Bulletin Archive
This archived information is dated to the 2008-09 academic year only and may no longer be current.
For currently applicable policies and information, see the current Stanford Bulletin.
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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09
Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09
Undergraduate courses in Art History
ARTHIST 1. Introduction to the Visual Arts
Multicultural rather than historical approach. GER:DB-Hum, WIM
5 units, Aut (Pentcheva, B)
ARTHIST 3. Introduction to the History of Architecture
Introduction to the History of Architecture'From antiquity to the 20th century, mostly Western with some non-Western topic. Buildings and general principles relevant to the study of architecture. GER:DB-Hum GER:DB-Hum
5 units, Win (Beischer, T)
ARTHIST 99A. Student Guides at the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts
Open to all Stanford students. Introduction to museum administration; art registration, preparation, and installation; rights and reproductions of images; exhibition planning; and art storage, conservation, and security. Skill building in public speaking, inquiry methods, group dynamics, theme development, and art-related vocabulary. Students research, prepare, and present discussions on art works of their choice.
1 unit, Aut (Young, P)
ARTHIST 101. Archaic Greek Art
(Same as ARTHIST 301, CLASSART 101, CLASSART 201.) The development of Greek art and culture from protogeometric beginnings to the Persian Wars, 1000-480 B.C.E. The genesis of a native Greek style; the orientalizing phase during which contact with the Near East and Egypt transformed Greek art; and the synthesis of East and West in the 6th century B.C.E. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Aut (Maxmin, J)
ARTHIST 102. Classical and 4th-Century Greek Art
(Same as ARTHIST 302, CLASSART 102.) The formation of the classical ideal in 5th-century Athenian art, and its transformation and diffusion in the 5th and 4th centuries against changing Greek history, politics, and religion. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Win (Maxmin, J)
ARTHIST 105. Introduction to Medieval Art
(Same as ARTHIST 305.) Chronological survey of Byzantine, Islamic, and Western Medieval art and architecture from the early Christian period to the Gothic age. Broad art-historical developments and more detailed examinations of individual monuments and works of art. Topics include devotional art, court and monastic culture, relics and the cult of saints, pilgrimage and crusades, and the rise of cities and cathedrals. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Win (Pentcheva, B)
ARTHIST 106. Byzantine Art and Architecture, 300-1453 C.E.
(Same as ARTHIST 306.) Art-historical developments, and monuments and works of art. Topics include: the transition from naturalism to abstraction; imperial art and court culture; pilgrimage and cult of saints; and secular art and luxury objects. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 107. Age of Cathedrals
(Same as ARTHIST 307.) Gothic art and architecture in W. Europe, 1150-1500. The structuring of a modern visual discourse within the ideological framework of a new monarchical church and state, emerging towns and universities, the rise of literacy, the cultivation of self, and the consequent shifts in patterns of art patronage, practice, and reception in Chartres, Paris, Bourges, Strasbourg, Canterbury, London, Oxford, and Cambridge. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 108. Virginity and Power: Mary in the Middle Ages
(Same as ARTHIST 308.) The most influential female figure in Christianity whose state cult was connected with the idea of empire. The production and control of images and relics of the Virgin and the development of urban processions and court ceremonies though which political power was legitimized in papal Rome, Byzantium, Carolingian and Ottonian Germany, Tuscany, Gothic France, and Russia. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 111. Introduction to Italian Renaissance, 1420-1580
(Same as ARTHIST 311.) New techniques of pictorial illusionism and the influence of the humanist revival of antiquity in the reformulation of the pictorial arts in 15th-century Italy. How different Italian regions developed characteristic artistic cultures through mutual interaction and competition. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Aut (Hansen, M)
ARTHIST 114. Vision and Emblem: Netherlandish Painting from Van Eyck to Brueghel
(Same as ARTHIST 314.) How 15th-century pictorial illusionism transformed the devotional image and portraiture, calling for a new kind of engagement with the image on the part of the beholder. How 16th-century humanist knowledge influenced the creation of new pictorial subjects and representational forms. The reflection of religious crises triggered by the Reformation in art. GER:DB-Hum GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 116. European Baroque Sculpture
(Same as ARTHIST 316.) Characteristics of and innovations in sculpture in 17th-century Europe. The integration of sculpture with architecture in theatrical settings by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Idealized images of statehood for mercantile republics, absolutist monarchs, and the papacy. Smaller works for private contemplation, ideas of classical versus modern style, and workshop practices. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 117. Picturing the Papacy: Renaissance to Neoclassicism
(Same as ARTHIST 317.) Campaigns of renovations aimed at restoring Rome to its former legendary splendor. How artists and architects created spectacular, large-scale representations of and for Christ's vicars on earth following the return of the papacy from Avignon in the early 15th century; how they negotiated papal nepotistic intentions from the 15th to the 18th century. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Spr (Hansen, M)
ARTHIST 120. Art and Culture of Northern Europe in the 17th Century
(Same as ARTHIST 320.) Painting and graphic arts by artists in Flanders and Holland from 1600 to 1680, a period of political and religious strife. Historical context; their relationship to developments in the rest of Europe and contributions to the problem of representation. Preferences for particular genres such as portraits, landscapes, and scenes of everyday life; the general problem of realism as manifested in the works studied. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Spr (Marrinan, M)
ARTHIST 121. 18th-Century Art in Europe, ca 1660-1780
(Same as ARTHIST 321.) Major developments in painting across Europe including the High Baroque illusionism of Bernini, the founding of the French Academy, and the revival of antiquity during the 1760s, with parallel developments in Venice, Naples, Madrid, Bavaria, and London. Shifts in themes and styles amidst the emergence of new viewing publics. Artists: the Tiepolos, Giordano, Batoni, and Mengs; Ricci, Pellegrini, and Thornhill; Watteau and Boucher; Chardin and Longhi; Reynolds and West; Hogarth and Greuze; Vien, Fragonard, and the first works by David. Additional discussion for graduate students. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 122. The Age of Revolution
(Same as ARTHIST 322.) Painting in Europe during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquest. As political events altered social formations, practices in the visual arts were similarly affected by shifts in patronage, public, and the social function of image making. An attempt to align ruptures in the tradition of representation with the unfolding historical situation. The first manifestations of a romantic alternative to the canons of classical beauty and stylistic restraint. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 124. The Age of Naturalism, ca 1830-1874
(Same as ARTHIST 324.) The origins, development, and triumph of naturalist painting in Europe. The creative tensions that emerged between traditional forms of history painting and the challenge of modern subjects drawn from contemporary life. Emphasis is on the development of open-air painting as an alternative to traditional studio practice, and to the rise of new imaging technologies, such as lithography and photography, as popular alternatives to the hand-wrought character and elitist appeal of high art. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 126. Post-Naturalist Painting
(Same as ARTHIST 326.) How conceptual models from language, literature, new technologies, and scientific theory affected picture making following the collapse of the radical naturalism of the 1860s and 1870s. Bracketed in France by the first Impressionist exhibition (1874) and the first public acclamation of major canvases by Matisse and Picasso (1905), the related developments in England, Germany, Belgium, and Austria. Additional weekly discussion for graduate students. Recommended: some prior experience with 19th-century art. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Aut (Marrinan, M)
ARTHIST 132. American Art and Culture, 1528-1860
(Same as ARTHIST 332.) The visual arts and literature of the U.S. from the beginnings of European exploration to the Civil War. Focus is on questions of power and its relation to culture from early Spanish exploration to the rise of the middle classes. Cabeza de Vaca, Benjamin Franklin, John Singleton Copley, Phillis Wheatley, Charles Willson Peale, Emerson, Hudson River School, American Genre painters, Melville, Hawthorne and others. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 133. American Art in the Gilded Age
(Same as ARTHIST 333.) Interdisciplinary. Art, literature, patronage, and cultural institutions of the late 19th century. Aestheticism, conspicuous consumption, the grand tour, and the expatriate experience. The period's great collectors, taste makers, and artists: Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, James Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Albert Pinkham Ryder, William Harnett, and John Peto. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Aut (Marshall, J)
ARTHIST 141. The Invention of Modern Architecture
(Same as ARTHIST 341.) The creation and development of new architectural forms and theories, from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, mainly in Europe but also in America. Emphasis is on the responses to new materials, technologies, and social conditions, and how they shaped the architecture of the present. Recommended as preparation for 142. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 142. Varieties of Modern Architecture
(Same as ARTHIST 342.) The development of competing versions of modern and postmodern architecture and design in Europe and America, from the early 20th century to the present. Recommended: 141. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 143A. American Architecture
(Same as ARTHIST 343A.) A historically based understanding of what defines American architecture. What makes American architecture American, beginning with indigenous structures of pre-Columbian America. Materials, structure, and form in the changing American context. How these ideas are being transformed in today's globalized world. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 149. Art Between the Wars: Dada, De Stijl, Constructivism, Surrealism
(Same as ARTHIST 349.) Historical avant garde movements and anti-modernist tendencies such as socialist realism and Nazi art. Issues: artistic responses to wartime trauma; attempts to develop the progressive potential of technology and the political utility of art; and attempts to reorder relations between body and machine, art object and commodity, and private and public life. Artists: Richter, Heartfield, Tzara, Rodchenko, Tatlin, Bellmer, Man Ray, and Ernst. Readings: the modern subject, mass culture, the modernism/anti-modernism debates of the 30s, and the uses of art in totalitarian regimes. GER:DB-Hum GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 151. Transatlantic Modernism: Paris and New York in the Early 20th Century
(Same as ARTHIST 351.) Modernism in the American arts at home and abroad, emphasizing transatlantic expatriation, cultural politics, and creative alliances. Painters and sculptors are the focus. Literary figures who interacted with artists such as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and Langston Hughes. Topics and artists: the Armory Show, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Futurism, Fernand Léger, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keefe, Gerald Murphy, the Harlem Renaissance, John Storrs, and Florine Stettheimer. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 153A. American Art, 1900-1945
(Same as ARTHIST 353A.) Painting, sculpture, photography, and design. Focus is on the emergence of diverse cultural forms in the search for a modern, American form of artistic expression. Topics include: Robert Henri and the Ash Can school; the Armory Show and the influence of European modernism; Marcel Duchamp and plumbing; futurism, cubism, and the machine aesthetic; Stuart Davis and jazz; Dorothea Lange and documentary photography; Alfred Stieglitz and his Seven Americans; Thomas Hart Benton and regionalism; the arts of the WPA; and the role of artists in wartime propaganda. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 155. American Art Since 1945
(Same as ARTHIST 355.) Major figures, movements, and concepts of American art with examples from Europe from WW II to the present. Topics: the ideology and aesthetics of high modernism, the relationship between art and popular culture, the death of painting, the question of postmodernism. Artists: Pollock, Newman, Stella, Johns, Warhol, Andre, Rainer, Smithson, Hesse, Serra, Kruger, Sherman. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Aut (Lee, P)
ARTHIST 158A. History of Photography
(Same as ARTHIST 358A.) From its invention in 1839 to the present. Emphasis is on the evolution of photography as a fine art. Photographs as a universal democratic art form to record familial events and express personal creativity. Development of photography as it relates to other art forms, journalism, architecture, portraiture, landscape, documentation, time, and personal expression. The technology of photography; photographic techniques. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Win (Dawson, R)
ARTHIST 159A. Photography in America
(Same as ARTHIST 359A.) The history of American photography as fine art and social tool. Topics include: defense of photography as a legitimate art form; role of portraits and photo albums in social self-fashioning; technological and market aspects of photography; politics of straight or documentary aesthetics; role of women; and how the idea of America has been shaped by photographs. Artists include Matthew Brady, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston, and Mary Ellen Mark. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 160A. Twentieth Century African American Art
(Same as ARTHIST 360A.) Paintings, sculptures, photography, and mixed media works. Styles, cultural and social histories, patronage, and critical reception. The problems of studying the production of artists of color as a separate field; alternatives to the category of African American art; and the outlook for new critical methodologies. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Spr (Staff)
ARTHIST 173. Issues in Contemporary Art
(Same as ARTHIST 373.) Major figures, themes, and movements of contemporary art from the 80s to the present. Readings on the neo-avant garde; postmodernism; art and identity politics; new media and technology; globalization and participatory aesthetics. Prerequisite: ARTHIST 155, or equivalent with consent of instructor. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Spr (Lee, P)
ARTHIST 182. Arts of China, 900-1500: Cultures in Competition
(Same as ARTHIST 382.) The era from the Five Dynasties and Song to the mid-Ming period was marked by competition in cultural arenas such as between Chinese and formerly nomadic regimes, or between official court art modes and scholar-official and literati groups. Topics include: innovations in architectural and ceramic technologies; developments in landscape painting and theory; the proliferation of art texts and discourses; the rise of educated artists; official arts and ideologies of the Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Ming regimes; new roles for women as patrons and cultural participants; and Chan and popular Buddhist imagery. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 182A. Imperial Eyes: Court Arts of Ming Dynasty China
(Same as ARTHIST 382A.) Coincides with a major loan exhibition of Ming court arts at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. How Ming dynasty emperors, aristocrats, eunuchs and officials used art patronage to assert political power and cultural values. Major Chinese court art forms and media, including painting, porcelain, textiles, furniture, and metalwork. Topics include styles and modes of signification, artists' careers and artist-patron relationships, court institutions, and the impact of court arts on the wider world. Field trips to the exhibition at the Asian Art Museum. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Sum (Vinograd, R)
ARTHIST 184. Aristocrats, Warriors, Sex Workers, and Barbarians: Lived Life in Early Modern Japanese Painting
(Same as ARTHIST 384.) The changes marking the transition from medieval to early modern Japanese society generated a revolution in visual culture. This paradigm shift as exemplified in subjects deemed fit for representation; how commoners joined elites in pictorializing their world, catalyzed by interactions with the Dutch. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 185. Art in China's Modern Era
(Same as ARTHIST 385.) From the late Ming period to contemporary arts. Topics: urban arts and print culture; commodification of art; painting theories; self portrayals; court art, collection, and ideological programs; media and modernity in Shanghai; politics and art in the People's Republic; and contemporary avant garde and transnational movements. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Win (Vinograd, R)
ARTHIST 185B. Contemporary Chinese Art: Sites and Strategies
(Same as ARTHIST 385B.) Issues and developments in contemporary Chinese art over the past two decades. Questions of personal and national identity, politics and history, globalization and mass culture, consumerism and urban transformation, and the body, sexuality, and gender, as represented in formats including painting, photography, and installation and multimedia art. Museum visits. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom
4 units, Aut (Vinograd, R)
ARTHIST 187. Arts of War and Peace: Late Medieval and Early Modern Japan, 1500-1868
(Same as ARTHIST 387, JAPANGEN 87.) Narratives of conflict, pacification, orthodoxy, nostalgia, and novelty through visual culture during the change of episteme from late medieval to early modern, 16th through early 19th centuries. The rhetorical messages of castles, teahouses, gardens, ceramics, paintings, and prints; the influence of Dutch and Chinese visuality; transformation in the roles of art and artist; tensions between the old and the new leading to the modernization of Japan. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom
4 units, Win (Takeuchi, M)
ARTHIST 188A. The History of Modern and Contemporary Japanese and Chinese Architecture and Urbanism
(Same as ARTHIST 388A.) The recent rapid urbanization and architectural transformation of Asia; focus is on the architecture of Japan and China since the mid-19th century. History of forms, theories, and styles that serve as the foundation for today's buildings and cityscapes. How Eastern and Western ideas of modernism have merged or diverged and how these forces continue to shape the future of Japanese and Chinese architecture and urban form. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, Spr (Beischer, T)
ARTHIST 191. Afro-Atlantic Religion, Art, and Philosophy
(Same as ARTHIST 391.) Afro-American graphic writing and other forms of visual communication including ancient rupestrian art and rock painting in Africa, and present-day forms in the Americas. The diversity of daily life, religion, social organization, politics, and culture with African origin in the diaspora. Focus is on major contemporary Afro-Atlantic religions including: Palo Monte and Abakua in Cuba; Gaga in the Dominican Republic; Revival, Obeah, and Kumina in Jamaica; Vodun in Haiti; and Candomble and Macumba in Brazil.
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 192. Introduction to African Art
(Same as ARTHIST 392.) Form, space, media, medium, and visual expression in African art. Rock art to contemporary art production. Majors works and art expression in terms of function and historical context. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 193A. Caribbean and Latin American Art: Empire, Identity, and Society
(Same as ARTHIST 393A.) Visual culture from 1505 to 1889 and its relation to current debates on cultural identity, hybridity, syncretism, and creolization. Painting, travel books, and printmaking by artists including De Bry, Belisario, Rugendas, Debret, and Landaluce. Visual analysis of works at the Yale Center for the British Art and Stanford's Green Library. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 195. Introduction to Black Atlantic Visual Traditions
(Same as ARTHIST 395.) African cultural expression in the Americas. How politics, religion, and culture influence the art of the Black Atlantic. Focus is on the period when cultures were brought from Africa to the Americas through the slave trade and came into contact and conflict with western colonial powers. GER:DB-Hum
4 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 203. Greek Art in and out of Context
(Same as CLASSART 109.) The cultural contexts in which art served religious, political, commercial, athletic, sympotic, and erotic needs of Greek life.
5 units, Aut (Maxmin, J)
ARTHIST 204A. Appropriations of Greek Art
(Same as CLASSART 110.) The history of the appropriation of Greek art by Rome, the Renaissance, Lord Elgin, and Manet.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 207A. The Message of Light and Color: The Art of Mosaics in the Mediterranean
Why mosaics in early Christian and Medieval contexts were placed on apses, triumphal arches, and clerestories. Why early Christian artists used the technically difficult and costly medium of mosaicsl? Why and how images of God-Father and Christ were legitimized in spite of the second commandment prohibiting images. What sort of a message was involved considering the near invisibility of mosaics located high up in apses and clerestories. GER:DB-Hum
5 units, Aut (Brenk, B)
ARTHIST 212. Renaissance Florence, 1440-1540
Notions of cultural superiority in light of changes in Florentine society as it went from being a republic to a duchy ruled by the Medici. Artists and architects such as Donatello, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Pontormo praised as having revived the arts and returned them to a level of ancient splendor. The role of the sacred in daily life and uses of the pagan past for poetic and scholarly expressions and as vehicles for contemporary experience.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 213. Print Culture: From Dürer to Goltzius
Coincides with the exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center. The relatively inexpensive and reproducible nature of prints, and how they became vehicles for spreading artistic inventions and political religious propaganda.
5 units, Win (Hansen, M)
ARTHIST 222. Chardin and Watteau: An Aesthetics of Touch
These 18th-century painters preferred everyday life subjects, still-lifes, and landscape; Watteau invented the fête galante as a new picture type. Common to their work is attention to the materials of art: surfaces, textures, and glazes of paint; graphic range of chalk, ink, and pencil; an objectness that signals the artist's creative presence. Readings in contemporary theory and historical criticism frame an aesthetics of touch at odds with the eye-centered bias of Academic theory. Student presentations. Recommended: 121. GER:DB-Hum
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 226. Georges Seurat
Art and cultural context of the inventor of pointillism, associated with scientific discoveries about the nature of light. Dimensions of Seurat's work that escape a purely scientific understanding; the psychological tenor of his imagery; his choice of subject matter; drawings that are neither colored nor dot-like in style; his interest in the traditions of art; and left-wing politics.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 227. Gustave Courbet
His evolving historical persona over the past three decades, emphasizing recent critical writings. Recommended: reading knowledge of French.
5 units, Aut (Marrinan, M)
ARTHIST 232. Rethinking American Art
Painting and some sculpture of the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on works in the de Young Museum. Each student studies of a single work using documents of social and cultural history. Emphasis is on recent scholarship, genre, and the biography of objects as they shift in context and meaning over time. Weekly meetings at the de Young with Professor Margaretta Lovell and UC Berkeley students.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 233. The Art Museum: History and Practice
Workshop. Contemporary museum culture emphasizing the collecting and exhibiting practices of art museums. Readings, field trips, and discussions with museum professionals. Each student creates a detailed proposal for a museum exhibition and presents it to a panel of faculty and curators. GER:DB-Hum
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 234A. The Harlem Renaissance
African Americans artistic expression in the 20s that reflected changing conditions of urban modernity and racial identity. The forms and meanings of African American modernism; social politics of black self-representation and white patronage; and how high culture became the primary front in the struggle for racial uplift. Cultural figures include: Aaron Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Jacob Lawrence, Zora Neale Hurston, and Carl Van Vechten. Sources include painting, sculpture, music, and literature.
5 units, Aut (Marshall, J)
ARTHIST 235A. Art and the Machine Age
Artistic and intellectual responses to modernization. Topics include: artistic uses of the machine as a metaphor for nature, the body, and sexuality; adaptation of mechanical technologies to art making; appreciation of machines as works of art; and how changing technologies in the industrial sphere impacted the artist's role in the cultural sphere. The place of the machine in architecture; historical role of industrial design; machine-themed museum exhibitions; and works by Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier, Rube Goldberg, Charles Sheeler, Charlie Chaplin, Raymond Loewy, and George Gershwin.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 242. Henri Matisse
Themes, methods, and media in the production of Matisse, the familiar yet enigmatic 20th-century master. The phases of his career; critical responses to his work. Research project and presentation. Recommended: reading knowledge of French.
5 units, Spr (Marrinan, M)
ARTHIST 245. Photographic Utopia Under Stalin
Photographic practices of foreign and Soviet travelers searching for the future in Russia and the Central Asian Republics during Stalin's crash industrialization and forced collectivization program of the 30s. Topics include utopia, propaganda, image-text relations. Protagonists include: photojournalists Lotte Jacobi, Margaret Bourke-White, Max Al'pert, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Ella Maillart; photomonteur John Heartfield; documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens; writers Langston Hughes and Sergei Tret'iakov; and theorists Enzensberger, Benjamin, Barthes, and Derrida.
5 units, Spr (Gough, M)
ARTHIST 248. Futurisms
(Same as COMPLIT 238, ITALGEN 238.) From its foundation in 1909 through WW II, futurism developed into the first truly international cultural-political avant garde. Its aim was the revolutionary transformation of all spheres of life. The movement's manifestations in Italy, Russia, France, Spain, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Topics: machines and culture; visual poetics and war; futurism's complex ties to bolshevism and fascism. Media: poetry, performance, music, painting, photography, radio, and film. Writers include: Marinetti, Mayakovsky. Visual artists include: Boccioni, Bragaglia, Russolo, Malevich, Lissitzky.
5 units, Win (Schnapp, J; Gough, M)
ARTHIST 252A. Place: Making Space Now
Premise is that architects are place makers; what that means in the contemporary world. The difference between place and space. Traditional notions of place by scale such as home, city, and nation state. Challenges to traditional notions of place such as: being out of place; nomadic place; and how architects can design for non-places. Reconceptualizations of contemporary space such as the role of digital and cyber technologies; how locality is constructed in a global world; and the sense of place in the in-between places created by a world in flux.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 254. Utopia and Reality in Modern Urban Planning
(Same as URBANST 164.) Primarily for Urban Studies and Art majors. Utopian urbanist thinkers such as Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and Frank Lloyd Wright who established the conceptual groundwork of contemporary urban planning practice. Research paper. GER:DB-Hum
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 256A. Critical Race Art History
Primer for the comparative study of the representation of race in Western art. Whiteness, a construction that has been dependent upon blackness and alterity from its beginnings. Stereotyped ethnicities, nationalities, and territories, such as the Red Indian, the Jew, and Orientalism. Style as an image making strategy shaped by patronage and reception.
5 units, Spr (Staff)
ARTHIST 281A. Making Art History in Republican China
The construction of modern art historical discourses under a new national regime and within an international context; the role of public institutions and media such as museums, art academies, and art journals in forming a new public role for art and art collecting; and the cultural politics of art production.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 282A. Imagining the Imperial: Images of the Court in Late Ming Dynasty Public Culture
Themes of palace and court life popular in vernacular painting, print illustrated books, and fiction. Dimensions of the imperial palace and court in late Ming public imaginary, including strategies of historical displacement, disguised political critique, commerce in imperial objects, the taste for scandal, and mythologies of court life.
5 units, Aut (Vinograd, R)
ARTHIST 283A. Paris and Shanghai, 1880-1940: Mexdiating the City
Offered in conjunction with the Stanford Humanities Laboratory. Mediations of the cosmopolitan cities of Shanghai and Paris as frames and stages for representation and social presentation, including: conventional visual, pictorial, and art media such as painting, lithography, photography, and film; and complex, multimedia and social spaces such as illustrated periodicals, cabarets, theaters, shopping streets, and expositions. The materiality of media, social and economic systems, cultural spaces, and the construction of urban imaginaries.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 284A. Art Discourses and Art Production in Late Ming China
The interplay of art theory, taste, and collecting with art production, especially painting from 1550-1664, in the context of regional and urban cultures.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 286. Shini-e: The Performance of Death in Japanese Actor Prints
Memorial prints, shini-e, issued upon the death of celebrated kabuki actors to celebrate the actor's life and ask for patron support for his descendants. They often included the actor's own death poem. Intellectual issues include the performative self in traditional Japan, the afterlife, commercialism of the theatrical milieu, lineage, fandom, and death protocols. Sources include a loan collection of more than 400 shini-e; students give intellectual shape to this material and present it as an exhibit at the Cantor.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 287. Pictures of the Floating World: Images from Japanese Popular Culture
(Same as JAPANLIT 287.) Printed objects produced during the Edo period (1600-1868), including the Ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) and lesser-studied genres such as printed books (ehon) and popular broadsheets (kawaraban). How a society constructs itself through images. The borders of the acceptable and censorship; theatricality, spectacle, and slippage; the construction of play, set in conflict against the dominant neo-Confucian ideology of fixed social roles. Prerequisites: 2, 186, 187, 188. GER:DB-Hum
5 units, Spr (Takeuchi, M)
ARTHIST 287A. The Japanese Tea Ceremony: The History, Aesthetics, and Politics Behind a National Pastime
The tea ceremony, a premodern multimedia phenomenon, integrates architecture, garden design, ceramics, painting, calligraphy, and treasured objects into a choreographed ritual wherein host, objects, and guests perform roles on a tiny stage. Aesthetic, philosophical, and political dimensions. The evolution of tea taste including its inception in Zen monasteries, use for social control during the 16th century, the development of a class of tea connoisseurs, and 20th-century manipulation by the emerging industrialist class.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 290. Mapping Africa: Cartography and Architecture
Visual forms of spatial representation of Africa and implications for understanding the cultures they depict. Examples include early Renaissance cartography and written accounts by explorers, travelers, geographers, and missionaries. African concepts of design, meaning in architecture, and spatial solutions. Case studies of African models.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 292. African Art and Museum Display
African art and its intersection with art concepts, museum politics, art display, and colonialism. African art collections in major institutions around the world. Methodologies. Final class exhibition using art from the Cantor Arts Center collection.
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 292A. Researching Africa: Problem and Theory in African Art
5 units, not given this year
ARTHIST 296. Junior Seminar: The Practice of Art Criticism
Historiography and methodology.
5 units, Aut (Gough, M)
ARTHIST 297. Honors Thesis Writing
May be repeated for credit.
1-5 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)
ARTHIST 298. Individual Work: Art History
For approved independent research with individual faculty members. Letter grades only.
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)
ARTHIST 299. Research Project: Art History
1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)
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