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JOHN CABOT UNIVERSITY

COURSE CODE: "AS 306 H"
COURSE NAME: "Rethinking Landscape Painting- HONORS (This course carries 4 semester hours of credits. A minimum CUM GPA of 3.5 is required)"
SEMESTER & YEAR: Fall 2023
SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTOR: Michele Tocca
EMAIL: [email protected]
 HOURS: TH 12:30-3:15 PM
TOTAL NO. OF CONTACT HOURS: 45
CREDITS:
PREREQUISITES: Prerequisite: One previous course in Drawing /Painting. This class requires a materials fee of €75/$85 to cover all basic art supplies.
OFFICE HOURS:
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course introduces the historical and philosophical significances of landscape painting, enabling students to explore its possibilities as a field of experience and speculation in the present. Onsite painting sessions around Rome alternate with lectures and discussions that resort to perceptual, imaginative and theoretical approaches to natural and urban spaces. With its millenary history, Rome is a stratification of ecosystems that makes it an ideal resource for students to develop a critical awareness of a variety of material and intellectual perspectives.

SUMMARY OF COURSE CONTENT:

Based on interrogatives posited by the direct observation of the physical world, onsite painting sessions alternate with lectures and discussions on the intellectual frame surrounding landscape, from psychogeography to the notion of walking as an artistic and philosophical tool. What is it that makes landscape painting relevant? To what extent can painting on the spot affect our understanding of place, time and historicity? With all the debating on ecological crisis, the effects of globalization and digitalization, the program resorts to the perceptual, imaginative and theoretical relationship to natural and urban spaces as a critical practice to investigate the environment from alternative perspectives.

Lessons mainly happen in locations around Rome. With a history of urban development spanning 28 centuries, Rome is ideal for its unique concoction of ebullient gentrification and wilderness, abandoned areas and tamed parks, factories and farms. Two excursions to nearby woods are expected.

 

Additional information:

1.The course involves working from direct observation and memory. Working from photographs is not permitted unless part of an assignement;

2. The core of the programme is painting directly from observation, whilst reflecting on the experience of landscape. You will not be able to meet the requirements of the course without working many hours outside of class;

3. The class meets rain or shine. Alternative plans will be agreed throughout;

4. The course is meant to be a framework allowing very free individual artistic choices. The lessons are meant to help students get started, but there is always room for creative alternatives and development.

 7. Students must come to class on time because that is when the site is explained, and the day's drawing problem and other announcements are communicated.

8. Students need to dress appropriately: proper footware, no bare shoulders in churches, hats and sunscreen, warm clothing when the weather turns cold. Decorous behaviour in public spaces.
9. No earbuds allowed during class time, as they diminish concentration and impede communication.

Bibliography:

Readings will be provided throughout, however a basic bibliography for extracts includes:

Kenneth Clark, Landscape into Art, Icon Editions

H. D. Thoreau, Walking

Madame de Staël, Corinne; or Italy, Good Press

Darren Pih, Radical Landscapes, Art, identity, activism, Tate Publishing

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A history of walking, Faber and Faber

Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography, Oldcastle Books 

 
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
Demonstrate a thorough understanding of fundamental traditions and problems in landscape painting and apply this with growing skill in representing form within space.

Demonstrate a growing awareness of the formal and philosophical possibilities of landscape painting within current concerns.

Demonstrate a sound ability within your work  to analyse the interdependency between form and content in relation to the experience of painting landscape. 

Demonstrate an awareness of your identity as practitioner in relation to landscape painting and an ability to critically reflect  upon the experience of places through your own work and the work of others during group critiques and painting sessions.
TEXTBOOK:
NONE
REQUIRED RESERVED READING:
NONE

RECOMMENDED RESERVED READING:
NONE
GRADING POLICY
-ASSESSMENT METHODS:
AssignmentGuidelinesWeight
Final PortfolioThe students' final body of works must reflect their identity and potential as practitioners within the current concerns of landscape art, whilst giving evidence of an awareness of historical traditions to sustain ideas and approaches to making. Evaluation criteria include: experimentation, resourcefulness, inventiveness, expressiveness, acuity of observation, concision, complexity, improvement, intentionality, spatial clarity, awareness of historical models, and other aspects of technical skill and artistic quality.50%
Group CritiquesAssignments and independent projects will be given throughout the course and will be presented and assessed during group critiques. There will be two formal critiques - one at mid-term and the other during final week. Students will be required to present their work to the class and to answer questions about their work by the professor. Students will be encouraged to comment on the work of their classmates. Attendance is mandatory. Failure to be present will result in a significant drop in assessment at the end of the term.25%
Attendance, participation and initiativeAttendance is mandatory. Independent work will be expected from each student. Students should expect to spend at least three days a week on developing and finishing projects.15%
Research PaperA 1000-word long paper is expected by Hons. students. The paper will reflect the students' ability to comment on the relationship between their work and issues of landscape presented in class or individually presented by the student.20%

-ASSESSMENT CRITERIA:
AWork of this quality shows excellent mastery of the course content along with exceptional levels of technical skill, artistic awareness, originality, resourcefulness, commitment, quantity of work and improvement. There has been excellent collaboration and leadership in group projects, and there have been no attendance problems.
BA highly competent level of performance with work that directly addresses the content of the course, with a good quantity of work produced.
CAn acceptable level of performance: the work shows awareness of the course content, but is very limited in quantity, quality, commitment and skill.
DThe student lacks a coherent grasp of the course material and has failed to produce much work.
FNegligent in attendance, academic honesty, engagement with the course content, or production of work.
-ATTENDANCE REQUIREMENTS:
This course introduces the historical and philosophical significances of landscape painting, enabling students to explore its possibilities as a field of experience and speculation in the present. Onsite painting sessions around Rome alternate with lectures and discussions that resort to perceptual, imaginative and theoretical approaches to natural and urban spaces. With its millenary history, Rome is a stratification of ecosystems that makes it an ideal resource for students to develop a critical awareness of a variety of material and intellectual perspectives.

ACADEMIC HONESTY
As stated in the university catalog, any student who commits an act of academic dishonesty will receive a failing grade on the work in which the dishonesty occurred. In addition, acts of academic dishonesty, irrespective of the weight of the assignment, may result in the student receiving a failing grade in the course. Instances of academic dishonesty will be reported to the Dean of Academic Affairs. A student who is reported twice for academic dishonesty is subject to summary dismissal from the University. In such a case, the Academic Council will then make a recommendation to the President, who will make the final decision.
STUDENTS WITH LEARNING OR OTHER DISABILITIES
John Cabot University does not discriminate on the basis of disability or handicap. Students with approved accommodations must inform their professors at the beginning of the term. Please see the website for the complete policy.
SCHEDULE

1. Class meets at Largo dei Fiorentini Studio

Introduction to course – Aims, expectations, grading

 

Seminar 1: A short history of Landscape Painting

Drawing exercises, presentation of the diary and collection project

 

2.Class meets at Largo dei Fiorentini Studio

View-finders and pictorial perception: the making and use of grids and mirrors to frame, measure and sketch views (proportions, negative and positive space, perspective and flatness)

 

Seminar 2: Walking as an artistic tool: horizons

 

3.Class meets at Largo dei Fiorentini Studio

Colours and shapes - paint: tints and shades, mixing, density and evanescence, qualities and values...

 

The colours of landscape: how to make a palette

 

4.Borghese Gardens: Class meets outside Harry's Bar, via Veneto 

 

Group reading: Valenciennes's Reflexions

 

1st Painting sketch: Foliage and Sky (focus on atmosphere)

(fragments of landscape to be taken home)

 

5.Orto Botanico: Class meets outside Guarini Campus 

 

Group reading - Routes and roots

 

Oil sketch: the tree, the roots and the trunk (focus on texture)

 

6.The Banks of the Tevere: Class meets at Ponte Sisto, Trastevere side

 

The wild: free painting sketches in preparation for midterm

 

7.Class meets at Largo dei Fiorentini Studio

 

Mid-term Critique

 

8. Class meets in Piazza del Campidoglio

 

Reading and discussion: Landscape as identity

 

Flying sketches - Identification of final project

 

9.Location to be confirmed

The sky's the limit: collective project

 

 

10.Class meets outside Colosseum Metro Station next to newspaper kiosk

 

Group reading: The Ruin, the debris - where we are from and where we are going

 

Painting sketch: Ruins and debris, the monumental and trash

 

Project: Diary of a route

 

11. Class meets outside Largo dei Fiorentini to walk to St. Peter's

 

Reading Edgelands

 

Sketching

 

12.Class meets outside Piazza di Spagna Metro Station (by the palm trees)

The Caffè Greco

 

Sketch: Urban Sketching

 

13.Class meets outside Circo Massimo Metro Station opposite FAO

 

Sketch: The veduta

 

14.Location to be confirmed

 

 Painting in preparation of finals

 

15.Class meets at Largo dei Fiorentini Studio

Final Critique