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ART HISTORY 202: RENAISSANCE TO MODERN ART

DISCUSSION SESSION TOPICS, ASSIGNMENTS, PARAMETERS

Discussion sections provide an opportunity to examine images, themes, and ideas in greater depth than the survey lectures allow. Attendance and participation are vital to your success in the course; please note that 20% of your grade is devoted to this. You also will find material covered in section is essential to the preparation of both papers for the course. Some sessions will take place in the Chazen Museum of Art, but plan to meet in the classrooms unless otherwise indicated. You don't need to bring the textbook with you to section unless your TA requests it. However, you should always bring your course packet and your copy of Barnet’s Short Guide to Writing About Art. Weekly topics and readings are listed in the Section Calendar below. Please be sure to read the assigned readings by the date they are listed. Also note that for most weeks, you should complete a worksheet related to the reading assignment. These will be available on the course website or via email in advance of the week they are assigned. Worksheets help you prepare for material to be covered in section. You should plan on completing them before coming to class. T.A.’s will collect 4 of the 8 assigned worksheets to grade (though you will not necessarily know in advance which ones will be collected). If you miss section, you should consult with your TA to make sure you have any handouts or assignment details for the following week. Also, if you need to consult works of art in the Chazen Museum of Art for assignments, please note the hours: Tuesday to Friday, 9-5. Saturday and Sunday 11-5. Don’t wait until Monday, when the museum is closed, to tackle any assignments that require you to consult works of art there.

SECTION CALENDAR*

*Subject to Change at Discretion of Professor and T.A.’s.

WEEK 1: INTRODUCTIONS [Lectures]

  • Meet briefly for discussion section introduction
  • ASSIGNMENT: Read course description, requirements, and policies, and review lecture and lecture and discussion syllabi before coming to section

WEEK 2: WORD/IMAGE: LOOKING AT ART USING FORMAL ANALYSIS [Lectures]

  • READ: Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing about Art (page numbers will vary based on edition of volume; 6th edition, pp. 81-100; 7th edition, pp. 95-114; 8th edition, pp. 99-114; 9th edition, pp. 113-34.
  • ALSO REVIEW “Guide to Formal Analysis” in your READER

WEEK 3: PAINTING AND EXPERIENCE IN RENAISSANCE ITALY [Lectures]

  • READ: Michael Baxandall, “Conditions of Trade,” in Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Style (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 1-27.
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet

WEEK 4: THINKING COMPARATIVELY [Lectures]

  • READ: Barnet, “Writing a Comparison,” in A Short Guide to Writing About Art (6th edition, pp.101-15; 7th edition, pp. 115-29; 8th edition, pp. 120-34, 9th edition, pp. 135-50
  • 1ST PAPER (FORMAL ANALYSIS) DUE IN SECTION [Paper 1 Guidelines]

WEEK 5: (DE)CONSTRUCTING THE WESTERN ART CANON [Lectures]

  • READ: Rona Goffen, “Sex, Space, and Social History in Titian’s Venus of Urbino,” in Titian’s “Venus of Urbino,” ed. Rona Goffen, 63-90 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet

WEEK 6: ART AND/IN HOME: SEEING PICTURES IN CONTEXT [Lectures]

  • READ: H. Perry Chapman, “Home and the Display of Privacy,” in Art and Home: Dutch Interiors in the Age of Rembrandt (Denver Art Museum and the Newark Museum, 2001), 129-52.
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet

WEEK 7: REVIEW FOR MID-TERM [Lectures]

  • NO READINGS OR ASSIGNMENT FOR THIS WEEK; REVIEW ONLY

WEEK 8: NO SECTIONS – MIDTERM WEEK [Lectures]

WEEK 9: ISN’T IT ROMANTIC? VIEWS OF ARTISTS IN THE EARLY 19C [Lectures]

  • READ: Selections by William Blake, Eugene Delacroix, and Caspar David Friedrich in READER
  • No worksheet this week

WEEK 10: INTERPRETATION [Lectures]

  • READ: Barnett, A Short Guide to Writing About Art, 9th edition, Chapters 10 and 11 – pp. 220-65
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet

WEEK 11: WHAT IS MODERNISM, ANYWAY? [Lectures]

  • READ: Charles Baudelaire, Excerpts from The Painter of Modern Life (1859) in READER
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet
  • 2ND PAPER DUE IN SECTION THIS WEEK!!!

WEEK 12: GENDER AND ART HISTORY [Lectures]

  • READ: Linda Nochlin, “Why Have there been no great women artists?” from Women, Art and Power and Other Essays (1988), 145-178, in READER
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet

WEEK 13: INTERWAR MODERNISMS: MODERNIST MANIFESTOS [Lectures]

  • READ: The Manifesto of Futurism (by Filippo Tomasso Marinetti), 1912; “Non-Objective Art and Suprematism (by Kasimir Malevich), 1919; Dada Manifestoes (Tristan Tzara and Richard Hulsenbeck), 1918 and 1919; and First Manifesto of Surrealism (by Andre Breton), 1924, all in READER
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet

WEEK 14: THE TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM: ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM [Lectures]

  • READ: Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” 1952; from American Art, Sources & Documents, 213-22
  • ASSIGNMENT: Complete take-home worksheet

WEEK 15: REVIEW [Lectures]

  • Prepare for final
  • ASSIGNMENT: NONE