H101 History of Art and Visual Culture
Fall, 2015
Lecture:
T + TH 11:20 - 12:20 RISD Auditorium
Section: 1 ½ hour various times and locations. Consult your class schedule
Course Staff:
Lecturers: Professor Mary Bergstein, Professor Bolaji Campbell, Professor
Daniel Harkett, Professor, Leora Malz Leca, Professor Ijlal Muzaffar and
Professor Susan Ward
Section Instructors: Professor Katheryn Howley, Professor Pascale Rihouet,
Professor Suzanne Scanlan, Professor Rachel Silberstein, Professor Esther
Thyssen, Professor Elena Varshavskaya, Professor Fatimeh Abbas Zahed and the
course lecturers.
Course Coordinator: Professor Susan Ward (slward@risd.edu)
Course Description
History of Art and Visual Culture 101 is an introduction to global issues in art and visual
culture. The course does not and does not intend to provide comprehensive art historical
coverage. Its goals are to present elements of the world visual traditions and to introduce
basic methodology to interpret them. With these tools in hand, students will be in the
position to pursue their interests in specialized courses in subsequent semesters.
Forms of Assessment and Grading Breakdown
15%
Attendance & Participation
15%
First paper. Deadline: due the week of Oct. 1
25%
Midterm exam: the week of Oct. 15
15%
Second paper. Deadline: due the week of Nov .19
30%
FINAL EXAM: THURSDAY DEC 10 2015
SEE YOUR SECTION INSTRUCTOR FOR YOUR SPECIFIC DUE DATES FOR
ASSIGNMENTS.
Attendance & Absences
Per RISD policy, each student is allowed a total of two unexcused absences from lecture
or section meeting. Each unexcused absence beyond this limit will reduce your
attendance grade by a third of a letter grade. To have your absence excused in case of a
personal emergency, you must contact the instructor as soon as possible and provide
documentation of your emergency.
Punctuality
Please arrive on time for section meetings and lectures. Late arrivals disrupt the class and
will affect your grade negatively. A late arrival might count as an unexcused absence.
Class Participation
Class participation is a vital element of this course. Our goal is to have lively discussions
of the images, readings, and relevant issues. You should see effective participation as
both an aid to learning and a skill that can be learned.
REQUIRED READINGS
BOOKS:
Willet, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.
If you have never taken an art history course there are several excellent art history
textbooks. We recommend: Stokstad, Marilyn & Michael W. Cothren. Art: A Brief
History. Boston: Pearson, 2012.
The books listed above are on reserve at the RISD LIBRARY.
ARTICLES AND ONLINE RESOURCES listed in the course schedule are available on
e-reserve at the RISD Library and in the class digication portfolio:
https://digicationlogin.risd.edu
Paper Formatting Guidelines
Papers should be typed in twelve-point Times New Roman font and double-spaced.
Margins should be one inch on all sides. Use the Chicago Manual of Style humanities
style for citations. For a brief guide, with examples, go to:
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Assignments
All assignments should be completed in time and handed in on the date specified on the
syllabus. Late papers will be downgraded by a third of a letter grade per day of delay. For
example, a B paper that is one day late will get a B-; if it is three days late, it will receive
a C. All papers should be submitted in print and stapled unless otherwise specified by the
instructor.
Exams
Exams must be taken on the date and time specified on the syllabus. Students are not
entitled to a make-up exam except in properly documented emergencies. If you have an
emergency, you must contact the instructor as soon as possible. Students who fail both
exams, fail the class regardless of grades in other assignments.
Academic honesty
Students are expected to be honest in their work and not engage in cheating, plagiarism or
other forms of academic dishonesty. For further specifics see RISD’s Academic Code of
Conduct: http://www.risd.edu/Policies/Academic/Code_of_Conduct/
LECTURE SCHEDULE:
Week 1
INTRODUCTIONS AND FOUNDATIONS
Thurs. Sept 10—Lecture 1: Introduction Professor Ward
Reading: Alexandra Peers, “Canon Fodder.”
http://www.artnews.com/2006/02/01/canon-fodder/
Week 2
Tues. Sept 15 Lecture 2: Classical Art, Professor Bergstein
Reading: Mary Beard, “House and Home,” from Pompeii: The
Life of a Roman Town. London: Profile Books, 2010. Pp. 81-119.
Marguerite Yourcenar, That Mighty Sculptor,
Time. Trans. Walter Kaiser. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992.
Optional reading: Ingrid Rowland, "The Grandest Sculpture of the
Ancients", NewYork Review of Books, August2015.
http://www.nybooks.com/shared/1aa754fc99e7cf3b62af9432f13aebab
Thurs. Sept 17 Lecture 3: Why won’t classical architecture go away? Professor Muzaffar
Reading: Sophia Psarra. “The Parthenon and the Erechtheion: the
architectural formation of place, politics, and myth.” Journal of
Architecture 9 (Spring 2004): 77-104.
Week 3
ART AND RELIGION
Tues. Sept 22 Lecture 4: The Christian Basilica, Professor Ward
Reading: Roger Stalley, “The Christian Basilica,” Chapter 1, Early
Medieval Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 17-36
Thurs. Sept 24 Lecture 5: Rock Art: Professor Campbell
Reading: Willett, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson,
2002. Pp. 42-61
Week 4
Tues. Sept. 29 Lecture 6: Islamic Art and Architecture, Professor Ward
Reading: Jerrilyn Dodds, “The Great Mosque at Cordoba,” from AlAndalus: The Art of Islamic Spain. Pp. 11-26.
(metmuseum.org/research/metpublications/Al_Andalus_The_Art_of_Isam
ic_Spain)
Thurs. Oct. 1 Lecture 7 Masking Traditions: Honoring Our Mothers Professor Campbell
Reading: Willett, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson,
2002. Pp. 130-149; 157-170
Week 5
Tues. Oct. 6 Lecture 8 Medieval Manuscripts and Sculpture Professor Ward
Reading: Illene Forsyth, “The Ganymede Capital at Vézelay,” Gesta 15
(1976): 241-246.
NATURALISM AND IDEALISM
Thurs. Oct. 8 Lecture 9 Sculptures of Ancient Nigeria: Nok, Igbo Ukwu, Ife, and
Benin, Professor Campbell
Reading: Willett, Frank. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson,
2002. Pp. 63-75; 97-103
Week 6
NO SECTIONS MONDAY Oct. 12 RISD Holiday
Tues. Oct. 13 Lecture 10 Michelangelo in Rome, Professor Bergstein
Reading: Maria Loh, “Outscreaming the Laocoön: Sensation, Special
Effects and the Moving Image.” Oxford Art Journal, 34 (2011): 393-414.
Sorabella, Jean. "The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance". In
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 2000–. (January 2008).
Department of European Paintings. "The Papacy and the Vatican Palace".
In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2000–.(October 2002).
Department of European Paintings. "The Rediscovery of Classical
Antiquity". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(October 2002).
Bambach, Carmen. "Renaissance Drawings: Material and Function". In
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 2000–.(October 2002).
Thurs. Oct 15 Lecture 11 The Venetian Alternative, Professor Bergstein
Readings: Patricia Fortini Brown, “Venezianità: The Otherness of the
Venetians,” from Art and Life in Renaissance Venice. New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1997. Map and pp. 1-37.
Carboni, Stefano, and Trinita Kennedy, and Elizabeth Marwell. "Islamic
Art and Culture: the Venetian Perspective". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art
History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(March
2007).
Carboni, Stefano, and Trinita Kennedy, and Elizabeth Marwell. "Venice
and the Islamic World, 828–1797". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.
New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(March 2007).
Carboni, Stefano, and Trinita Kennedy, and Elizabeth Marwell. "Venice's
Principal Muslim Trading Partners: the Mamluks, the Ottomans, and the
Safavids". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.(March 2007).
Week 7
MODERNITY
Tues. Oct. 20 Lecture 12 The Academy and the French Revolution, Professor Harkett
Reading: Félibien des Avaux, André. From the preface to Conférence de
l’Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (1669), translated by Linda
Walsh. In Art and Its Histories: A Reader, edited by Steve Edwards. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999: 34-36
“David Commemorates the Martyrs of the Revolution.” In Neoclassicism
and Romanticism, 1750-1850, edited by Lorenz Eitner. Vol. 1. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970: 132-34.
Thurs. Oct. 22 Lecture 13 Representing the Modern City Professor Harkett
Reading Extract from Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life.”
In The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated and edited by
Jonathan Mayne. New York: Da Capo Press, 1986: 5-15.
Week 8
Tues. Oct. 27 Lecture 14 The Avant-Garde and the Female Nude, Professor Harkett
Reading: “Various authors on Manet’s Olympia.” In Art in Theory, 18151900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, edited by Charles Harrison and
Paul Wood, with Jason Gaiger. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, 514-519.
Thurs. Oct. 29 Lecture 15 Bauhaus and the Making of the Modern Subject,
Professor Muzaffar
Readings: Leah Dickerman, "Bauhaus Fundamentals." In Bauhaus:
Workshops for Modernity, edited by Barry Bergdoll and Leah Dickerman.
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Pp. 15-39.
Week 9
MODERNISM AND ITS OTHERS
Tues. Nov. 3 Lecture 16 The Social History of Photography, Professor Bergstein
Reading: Susan Sontag. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1977.
Thurs. Nov 5 Lecture 17 Modernism and Colonialism, Professor Maltz-Leca
Reading: Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “Going Native.” Art in America
77(1989): 118-129.
Week 10
Tues. Nov. 10 Lecture 18 Ornamentation and Structure in Modern Architecture: Loos
and
Le Corbusier, Professor Muzaffar
Reading (ONLINE RESOURCE): Loos, Adolf. “Ornament and Crime
(1908).” In Programs and manifestoes on 20th-century architecture, edited
by Ulrich Conrads.
Thurs. Nov. 12 Lecture 19 Modernism and Abstraction, Professor Maltz-Leca
Reading: Malevich, Kazimir. Suprematism
Mondrian, Piet. Natural Reality and Abstract Reality (1919)
Week 11
Tues. Nov. 17 Lecture 20 Displaying Art: From the Salon to the White Cube, Professor
Harkett No Reading
THE MODERN COLONIAL AT HOME AND ABROAD
Thurs. Nov. 19 Lecture 21 Art and Popular Culture: American Art in the 1960s,
Professor Maltz-Leca
Reading: Anne M. Wagner, “Warhol Paints History, or Race in America.”
Representations 55 (1996): 98-119.
Week 12
Tues. Nov. 24 Lecture 22 Architecture as Environment + Desired (Dys)topia: From
Capital Cities to Slums in the Third World, Professor Muzaffar
Reading: Rem Koolhaas, "Lagos: Harvard Project on the City," in
Mutations. Barcelona: ACTAR, 2000. Pp. 651-719.
Vikramaditya Prakash “Introduction,” in Chandigarh’s Le Corbusier: the
Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial India. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2001.
THANKSGIVING BREAK NO CLASSES Wednesday Nov 25-Sunday Nov. 29
Week 13
Tues. Dec. 1 Lecture 23 Postmodern, Postcolonial: Re-reading Modernism,
Professor Maltz-Leca
Reading: Hal Foster, "Postmodernism: 1984" Art Since 1900.
York: Thames and Hudson, 2005.
New
Thurs. Dec. 3 Lecture 24 Contemporary Art in and Out of Africa: Diasporic Resonance,
Professor Campbell
Readings: Frank Willett. African Art. New York: Thames and Hudson,
2002. Pp. 220-255
Week 14
Sections meet Monday Dec. 7 and Wednesday Dec. 9. There are no classes
(including lecture) on Tuesday Dec. 8
LIBERAL ARTS EXAM DAY THURSDAY Dec. 10.