University of St. Thomas Master of Arts in Art History Course Offerings 2012 - 2013 *ATTENTION STUDENTS – Please note the background readings for each course. These will likely not be used as primary readings for the class and are intended for students without a strong background in the topic area. Students are strongly encouraged to read these items before class begins.

SUMMER  2012

ARHS 520: Contemporary Art in the Public Sphere Dr. Christopher Tradowsky Summer 2012, Tuesdays May 29-July 31, 530-900p.m., OEC 414 One of the most important trends in American and European art since World War II has been a movement towards greater sociability, interactivity, and political engagement. On one hand, this movement can be seen as a continuation of the avant-gardist impulse to break down the barriers between art and life as completely as possible, to abandon the museum for the streets. On the other hand, at certain moments in postwar art, artists have consciously tried both to capture and intervene upon the public political actions of their day. This seminar will focus upon various models of contemporary art that have attempted to engage audiences directly, stretching the notion of "public art" through performance, interactivity, and direct political action. We will examine how early performance works and happenings mirrored the political ructions of the 60s (looking at artists as varied as Allan Kaprow, Yayoi Kusama, and the Guerrilla Art Action Group). We will address how the feminist art practices of the 70s reimagined politics and public life (Yoko Ono, the Fresno Women's Art Program, Womanhouse). We will look at the culture wars of the 80s (The NEA controversies, Group Material, the art of AIDS); and 90s "new genre public art" (promoted by artist Suzanne Lacy) and "relational art" (championed by curator Nicolas Baurriaud), as well as critiques of the latter that are still contentious today. We will also consider the unparalleled globalization of the contemporary art scene, and survey models of interactive political art today, debating their viability (Jacques Rancier's philosophy will be featured). Although readings will focus largely on American and European art, students can produce research papers on pertinent contemporary art from any region. Suggested preliminary readings: For a broad survey: David Joselit, American Art Since 1945, (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003). More specifically: Miwon Kwon, "Sitings of Public Art: Integration Versus Intervention," Chapter 3 in One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2004). (We will read this book in its entirety during the course.) Instructor Bio: Christopher Tradowsky received his PhD in art history in 2010 from UCLA, where he specialized in contemporary art and critical theory, with an emphasis on the art of simulation and appropriation. His dissertation was a monograph on the appropriation artist Sherrie Levine, explored though the lens of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. His criticism has appeared in the CAA Art Journal. He was a teaching fellow at UCLA, and for the past two years has been a visiting assistant professor at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, MN. He is also a working artist, and enjoys persuading art historians (and students of art history) to create visual and conceptual artworks. Check out examples of his work at www.christophertradowsky.com.

ARHS 500: Methods and Approaches to Art History Victoria Young and Heather Shirey, team teaching. Class also includes undergraduate majors Tuesdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. This class will examine how we research, analyze, and interpret art. Beginning with more traditional approaches grounded in formal analysis and iconography, the class will then con-sider more recent theories and perspectives such as semiotics, structural analysis, post-structuralism, Marxism (socio-economic and political analysis), ritual theory and anthropology, psychoanalysis, feminism, and post colonialism. The class will seek to balance theory and practice through a series of short and medium-length papers and class presentations, resulting in a final portfolio. The class will begin with a consideration of the beginnings and definition of art history and then move on to a survey of different methods or approaches, considering a new method each week beginning with stylistic/formal analysis and moving on to methods that consider meaning and context. Common readings will consist of historiographical overviews, theoretical explanations, and practical applications of each method; students will present summaries and critiques on selected additional readings for class discussion. Students will be asked to write a synopsis of each method defining its goal, basic process, terminology, and evidence. In addition, they will write short essays that will apply some of the methods in assigned projects drawing from a range of historical and geographic periods. We will also spend several nights discussing the role of ethics in art history. Unlike other graduate seminars that produce an in-depth research paper, this class will produce a portfolio of shorter writings that focus on processes. The course will also be held jointly with ARTH 211. This course fulfills the Theory and Methodology core requirement. Background Reading (one of the following is sufficient): Adams, Laurie Schneider. The Methodologies of Art: An Introduction. New York: 1996. Minor, Vernon Hyde. Art History’s History, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: 2001

FALL  SEMESTER  2012  

ARHS 510.01 What is a “history” of Greek Art? Mark Stansbury-O’Donnell Wednesdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. Winkelmann wrote the first modern history of Greek art almost 250 years ago, and since that time many other histories have appeared, some for a general public or as textbooks for university courses. Any history, however, is an abstraction and selection. Schemes for dividing the history of Greek art into periods have changed over time, the canon of great works, always a feature of such books, has shifted, the categories and concepts that organize our understanding have altered, and the methodological and theoretical approaches have grown. This seminar would like to consider how the history of the history of Greek art has developed and consider whether the changes are a result of new knowledge, new approaches, new choices, or new biases. Are the stories of Greek art being told today more objective, or just different, and what constitutes a ‘good’ history? The seminar will look at these questions in several ways, and students will work both individually and collaboratively on a series of short projects that will analyze the historiography of Greek. The assignments will consist of essays and presentations but not a large research paper; they will include the role of peer reviews and books reviews in the process of publishing books on Greek art and students will write examples of both in the class using guidelines from publishers and journals. In the interests of full disclosure, the instructor is under contract to publish a textbook on Greek art history, but this will not be part of the seminar material.

Suggested reading: Your choice of any introductory textbook on Greek art. Please bring the book you have read to class on the first day and be prepared to discuss the reason that you chose it.

ARHS 520: The Craft of Researching Modern Art Craig Eliason Thursdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m.

This seminar will explore the fundamental aspects of undertaking and presenting research that has as its starting point a work of twentieth-century art. How does one engage honestly and fully with complicated theories, endless historical contexts, and methodological self-consciousness, yet produce a report of this engagement that is of practical use, limited length, and accessible coherence for a given audience? This is a question of great importance for the two traditional subdomains of art history as a discipline—the academy and the museum. Neither is served by the notion that intellectual and the pragmatic approaches to talking about art are strangers to each other. We will develop strategies and skills for integrating these approaches.

Our discussion of research practice will be guided by the ideas of Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams, authors of The Craft of Research. We will both discuss and practice the essential steps of good research: generating research questions, turning those questions into claims, structuring arguments, presenting evidence, and revising writing.

As our focus, we will be developing research on twentieth-century works of art in the collections of the University of St. Thomas and/or of the major local art museums. Participants will be choosing artworks, researching various aspects of them, and presenting their findings in a number of different oral and written formats. These will include formats that would be ready to use in a gallery context, such as exhibition proposals, didactic labels, and catalogue entries. Suggested reading:

• Booth, Colomb, and Williams, “Research and Writing: From Planning to Production,” part I of Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th ed.

• A survey of twentieth-century art such as Arnason, History of Modern Art or Foster et al., Art Since 1900

• Harrison and Wood, eds., Art in Theory 1900-2000 This course fulfills the Western/European requirement for those beginning in fall 2009 and beyond. This course fulfills the Modern core requirement for those who entered the program prior to fall 2009.

ARHS 530: Art of the Dragon Throne Elizabeth Kindall Mondays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. This seminar will examine Chinese imperial art and patronage in correlation with the fall exhibition “China’s Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor’s Legacy” on display October 27 through January 20, 2012 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The course lectures and readings will focus on a chronological set of case studies of the art created for individual emperors and empresses from the 3rd century BCE to the present. We will investigate the terracotta warriors of the First August Emperor of Qin; the Buddhist caves and architecture created for Empress Wu of the Tang dynasty; the auspicious bird-and-flower paintings the Song academy produced for Emperor Huizong; Song Empress Yang and her favorite plum blossom painter Ma Yuan; the artistic Sinicizing attempts of Khublai Khan; and the religious and historiated portraits of the Qing dynasty Emperor Qianlong, among others. Artistic expressions of imperial patronage communicate the religious beliefs and political authority of the throne, and the personal tastes, academy favorites, and court intrigues of the individuals on that throne, for both public and private consumption. This course will address the various artistic, social and political issues that intersected at the dragon throne, such as the role of Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian belief, practice, and authority in imperial art; the organization and development of the court art academies; the functionality of imperial art both within and outside the palace; the role of court artists; imperial and non-imperial collaborative patronage projects; the compilation of imperial collections; the politics of imperial stylae; and the role of imperial visual culture in modern China. Students are not expected to have a background in Chinese studies. All readings will be in English. Background Reading: Craig Clunas. Art in China. Oxford: New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. This course fulfills the Non-Western/Non-European requirement for those beginning in fall 2009 and beyond.This course fulfills the Non-Western Art core requirement for those who began the program prior to fall 2009.

ARHS 520: From Realism to Art Nouveau: Nineteenth-Century Art in France Dr. Lisa Dickinson Michaux Thursdays 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. This course will trace trends in French art during the fertile period from the Revolution of 1848 until the World’s Fair of 1900. While the official Salon system propagated the idealized classicism of academic art, artists outside of this system experimented with various movements including Realism, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Art Nouveau. We will look at the officially encouraged art of Napoleon III’s Second Empire and the birth of modern Paris while also examining the ways in which artists worked to succeed outside government sponsored exhibitions. Each of the so-called Impressionist Exhibitions had a different emphasis, and we will study each in depth. The late 1880s and 1890s saw the creation of a new art (Art Nouveau) that found inspiration in nature and Japanese art. Artists moved off the easel and posters and the decorative arts flourished. The Paris World’s Fair of 1900 was the perfect backdrop for French artists to show their talents to the international audience. This course will encompass several visits to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts including an evening in the Print Study Room. The second half of the nineteenth century saw a revival of the etching medium as well as the development of a new market for original prints. We will look at the vast range of printed work by Manet, Whistler, Degas, Cassatt, Gauguin, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and their colleagues. Students will learn to recognize the different print techniques of woodcut, etching, aquatint, engraving, and lithography while also familiarizing themselves with this important local resource. The aim of this course is to present a balanced view of nineteenth-century French art that includes the academic as well as the avant-garde, painting as well as artists’ efforts off the easel, and time interacting with actual art objects as well as developing strong research skills. Suggested Reading: Ross King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism (New York: Walker &Company, 2006) This course fulfills the Western/European requirement for those beginning in fall 2009 and beyond. This course fulfills an elective for those who entered the program prior to fall 2009. Lisa Dickinson Michaux is a consulting curator for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. She was a curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the MIA for 20 years and is developing the exhibition “Bonjour Japon: A Parisian Love Affair with Japanese Art” which will be on display October 16, 2011-January 15, 2012. She is an ardent lover of all things French and makes several trips to Paris every year, spending much of her time in museums.

SPRING  SEMESTER  2013  

ARHS 535: Blood, Sacrifice, and Spectacle in Aztec Mexico William Barnes Tuesdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. When approaching the city of Tenochtitlan the Spanish conquistadors remarked on the splendor of the sprawling island city with its myriad canals, shining temples, palaces, and lengthy white causeways that connected it to the shore. The Spanish response was exactly what the Aztecs wanted, as they intended for all to be astounded by their great capitol: a city purpose-built for spectacle. As Ross Hassig pointed out a number of years ago, the Aztecs administered a hegemonic empire, one wherein the control of vassals required intimidation, the threat of force, and the continued acquiescence of conquered rulers. In this, the great and fearsome spectacles for which Tenochtitlan served as a stage played a major role. For example, some of the more remarkable feast-days were also tribute payment dates, thus ensuring that foreign dignitaries (and even invited enemy ambassadors) would experience the rites and rituals firsthand, returning home to their lords or subjects awed -- and, hopefully, cowed -- by what they had witnessed.

This class will look into the role that religion, rites, and ritual violence played in Aztec society, and, in particular, how artists through time have chosen to portray such things from the Pre-Columbian past to the present. Through such an in-depth investigation of ancient festivals and rites and their subsequent depiction, participants will have the opportunity to compare and contrast the methods and motivations behind Pre-Hispanic, early Colonial, and even more modern artists' depictions of blood, sacrifice, and spectacle in Aztec Mexico. Background reading: Esther Pasztory, Aztec Art, University of Oklahoma Press. 1998. This course fulfills the Non-Western/Non-European requirement for those beginning in fall 2009 and beyond. This course fulfills the Non-Western Art core requirement for those who began the program prior to fall 2009.

ARHS 540: New Orleans: An Architectural History of the Big Easy from Settlement to Post Katrina Victoria Young Wednesdays, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. The city of New Orleans has embraced life to its fullest since its first days of French settlement. This course will trace the development of the South’s most exotic city through social, political and cultural elements and their impact on the built environment. Some of the topics to be studied include: ethnicity and architecture, the great plantations on the river road, the shotgun house, cemeteries, the French Quarter, jazz music and architecture, the Garden District, the Superdome, infrastructure including levees and canals, and the impact of modernism. The last third of this course will focus on the impact of Hurricane Katrina. We will consider the state of the city pre-Katrina through to the present day with rebuilding projects like Brad Pitt’s “Make it Right” houses in the Lower Ninth Ward. What lessons have we learned about our abilities to respond to natural disasters, and our abilities to offer sustainable, capacity-building approaches to New Orleans post-Katrina? How do politics and race/class issues impact this rebuild? Several other cities in the United States and beyond will be used as a counterpoint to New Orleans, and we will also consider its relationship to the Caribbean and Atlantic worlds, specifically the translation of architectural ideas from Haiti, Cuba, France, and Africa. Background Reading: Karen Kingsley, Buildings of Louisiana (New York and London: Oxford, 2003). Introduction. Any cultural history of New Orleans This course fulfills the Western/European requirement for those beginning in fall 2009 and beyond. This course fulfills the Modern core requirement for those who entered the program prior to fall 2009.