Course Catalog Painting
Painting Beyond Observation PTG 232 Continued emphasis on material, color, and skill-building. Students will work with primarily with acrylic paint. This class moves beyond observational rendering and focuses on other approaches to developing content for work. Class topics focus on contemporary issues in Painting including: “What makes a Contemporary Painter? What is Painting? What is a studio practice? What does it mean to be a professional?” Some of the topics to be considered: abstraction, representation, perception, mimesis, conceptual, subject, reality, expressive, authorship, and interpretation. A few of the artists that will be looked at: Kandinsky, Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Jack Whitten, Peter Saul, Agnes Martin, Pipilotti Rist, Lisa Hoke, Jessica Stockholder, Jenny Saville, et. al. This course is open to all non-Painting major students as an elective with the prerequisite of Intro to Painting or with the permission of the faculty. It is required of all Painting Major Sophomores. 3 credits.
Painting After the Photograph: Painting in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction PTG 233 Painters going back as far as the Renaissance have been using devices such as the camera obscura to produce a two-dimensional verisimilitude. With the invention of photography in 1839, artists were liberated from the demands of reproducing naturalistic appearances. This course will explore the relationship between the photograph and painting; the effect that the birth of photography has had on the history and current state of painting. A primary question to be considered will be: What are the strategies of painting in the age of mechanical reproduction? How has photography and mechanical reproduction influenced painting functions? We will look at artists as varied as Delacroix, Courbet, Warhol, Rosenquist, and Richter among others. Readings will include Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” 3 credits.
Painting: The Medium Is the Message PTG 234
Painting: Mechanics of Meaning: Subject, Form, Content PTG 236
Careful selection and control of the medium enables us to express ideas clearly. In this class students will explore and consider how various materials, methods, and processes operate, function, and ultimately how they impact meaning. Class demonstrations and lectures will introduce students to basic traditional and nontraditional painting materials and processes including safe handling and use. The class will function as a lab where through the process of trial and error, students will conduct ‘tests,’ keep notes, and ultimately catalogue their findings in an archive. Students are expected to explore these ‘findings’ in their own studio practice, as they further develop the practical and conceptual skills necessary for their work.
The goal of this course is to develop an understanding of the criteria, standards, and values promoted by artists and how these come to be understood by their audience through exploring the relationships that exist between subject, form and content. Through discussion, assignments and studio critiques the class will attempt to make explicit the role that our assumptions about the component parts of an art work plays in the construction of a work and how it is understood by its audience. 3 credits.
This course is open to all students with the prerequisite of Intro to Painting or with the permission of the instructor. 3 credits.
Painting: Constructing Narratives PTG 235 Every painting implies a narrative, whether it is a story being told through the images or the story of how the painting itself was made. This class is focused on what constitutes a narrative and the creation of content and strategies in painting. Students will consider implied, explicit, rhizomatic and linear narratives. Through studio practice, lecture and discussion students will engage in producing visual and conceptual narratives within their work. Through investing narrative students will move beyond the fundamentals of Painting and focus on the development of a personal practice as framed by contemporary standards. Students will be expected to do research and generate a project reflecting their personal interests. By the end of the semester students will have identified a subject and created a group of works focused on this subject. Further students will be asked to work toward an artist statement to accompany their work.
Painting Lab: Explorations in Representation + Figuration PTG 23X This course identifies the components of traditional figurative painting such as space, composition, point of view, color, and scale. Using this as a platform each of these will serve as the subject of a sustained investigation. This approach will function to establish an understanding of these elements in a conventional context as well as the object of experimentation. This course will be useful to students in all areas who are interested in working figuratively in two-dimensions. This course is open to all students with the prerequisite of Intro to Painting or with the permission of the instructor. 3 credits.
This course is open to all non-Painting major students as an elective with the prerequisite of Intro to Painting or with the permission of the faculty. Required for Junior Painting Majors. 3 credits.
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