Modern Art I – Romantic Classicism to Impressionism (Undergraduate)
This course will examine the evolution of European art from the eve of the French Revolution of 1789 to the great Paris Exposition of 1889. During this period, Europe saw numerous political revolutions, a profound reorganization of society, and the birth of what we call modernity. We will consider how art was implicated in these historical changes, and how the rules of representation changed so dramatically as to transform the definition of art itself. In order to understand the impact of these changes on all forms of art, we will look at oil painting in relationship to sculpture and the graphic and decorative arts, with special attention to the birth of photography. The course will cover the major artistic movements of the period – Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism – and will consider how these “isms” became central both to nineteenth-century culture and to our own conceptions of art. Themes will include the political uses of art, the art market and the construction of artistic identity, the technical aspects of painting and sculpture, the gendering of art production, and the role of art in European colonialism.
Surface Issues: Painting from 1750-1890 (MA)
The eighteenth-century French theorist Claude-Henri Watelet described the artist’s touch as “simultaneously an imitative sign, drawn from nature, and a communicative sign of what the artist saw and felt in making his imitation.” Written in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Watelet’s words conjure up a range of painting styles for the twenty-first-century reader, from the mimetic qualities of Dutch naturalism to the gestural power of Abstract Expressionism. His consideration of both the figural and expressive potential of the artist’s touch draws our attention to one of the defining features of the medium of painting: its surface. This course seeks to address the materiality of paint and artists’ use of it through close study of the surface of paintings in the Kimbell Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art. We will pair works with primary and secondary literature on paint and color to examine changing discussions of paint in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some topics to be addressed: eighteenth-century modes of connoisseurship and discussions of the “touch” of the old masters, the comparison of painting to makeup in anti-Rococo criticism, the myth of “masculine” versus “feminine” touch, the association of brushstroke with the expression of an artist’s psyche, color theory (both spiritual and scientific), and the role of paint in major movements of the nineteenth century, including Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, and Neo-Impressionism.
Fashion and Identity in the Eighteenth Century (MA seminar)
This course explores the relationship between fashion (broadly defined) and identity in eighteenth-century France and England. We will examine the role of dress, hair, make-up and accessories in eighteenth-century life, as part and parcel of the social practices of the period. This period saw a shift from clothing as external signs of social position towards a modern emphasis on clothing as part of a self-constructed identity that corresponded to larger political, social, and economic changes. We will consider how conditions of manufacture and commodification of clothing, make-up, and fashionable things engaged with ideologies of class and how fashion and shopping became gendered over the course of the century. Finally, we will discuss the lasting influence of eighteenth-century fashion by studying its appropriation in the nineteenth century and by contemporary designers and pop culture.
Luxury, Consumption, and Sociability in Eighteenth-Century France (MA seminar)
This course explores the role of the decorative arts in eighteenth-century France. We will examine furniture, porcelain, and other objects, considering them as part and parcel of social practices of the period. These objects could, among other things, mark social status, project identity, and structure social interactions. The first half of the semester will focus on eighteenth-century debates about luxury, sociability and taste, and the conditions of production and sale of decorative objects. The second half of the semester we will turn to different approaches for considering the function of these objects in sociable practices of the period, how they were used in the construction and expression of the self, and their roles in the increasingly separating realms of public and private life.
Gender and French Visual Culture: Renaissance to Revolution (Undergraduate, taught in Paris)
This course looks at three centuries of representations of women in art in France across a range of media from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The course will consider the gender politics of women as subjects of representation, patrons of art, and as artists. The class will provide students with a strong museum-based background in painting, sculpture and material culture through close study of original works of art. Drawing on the unrivalled collections of the French national and municipal museums (Versailles, the Louvre, Château de Fontainebleau, Musée des arts décoratifs), we will follow a broad historical progression beginning with the Renaissance and baroque court cultures through the fall of the ancien régime in the eighteenth century. This period saw the rise of powerful women at court and in urban society, and we will examine changing conceptions of their roles in relation to changing fantasies of the female figure.