Art History (ARTH1-UC)

This course explores the art and architecture of Western Europe's diverse and transforming cultural, social, and political contexts from approximately the fourth to the eleventh century, a time inaugurated by both the legitimization of the powerful new religion of Christianity and the disintegration of the power structure of the Roman Empire.

The course traces the history of photography in a variety of mediums ranging from famous photographs to new practices that challenge traditional definitions of photography, such as selfies, Instagram and other social media. Emphasis is on understanding photography as a creative and critical medium within the context of modern art movements and current world events. Students will visit exhibits and other sites as part of the course.

This course focuses on the architectural history of New York and its unique mix of public and private buildings. Field trips, walking tours, and museum visits are included.

Advertising and design have been vital to consumer culture since the Industrial Revolution. And they have only gained power and market penetration since the digital era put the tools of opinion-making in our middle-class hands. How have print ads and graphics, pulled from high art and popular culture since the early 19th century, influenced our purchases, our votes, our self-images, and our concepts of our country and the world? How does advertising work? What is "good" graphic design? This chronologically organized course answers these questions by focusing on game-changing individuals--designers, artists, photographers, entrepreneurs--and successful campaigns and their under pinning principles from c.1800 to the present.

This course focuses on the European avant-gardes of the 20th century and the modern art they created. This course studies the increasing abstraction in modern art, not as a single stylistic and aesthetic development, but as a series of heterogeneous experiments by distinct groups of artists, the avant-gardes. The course covers both the works of art and the wider cultural context in which they were created.

This course is designed as an introduction to the art of Western culture - in reality European culture - from cave art through the medieval times. Within this considerable span of time, students examine examples of architecture, sculpture, and painting, focusing on their relationship to specific historical and cultural realities.

This course is designed as an introduction the art of Western culture - in reality European culture - from the Renaissance through modernism of the 20th century. Within this considerable span of time, students examine examples of architecture, sculpture, and painting, focusing on their relationship to specific historical and cultural realities.

Images are everywhere in contemporary society. In such an environment, they often become mere background noise and are rarely viewed critically. What purpose do these images serve? How does the style of their presentation affect their meaning? This course employs a wide range of imagery to address these questions, including painting, sculpture, architecture, public monuments, photography, film, and graphic design. This course aims to develop a visual literacy by teaching the student how to read and decipher the social and cultural messages of images that lie hidden beneath their aesthetic surfaces.

Examines the fate and achievement of women artists and some of the controversial questions surrounding them, from the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the 20th century, from Artemisia Gentileschi and Properzia de'Rossi to Mary Cassatt and Georgia O'Keeffe.

This course provides an examination of major postwar artists and movements, including pop art, minimalism, conceptual art, photorealism, pattern and decoration, neo-expressionism, and appropriation. The course considers the transition from high modernism to postmodernism and the role of art criticism in relation to these art movements.

This course will investigate the art of the 19th century – a period of profound political and social transformation – as it developed in Europe and America. As with every historical period, the 19th century felt a need to create narratives that would help to explain and rationalize its own contemporary history. The dramatic break with the past that occurred in this period encouraged just such mythic creations, helping to shape what we recognize today as the modern world.