Japanese Screen Painting

Japanese Screen Painting
Melissa McCormick

This graduate lecture surveys the history and development of the folding-screen format in Japanese painting from the 8th to 17th centuries. Through a series of case studies, the course explores art historical issues for which the folding screen provides a unique perspective, including the relationships between painting and architectural space, poetic practice, religious ritual.

Visual Narratives of Indian

Visual Narratives of Indian
Vidya Dehejia

This course proposes the existence of distinct modes of visual narration used by India's artists to present stories visually, both in the medium of relief sculpture, and that of watercolors on paper or plastered walls. The first half of the course is devoted to the rich corpus of Buddhist narrative reliefs, while the second half considers the relationship of text and image in the manuscript tradition of India.

Histories and Frameworks

Marcel Duchamp: Histories and Frameworks, from Dada to the Neo-Avante Garde
T.J. Demos

This course explores the artwork of Marcel Duchamp, placing it in relation to select historical contexts and avant-garde formations of the twentieth-century, and reviewing the diverse and recent scholarship that addresses it. Topics include the ways in which Duchamp's artistic practice proposes new forms of artistic identity, modes of audience address, and innovative artistic categories such as the ready-made and installation design, and how it relates to capitalism and industrialization, anti-nationalism and exile, gender and sexuality.

Roman art from Trajan to Constantine

Roman Art III: From Trajan to Constantine
Natalie Kampen

Some knowledge of Antiquity and German useful. Roman art from Trajan to Constantine; examination of Roman figural art, painting, mosaic, sculpture, their principal modes and themes of representation, and an analysis of the phenomenon of Late Antiquity

The Construction of Andean Art

The Construction of Andean Art
Esther Pasztory

Open to graduate students. Prerequisite: Course in related field, or equivalent experience. Explores the various ways in which the West has made sense of Andean Art from the sixteenth century to the present.

Chinese Art

Significant Recent Discoveries in Chinese Art & Archaeology: Problems of Interpretation
Guolong Lai

A survey of recent archaeological discoveries on early China and how this new data has been interpreted and altered our pictures of early Chinese art and society. Focusing on specific, detailed discussions of some of the most important archaeological finds, topics include various archaeological, art historical, and anthropological themes.

Italian Renaissance Drawing

Italian Renaissance Drawing
Carmen Bambach (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

More so than the finished works, drawings can offer an extraordinary glimpse into the artist's mind and creative act. In many ways, the study of Italian Renaissance drawings is still a wide open field, and can still offer numerous oportunities for original research and discoveries. The course will focus on the study of original drawings (rather than reproductions) in order to analyze the archaeological evidence, and pose questions regarding artistic intention, technique, function, and workshop practice. We will explore numerous issues of methodology in the study of art-historical evidence.

Great attention will be given to the works of the major artists of the Italian Renaissance (Pisanello, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian). We will examine drawings intended for paintings, prints, decorative arts, sculptures, and buildings, as well as drawings done as works in and of themselves. The course is "hands on" and will be conducted mostly on-site at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visits to other public and private collections will also be arranged.

Greek Temple Decoration

Kosmos: Greek Temple Decoration
Clemente Marconi

Perception and current interpretation of Greek architectural sculpture. The relationships between architects and sculptors; the origin, the diffusion and distribution of architectural sculpture; the working process. The imagery of architectural sculpture, and its relation with the imagery in other artistic media. The religious and political context of the images and their social role.

Roman architectural

Roman Ensembles
Bettina Bergmann

The seminar considers Roman architectural complexes as multimedia environments composed of painting, mosaic, furniture, and sculpture. Although recognized as great innovations of spatial design, such complexes are rarely studied with the media so integral to their design. Painting, sculpture, and mosaic form separate traditions in scholarly literature. The rationale for the seminar is that it is precisely in their combination that these media, and Roman experiences of environments, can be understood. Students will investigate case-studies with a critical awareness of the scholarship on different media as well as of the methods, benefits, and pitfalls of reconstructing ancient contexts. In addition to villas and houses, we will look at the evidence of tombs, baths, and spectacle buildings. Sites include Delos, Pompeii, Nemi, Rome, Tivoli, Vienne, Chirargon, Ephesos, and Lullingstone.