OUTLINE OF LECTURES
1. FA205: History of Art
Credits: Not for Credit
2. Description: This series of five lectures gives a historical and critical review of
the Western art tradition. This history is unique, however, in that its approach is
not a pursuit of nostalgic fact and aesthetic feeling, but rather, a pursuit of the
true, good, and beautiful.
Beauty in Western culture is associated with wisdom, with knowledge of that
which is true and that which is good, thus the lecturer examines the history of art
from a philosophic and theological perspective rooted in classical philosophy and
the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
3. Goals: This series of lectures on the history of art aims to be both inspirational
and practical. It is assumed that all cultural periods offer the promise of insight
concerning the beautiful in life. It is our task to attempt to discern which of those
promises are kept are to focus on the pursuit of insight concerning the human
condition, and the application of that to realizing a better life.
4. Lecture Concepts
1. Modernism, postmodernism, relativism and narcissism, art as therapy,
entertainment, propaganda, the pursuit of wisdom
2. Classicism, Plato, Aristotle, Polytheism, Pantheism, Parthenon, Doric,
Ionic, Corinthian, Charioteer, Laocoon. censorship, morality and art,
imitation, art and technology, art and propaganda. mysticism, Stoicism,
skepticism.
3. The Abrahamic religions: Old Testament linkage of beauty and morality;
the cultural and artistic significance of the Incarnation, Augustine, Aquinas,
Trinitarianism, Dante.
4. The illumination theory of art; monasticism, Crusades, pilgrimage route,
Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Saint Apollinare Nuova, Saint Peter’s
Basilica, idolatry
5. Scholasticism. Mysticism, empiricism, realism, idealism, Cistercians,
Cluniacs, Scholastics, Book of Kells, Romanesque, Abby Church at
Vezelay, Abbot Suger
6. Renaissance, Ockham's razor. Galileo, Machiavelli, Savonarola,
scientism, Anselm, Abelard, Roscellinus, Giotto, Leonardo de Vinci,
Raphael.
7. Nominalism, individualism, humanism, Michael Angelo, Pontormo, Bruno.
8. Reformation and Counterreformation, the Englightenment, Luther, Calvin,
St Ignatius Loyola, the Sacraments and the nature of fine art, the Baroque,
Newton, Locke, Durer, Bernini Caravaggio
9. Modernism, Relativism, Kant, French and American Revolutions, Edmund
Burke. Fragonard, David, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Monet.
10. Postmodernism, Kant: Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, nihilism,
futurists, abstractionism, abstract expressionism, existentialism, Picasso,
Duchamp, Pollack, Hopper.
6. Recommended Reading:
Arthur Pontynen, For the Love of Beauty: Art, History, and the Moral Foundations of
Aesthetic Judgment. Transaction Publishers, 2006. ISBN: 0-7658-0301-1
Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, Notre Dame University Press, ISBN 13:
9780268001032.
7. Online Resource
http://www.wga.hu
8. Outline
Lecture 1: Why Study Art History? This introductory lecture establishes an uncommon
approach to the tradition of artistic expression as the attempt to present reality as the
true, the good, and the beautiful. (57 minutes/25 seconds)
Lecture 2: Classicism. The classical worldview is best represented by the Greek
aspiration for an orderly and intelligible life. Order must nevertheless account for
disorder and unintelligibility, which is where life begins. This section explores how the
Greeks portrayed the beautiful as the good and ultimately as the object of the highest
human achievement. (1 hour/10 minutes)
Lecture 3: The Christian Tradition, This lecture distinguishes the differences between
the classical and the Christian understanding of the beautiful on the basis of an eternal
versus a created universe. A created universe posits that humans are endowed with the
freedom to makes choices about what constitutes virtue, and accordingly goodness,
which is synonymous with the beautiful in a God-created universe. (2 hours/9 minutes)
Lecture 4: Renaissance/Baroque This lecture distinguishes the Gothic worldview from
the Renaissance. Why Gothic cathedrals teach their local populations about God’s
creation and His love. The shift from a focus on beauty to aesthetics in the
Renaissance. The Reformation and Renewal: From Mannerism to the Reformation and
the Baroque. (56 minutes/27 seconds)
Lecture 5: Modernist and Postmodernst Traditions. Consideration of the lineage from
Newton, through Kant, Hegel, Marx, and finally Nietzsche. Foundation of modernists
and postmodernist periods built upon the divorce of facts from spirit. The assertion that
the individual constructs reality determines what is beautiful— aesthetics. The
Postmodernist argument that, If nothing has value or meaning because no one shares a
common reality, all utterances are incommunicative, futile, and oppressive. Marchel
Duchamp unintentionally reveals the absurdity of postmodernism. Edward Hopper
mourning for the loss of the Beautiful. (1 hour/11 minutes)