance Art. Mr. Gorse. Painting, sculpture and architecture in northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. Developments in painting emphasized; special attention to the Low Countries and Germany. To be announced.

173. The Medieval and Renaissance City. Mr. Gorse. Interdisciplinary approach to the Medieval and Renaissance city in Italy, 1250-1600, with emphasis on architecture and urbanism. The rise of Italian city-states and how their urban designs go hand-in-hand with their social, political, and economic institutions. Compares Florence, Venice, Rome, Genoa,Pisa, Siena, and the small princely courts. City dwellers’ civic, religious, and family rituals. To be announced.

174. Italian Baroque.  Mr. Gorse.  To be announced.

175. Baroque Art of Northern Europe. Mr. Gorse. Painting, sculpture and archtiecture of the 17th century in Germany, France, Spain, England and the Low Countries.  Poussin, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Leyster, Rubens, Vermeer, WRen, Neumann, Fischer von Erlach. Fall 2009.

SC 177. Eighteenth Century European Arts. Mr. Coats. The European Enlightenment will be explored, with a focus on the visual and performing arts and with concern for the popularization of the arts through public displays and performances.  Field trips to see original 19th century works are planned.  Spring 2010.

178 AF. Black Aesthetics and the Politics of (Re)presentation. Ms. Jackson. Survey of the visual arts produced by people of African descent in the U.S. from the colonial era to the present. Emphasis on Black artists’ changing relationship to African arts and cultures. Examines the emergence of an oppositional aesthetic tradition that interrogates visual constructions of “Blackness”and “whiteness,” gender and sexuality as a means of revisioning representational practices. Recommended prior course in Art History, or Asian American Studies, Black Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies or Media Studies. Letter grade only. Fall 2008; offered alternate years.

179. Modern Architecture, City, Landscape and Sustainability. Mr. Gorse. Survey of “Modernist” traditions of architecture and city planning (19th-21st centuries), tracing “roots” of “sustainability” from the Spanish tradition through Arts and Crafts Movement to Bauhaus machine aesthetic to “post-modernism” and “sustainable architecture”–the new “Gesamtkunstwerk” (”total work of art”).  Los Angeles within these global contexts.  Spring 2010.

HM 179. Visualizing China. Ms. Tan. To be announced.

SC 180. Seminar: Early 20th-Century European Avant-Gardes. Ms. Koss. Examines major movements of early 20th-century European art, including cubism, dada, surrealism, futurism, constructivism and productivism, to explore how the avant-garde irrevocably altered traditional ideas of the definition and function of art. Prerequisite: one upper-division Art History course. To be announced.

182. From Colony to Nation State: A Social History of North American Art. Ms. Pohl. A comparative analysis of artistic production in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico from colonial times to 1900. Emphasis on issues of race, class and gender and on the role of the visual arts in the formation of national identities, cultures and myths. Examination of indigenous (Native American) as well as imported (European, African, Asian) artistic traditions. To be announced.

PZ 183. The Art World Since 1960. Mr. Anthes. Provides an overview of significant issues and movements in art since 1960; focuses on the development of the global contemporary art world; mainstream and alternative movements in the United States and Western Europe will be discussed, with comparisons to emerging contemporary art centers. To be announced.

184. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism: A Social History of North American Art. Ms. Pohl. A comparative analysis of artistic production in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico in the 20th and 21st centuries. Examines issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and the relationships between artistic theories and practices, economic developments, and social and political movements (e.g., the Mexican Revolution, the Depression, the Women’s Movement). Spring 2010.

185. History of Photography. Ms. Howe. Surveys the complex interactions among photographers, subjects, the pictures they made and their audiences, past and present. Through an approach grounded in political, social and economic history, as well as in the literature, arts and intellectual battles of the period, considers the myriad roles of the photograph as document, aesthetic expression, commercial production and personal record. Letter grade only. To be announced.

186A. Theories of Contemporary Art. Staff. Based on close readings of key writings by artists, critics, curators, and scholars, seminar focuses on the evolving aesthetic, social-political, and theoretical discourses that have informed the art world since 1960. Includes modernism, postmodernism, mass media, feminism and gender theory, censorship, notions of identity, multiculturalism, post-colonialism, and globalization and the development of new media. Letter grade only. To be announced.

PZ 186B. Seminar: Topics in Contemporary Art. Ms. Robinson. Examines in-depth one or more themes or critical issues in contemporary art history or colleciton of artworks from a local collection.  Topic: contemporary community performance.  Spring 2010.

SC 186C. Seminar: Topics in Asian Art. Mr. Coats. Designed as a hands-on experience with interpreting works of Asian art through investigative research and educational presentation. Fall 2009.

186F. Seminar: Topics in North American Art. Ms. Pohl. Intensive investigation of a wide variety of topics relating to the production and reception of art in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Course may be repeated for credit as topics vary. Topic: Art and Nationalism in 19th-Century North American Art. Letter grade only. Spring 2009.

186G. Gendering the Renaissance. Mr. Gorse. Takes up historian Joan Kelly’s challenge, “Did women have a Renaissance?” Expands the question to cultural constructs of the male and female body, sexuality, identity, homosexuality and lesbianism and their implications for the visual arts, literature and the history of early moder Europe (14th-17th centuries). Spring 2011.

SC 186K. Seminar in Modern Art. Ms. Koss. Examines in-depth one theme or set of themes in 19th and 20th-century art and related fields. Prerequisite: one upper-division Art History course. Topic: Bauhaus. Spring 2010.

186L AF. Critical Race Theory, Representation & the Rule of Law. Ms. Jackson. Examines the role of law in constructing and maintaining racialized, gendered and classed disparities of justice, as well as the intellectual, aesthetic, scientific and political convergences of critical jurisprudence with representational practices in African Diasporic visual arts.  Prerequisites: Completion of one of the Africana studies, Asian American studies, Chicano/a-Latino-a studies or Gender & Women’s studies coruses.  Spring 2010; offered alternate years.

SC 186M. Seminar in 20th-Century Art. Ms. MacNaughton. Seminar will examine one movement, artist or other selected topic within the art of the 20th-century. Juniors and seniors only. Topic: abstract art at mid-century. Spring 2010.

186P. Seminar: Women, Art, and Ideology. Ms. Pohl. To be announced.

186T. Art and Time. Mr. Reed. Technological developments over the past 200 years have altered relations between art and time. How has moving from painting to lithography, photography, film and digital media influenced the creation of art and its relation to beholders? Considering North America and Europe since 1800, we explore relations between still and moving images, and ask how artists manipulate our experience of time. First years with written permission by instructor only. Fall 2009.

186W AF. Whiteness: Race, Sex and Representation. Ms. Jackson. Interrogation of linguistics, conceptual and practical solipsisms that contribute to the construction and normalization of whiteness in aesthetics and visual culture. Questions dialectics of “Blackness”and “Whiteness” that dominate Western intellectual thought and popular culture, thereby informing notions and representations of race, gender, sexuality and class. Recommended prior course in Art History, or Asian American, Black, Gender & Womem’s or Media studies. Letter grade only. Spring 2011.

186Y. WMDs: Cinema Against War, Imperialism and Corporate Power. Ms.Jackson. Documentary films (weapons for mind decolonization) by human rights advocates offer critical narratives effectively silenced by the blare of commercial mass media and post-9/11 nationalism. Course explores how documentary filmmakers raise historical awareness, deconstruct the rhetoric of power elites, debunk the conceits of imperialism, and dismantle the deceits of transnational corporations. Course promotes active spectatorship and creativity as the antidote to fear. Requires production of a mini-documentary. Fall 2009; offered alternate years.

SC 187. Old New Media. Ms. Koss.  Beginning with the birth of photography in the 1830s, attending to telegraphy, telephony, radio and television and ending with video, this seminar explores the history of the fascination, fear and peculiar associations that have accompanied new technological developments in Europe and the United States.  Prerequisite: one previous art history course or instructor’s permission.  Fall 2009.

SC 189. Modernism 1840-1940. Ms Koss. Beginning with Courbet and ending with surrealism, this course surveys European art between 1840 and 1940 with particular emphasis on the relationship between modernism and mass culture. Spring 2010.

191H. Senior Thesis. Mr. Emerick. In the fall semester students join in a weekly seminar for guidance on the researching and writing of the senior thesis, an original investigation of a topic in art history, to be completed in the spring. In the spring students work independently, but in constant contact with their advisers. Half-course each semester; grade and credit awarded after the second semester. Letter grade only. “C” or better required to satisfy the major requirement.

198. Summer Reading and Research. Staff. Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Course or half-course.

99/199. Reading and Research. Staff. Prerequisite: permission of instructor. 99, lowerlevel; 199, advanced work. Course or half-course. May be repeated. Each semester. (Summer Reading and Research taken as 98/198.)