Spring 2007 Undergraduate Courses

Lectures

(AHIS BC 1002) Introduction to the History of Art II 
A. Higonnet 
Either term may be taken separately. Brief examination of the techniques of visual analysis, followed by a chronological survey of the major period styles of Western European art. Emphasis on the introduction of form and content in the works studied and on the correlation of the visual arts with their cultural environments. BC1001: Greek and Roman art; medieval art. BC1002: Renaissance to modern art.

(AHIS V3250)  Roman Art & Architecture
F. de Angelis   
The architecture, sculpture, and painting of ancient Rome from the 2nd century B.C. to the end of the Empire in the West.

(AHUMV3340) Art in China, Japan, and Korea
D. Delbanco, C. Foxwell
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. Major Cultures Requirement: East Asian Civilization List B.

(AHUM V3342)  Masterpieces of Indian Art & Architecture
D. Khera, Y. Sharma
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.

(AHIS W3437)  Italian Renaissance Painting II: 16th Century   
D. Rosand  
Style and significance of painting in Italy, with attention to the social, political, and religious contexts of artistic production as well as to the critical  concepts of High Renaissance and mannerism. Emphasis on major figures in Florence, Rome, and Venice, especially Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giorgione, and Titian.

(AHIS W3645)  20th Century Architecture & City Planning 
V. DiPalma   
Major movements, figures, and theoretical positions in European and American architecture since 1890. Attention to the influential urban proposals of Wright, Le Corbusier, Hilbesheimer, CIAM, Archigram, the Metabolists, and Venturi & Scott Brown.

(AHIS W3650) 20th Century Art  
B. Joseph   
Major developments in 20th-century art, with emphasis on modernist and avant-garde practices and their relevance for art up to the present. Discussion Section Required.

(AHIS BC3673)  History of Photography
J. Mansoor 
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.

(AHIS BC3675)  Feminism & Postmodernism in the Visual Arts  
R. Deutsche   
Prerequisites: Course in 20th century art history. Examines art and criticism of  the 1970s and 1980s that were informed by feminist and postmodern ideas about visual representation. Places this art in relation to other aesthetic phenomena, such as modernism, minimalism, institution-critical art, and earlier feminist interventions in art.

Seminars and Colloquia

(AHIS W3895) Major's Colloquium: the Literature and Methods of Art History
Z. Bahrani, D. Harkett 
Schermerhorn  Prerequisites: the department's permission. Students must sign up in 826 Schermerhorn. Introduction to different methodological approaches to the  study of art and visual culture. Majors are encouraged to take the colloquium during their junior year.

(AHIS W3820)  The Idea of the Baroque   
C. Heuer
Critical examination of topics in painting and architecture circa 1600-1700, with emphasis upon how ideas of excess, theatricality, spectacle, and the concepts of "baroque" and "mannerism" figure in the broader history of the discipline. Artists to be considered include: Velazquez, Bernini, Rubens, Rembrandt, Ruisdael, and Poussin, with readings from Descartes, Spinoza, Wölfflin, Riegl, Adorno, Shearman, and Deleuze, among others.

(AHIS W3845) The Grand Tour
V. DiPalma  
This undergraduate seminar explores the origins and development of tourism by focusing on the eighteenth-century Grand Tour. The course will examine topics such as motion as a vehicle of aesthetic experience and the use of guidebooks and itineraries; the identification and codification of a canon of monuments and masterpieces; luxury, consumption, and the category of tourist art; copying, invention, and the role of the fragment; and the relationship between tourism, collecting, and the origin of museums.

(AHIS W3904) Aztec Art & Sacrifice   
E. Pasztory   
This seminar explores the issues of art and sacrfice in the Aztec empire from the points of view of the sixteenth century and modern times.

(AHIS W3908) Topics in the Mediterranean Bronze Age: Palaces
J. Smith
This seminar that explores palace cultures of the Bronze Age Mediterranean world (Aegean, Anatolia, Syria-Palestine, Cyprus, and Egypt) in order to define what palaces are, how and by whom they were used, and what roles they played in the international world of the second millennium B.C. The course includes some comparative discussion of earlier palaces and possible palaces of the third millennium as well as later Iron Age and later palaces of the Near East and Greco-Roman world. During the course of the seminar, each student will research and present a palace in terms of the following topics: (1) palace origins, architecture, and landscape; (2) economy, storage, and record-keeping in and around palaces; (3) public ceremony and ritual in and around palaces; (4) private cult and ritual in and around palaces; and (5) élite residence in and around palaces.

(AHIS W3916) Renaissance Architecture in Venice between Rome & the East    
F. Benelli  
The seminar investigates Renaissance Architecture in Venice from the Codussi family to Palladio (second half of XV century to 1580) and the components of its language including those from Constantinople, Rome and Florence. Some attention will be paid on the role of the Venetian patriciate  on the architecture of the city.

(AHIS W3921)  Patronage & the Monuments of India
V. Dehejia   
This is the department's annual travel seminar. The course is to travel to India over Spring break with all travel costs paid for by the department. 
Exploration of the multiple aspects of patronage in Indian culture—religious, political, economic, and cultural. Case studies focused on specific monuments will be the subject of individual lectures.

(AHIS BC3031)  Imagery & Form in the Arts  
J. Snitzer   
Attendance at first class mandatory. Instructor determines class roster on first day of class. No application required. Description to follow

(AHIS BC3947) Dada and Surrealism
J. Mansoor 
Attendance at first class mandatory. Instructor determines class roster on first day of class. No application required. Description to follow

(AHIS W3962) Information: document, archive, map in modern and contemporary art   
J. Rajchman
How do artists use information—document, archive, map? How are information-strategies involved in painting, photography, cinema, and the very 'sense' of images and the ways people think with them? How do they change ideas and spaces of 'art'? A number of political, scientific, and technological developments have helped revive such questions in contemporary art and in its relations with critical thought and curatorial practice. They have posed in new ways questions that go back to the transformations of the 60s, debates in 'modernist' art in Russia and elsewhere, as well as to theoretical questions about document and fiction, media and reality, and the involvement of art with publics, or its ethics and politics.

(AHIS W3982)  The Shape of New York: Robert Moses and New York 
H. Ballon  
No figure had a greater impact on the physical transformation of New York than Robert Moses. Moses responded to pervasive urban issues, including the rise of the automobile, the urban exodus of the middle class, slums and blight, and Moses's solutions were aligned with national trends and fueled by federal funding. This in-depth examination of Moses's urban program from 1934 to 1965 will take advantage of three concurrent exhibitions on Moses at the Wallach Gallery, the Museum of the City of New York, and the Queens Museum during the spring semester; the exhibits are curated by Professor Ballon.

(AHIS BC3985)  Introduction to Connoisseurship   
M. Ainsworth