Details of further reading suggestions as well as a relevant bibliography for the course will be provided at the start of the semester.
Bibliographic works referred to as Set Reading:
D'Alleva, A. (2012). Methods and Theories of Art History. London, Laurence King Publishing.
Dyson, S.L. (2006) In pursuit of ancient pasts a history of classical archaeology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yale University Press.
Haskell, F. and Penny, N. (1982) Taste and the antique: the lure of classical sculpture 1500-1900. Yale University Press. NB85.H34
Hatt, M. and C. Klonk (2006). Art History. A Critical Introduction to its Methods. Manchester, Manchester University Press.
Preziosi, D. (ed.) (2009) The Art of Art History. A Critical Anthology. Oxford University Press: 13-21; 22-26
Rudolph, C. (2019) Introduction. A sense of loss: An overview of the historiography of the Romanesque and Gothic. In C. Rudolph (ed.), A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe (2nd ed.): 1-44. Blackwell.
Course schedule
Introduction
Week 1 - Introduction
1. Introduction to the course
Set reading Hatt and Klonk 2006: 1-6 (introduction)
2. Introduction to art historical thinking
Set reading D'Alleva 2012: 5-10 (thinking about theory); Preziosi 2009: 7-11 (Art History: Making the visible legible)
Part 1: Monocausal approaches / the historiography of art history
Week 2: Art as history (16th-17th cent.)
3. The first art historian (Vasari).
Renaissance tools and rules of representation (Alberti, Ripa). Institutions and canon-formation (Zuccari, Félibien, Le Brun).
Set reading: Preziosi 2009: 22-26 (Vasari: Preface to third part)
4. Rules and canons; discovery and invention
Renaissance tools and rules of representation (Alberti, Ripa). Institutions and canon-formation (Zuccari, Félibien, Le Brun). Reformation and Counter reformation; antiquarians and nationalists of medieval art
Set reading: Rudolph 2019: 4-16 (historiography of western Medieval art)
Week 3: Taste and knowledge (18th- early 19th c.)
5. The father of classical archaeology: Winckelmann
Art history beyond biography and style. Enlightenment and Grand Tour (collectors and collecting; excavation and restoration)
Set reading: Dyson 2006: 1-6 (Winckelmann; Grand Tour)
6. Grand Tour and art criticism
Enlightenment aesthetics between knowledge and taste (Kant, Diderot); birth of art criticism; subjective vs. objective data (Empiricism, Positivism); history vs context? (Zeitgeist; Historicism).
Set reading: Haskell and Penny 1982: 37-52, 79-91 (early antiquarians, casts and copies)
Week 4 – Connoisseurs and big systems (late 19th/early 20th cent.)
7. Aesthetics: Hegel and Kant / Discussion of critical review format
Aesthetics and sensory knowledge; Hegel (dialectics of history, Zeitgeist and Volksgeist)
Set reading: Hatt and Klonk 2006: 21-38 (Hegel);
8. International ‘cultural heritage’ – ancient art (19th cent.)
Scientific study of ancient art; art and nationalism (big digs, international academies, and national collections); Greek art, Roman art, and the ancient artist; Furtwängler (Kopienkritik and connoisseurship)
Set reading: Dyson 2006: 157-59 (Furtwängler)
Week 5– Connoisseurs and big systems (late 19th/early 20th cent.)
9. Connoisseurship
Photography and academia. Taxonomies / classifications in ancient art (new media, new patrons, new approaches?), Morelli and Beazley (taxonomies of art and artists, connoisseurship)
Set reading: Hatt and Klonk 2006: 40-42, 48-50 (connoisseurship, Morelli)
10. International ‘cultural heritage’ – medieval art
19th-early 20th century concepts about the art and architecture of a ‘Middle Age’; western concepts of Islamic art; Nationalism; Collections and Exhibitions; Riegl, Wickhoff, Rivoria, Berenson, Strzygowski
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 16-19 (Formalism)
Week 6 – Formalism (late 19th/early 20th cent.)
11. Discipline emerges: systematic art history (late 19th/early 20th cent.)
Form and style (Riegl, Wölfflin); compendium of transcultural forms (Warburg); the iconological method (Panofsky)
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 16-19 (Formalism); Hatt and Klonk 2006: 65-70 (Formalism)
12. ‘Scientific’ and interpretative strategies: iconography
The ‘birth’ of late antiquity: Riegl's Kunstwollen; concepts about a ‘Middle Age’: Didron, Viollet-le-Duc, Mâle; keys to interpretation: Panofsky
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 19-26 (Panofsky); Hatt and Klonk 2006: 96-108 (Panofsky)
Week 7 – Materialist and psychological perspectives (late 19th/early 20th cent.)
13. Marxism and psychoanalysis / Midterm exam format
The start of a social history of art; foundations for reception studies; historical canons as psychological expectations (Gombrich)
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 48-58, 88-105
14. Mid-term exam
See details posted on Moodle
Part 2: Approaches since 1960s
Week 8 – New Archaeology
15. The contextual turn
New Archaeology (Renfrew, (post)processualism and ‘the great divide’); New Art History (the contextual and historical turn); semiotics
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 26-36 (semiotics)
16. Style: Reassessing the ancient and medieval ‘canon’
Style as a bearer of meaning / the iconography of style; semantic systems; Kitzinger, Schapiro, Camille, Hölscher
Set reading: Hatt and Klonk 2006: 212-18 (Schapiro, semiotics)
Week 9 – New Art History
17. The “New Art History” and the “New French Thought”
Social art history (Hauser to Clark), from structuralism and semiotics (1960s-1980s) to “New French Thought” (Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard in the 1980s and 1990s)
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 126-42 (structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction)
18. Artistic ‘Evolution’ between Form and Context
Replacing the notions of style and form with teleological definitions of media (Greenberg); the “period eye” (Baxandall); 1960s-1980s
Week 10 – Contexts of art
19. Feminism(s) and gender studies
Feminism/feminisms, gender and queer studies
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 59-67, 68-74 (feminisms and gender)
20. Visual culture and cultural studies: a crisis in the discipline?
Post-colonial and race theory
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 75-85 (cultural studies, post-colonial theory)
Week 11 – Contexts of art
21. Viewing as process
How may art have agency (Gell); Reception studies; Framing; viewing as process, movement as context; actor network theory; code-switching
Set reading: Bal 2002: 74-76 (framing and the matter with context)
22. Museum studies.
History of history of art vs. traditional historiography; self-reflective disciplinary practice; art exhibitions as narratives
Set reading: D'Alleva 2012: 142-50 (postmodernism)
Week 12 – Contexts of art
23. To be confirmed
24. Presentations to class
Week 13 – Presentations
25. Presentations to class
26. Presentations to class
Week 14 – Presentations
27. Presentations to class
28. Presentations to class
Week 15 – Assessment
Taking stock: final discussion