European Art and Architecture, 1800-1900
ARH 272, Fall 2005
Mon, Wed, (Fri), 9:00-10:20, Graham Hall
André Dombrowski, Hillyer 314, 585-3101, adombrow@smith.edu
Office Hours: Mon 10.30-11.30am, Wed 2:45-3:45pm, and by appointment
Course Description:
Despite its current popularity, the art and architecture of nineteenth-century Europe did not
always please its original audiences. To look at immense, unadorned constructions of steel, at the
first photographs, at a brushstroke left overtly visible, or at a painting showing nothing but a heap
of butter, required, to say the least, a little getting used to. Our principle aim in this course—
spanning art, architecture and some visual culture from the French Revolution to the Paris
World’s Fair of 1900—is to recover the original radicality of the period’s most important formal
propositions within their social and artistic context. How can art and architecture give form to
history, revolution and war, and to empire and modernity? How can art keep up with, emulate or
reject new technologies, media and scientific innovations? How to picture the new forms of social
conduct and class conflict in a newly urbanized environment? And how should we understand the
sexual politics of an art made by men obsessed with the representation of the naked female body?
Arguably, Paris was the “capital of the nineteenth century,” as Walter Benjamin had it,
and it is here where most artistic innovation of the time took place. This course will therefore
focus heavily on art production in France. Nonetheless, we will look outside of France’s borders
as much as we can: to Germany, Britain and Spain, for example. In particular, we will pay
attention to the nineteenth century’s own conception of “Europe,” and will ask ourselves to what
extent one nation’s art occurred in reaction to that of another. Some lectures will provide broad
overviews of decades and styles or introduce the art made at a particularly important historical
juncture; others will be theme-based like “The Rise of Landscape;” and still others will take us
deep into the fabric of one important work of art.
Readings:
There are two textbooks for this course: Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century
European Art (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, New York: Abrams, 2003); and Barry Bergdoll,
European Architecture 1750-1890 (Oxford University Press, 2000). I also recommend the
following book for purchase: Vanessa R. Schwartz, Jeannene M. Przyblyski, eds., The
Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York, London: Routledge, 2004). All are
available for purchase at Grécourt Books. Required readings for each lecture are listed below and
are available through E-Reserves, via Blackboard (please contact Matthew Durand in the Art
Library if you have questions, mdurand@smith.edu). I have added a few optional pieces—if you
feel so inclined—which are by no means mandatory to read and will not appear in exams unless
in the ways they were introduced by me in lecture. In addition, books on related topics have been
placed on reserve in the Hillyer Art Library and the list can be accessed through the library
catalogue. My lectures will sometimes relate directly to the readings, sometimes not. I do ask you,
nonetheless, to read all required material carefully, as I expect you to be familiar with it for
papers and exams. Please use the Chu and Bergdoll books as your image base, especially their
color illustrations. Some images used in this lecture will be available on Insight.
Requirements:
I expect you to come to class having completed the assigned reading for that lecture. Your grade
will be assessed as follows:
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(20%) One short paper, ca. pp. 3-4 (a descriptive exercise based on a work of art in the
museum’s collection), due in class on October 17th
(20%) Midterm exam, October 31st
(30%) Short research paper, ca. pp. 7-8, due in class on December 12th
(30%) Scheduled Final exam, date to be announced
All assignments will be handed out and discussed in class. I do not accept late written work
except in the case of a serious emergency. All late papers will be penalized one full grade.
Although this is a lecture course, discussion is always encouraged, so please ask any questions in
class, or make an appointment to see me. Lively participation may, in borderline cases, convince
me to opt for the higher grade.
Please Note: We will not regularly meet on Fridays, but, as you can see from the schedule below,
I have reserved some Fridays for discussion and a museum visit. I reserve the right to convene the
class on further Fridays should we require further discussion time or should another lecture have
to be cancelled.
Mon 09/12
Introduction
Wed 09/14
Reading:
Painting the French Revolution
Chu, ch. 2.
Crow, Thomas, “Patriotism and Virtue: David to the Young Ingres,” in ed. S.
Eisenman, Nineteenth-Century Art. A Critical History (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1994), 14-50.
David, Jacques-Louis, “The Painting of the Sabines (1799),” in ed. C. Harrison
et al., Art in Theory 1648-1815 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 1119-1125.
Chu, chs. 1 & 4.
Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa, Necklines. The Art of Jacques-Louis David After the
Terror (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1999), 130-157, 325-328.
Optional:
Mon 09/19
Reading:
Optional:
Revolutionary Space and the Classical Paradigm: Architecture, Urbanism
and Sculpture
Bergdoll, chs. 1 & 4.
Potts, Alex, “Classical Figures,” The Sculptural Imagination. Figurative,
Modernist, Minimalist (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2000), 2459, 383-386.
Bergdoll, ch. 2.
Wed 09/21
Reading:
Art in Napoléon’s Empire
Chu, ch. 5.
Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo, “Plague. Egypt-Syria. Gros’s Bonaparte Visiting the
Plague Victims of Jaffa, 1804,” Extremities. Painting Empire in PostRevolutionary France (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2002), 65103, 329-338.
Mon 09/26
Reading:
Goya and Spanish Painting ca. 1800
Chu, ch. 6.
Goya on the Caprichos (1799), in ed. C. Harrison et al., Art in Theory 1648-1815
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 975-976.
Wed 09/28
Reading:
Painting After Classicism
Chu, ch. 9.
2
Crow, Thomas, “Classicism in Crisis: Gros to Delacroix,” in ed. S. Eisenman,
Nineteenth-Century Art. A Critical History (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994),
51-77.
Delacroix on Romanticism (1822-24), in ed. C. Harrison et al., Art in Theory
1815-1900 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 26-30.
Mon 10/03
Reading:
Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo, “Cannibalism. Senegal. Géricault’s Raft of the
Medusa, 1819,” Extremities. Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France
(New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2002), 165-235, 346-357.
Wed 10/05
Reading:
Romantic Aesthetics in Germany
Chu, ch. 7.
Carus, Carl Gustav, excerpts from Nine Letters on Landscape Painting (18151824, 1831), in ed. C. Harrison et al., Art in Theory 1815-1900 (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1998), 101-107.
Koerner, Joseph Leo, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape
(New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1990), 1-28, 245-246.
Optional:
FALL BREAK, Sat 10/08 - Tue 10/11
Wed 10/12
Reading:
Optional:
The Rise of Landscape Painting in Europe, from Constable to Barbizon
Chu, ch. 8 & pp. 230-236.
Thoré, Théophile, “Open Letter to Théodore Rousseau (1844),” in ed. C.
Harrison et al., Art in Theory 1815-1900 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 220-224.
Thomas, Greg M., Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The
Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau (Princeton University Press, 2000), 1-61, 221226.
Mon 10/17
History and Architectural Style: Nationalism and Revivalism from Potsdam
to the Neo-Gothic
Reading:
Bergdoll, chs. 5 & 6.
[SHORT PAPER DUE IN CLASS]
Wed 10/19
Reading:
Mon 10/24
Reading:
Optional:
The Cult of the Popular Image: the Lithograph, the Caricature and the
Photograph
Chu, ch. 10.
Benjamin, Walter, excerpts from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction (1936), in eds. V. Schwartz, J. Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-Century
Visual Culture Reader (New York, London: Routledge, 2004), 63-70.
Crary, Jonathan, excerpts from Techniques of the Observer (1990), in eds. V.
Schwartz, J. Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New
York, London: Routledge, 2004), 82-92.
Courbet’s Realism, the Revolution of 1848 and A Burial at Ornans
Chu, ch. 11.
Clark, T. J., Image of the People. Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution
(1973) (Princeton University Press, 1982), 77-154, 178-191.
Baudelaire, Charles, excerpts from The Salon of 1846, in ed. C. Harrison et al.,
Art in Theory 1815-1900 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 300-304.
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Wed 10/26
Reading:
Optional:
Second Empire Paris: Culture, Urbanism and the first World’s Fairs
Chu, chs. 12 & 15.
Bergdoll, pp. 241-257.
Clark, T. J., “The View from Notre-Dame (1984),” in eds. V. Schwartz, J.
Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York, London:
Routledge, 2004), 178-193.
Bennett, Tony, “The Exhibitionary Complex,” in eds. V. Schwartz, J. Przyblyski,
The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York, London: Routledge,
2004), 117-130.
Marx, Karl, “Commodities and Money (1867),” in eds. V. Schwartz, J.
Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York, London:
Routledge, 2004), 42-47.
Fri 10/28
Discussion and Midterm Review
Mon 10/31
MIDTERM
Wed 11/02
Reading:
Manet’s Modernism: Olympia
Baudelaire, Charles, “The Painter of Modern Life (1863),” in eds. V. Schwartz,
J. Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York,
London: Routledge, 2004), 37-42.
Clark, T. J., “Olympia’s Choice,” The Painting of Modern Life. Paris in the Art
of Manet and his Followers (New York: Knopf, 1985), 79-146, 281-297.
Fried, Michael, Manet’s Modernism, or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s
(Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 280-302, 565-574.
Optional:
Mon 11/07
Reading:
Optional:
1870/71 and after: Art and Culture during War and Revolution
Chu, pp. 361-366.
Przyblyski, Jeannene M., “Revolution at a Standstill: Photography and the Paris
Commune of 1871,” Yale French Studies, no. 101, Fragments of Revolution
(2001): 54-78.
Clayson, S. Hollis, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege (187071) (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 3-47, 375-385.
Wed 11/09
Reading:
The Impressionist Decade
Chu, pp. 375-397.
Smith, Paul, “Monet and the Moment of Art,” Impressionism. Beneath the
Surface (New York: Abrams, 1995), 83-111.
Duranty, Edmond, excerpts from The New Painting (1876), in ed. C. Harrison et
al., Art in Theory 1815-1900 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 576-585.
Fri 11/11
Visit to the Smith College Museum of Art
Mon 11/14
Reading:
The Late 19th-Century City: Vienna’s Ringstrasse
Bergdoll, pp. 257-261.
Schorske, Carl E., “The Ringstrasse, its Critics, and the Birth of Urban
Modernism (1979),” in eds. V. Schwartz, J. Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-Century
Visual Culture Reader (New York, London: Routledge, 2004), 167-178.
Wed 11/16
Reading:
Art in Victorian Britain
Chu, ch. 14.
4
Optional:
Mon 11/21
Reading:
Optional:
Pater, Walter, “The School of Giorgione (1877),” in ed. C. Harrison et al., Art in
Theory 1815-1900 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 830-833.
Barringer, Tim, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (New Haven, London: Yale
University Press, 1999), 7-53.
Art, Empathy and Aesthetic Thought in Germany, 1870-1900
Chu, pp. 300-309.
Hildebrand, Adolf, excerpts from The Problem of Form in the Visual Arts
(1893), in ed. C. Harrison et al., Art in Theory 1815-1900 (Oxford: Blackwell,
1998), 706-710.
Fried, Michael, Menzel’s Realism. Art and Embodiment in Nineteenth-Century
Berlin (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2002), 5-39, 266-269.
THANKSGIVING BREAK, Wed 11/23 – Sun 11/27
Mon 11/28
Reading:
Wed 11/30
Reading:
Optional:
1889/The Eiffel Tower: New Technology, Colonialism and Colossal
Engineering
Bergdoll, ch. 7.
Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo, “Geometry/Labor = Volume/Mass?” October, no. 106
(Fall 2003): 3-34.
Some Post-Impressionist Painters: Cézanne and Van Gogh
Smith, Paul, “Cézanne and the Problem of Form,” Impressionism. Beneath the
Surface (New York: Abrams, 1995), 145-163.
Schapiro, Meyer, “On a Painting by Van Gogh (1952),” Modern Art. 19th & 20th
Centuries. Selected Papers (New York: George Braziller, 1978), 87-99.
Schapiro, Meyer, “The Apples of Cézanne. An Essay on the Meaning of StillLife (1968),” Modern Art. 19th & 20th Centuries. Selected Papers (New York:
George Braziller, 1978), 1-38.
Clark, T. J., “Freud’s Cézanne,” Farewell to an Idea. Episodes from a History of
Modernism (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1999), 139-167, 422423.
Mon 12/05
Reading:
Neo-Impressionsim, Science and Seurat’s Sunday on La Grande Jatte
Herbert, Robert L., Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte, exh. cat., The Art
Institute of Chicago, 2004, 96-131.
Clark, T. J., “Conclusion,” The Painting of Modern Life. Paris in the Art of
Manet and his Followers (New York: Knopf, 1985), 259-268, 315-316.
Wed 12/07
Reading:
Art and the Psyche: Symbolism, Nabis & Fin-de Siècle Sculpture
Chu, ch. 461-483.
Orton, Fred; Griselda Pollock, “Les données bretonnantes: la prairie de
répresentation,” Art History 3, no. 3 (September 1980): 314-344.
Wagner, Anne, “Rodin’s Reputation,” in ed. L. Hunt, Eroticism and the Body
Politic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 191-242.
Mon 12/12
Reading:
New Forms, ca. 1900: Art Nouveau and Secessionism
Chu, pp. 451-460, ch. 20.
Bergdoll, ch. 9.
Silverman, Deborah, excerpts from Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France:
Politics, Psychology and Style (1989), in eds. V. Schwartz, J. Przyblyski, The
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Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York, London: Routledge,
2004), 371-392.
[RESEARCH PAPER DUE IN CLASS]
Wed 12/14
Discussion and Final Review
Scheduled Final Exam, date to be announced
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