Course Catalog Art/Craft/Design History+Theory
The Body: Tradition, Transformation, Transgression ACD 458 This seminar-style course will explore one of the most important themes of 20th-century visual art: the body (male and female). We will discuss a complex range of ideas and values associated with the nude (and naked) body as it has been re-presented in 20th c. photography; painting; sculpture/installation; performance and body art; and video. While the “great tradition” of the nude will be introduced, the course will focus on art produced since the 1950s (from the late modern to the postmodern era). Among other topics, we will study the visual body as a representational site for the self; for erotic desire; for the political position of women; and for formal experimentation. We will look at art that presents bodies which are very much outside tradition: i.e., bodies that are sick, decaying, dying, dead, aging, obese, androgynous, deformed, etc. Topics and terms of analysis will include: the traditional nude; feminist critiques of sexism; voyeurism; “exploitation,” “obscenity,” and censorship; objectification (gaze theory) sexuality; the nude self-portrait and portrait; parody and quotation; the female nude and modernism; Kenneth Clark’s nudenaked (ideal-real) dichotomy; identity and performance; and formal aestheticizing of the body. Visual Culture Emphasis course. 3 credits.
Design + Craft in Modern Culture ACD 462 This course is an introduction to graphic and three-dimensional design from the Industrial Revolution to the present. We will examine modern and contemporary artists, styles, and objects across the design and craft disciplines, including finely crafted furniture and other objects designed for public and private spaces (architectural details and ornamentation, wallpaper, textiles, lamps, kitchenware, etc.); decorative objects such as ceramics, metalwork, and glass; objects of mass production and consumer culture (cars, trains, cameras, corporate and residential furnishings, electronic goods, etc.); art posters, private press books and illustrations, and innovative forms of communication graphics. Special
consideration will be given to the social and cultural meanings of objects, issues related to the design and craft fields as professional occupations, and the art historical and theoretical relationships of the various design and craft disciplines beyond medium (material) specific concerns. Visual Culture Emphasis course. 3 credits.
Museum Studies: Who Owns Art?: Issues in Asian Art Collecting ACD 480X In the past five to ten years, issues of ownership and provenance of art works in museums have been hotly debated, with regard to both art world ethics and cultural sensibilities. Some art museums have returned holdings to their original countries and some have firmly maintained their legitimate ownership of objects. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York recently returned to Italy the fifth-century B.C. Euphronios krater. The looting of art has existed in both the past and the present and has not been limited to European countries alone. It has also occurred in Asia—China, India, and other South Asian countries—where the looting has come from internal rather external motivations. How much do we know about such occurrences in Asia? This open-discussion seminar is aimed at exploring issues of ownership in the art and visual culture of Asian countries, and how they are represented and displayed in current European and American contexts. In order to understand this current issue, some historical background on art collecting and museum operations can not be omitted. Participation in readings and discussions are expected in the classroom. Visual Culture Emphasis course. 3 credits.
Conceptual Art ACD 483X This theme-based art history course is designed to give students an in-depth, semester-long investigation into the art movements and ideas that informed Conceptual Art’s development in the 1960s and 1970s as well as its impact on contemporary art making in the decades that followed. This course will cover, but not be limited to, the so-called heyday of Conceptual Art in the 1960s and 1970s, a focus on which would otherwise reinforce the traditional modernist art historical framework that defined styles in part by limiting them to a specific time period. Significant time in the class will be devoted to investigating examples of conceptuallyinformed art created in the 1980s, 1990s and the early 21st century, underscoring the impact of Conceptual Art’s legacy for art, craft and design today. The course will investigate the philosophies that informed conceptual art that allowed artists to problematize the conditions and encounters with art; the conventions of its visuality, and the circumstances of its production. Visual Culture Emphasis course. 3 credits.
Media Arts + Visual Culture: Installation ACD 486 This course investigates the emergence, prominence and impact of the installation as a new medium in contemporary art. “Media arts” or “new media” include but are not limited to video and experimental film, performance, interactive art, digital media, and especially the installation, which itself embraces a wide range of media. We will focus on the growth of the installation from “environments” in the 1960s into a distinct artistic medium used widely since the 1980s. We will discuss the work of many recognized artists and some less familiar artists from around the world as well as corresponding theories of media within the broader field of visual culture. Using a wide range of installations as examples, particular attention will be given to the implications that new media, especially digital media, have for the creative process and the critical social issues that they raise. Visual Culture Emphasis course. 3 credits.
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