Undergraduate Seminar

Visual Art and Culture: remix I & II

Visiting Professor, Visual & Performing Arts
Bennington College, Bennington, VT
2010–14

This two-term, two-part survey course first traced the development of Western visual culture from Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Christian to Romanesque, Gothic and early Renaissance art.

Students became acquainted with a North Atlantic history of art through the study of works of art and architecture and the key political, social and religious frameworks that shaped them. The course overall relied on contemporary topics related to repatriation, museum acquisitions, cultural tourism, popular culture, and artistic and architectural practices as points of departure for reflecting on the biased nature of these histories. As such, H.W. Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition was used as a point of critique. Other subjects studied included patronage, economy, gender, and the emergent identity of the singular artist figure.

The second part of the course applied comparable teaching methodologies: this time focusing on the art of the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism, concluding with Postmodernism. These studies examined the increasing interests by artists to represent reality and a desire to convey personal expression. Other major topics included the influence of politics, the industrial revolution, technology, race, gender, and class on art. This course comparatively interwove contemporary contexts as a means to initiate conversations about the relevance of the historical material.

Students learned to identify and discuss the styles of individual artists, movements, and mediums. They learned to analyze a work of art while becoming versed in communicating about art through routine writing and speaking assignments.