This is a course for advanced students in art history, who need to develop a sophisticated understanding of how art historical studies function.  It is a survey of the most important and influential art historical approaches. Prerequisite: one course in art history

It is not possible to look at art in an entirely direct, “pure,” way: our understanding is always mediated by a conceptual structure, hence the necessity to be conscious of the methods and theories we employ when studying art. 

The biographical approach (Pliny, Vasari) leads to the beginnings of the history of art per se (Winckelmann, Buckhardt, etc.), and the analysis of form (Wölfflin, Riegl etc.) and style. The course continues with the classical iconographic method of interpretation (Panofsky, Warburg), psychology (C.G. Jung), perception (Arnheim), philosophy (Adorno, Lyotard, Danto), sociology (Clark, Gehlen), modernists (Greenberg) gender studies (Goffen), the feminist outlook (Pollock), esthetics (Adorno), post-structuralism (Barthes), anthropology of art (Belting), hermeneutics (Imdahl) and semiotics (Schapiro, Nelson, Goodman), spirituality (Lipsey), culture (John Berger) and poetry (Baudelaire). The study of specific interpretations of modern art will be brought into a wider cultural context. The course is not limited to purely art historical writings, but integrates methods and theories from other disciplines.

Students will gain an understanding of how a work of art can be analyzed, practically and theoretically. They will have a good working familiarity with the standard terminology and techniques of the analysis of art, a broad understanding of different sorts of historical interpretations, and a capacity to analyze these strategies critically. They thus also acquire the appropriate tools with which to approach new and unfamiliar works. Presentations in class and personal written essays should give the students the chance to defend one aspect of interpretation in art. 

Assessment Guidelines for assigning main letter grades: A, B, C,D, and F.

A:  Work of this quality directly addresses the question or problem raised and provides a coherent argument displaying an extensiveknowledge of relevant information or content. This type of work demonstrates the ability to critically evaluate concepts and theory and has an element of novelty and originality. There is clear evidence of a significant amount of reading beyond that required for the course.

B:  This is highly competent level of performance and directly addresses the question or problem raised.

There is a demonstration of some ability to critically evaluatetheory and concepts and relate them to practice. Discussions reflect the student’s own arguments and are not simply a repetition of standard lecture andreference material. The work does not suffer from any major errors or omissions and provides evidence of reading beyond the required assignments.

C:  This is an acceptable level of performance and provides answers that are clear but limited, reflecting the information offered in the lectures and reference readings.

D:  This level of performances demonstrates that the student lacks a coherent grasp of the material.

Important information is omitted and irrelevant points included.In effect, the student has barely done enough to persuade the instructor that s/he should not fail.

F: This work fails to show any knowledge or understanding of the issues raised in the question. Most of the material in the answer is irrelevant.

Semester course schedule:

1. Introduction

Present day conditions and reasons for studying the history of art history and criticism. Introduction to concepts such as taste, artistic judgment, personality, style, form, content, and conventions in art. The relative character of artistic judgment. How periods and movements have acquired their names and characteristics by later observers. Difficulties encountered in the use of language when applied to art. Required Reading:  Eric Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology, London: Phaidon, 1995/2003 (Part I. Introduction). L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New York 1936 (Introduction). Course Reader (Photocopies will be provided)

2.  Overview: The history of classical methods

Panofsky: the philological value of the schemes of pure visibility and the pretence of their aesthetic value.  

Required reading:  E. Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in T. Greene, ed. The Meaning of the Humanities, Princeton, NJ, 1940. H. Kessler, Spiritual seeing, Picturing God’s Visibility in Medieval Art,  2000 University of Pennsylvania Press. A. Stock, The dogmatic poetry I.  2007.

3. Art theories and art histories  

Plato. Donatello and Neoplatonism, Picasso and Existentialism. Bacon and the “self” in art.  Required reading: Renftle: Existencialism in Picasso, London 1999, Ernst van Alphen, Francis Bacon and the Loss of Self, 1998, London

4. Formalism, Modernism and modernity

The formal components of painting and design. Abstraction as a process. Roger Fry and British formalist tradition. Avant garde and the crisis of taste. Modernism and the white cube hang.

Required reading: Mary Acton, Learning to look at painting, London New York 1997.

5. Semiotics and poststructuralism

Some basics about language and linguistics: Modalities of sign. Discourse and meta narratives.  Figurative language. Social semiotics. Poststructuralism and its critics. Challenging reality.

Required reading: Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics, New York 2002.

6. Psychoanalysis, art and the hidden self

Psychoanalysis as a method for understanding art. The determining role of the artist’s unconscious. Symbolism and psychology in art. The Vienna School and New Vienna School.

Required reading: E.H.Gombrich, Freud's Aesthetics, 1965. Ernest Jones, Psychoanalysis and the History of Art, London 1963. Freud and the Twentieth Century, ed. by Benjamin Nelson, New York 1957. C.G. Jung, Man and his symbols, London 1964

7. The transcendental in art: Master Eckhart, Danto, Adorno, Kessler, Lipsey,

Dillenberger .When the artist tries “to make visible the invisible.” Giotto (Kessler),

Impressionism and Arnulf Rainer (Rombold) and Picasso (Lipsey), Warhol (Danto).  The

deeper sense of art. The spiritual dimension in art: transcendental,  sublime, religious and

the sacred character of art.

Required reading: Roger Lipsey, An Art of our Own, The Spiritual 20^th Century,

Boston, London 1997; Kessler, The spirituality in the Middle Age, London 1998

8. Perception in art from Gombrich to Arnheim

Imitation the nature and the technical skill. Cognition in the process of seeing. Riegl and the “Kunstwollen”. Gombrich and the Psychology of seeing The genesis of a work of art: Form, color, composition as symbols of perception. The new role of the observer. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and Arnheim’s interpretation of Picasso’s Guernica.

Required reading: R. Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, Berkeley /Los Angeles 1954 (Introduction). M. Fried, Absorption and Theatricality, Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot, Berkley/Los Angeles/London 1980.

9. MID TERM

10. Poetry and art: Zola, Paul Valery, Baudelaire

Art analysis by poets. Required reading: Baudelaire, Writings on art,

11. Science, invention and art. Analysis of the artistic process of Picasso, the Cubists and the Futurists. Scientific discoveries reflected in art. Required reading: M. Schapiro, Theory and philosophy of art: style, artist and society, 1994 (chap. 1).  M. Schapiro, The unity of Picasso’s Art, New York, 2000

12. Ideology, politics, gender studies. Artistic creation, aesthetics, and social context.  The traditional masculine viewpoint. Images, texts, and social assumptions and conventions. The widespread diffusion of critical thought based on Marxist precepts. Art and the struggle between classes, races and genders. Women’s studies. Psychoanalytical analysis of texts. Meret Oppenheim, Frieda Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois.

Required reading:  E. Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology, London: Phaidon, 1995/2003

12.  The End of Art History? Exploring postmodernities (Benjamin, Danto, Belting,

 Didi-Huberman) New role of art. Interdisciplinary methods. Anthropology and art.

Required reading: H. Belting, Likeness and present: a history of the image before

the era of art, 1994;  Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art? Translated by C.S.

Wood, Chicago, 1987

13. Globalised proximities and perspectives

Global and local perspectives. Orientalism. Boundaries and art histories. East and West. Perceptions of non western art. Towards a global future. A globalised art history.

Required reading: Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism. A very short Introduction

Oxford, 2003

14. Video and film as art.

Required reading H. Belting, Bill Viola: the passions, a conversation between Hans

Belting and Bill Viola, 2003 A.C. Danto, The Body/Body problem. Selected Essays, 1999,

p. 184 -201; H. Belting,  Likeness and present: a history of the image before the era of

art, 1994; H. Belting, Bill Viola: the passions, a conversation between Hans Belting and

Bill Viola, 2003

15. New approaches