1. Introduction
What is art and how can we describe art. Description and interpretation and its significance. Difference between interpretations of art historians, poets and philosophers about a work of art. How to analyze an interpretation. What is style? Practice in complete and rigorous description.
Required Reading: Eric Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology, London: Phaidon, 1995/2003, I. chap.; - L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New York 1936, I. chap.
2. Vasari and Leonardo
The story of the artist. Leonardo: predominance of painting. Giorgio Vasari: the
Virtue of the individual, the three ages of Italian art, origin, progress.
Required reading: Eric Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology,
London: Phaidon, 1995/2003, II. chap. ; L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New York
1936, III. chap.; Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, 2nd ed. Of 1568, translated by George
Bull, 2 vols., Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1987, pp. 25-47, 83-93, 249-254
3. Winckelmann and the Apollo of Belvedere
The beginning of the history of art. The neo-classical reaction. The creation of aesthetics as a
science. The autonomous form of the criticism and history of art: reports of exhibitions,
Winckelmann.
Required reading: E. Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology,
London: Phaidon,1995/2003, VI. chap. - L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New York
1936, IV.chap.(Class reader)
4. Goethe, Lessing and the Laocoonte Group
Goethe: the characteristic of beauty and moral content, fineness of
the poet and weakness of the critic. Lessing: distinction of painting and poetry, the plastic
arts, physical beauty, the ugly in painting.
Required reading: E. Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology,
London: Phaidon,1995/2003, VI. chap. - L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New York
1936, IV.chap.(Class reader)
5. Kant, Hegel and Newman
Philosophy and art. The synthesis of neo-classicism and romanticism offered by idealistic
thought. Detachment from contemporary art and the “Death of Art” . Painters of ideas. Kant:
the judgment of taste, the distinction between subjective and arbitrary, the identity of beauty
and art. Herder: the universal idea, art as truth in sensible form and as an expression of the
ideal, art as introduction to philosophy.
Required reading: Eric Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology,
London: Phaidon, 1995/2003, VIII. chap. ; - L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New
York 1936, II. chap. (Class Reader)
6. Wölfflin: Renaissance and Baroque art in comparison
Wölfflin: the fundamental concepts of art history or five schemes of
pure visibility reducible to the pair: tactical- optical. Croce’s critic on Wölfflin.
Required reading: Eric Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology,
London: Phaidon, 1995/2003, XI. chap.; - L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New ork
1936, II. chap.; H. Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, Munich: Bruckmann, 1915, pp. 25
-32 (translation);
7. Panofsky and Picasso
Iconography. The necessity of achieving a sophisticated knowledge of historical and cultural context before presuming to analyze a work of art. Works can never be analyzed as if they stood alone. Understanding a time and culture remote from our own is extremely difficult.
The origins of the science of art. Panofsky: The philological value of the schemes of
pure visibility.
Required reading: E. Panofsky, The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline, in T. Greene,
E. Fernie, ed., Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology, London: Phaidon,
1995/2003, V. chap. L. Venturi, The history of Art Criticism, New York 1936, XI. chap
8. John Berger and Modigliani
The perception of art. The appearance of a work of art and the work of art itself.
Required reading: John Berger, Art and Illusion.
10. Paul Valery and Goya Art and poetry: what is the relation? Can a poet understand art?
Required reading: Baudelaire, The writings on art, Paul Valery,
9. Sedlmayr and Cezanne
Cezanne is traditionally the hero of the formalist approach to modern art, as exemplified
in the story of the progress of Modernism as propounded by New York’s Museum of
Modern Art. This approach fell into disfavor with writers proposing post-modernist
theories. Formalist modernist analysis has roots in earlier art historical writings.
Sedlmayr and structural analysis. Art as an expression of the culture. The artist’s work
represent the state of a culture.
Required reading: H. Sedlmayr, Art in crisis. The lost center, Chicago 1958, I, II, III.
chap. Robert Williams, Art Theory, An Historical Introduction, 2004 (Early Twentieth
Century p. 171-223)