Satisfies the architectural history/theory distribution requirement for majors, but is also open to students wanting a general humanistic approach to architecture and its history. Architecture analyzed through in-depth case studies of major monuments of sacred, public, and domestic space, from the Pantheon and Hagia Sophia to Fallingwater and the Guggenheim.

Discussion Section Required.

Introduction to the art and architecture of the Greek world during the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods (11th - 1st centuries B.C.E.).

Discussion Section Required.

Introduces distinctive aesthetic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea--their similarities and differences--through an examination of the visual significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other arts in relation to the history, culture, and religions of East Asia.

Discussion Section Required.

Introduction to 2000 years of art on the Indian subcontinent. The course covers the early art of Buddhism, rock-cut architecture of the Buddhists and Hindus, the development of the Hindu temple, Mughal and Rajput painting and architecture, art of the colonial period, and the emergence of the Modern.

An introduction to the origins and early development of Italian Renaissance painting as a mode of symbolic communication between 1300-1600. Artists include Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Mantegna, and Leonardo da Vinci. Emphasis on centers of painting in Florence, Siena, Assisi, Venice and Rome.

Painting and sculpture in Western Europe, 1789-1900. The neoclassic, Romantic, Realist, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist movements. No Laptops.

Discussion Section Required.

At the center of the avant-garde imagination�and the interwar period in Europe more broadly�were photography and film. Long relegated to the margins of art history and rarely studied together, photography and film were often the guiding lights and vehicles for mass dissemination of avant-garde images and techniques. This lecture course delves into interbellum art, photography, film, and critical writing as it surveys a range of avant-garde movements and national cinemas; seminal artists and theorists; and topics such as montage, abstraction, technological media, archives, advertising, sites and architectures of reception. Film screenings will take place most weeks.

A survey of the major pre-Hispanic cities of Mexico and Guatemala, including San Lorenzo, Teotihuacan, Tikal, Monte Alban, Uxmal, and Chichen Itza.

Aesthetic, historical, and archaeological problems are discussed.

This course explores the emergence and development of the Indian temple, examines the relationship between form and function, and emphasizes the importance of considering temple sculpture and architecture together. It covers some two thousand years of activity, and while focusing on Hindu temples, also includes shrines built to the Jain and Buddhist faiths.

Greek art is usually associated with beauty, symmetry, and formal perfection. However, both the historical context that led to the creation of artistic expressions in various media and the majority of topics Greek artists chose to depict clearly demonstrate the violent origins of Greek art. Aim of this course is to break through the frame of what is considered the canonical image of Classical antiquity and shed light on the darker aspects of Greek art. The course will try to demonstrate how art in Classical Greece was used as an effective means in both dealing and channeling violence. Nevertheless, violence in art also represented a sophisticated way to create and demolish the image of dangerous otherness: the aggressive barbarian (Persian), the uncontrolled nature outside the constraints of the polis (Centaurs), the all too powerful female (Amazons).

The urban fabric of Paris provides the connective tissue linking medieval achievements in architecture, sculpture, and painting with the history of the city from the Romans to the Renaissance.

This class surveys the field of American colonial portraitures, introducing the major figures in each region and analyzing their work in terms of its style and technique as well as the cultural expectations surrounding the making and viewing of the paintings. Attention will be paid to diverse material forma of portraiture, from miniatures to silhouettes, from oil paintings to engravings on individual sheets or bound into books. The class will pay particular attention to the ways in which portraiture facilitated and undermined the economic and political operations of the colonies.

Major developments in the emergence of modern visual culture in Europe and North America, 1750-1900. Topics include the panorama, diorama, photography, painting, world's fairs, early cinema; issues in technology, urbanization and consumer society.

The class will examine the development of German painting and sculpture from the rise of Neoclassicism to the formation of Expressionism. It focuses on the tension, on the one hand, between a developing nationalist sensibility and the concomitant search for a national style, and, on the other hand, German art's intense engagement with the international art context. Given the particularities of German history, the question of periphery and center assumed a crucial role in the making of the German art world. Focusing on this problem will not only allow us to examine the love-hate relationship of Germans and their art, and the culture of France and England, but also to shed light on the role of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, East Prussia, and Poland in the creation of German (artistic) identity. Periphery and center will also be key concepts for thinking about another vital issue of the period: religion. In an age characterized by burgeoning confessionalism and the rise of an anti-semitism now grounded in racist theories, religion served as an arbiter for inclusion and exclusion, and was thus inseparably intertwined with the debates about German national identity.

This course examines minimalism�one of the most significant aesthetic movements�during the sixties and seventies. More than visual art, the course considers minimal sculpture, music, dance, and �structural� film, their historical precedents, development, critical and political aspects. Artists include: Carl Andre, Tony Conrad, Dan Flavin, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Anthony McCall, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson.

TBA

Arguably no other Renaissance artist reflected more profoundly on the nature of art than Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo filled thousands of notebook pages but always maintained that painting and drawing remained the privileged medium of reflection. That reflection forms the topic of this seminar. We will examine Leonardo�s writing, but most sections will be devoted to the paintings and drawings proper. This class includes visits to the Drawings and Prints Department of the MET.

The seminar investigates the work by seven crucial protagonists of today�s architecture. They are: Frank O. Gehry, Steven Holl, Rem Koolhaas, Herzog &

deMeuron, Diller & Scofidio, Jean Nouvel, Sanaa (Sejima & Nishizawa).

This course surveys the earliest forms of visual production by North Americans of African descent, spanning the period from 1640-1900. Our focus encompasses decorative arts and crafts (furniture, wrought iron, pottery, quilts), architecture and the emerging field of African American archeology, along with photography and the fine arts of painting and sculpture. We will consider how certain traditions brought from Africa contributed to the development of the early visual and material culture of what came to be called the United States. We will also reflect on how theories of creolization, diaspora, and resistance help us understand African American and American culture in general.

Explores various ways in which the West has made sense of Andean Art from the 16th century to the present.

A survey of the multifaceted forms of Japanese painting from antiquity through the early modern period. major themes to be considered include: painting as an expression of faith; the interplay indigenous and imported pictorial paradigms; narrative and decorative traditions; the emergence of individual artistic agency; the rise of woodblock prints and their impact on European painting in the nineteenth century.

The architecture, sculpture, and painting of ancient Rome from the 2nd century B.C. to the end of the Empire in the West.

Discussion Section Required.

Introduces distinctive aesthetic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea--their similarities and differences--through an examination of the visual significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other arts in relation to the history, culture, and religions of East Asia.

Discussion Section Required.

Introduction to 2000 years of art on the Indian subcontinent. The course covers the early art of Buddhism, rock-cut architecture of the Buddhists and Hindus, the development of the Hindu temple, Mughal and Rajput painting and architecture, art of the colonial period, and the emergence of the Modern.

This course offers an overview of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Italy from about 1475 to about 1600. It concentrates on artists in four geographical areas and periods: (1) Florence in the late-15th and early-16th centuries (Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo); (2) Rome from 1502 to about 1534 (Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael); (3) Florence from 1520 to 1565 (Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Bronzino, Cellini); and (4) Venice from about 1500 to 1588 (Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Jacopo Sansovino).

The course looks at works produced in the more than 20 countries that make up Latin America. Our investigations will take us from the Southern Cone nations of South America, up through Central American and the Caribbean, to Mexico in the north. We will cover styles from the colonial influences present in post-independence art of the early 19th century, to installation art from the beginning of the 21st century. Along the way we will consider such topics as the relationship of colonial style and academic training to forging an independent artistic identity; the emergence and establishment of a modern canon; experimentations in surrealism, neo-concretism, conceptual art, and performance. We will end the course with a consideration of Latino artists working in the U.S.

This undergraduate lecture course is an introduction to the crucial and peculiar topics in the history of modern (western) architecture of the twentieth century. The course does not systematically cover all the major events, ideas, protagonists, and buildings of the period. It is organized around thematic and sometimes monographic lectures, which are intended to represent the very essential character of modern architecture from its beginnings around 1900 until some more recent developments at the end of the century.

The course will examine a variety of figures, movements, and practices within the entire range of 20th-century art�from Expressionism to Abstract Expressionism, Constructivism to Pop Art, Surrealism to Minimalism, and beyond�situating them within the social, political, economic, and historical contexts in which they arose. The history of these artistic developments will be traced through the development and mutual interaction of two predominant strains of artistic culture: the modernist and the avant-garde, examining in particular their confrontation with and development of the particular vicissitudes of the century�s ongoing modernization. Discussion section complement class lectures. Course is a prerequisite for certain upper-level art history courses.Discussion Section Required.

Focuses on the intersection of photography with traditional artistic practices in the 19th century, on the mass cultural functions of photography in propaganda and advertising from the 1920s onwards, and on the emergence of photography as the central medium in the production of postwar avant-garde art practices.

Books written and illuminated on parchment are among the most evocative and complex records of life in the Middle Ages. This course will consider manuscripts made in the Latin West from 500 to 1500, the span of time in which the handwritten codex dominated the production of writing. We will examine the books of the Middle Ages thematically with special consideration given to the purposes for which books were made and illustrated. Consequently historical text, patronage, and reception will be stressed throughout. Several sections held in the rare books and manuscripts library, along with visits to local museums will serve to familiarize students with actual manuscripts from the Middle Ages.

PLEASE NOTE: APPLICATION DUE TO 826 SCHERMERHORN. A travel seminar on Paris in its nineteenth-century heyday. Painting, prints, architecture, urban planning, fashion, romance, revolutions and death will all be studied. Assignments will include novels about Paris. During spring break, the class will travel to Paris to experience the city.

During the Hellenistic period (330-30 BCE), themes that were considered uninteresting, even inappropriate for the viewer of Classical and Late Classical sculpture became extremely attractive: old people, hard working peasants, old drunken prostitutes, fishermen in the big harbours, or persons ethnically different from the Greek ideals became the subject of the Hellenistic sculpture in the round that also produced images of serene divinities and dynamic members of the elite in an entirely Classical tradition. Besides Athens, new cultural and artistic centres arose: Alexandria in Egypt, Antiocheia and Pergamon in Asia Minor, or Rhodes. Despite its importance as the birthplace of all arts, Athens did not dominate anymore the artistic language, so that an unprecedented variety of styles characterises the sculptural production of the Hellenistic period. The seminar will study the sculpture of the Hellenistic period as an extremely imaginative and dynamic artistic expression without the Classical bias. The styles of the various Hellenistic artistic centres will be individually analysed based on representative works and then compared to each other and to the sculptural traditions of the Classical period, so that Hellenistic sculpture can be understood both as a continuation of the Classical and especially Late Classical sculpture and as an artistic and intellectual revolt against the ideals of the past.