Description: |
This course overviews Western painting, sculpture, architecture, film, performance and installation and its dialogues with the wider world. We will examine various practices in historical contexts, while paying particular attention to the narratives, sociabilities, and materials that bear upon them, such as the influence of the past, religion, gender, colonialism, race, ideology, technology, ecology, and politics. The course will attempt to familiarize students with the way some principal monuments of world art from about 400 BCE onward were made and understood, and to develop visual literacy, that is, the ability not only to identify, but also to discuss art works as central elements of culture. Museum, gallery, and archive field trips are key components of the course. |