Details of further reading suggestions as well as a relevant bibliography for the course will be provided at the start of the semester.
Core bibliographic works for the course include:
Arnold, D. (2004) Art History. A Very Short Introduction. OUP
Fernie, E. (ed.) (1995) Art History and Its Methods. Phaidon.
Pooke, Grant, and Diana Newall (2008) Art History: the basics. Routledge.
Alcock, S:E. and Osborne, R: (eds) (2012) Classical Archaeology. A Second Edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
Borg, B. (2015) (ed.) A Companion to Roman Art. Wiley-Blackwell.
Dyson, S.L. (2006) In pursuit of ancient pasts a history of classical archaeology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. YUP
Friedland, E.A., Sobocinski, M.G. and Gazda, E.K. (eds) (2015) The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture. OUP
Marconi, C. (ed.) (2015) Oxford handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture. OUP.
Marlowe, E. (2013) Shaky Ground: Context, Connoisseurship and the History of Roman Art. Bloomsbury.
Marvin, M. (2008) The Language of the Muses. The Dialogue between Roman and Greek Sculpture. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
Smith, R.R.R. (2002) The use of images: visual history and ancient history. In T.P. Wiseman (ed.), Classics in Progress. Essays on Ancient Greece and Rome: 59-102. OUP.
Stewart, P. (2008) The Social History of Roman Art. CUP
Blair, S. and Bloom, J. (2003) The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field. AB 85/1: 152-184
Cahn, W. (1969) The artist as outlaw and Apparatchik: Freedom and Constraint in the Interpretation of Medieval Art. In Sker, S. (ed.), The Twelfth Century Renaissance (Exhibition Catalogue of the Museum of Art of the Rhode Island School of Design)
Cassidy, B. ed. (1990) Iconography at the Crossroads: papers from the colloquium sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 23-24 March 1990. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Index of Christian Art (Occasional Papers 2)
Freeman Sandler, L. and Kessler H. (1989) An Exchange on the ‘State of Medieval Art History’. Art Bulletin 71/3: 506-507
Hoffman, E. ed. (2007) Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World.
Kessler, H. (1988) On the State of Medieval Art History. AB 70/2, 166-87
Rudolph, C. ed. (2006) A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe. Blackwell
Wharton, A. J. (1995) Refiguring the Post Classical City. Dura Europas, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna
COURSE SCHEDULE
Please note - the schedule includes a make-up day on Friday September 22
INTRODUCTION
1. Mon. Aug. 28 - Introduction to the course
Course organization, requirements, logistics, etc.
2. Thurs. Aug. 30 -
Introduction to Art Historical Thinking
Example of an approach that has influenced how we think about art history: Giorgio Vasari
Essential reading: Fernie 1995: 22-28 (Vasari)
PART 1 - THINKING ABOUT ANCIENT ART
Historiographical approaches: the development of the field
3. Mon. Sept. 4 C16-18: Discovery and 'systemization' of ancient art (object)
Interests in ancient art; study and collecting of Greek and Roman works; excavations in Italy; Winkelmann; Kant
Essential reading: Bartman in Friedland et al. 2015: 15-22 (collecting); Dyson 2006: 1-19 (protohistory of classical archaeology); Marvin 2008: 103-19 (Wickelmann)
4. Wed. Sept. 6
19: Great artists; big collections (maker)
Greek art and Roman art; international big digs and academies; Fürtwängler and Kopienkritik; Hegel and Zeitgeist
Essential reading: Arnold 2004: 7-80 (theories); Bartman in Friedland et al. 2015: 21-24 (collections); Hall 2014: 5-12 (history of study of classical archaeology); Smith 2002: 59-72 (artists and art)
5. Mon. Sept. 11
C19-20: Connoisseurship and social history of art (context)
Taxonomies of ancient art and artists: effects of wars, nationalism, and communism; social history, style, and non-elite art; ‘decline’ of Roman art and teleology of late antique art; Morelli; Beazley, Marx
Essential reading: Elsner 2000: esp 251-5, 260-2 (teleology); Fernie 1995: 103-5 (Morelli); Marvin 2008: 139-44 (Morelli and connoisseurship); Petersen in Borg 2015: 214-21 (‘plebian’ art); Stewart 2008: 4-9 (New Art History)
6. Wed. Sept. 13
C20: Patronage, identities – and archaeology (viewer)
New Art History, New Archaeology; (post)processualism and ‘the great divide’; the contextual and historical turn; Freud; Derrida; Renfrew
Essential reading: Fehr in Marconi 2014: 579-85, 595 (sociohistorical approaches); Renfrew 1980: esp 295-8 (archaeology, anthropology, classics); Smith 2002: 67-74, 96-97 (the ‘contextual turn’)
Contemporary approaches: case studies in current developments of the field
7. Mon. Sept. 18
Thinking about ‘the object’
What might influence artistic forms and styles? (top-down) cultural interaction; internal diversity; semantic systems; code-switching; Hölscher
Essential reading: Marlowe 2013: 64-70 (constancy of style); Varner 2006: 284-7 (eclectic rhetoric); Wallace-Hadrill 1998: esp 83-86 (‘code switching’)
8. Wed. Sept. 20
Thinking about ‘the maker’ Annotated bibliography 1 due
Who are the ‘makers’ of ancient art – workshops, artists, patrons? signatures and viewed statements; rethinking replication
Essential reading: Beard 1991: 12-19 (viewing Greek pots); Fejfer 2008: 29-33, 407-19, 426-9 (dedication, commission, portrait prototypes); Osborne 2010: esp 231-6, 243-51 (signatures on pots); Stewart 2008: 32-38 (patrons and customers); Squire in Borg 2015: 175-88 (signatures of Roman artists)
9. Fri. Sept. 22
Thinking about ‘the context’
What is the relationship between display context and object? Rhetoric of form (replication) and style (decorum); patronage and display
Essential reading: Marconi 2009: 157-63, 166-68 (Parthenon decoration); Marvin 2008: 151-64 (types and copies); Trimble 2014: 139-45, 145-49 (setting and replication of honorific portraits)
10. Mon. Sept. 25
Thinking about ‘the viewer’
In the act of viewing, what is the relationship between viewer and object? Agency and performativity; visual culture and globalization; Gell
Essential reading Trimble in Friedland et al. 2015: 606-19 (viewing art); Versluys in DeRose Evans 2013: 436-40 (local and global); Whitley 2012: 579-90 (agency in art)
PART 2: THINKING ABOUT EARLY MODERN AND MODERN ART
Historiographical approaches: the development of the field
11. Wed. Sept. 27
12. Mon. Oct. 2 Research paper 1 due
13. Wed. Oct. 4
14. Mon. Oct. 9
15. Wed. Oct. 11
Contemporary approaches: case studies in current developments of the field
16. Mon. Oct. 16
17. Wed. Oct. 18 Annotated bibliography 2 due
18. Mon. Oct. 23
19. Wed. Oct. 25
PART 3: THINKING ABOUT MEDIEVAL ART
Historiographical approaches: the development of the field
20. Mon. Oct. 28 Medieval Art: Discovered, invented, and evaluated (Object) Research paper 2 due
16-19th-centuries concepts about the art and architecture of a ‘Middle Age’: from decline to sublime; Renaissance, Reformation, Counterreformation; Antiquarians and Nationalists; Enlightenment, beauty, and the sublime; Wincklemann and Goethe; the Gothic Revival
Essential reading: Rudolph in Rudolph 2006: 1-16 (historiography of western Medieval art)
Tuesday November 1 - No class (Italian holiday)
21. Mon. Nov. 6 The Romantic, the Nationalist, the Orientalist, and the Universalist Middle Ages (Object and Maker)
19th-century concepts about the art and architecture of a ‘Middle Age’: Gothic Art ‘enshrined’; the ‘birth’ of late antiquity: Riegl and Kunstwollen and the Rome vs Orient debate; Orientalism and Islamic Art
Essential reading: Rudolph in Rudolph 2006: 16-26 (historiography of western Medieval art); Wharton 1995: 1-14 (Orientalism and late antiquity); Blair and Bloom 2003: 152-6 (historiography Islamic art)
22. Wed. Nov. 8 Formalism, Iconography and Intent (Object, Maker and Context)
c. 1900-1950 concepts about the art and architecture of a ‘Middle Age:’ formalism, style and iconography; the iconography of style; the impact of politics and war in Europe; the “medieval U.S.A.”; the “birth” of Romanesque and the impact of Modern Art
Essential reading: Rudolph in Rudolph 2006: 26-39 (historiography western med. Ar)t; Cassidy in Cassidy 1990: 3-11 (historiography of and issues in iconographic studies); Blair and Bloom 2003: 153-6 (historiography Islamic art)
23. Mon. Nov. 13 Meaning Patronage and Viewing (Object, Maker, Context and Viewer)
c. 1950-1990 concepts about the art and architecture of a ‘Middle Age:’ historiographical awareness, building on and critiquing the field; semiotics; viewer response; the rise of feminist and gender studies in medieval art history
Essential reading: Kessler 1988 (state of the question on Medieval art); Freeman Sandler and Kessler 1989 (discussion about the state of the question on Medieval art); Blair and Bloom 2003: 156-8 (historiography Islamic art)
Contemporary approaches: case studies in current developments of the field
24. Wed. Nov. 15 Thinking about ‘the object’
How are the style, form, medium, and subject matter of artworks to be understood? Does medium, affect style, form and subject? Does subject affect style and form? How does “received” artistic tradition affect style, form and subject? How do contemporary (medieval) cultures affect style, form and subject?
Essential reading: Elsner in Hoffman 2007: 11-18 (style in Late Antiquity); Golombek in Hoffman 2007 (textiles and Islamic art); Moxey in Cassidy 1990: 27-31 (critique of Panofsky via new emphases in the study of iconography)
25. Mon. Nov. 20 Thinking about ‘the maker’ Annotated bibliography 3 due
Who are the ‘makers’ of medieval art – workshops, artists, patrons, “designers” in the form of learned advisers, anti-establishment forces
Essential reading: Cahn 1969 (role of the artist); Caskey in Rudolph 2006: 193-212 (patronage in Romanesque and Gothic Art)
26. Wed. Nov. 22 Thinking about ‘the context’ and the ‘viewer’ (part 1)
What is the relationship between the physical viewing context and the artwork? Public, communal and private viewing contexts; accessibility and meaning; in the act of viewing, what is the relationship between the viewer and the artwork? How was seeing construed in the middle ages? How do feminism, gender and queer studies contribute to the discourse?
Essential reading: Caviness in Rudolph 2006: 65-85 (medieval viewers); Hahn in Rudolph 2006: 45-64 (medieval visuality)
27. Mon. Nov. 27 Thinking about ‘the context’ and the ‘viewer’ (part 2)
What is the relationship between the physical viewing context and the artwork? Public, communal and private viewing contexts; accessibility and meaning; in the act of viewing, what is the relationship between the viewer and the artwork? How was seeing construed in the middle ages? How do feminism, gender and queer studies contribute to the discourse?
Essential reading: Caviness in Rudolph 2006: 65-85 (medieval viewers); Hahn in Rudolph 2006: 45-64 (medieval visuality)
ASSESSMENT
28. Wed. Nov. 29 Discussion of course content
29. Dec 4-8 Discussion of course content