DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY

Some of the most influential works of art and architecture and enduring styles in world history were created in the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Greece, and the Roman Empire. In this course we investigate their formal traditions, styles, and built environments, focusing on the highlights—by general consensus—of these cultures’ artistic and technological achievements. A primary objective is to examine the key monuments that have influenced Western (and global) art over the centuries, along with gaining skills in visual literacy and an understanding of art historical methods and aims. Another goal is to provide insight into the specific historical contexts in which buildings, sculptures, and paintings were produced and the particular political, social, and religious functions they served. To provide exposure to a wide variety of material within a critical framework, we will examine specific case studies to supplement textbook readings.

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How did European art come to be “European art”? This course studies the early modern period, ca. 1400–1800, the time of formation of many of the standard conventions and genres of European art, such as linear perspective and landscape. The period also coincides with the beginnings of European exploration and colonization of other parts of the world. What, if any, is the relationship between these two phenomena? What is the relationship of art to power, knowledge, conflict, race, religious devotion, gender relations, and aspirations to freedom and self-expression? We will study key works of European art produced in what are conventionally called the “Renaissance” and “Baroque” eras, in dialogue with historical context and art objects produced around the globe. This course is intended as an introduction to the artworks and historical material covered in the class and to skills in visual analysis and historical interpretation. No prior art history coursework is required.

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 The materiality of art is obvious—and central to how art looks, how it means, and how it endures. This new course is designed as a survey of current discussions of the materiality of objects and works of art made during the early modern era (c. 1400-1700). Works in a variety of materials—ivory, wax, woods, feathers, shells and mother-of-pearl, oil paint, lacquer, metal, fresco, stone—populate a series of case studies drawn from European, Mesoamerican, and East Asian workshops. In addition to learning about what goes into making an early modern work of art, students will trace the geographies of materials, and the ways in which materials, format, and durability all affect the viewer’s experience. Students will read, analyze, and discuss current research on the makings of art, on theories of the materiality of art, and problems in conservation of art—and will participate in close examination of works in the collections of the Block Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Loyola University Museum of Art. (Admission to collections is free; travel is available on the intercampus shuttle.) Prior coursework (AH 250 or AH 330) is beneficial but not required.

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Taking inspiration from Nathan Hare’s 1970 essay “Black Ecology” and Félix Guattari’s 1989 essay “The Three Ecologies” (which discusses ecology in relation to environment, society, and human consciousness and also includes a memorable comparison of Donald Trump to invasive algae), this course addresses the question of eco-aesthetics in relation to environmental justice with a focus on the experiences, political struggle, and art making of people of color in the U.S. and internationally. We will read fiction and scholarly writings, view artworks, and participate in one or more environmental projects. The class will also host several guest speakers (artists, scholars, and activists). It will also involve several field trips during class time—potentially extending into the early evening—and/or on weekends.

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This course explores modern architecture, design, and urban planning from the late 19th century to the 1970s. Focusing primarily on the modern movement in architecture, we will situate key figures, objects, and design practices within broader political, cultural, social, and economic contexts. Among the themes we will explore are how the major world wars, the Soviet Revolution, colonialism and decolonization influenced the production of architecture; how aesthetic considerations such as the relations between form and function were imbricated with questions about technology and labor; how architectural modernism became the International Style and what were the effects of its internationalization; and how discourses about hygiene, race, and climate informed modern architecture’s global expansion.

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The seminar will study the global rise and proliferation of World’s Fairs in the modern era: high profile political, aesthetic, technological, spatial, scientific, social, and cultural events in many key world cities. We will mine their impact on habits of display, consumption, visual and literary representation, and travel during the era of High Capitalism. The seminar will focus in upon specific fairs starting with the foundational 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations (in Hyde Park, London) through to the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (in Paris). The French capital hosted the lion’s share of World Expositions in this period, but fairs were mounted in cities in the USA, England, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Spain as well.

Advanced undergraduates as well as Ph.D. students may enroll.

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In this class students will negotiate the practical and conceptual challenges that arise in reinterpreting an exhibition for three different national contexts. The Block Museum’s exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa includes loans from museums and research institutes in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria. Returning unique versions of the exhibition to these countries that use each country’s loans as a focal point is among the exhibition’s goals. Working in teams in close consultation with the exhibition’s curator, students will formulate a curatorial approach, select key objects, and revise label texts.

 The Block Museum’s exhibition Caravans of Gold tells the story of medieval exchange across the Sahara Desert, and its far-reaching impact. Trans-Saharan exchange was central to an interconnected economy that stretched from West Africa to Europe, the Middle East, and beyond, stimulating the movement of things, people, and beliefs, especially Islam. Iconic works of medieval art—including gold leaf embellished books and panel paintings, ivory boxes and sculptures, lusterware ceramics, and delicate glass vessels—were tied to this trade. By bringing together such artworks with archaeological fragments from major sites in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria the exhibition reveals a largely forgotten view of the Middle Ages.

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In our epoch of the Anthropocene–when climate change has been deemed irreversible and its effects command more attention–looking to the roots of this crisis with industrialism in the late-nineteenth century reveals the interwoven colonial and environmental conditions that are at the heart of our contemporary moment. This seminar will teach the history of French art during the late nineteenth century–encompassing the artistic movements of Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and Art Nouveau–through the lenses of the environment and colonialism. Conducted at the Art Institute of Chicago, this course is a unique opportunity for students to develop the analytical skills of visual analysis first-hand in the museum collection, to apply these skills to theoretical paradigms, and to gain exposure to museum practices more generally.

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In her seminal study of the medieval world system, Janet Abu-Lughod sidelined sub-Saharan Africa as a non-player in the intricate circulations of goods and people that spanned the medieval world. Drawing in part on the show “Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time” at the Block, this course will consider recent work—based largely in the material record—which has begun to refigure our understanding of the place of Africa in medieval studies. While the focus of class meetings will be on West Africa between the eighth and fifteenth centuries, students with interests in other regions (whether within Africa or which engaged in contact with it) or the historical legacy of this era may pursue those concerns in their research projects. In attending to this new material, we will also grapple with the theoretical problems posed by the historical differences between the fields of sub-Saharan and medieval art history. Given the paucity of general resources currently available on this material and in order to help students hone their skills as teachers and public intellectuals, the final project for the course will be a group-produced website/open course rather than the traditional research paper.

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The seminar will study the global rise and proliferation of World’s Fairs in the modern era: high profile political, aesthetic, technological, spatial, scientific, social, and cultural events in many key world cities. We will mine their impact on habits of display, consumption, visual and literary representation, and travel during the era of High Capitalism. The seminar will focus in upon specific fairs starting with the foundational 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations (in Hyde Park, London) through to the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (in Paris). The French capital hosted the lion’s share of World Expositions in this period, but fairs were mounted in cities in the USA, England, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Spain as well.

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In art history as in popular culture, approached with veneration or condemnation, Picasso is synonymous with the idea of modern art. Examining Picasso’s work from his early scenes of bohemian Paris to his engagement with primitivism, his invention of cubism, his association with the surrealists, his protest mural Guernica of 1937, and his later communist-inspired mural projects, we will ask: What makes Picasso such a powerful sign of the modern? Engaging the Picasso historiography is to engage in a focused way with the methods of modernist art history and its critics. Readings include texts by contemporaries like Gertrude Stein, Carl Einstein, and Georges Bataille, the social art history of John Berger, classic modernist texts by Clement Greenberg and Leo Steinberg, semiotic readings by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss, post-colonialist revisions by Simon Gikandi, Patricia Leighten and Christopher Green, feminist critiques by Carol Duncan and Anne Wagner, Michael Fitzgerald’s economic analysis of prices and dealers, the literature on Guernica including Marxist critics of the 1930s, Sarah Wilson’s Picasso/Marx, and a special emphasis on T.J. Clark’s extensive meditations on the artist and his modernism.

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