The art and architecture of ancient Mexico as well as that of selected neighboring areas, will be examined against the background of the growth of complex cultural systems. The course will consist of readings and lectures including the presentation of visual materials dealing with ancient Mesoamerica (a culture area), and the archaeological and historical research which sheds light on its development. Museum visits to RISD and Brown will allow us to become familiar with real pre-Columbian art and artifacts for a closer association to ancient cultures that produced them.
Also offered as HPSS C735. Register in the course for which credit is desired

Graduate Level Students take this class as part of the Art History Concentration Program. Work with Art History Coordinator to develop Thesis

The Bronze Age saw the development of several advanced civilizations in the Mediterranean basin. Perhaps the best-known among these is the civilization of Pharaonic Egpyt. This course will focus on the art and architecture of Egypt and their neighbors to the north: the Aegean civilizations known as Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean. While art historical study of these cultures will be emphasized, evidence for trade and other cultural interchange between them will also be discussed. The course will cover such topics as the Pyramids of Giza, the Tomb of Tutankhamun, and the Palace of Knossos.

From Rococo to Neo-Classicism, radical stylistic changes took place in the visual arts (architecture, painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, and the decorative arts) of 18th - century France. This course explores the development of the art academy with its annual salons in Paris, patronage patterns (private collectors, the state, the church), and the emergence of professional art critics and art criticism. Themes range from erotic to moralizing, from history, portraiture, and genre scenes to architectural landscape while dealing with the impact of royal and revolutionary politics on artistic production. Major artists include Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Soufflot, Ledoux, Boullie, Chardin, Greuze, Robert, Canova, David, and Vigie-Lebrun.

Registration by application only. Application is restricted to concentrators in History of Art and Visual Culture. A call for applications will be sent to all HAVC concentrators.

Part I of a two-semester course that will survey major topics in the Histories of Photography. Emphasis will be given to the diverse cultural uses of photography from its invention to the present day. Such uses include: the illustrated press; amateur photography; studio photography; industrial, advertising, and fashion photography; political and social propaganda; educational and documentary photography; and photography as a medium of artistic expression. Much attention will be paid to how photographs construct histories, as well as being constructed by them.
Major Required Art History credit for Photo majors
Liberal Arts elective credit for nonmajors on a space available basis.

This is a required course to introduce students to fundamental works of art and design from diverse cultures and chronological periods. It will use basic art historical methods of formal, stylistic, and iconographical analysis in the study of these works thereby providing students with the tools necessary for critical looking and analysis essential for the education of artists and designers. Emphasis will be placed on the relation between artifacts and culture, with the assumption that the production of works of art and design is a form of cultural knowledge, as well as on the cultural conception of the role of the artist and designer, on various techniques and materials, and on the social context of the works discussed.
Required for graduation for all undergraduates, including transfers. There are no waivers for HAVC-H101.

The first of a two-semester overview of design history tracing major developments in the decorative arts and material culture from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Lectures will provide a framework for the study of design processes throughout history, analyzing artifacts for evidence of production technology, function, iconography, and patronage. Objects will be studied in conjunction with their original context from humble domestic spheres to the extravagant palatial setting. Artifacts from the RISD Museum will be featured in regular visits with the understanding that it is best to analyze works directly when asking questions about appropriate design technology and cultural consumption. Course topics will cover diverse material from the excavated remains of ancient furniture, to Byzantine textiles, to the mechanics of 16th-century plate armor, as well as the rise of the artist/artisan designer with the dissemination of the ornamental print.

This course will attempt to identify, analyze, and understand non-western architectural traditions of Native people in North America, Mesoamerica, and South America. An attempt will be made to understand both environmental and cultural components people integrated into their choices of construction materials, spatial arrangements, and in some cases urban planning. Particular emphasis will be placed on the appropriation and socialization of landscapes through architecture, and how landscape was used to express greater cultural concerns. The following cultures will be discussed: Mound Builders and the Mississippians; the Iroquois; Coastal Northwest coast cultures; the Arctic; the Southwest; the Maya; and Ancient Peru.

Islamic rulers dominated the Indian subcontinent between 1192 and 1858. Some of the most spectacular and exquisite works of art and architecture in South Asia were produced under Islamic patronage. This course will look at the architecture, manuscript paintings, and decorative arts of the period. The age-old question arises: Should Islamic art be considered a geographical, religious, historical, or cultural phenomenon? The class will examine works of art as instruments in the process of establishing an empire as well as expressions of political and religious power.

This seminar will focus on selected issues in Contemporary Art. The class will include intensive critical reading and writing.

This seminar offers students an opportunity to reflect on a variety of approaches to the study of art history and visual culture. Students will be asked to think about how historians of art and visual culture have selected their objects of study, framed their questions, and voiced their arguments. Students will also consider how the discipline of art history has been constituted, its relationship to the field of visual cultural studies, and to other models of interdisciplinarity.

The main feature of Performance Art is its immediacy. As other forms of time-based art, Performance depends upon its documentation. The course explores the history of Performance Art through the media used to document it: photography, cinema, radio, books, journals, posters, objects, video, digital technologies and the Internet. The goal of the course is to show how the history of Performance Art is deeply connected with the development of mass media and technology in our society. Performance artists have been exploring mass media both as an instrument and as the content of their practice since the beginning of the Modern era. The course has an historical and theoretical approach, considering Performance Art from a wide perspective including social and cultural events at large and crossing the boundaries between visual art, design, theatre and subcultures. We will start with historical avant-gardes like Futurism and Dada up to contemporary art and activist practices like parades, flash mobs and re-enactments, passing through Action Painting, Situationism, Body Art and Relational Aesthetics.

How much naivete and how much critical acumen are needed to carry off a work of "humanitarian design"? What are the terms of discussion? Would it hobble the enormous effort of motivating an intervention to know the implications of those terms, their derivations, their implications, the thought structures in which they are embedded? Taking its clue from the practice of "critical social work," this course will consider both critical theory and models of practice that deal with the problems and potentials of working with traditionally underserved populations in different contexts. It presumes that no effort in fieldwork can afford to ignore the insights offered by critical theory; it equally presumes that theory cannot afford to dismiss the efforts made by productive field work. The course will draw upon readings, class discussions, case study analysis, research, guest lecturers, and film to address the question raised in defining the correct admixture of intellectual and physical effort required in realizing architecture and design that can empower without merely enforcing power structures.

This seminar-co-taught by a member of RISD's Department of History of Art and Visual Culture and the Director of Education at the RISD Museum--offers students opportunities to think historically and critically about the institution we're all part of: art school. We will explore its origins, practices, values, politics, and poetics as well as the relevance of its past for the future.
Sophomore and Above

This will be a seminar and workshop course dedicated to Buddhist art and architecture. The course will be concentrated mostly on China, but will include an introduction to Buddhism in India as well as lectures on the transmission of Buddhism to China via the Silk Road (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia). We will explore the phenomenon of the Buddhist cave from the point of view of painting, sculpture, architecture and landscape with the aim to understand the relationship between religion and place. We will also explore the relationship of grottoes and rocks to other religions active on the Silk Road at the same time (Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Taoism, Shamanism, Nestorian Christianity) to problematize the relationship between religion and culture. I plan a focus on the grottoes of Kyzyl, Bezeklik, and Kumtura in Xinjiang province, Mogao (Dunhuang), Bingling, and Maijishan in Gansu province, Xumishan in Ningxia province, Yungang in Shanxi province, Longmen in Henan province, Leshan in Sichuan province and Dazu in Chongqing. These Chinese Buddhist grottoes date to different dynasties and construction activities at these sites ranges from the 4th to the 14th century. Particular attention will be dedicated to the site of Xumishan, which is the site where the instructor conducts archaeological fieldwork.
Sophomore and Above

This course explores the diversity of form, style, and narrative content of works created by African American artists from the antebellum period to the present. Specific attention will be devoted to several underlining issues including but not limited to identity, race, class, ethnicity, representation, sexuality and aesthetic sensibilities.

This course will focus on architectural buildings and remains of synagogues, churches, and mosques in Palestine from antiquity (the sixth century BCE) through the end of the Ottoman period (1917). Beyond the physical components of the houses of worship, and dealing with architectural, technological, and iconographic matters, we will investigate the spiritual and religious characteristics of the relevant structures. One of the goals will be to examine how these institutions influenced each other throughout the history of their architectural development.

How does a museum preserve its art collection? How do art and science reinforce each other in this field? Does the approach to the conservation of ancient art differ from that of the conservation of contemporary art? How and why do materials composing visual art deteriorate? Which environmental factors adversely affect organic and inorganic materials first or fastest? In this course, the student will gain an understanding for the five agents of deterioration, for issues of physical and chemical stability regarding organic and inorganic materials chosen by artists over the millennia, as well as how the care and handling of art differs in some respects for a museum than for a working artist. Frequent visits through the museum exhibits, storage, and the conservation lab will demonstrate key concepts covered in the class. Ethical issues regarding the determination of the original intent of any given artist as well as ethical issues regarding forgeries and looted art will be discussed. Assignments will focus on the RISD Art Museum's collection.
Restricted to HAVC concentrators or MA candidates in Museum Education
Sophomore and above

This course explores the changing philosophical, religious, literary, aesthetic, economic and political ideas that waves of settlers and their descendants projected onto the New World topography (and native inhabitants) of what became the United States. The concurrent survey of American landscape photography, scheduled to open this fall at the RISD Museum, will allow us to integrate period works into our discussion and provide students with the opportunity to compare approaches to visualizing the American landscape as the nation evolved from a collection of competitive European colonies to a global economic empire. We will question the notion of landscape itself and its relevance to the age of Google earth. Students from diverse disciplinary approaches (architectures, fine arts, photography, design) are encouraged to enroll so that our discussions will be richly informed by different perspectives.

What is a photograph? How does a photograph function? What should photographs look like? From the invention of photography in 1839 through to the digital present, these questions and many others like them have circulated around the ever changing medium. With a focus on the twentieth century, this course will examine the differing and at times antagonistic theories of photography that have been advanced by famous writers such as Walter Benjamin, Andre Malraux, Susan Sontag, and Rosalind Krauss.

This course will explore various topics in contemporary art. Attention will be paid to a variety of media including digital work and the class will have a global focus. Students will read both canonical and contemporary texts. Critical writing will also form an important part of the class.

This course will examine the visual culture pertinent to Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries in turn-of-the-century Vienna. We shall look at the modernist art of Austrian painters such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, as well as the "minor" arts of illustration, photography, scientific imaging, and film in light of Freud's psychoanalytic ideas. Classes will be devoted to topics such as avant-garde postcard design, ethnographic photography, and scientific images including x-rays and surgical films. The silent erotic "Saturn" films that were screened in Vienna from 1904-1910 will also be considered. Requirements include mid-term and final exams, two essays, and interest in the subject (no past experience needed).

This history of architecture course, co-taught by an architectural historian and an architect, introduces key ideas, forces, and techniques that have shaped world architecture through the ages prior to the modern period. The course is based on critical categories, ranging from indigenous and vernacular architecture, to technology, culture, and representation. The lectures and discussions present systems of thought, practice and organization, emphasizing both historical and global interconnectedness, and critical architectural differences and anomalies. Each topic will be presented through case studies accompanied by relevant texts. The students will be expected to engage in the discussion groups, prepare material for these discussions, write about, and be examined on the topics.
Major requirement: ARCH majors only
Registration by Architecture department, course not available via web registration
Liberal Arts elective credit for nonmajors on a space available basis.

Printmakers as well as many other artists use paper as one of their main materials, yet have little opportunity to learn much about this material: its history, how it is made, and the materials that go into its production. In their sophomore year as print majors, RISD students study Japanese woodblock printing techniques in depth, a technology dependent on Japanese papers and their specific qualities. Other artists and designers habitually use fine quality Japanese washi for a wide variety of applications. This course will introduce RISD students not only to the traditions and history of Japanese paper and the corresponding tradition of printmaking, but also to paper fabrication through a two week workshop at a traditional paper manufacturer.
The class will then proceed to Kyoto for a three week stay to study in depth the historical sites and artistic collections of Kyoto, Nara and Osaka, with an overnight trip to study the art and architecture of the mountain monastery village of Koya San for an in depth appreciation of the continuing importance to Japanese art and culture.
Register for PRINT-4525 and you will be added to this Art History class by the Registrar
Permission of Instructor required
Registration begins on October 10 and ends on Wednesday, October 31, 2012.
Travel cost: $3,596.00
***Off-Campus Study***

The Trojan War is one of the most influential stories in the history of Western culture. After a brief examination of the archaeological evidence for such an event, this course will focus on the art and literature inspired by the Trojan War from Ancient Greece through modern times. Readings will include selections from Homer, Virgil, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and take into account return stories such as the Odyssey. Art with Trojan iconography will be explored from ancient vase-paintings and sculptures through Renaissance and Baroque depictions, up to a contemporary graphic novelization and a brief discussion of films on the subject. Major themes include the interaction of art and literature, and the mutability of an established narrative at the hands of subsequent creators.

This course examines art in Rome from 1580-1700, a dynamic period that shaped much of the city as we know it today. We will analyze architecture, sculpture and urban planing through the work of Bernini and Borromini along with paintings and printed works by artists such as Caravaggio, Cortona and Artemisia Gentileschi.

Designers and theorists have defined the domestic environment in many ways: as individual refuge, symbol of collective identity, tool for social engineering, or fashion object, as masculine or feminine, aesthetic or functional, revolutionary or oppressive. Through close study of houses, interiors, furnishings, and a range of texts, this seminar will explore multiple concepts of domesticity and ways these have informed design practice. Student research projects will focus on recent works of design.

Dreams, fantasies, hallucinations have been matter for religion, philosophy, and science, and have fascinated art, theater, and literature. Film makers have been challenged by these "altered states' and by their social and aesthetic effect. Significantly, both cinema and psychoanalysis were born a century ago. Since the first definitions of film as new art, artists and critics have compared movies with dreams, and spectators with dreamers. This course analyzes how cinema represents dreams with specific visual imagery and techniques, how in these moments of intensified visual and aural experience cinema figures the psyche, echoes other arts and invents a new language to translate and critique ideas about these fascinating experiences. We will review films from American, European, and World Cinema and we will discuss basic texts about film, dreams, and dreamers with these questions in mind: How do spectators deal with the logic of dream sequences? Why do avant-gardes privilege dreams? How have Hollywood and "auteur' cinema treated dreams? Do dreams have a "gender". How the filmic imagery of dreams echo other arts and how is it "re-mediated' in advertising, television, video? Weekly screenings, readings in film theory, discussions by groups, and essay exams.

This course is object-centered and will explore the theories and methodologies that have been adopted for the display of ethnographic materials in museums over time. Students will have the opportunity to visit a number of local and regional museums, exhibitions and private collections. We will talk to collectors and to curators, and engage in exercises that focus on the display of objects for general audiences. This will give students a general background on such questions as: how can 3D objects best be displayed? What information should objects be displayed with? What are the goals of an ethnographic exhibition? How are exhibitions organized? Is modern technology making museums obsolete? What are the repatriation regulations, and how have they impacted collectors and museums? The course will require a number of weekend visits to collections, as well as a final project that will be object-centered.
Also offered as HPSS-C578. Register in course for which credit is desired.

In European and American art of the 19th and early 20th centuries, women were often presented in extreme ways: either as blood-thirsty creatures from Greek mythology, as Salome obsessed with the decapitation of a lover, as poison flowers and vamps; or as personifications of love and virtue, household angels, noble virgins dying out of self-sacrifice. The literature and, later, cinema supported this dichotomy that can be still traced in contemporary culture. In this course we will analyze the images of blessed and cursed women in Western art of the last two centuries.

The increasing presence, even dominance, of digital and time based media is one of the most prominent features of Contemporary Art. A regular component of installation and performance, digital art has become integral to contemporary painting and sculpture and has established itself as a distinct mode of production. Yet despite its technical maturation, the theoretical and historical claims of these practices are still in development. This course is designed to give students a firmer grounding in the principle practitioners, the trajectory of art and technology, and the major themes and issues that confront digital art. Among the issues to address include the new terms of media specificity, evolving apparatuses and their consequences on the spectator?s immersion and identification, and the development of models for digital representation.

From the social satires and polemical prints of the mid-1400s to today's political cartoons, comedy is frequently deployed by graphic artists to persuade, critique and even reform the thoughts and behaviors of viewers. Works by unidentified satirists as well as those of major artists in the genre -- William Hogarth, Honori Daumier, Thomas Nast, Ann Telnaes and Steve Bell -- will be explored. Visits to collections of works on paper will allow us to examine the techniques of comedy and print mobilized in these witty, subversive and entertaining objects firsthand.

In the Middle Ages a variety of stories were told in visual form. These vary from Bible stories to romances of King Arthur's court. In addition, a wealth of formats are used to relay these stories including illuminated pages in books with texts, stained glass with stories told in roundels, long narratives in textiles, and narrative without text in sculpted portals. Many of these formats are non-linear and quite different from the point by point illustration of a text. By studying those medieval examples we will better understand the rich wealth of possibilities for narrative depiction.

This course will examine scientific and technical applications developed by Western artists and visual theorists from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. Concentrating on pictorial traditions, the course will address what artists, authors and artist/engineers have referred to as scientific, technical, mechanical, and purely mental solutions to optical, proportional and quantitative visual problems. General themes will be perspective, form, color, and mechanical devices, and will include discussions on intellectual training, notebooks, treatises, and collecting. The course will examine artists such as Masaccio, Leonardo, Piero della Francesca, D|rer, Serlio, Carlo Urbino, Cigoli, Rubens, Vel`zquez, Saenredam, Vermeer, Poussin, Andrea Pozzo, Canaletto, Phillip Otto Runge,Turner, Delacroix, Monet, and Seurat.

This is a workshop course in art-historical methods and theories. This seminar will outline the history of art history from its initial practices through its present alterations. The course will examine traditional methodologies of study and more recent approaches.
Sophomore and above

For thousands of years, silk has played a profoundly formative role in the social, economic, and cultural development of China. This course examines the many different faces of silk: imperial robes and taxation crop, trade goods and religious garments, luxury furnishings and urban fashions. We will use a broadly chronological structure to examine the technological and stylistic development of silk in Chinese history, but combine this with thematic studies of silk in specific cultural contexts, for example silk in diplomacy, trade silks, and silk as art. Through close object study, we will use these topics as frameworks to explore how dyes, weaves and stitches, patterns and iconography allowed silk to achieve such varied expressions of status, power and style.

The course will study methods and kinds of Soviet propaganda from the Great October Revolution to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. We will focus particularly on painting, poster, and film as tools of ideological indoctrination in a totalitarian society.

Jerusalem has earned a special eminence among the famed ancient cities of the world. Its sanctity to Jews, Christians, and Moslems has made the city a focus of discussions and controversies regarding the evolving and changing identifies throughout its long urban history. Early and recent studies and discoveries, as well as old and new theories with a special emphasis on the Roman, Byzantine, and Early Islamic periods (ca. 63 BCE - 1099 CE) will be examined in the seminar. A particular focus will be placed on how to identify ethnicity, religious identity, and gender in the archaeological record. Though politics and religion have often biased related scholarship and the way excavations and their interpretations have been presented to the public, the goal of the seminar is to understand and examine various opinions and viewpoints. This seminar will consist of regular meetings, with illustrated lectures, student presentations, and discussions. In addition to the presentations, weekly reading assignments, a mid-term exam, and a final term paper will be required.
Also offered as HPSS C729. Register in the course for which credit is desired

During this seminar we will discuss how America is seen by contemporary European artists and intellectuals. Jean Baudrillard's famous book "America" as well as films by Antonioni ("Zabriskie Point"), Makaveyev ("WR: Mysteries of the Organism") and Herzog ("Stroszek") will number among the works analyzed in the class.

This course will examine the role played by urban mythology in 19th and 20th - century European and American art. We will study the late - 19th - century idea of the flaneur, which influenced both visual arts and literature. We will discuss the Futurists' fascination with machines and the Surrealists' concept of a city perceived as a human body. We will analyse the Impressionists' views of Parisian streets, Frans Masereel's woodcuts The City, de Giorgio Chirico's metaphysical paintings and Edward Hopper's nostalgic images of the American metropolis. We will study how the interest in urban reality has influenced the development of new art movements of the last two centuries.

Since the birth of Islam in the seventh century, westerners have collected works of art made in Muslim empires voraciously. Crusaders brought back Muslim basins and canteens inlaid with silver from the Holy Land. Even the most precious relics?bones of Christian saints?were wrapped carefully in luscious silks from Islamic looms. When Renaissance painters and sculptures represented the Virgin and Child, they often draped them with the most extravagant cloth possible, thereby depicting Arabic inscriptions in astonishing proximity to the faces of their Christian figures. And during the centuries of European colonialism, the most discerning patrons collected and displayed exotic specimens of Islamic countries.
This seminar will examine the transfer of works of art from Islamic territories to the West. Beyond exceptional quality, what made these objects so desirable? How did political and ritual gift giving in the West promote the circulation of Islamic works of art? How were collecting and dominion linked? What stylistic impact did the western interest in Islamic objects have on European art? And how does this cross-cultural collecting continue today?

How are we made by things that we make? How do things precede their creation and make the creator, before the brush touches the canvas, the pencil the paper, the pen the ?mayline,? the fingertips the keyboard, the eye the camera, the metal the mold, the glass the fire? This course will look at the emergence of specific instruments of art and design making from medieval parchment folios, to graphite pencil, to architectural parallel straightedge, to mechanical and then electronic scanners, CAD software and 3D printers. It would follow the conceit that the process of creation we set for production of things also organizes our sense of self and the world, even before we have produced those things, just by virtue of the goals we have set for them, the processes we have organized for their production, the tools we have gathered or invented to transform them. We will explore the argument that physical things are always already ?epistemic? things as well: organizers of knowledge and meaning; knowledge that bubbles in the cauldron of meaning under which we are continuously trying to set the flame of experiment and process in to produce our historical, social, political, cultural and personal identities. Reading will cover a wide range of topics and disciplinary areas: from historians of science looking at production of immortal cell-lines, GMO seeds and combative viruses, to artists and designers discussing production of stone carving tools and images produced by spitting blood on rocks, to art-historians talking about breeding horses to produce that ultimate paintbrush. Only serious thinkers hopelessly invested in their making (and vice versa) invited. Class attendance and participation is mandatory along with a final presentation and research paper.
Sophomore and Above

Maps typically indicate space on a two dimensional surface through abstract signs which are recognizable to a contemporary audience. Although this may seem an objective scientific process, maps are inherently subjective in nature, and just like any other visual image reflect the culture of their producers and the social, religious and personal contexts in which they were created. Maps can be beautiful. Highly decorative, and for the most part, intensely economical, they can demonstrate remarkable achievements in design. Appealing to the left and right sensibilities, their refined symbolism and poetic nature create ironic tension with their rather scientific reputation, inspiring countless artists to exploit these geographical narratives. This course will get you to think critically of the space you live in, geographically, politically, metaphorically, metaphysically, mentally, and artistically. We will question and investigate how we and our worlds are organized visually and how our assumptions about the abstractions of space, the coding of geography has been exploited in mapping agendas and related artistic expression.

The course offers an introduction to the arts of several sub-Saharan African communities. We will explore the creative process and the context of specific African traditions as well as the impact of the African diaspora on the arts of other communities, particularly in the Caribbean.
Also offered as HPSS C519. Register in the course for which credit is desired.

Graduate Level Students take this class as part of the Art History Concentration Program. Work with Art History Coordinator to develop Thesis

Literary and philosophical essays have each had an illustrious history. In the cinema, essay films constitute a controversial genre similar but different from documentary, experimental, avant-garde or political film. Essay filmmakers create non-fictional works as aesthetic and political weapon "at the intersection of subjective rumination and social history." They exhibit the presence of an author and call for critical interpretations, even as they remix and explore archives of moving images. Present in installations and on the web, these artists are globally popular as political and aesthetic provocateurs. They offer intellectual pleasures other than those of conventional narratives by reinventing the "arts and crafts" of "screen culture." We will study essay films from diverse times and places, and review notions and theoretical categories: avant-garde, self-reflexivity, auteur. Requirements: two papers, short reports, and weekly class discussions of films and readings.

This course is designed to acquaint students with a variety of non-Western aesthetic expressions in the Americas and the Pacific. The course will explore the indigenous contexts, both contemporary and historical, in which these art forms are or were created and function. We will look at the art and its context in selected communities of the American northwest coast such as the Inuit, Kwakiutl and Haida, the Southwest of the US, such as the Hopi and Navajo, and parts of Australia, Papua-New Guinea and some of the Pacific islands.
Also offered as HPSS C726. Register in the course for which credit is desired

This course locates Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio within the context of Baroque painting and culture, addressing the origins and results of his pictorial approaches to truth in nature. Although highly influential, considered a father of modern painting, he was also criticized as ?too naturalistic? or artless. Concentrating on the interests of Caravaggio, his contemporaries, followers and critics, the course examines the impact of his work in early modern visual culture.

Though often associated with a small group of American artists working in the late 1960s, Conceptual Art is increasingly understood as one of the most important developments of recent art. The critical scrutiny brought to and the greater appreciation of the physical and ideological contexts that frame the art object was a broad phenomenon that was motivated by a range of political, social, and aesthetical concerns that continues to redefine art of the present. This course examines some of the most significant contributors to Conceptual Art between 1950 and 1980 in a variety of countries. Starting with works produced through the revival of Marcel Duchamp and by experimental art collectives during the 1950s, the course moves to the emergence of self-described "conceptual" works in the 1960s. We conclude with the shift of Conceptual Art towards the distinct tendencies of Institutional Critique and Appropriation in the late 1970s. Concurrent with this trajectory, the course will examine how Conceptual Art became an important mode of investigation into and expression of racial identity, Feminism and class-consciousness. We will also consider the international dimension of Conceptual Art during this period through works from South America, the Soviet Bloc, and East Asia.
Sophomore and Above

This course focuses on contemporary art in and out of Africa, with specific reference to Nigeria. Our objective is to situate Contemporary Nigerian Art within the dialectics of modernism and postmodernism beginning first with the colonial implantation of the "modernist" trend in Africa. We examine the impact on the artistic vision and direction of the major artists in Africa, while highlighting the careers of their counterparts operating outside the continent within the postmodernist currents of Paris, New York, London, Berlin, etc.

This seminar will examine a series of canonical readings of contemporary art, focusing primarily on key writings published in the journal October and the magazine Artforum since 1975. We will engage in detail with such overarching critical concepts as postmodernism, neo-avant-garde, site-specificity, and relational aesthetics. We will also examine readings that draw on concepts such as the fetish, the abject, the informe, the gaze, primitivism, and postcolonialism. Finally, we will attend to issues of writerly style and method, seeking to understand the wide variety of tools that critics and art historians employ to understand, historicize, and enrich our understanding of works of contemporary art.
Also offered as PAINT 4516 for junior painting majors

French Surrealism played an important role in the development of 20th-century European and American art. The arrival of French Surrealists to New York during the Second World War influenced American artists and exposed more than a European audience to the movement. In this course will study French surrealist painting, literature, and cinema in the context of intellectual and philosophical currents (such as psychoanalysis). We will discuss Odilon Redon, Gustave Moreau, and Giorgio de Chirico, the precursors of the movement, Andre Breton, the author of the "Surrealist Manifesto of 1924," Dora Maar and Meret Oppenheim - unfairly considered only as "muses" at the beginning of their careers. Special focus will be put on the work by Max Ernst, Man Ray, Luis Bunuel, and Leonora Carrington.

Registration by application only. Application is restricted to concentrators in History of Art and Visual Culture. A call for applications will be sent to all HAVC concentrators.

Students will select one course from introductory level offerings. The choice of topics is intended to give each first-year student a chance to work with a broad but culturally and chronologically bounded field of art and design, under the teaching of an expert in that field. Students will have the opportunity to become familiar with art historical texts particular to the selected topic and will develop skills of critical reading and writing about the works of art.
Required for graduation for all undergraduates including transfers, unless waived by the HAVC department head with the substitution of an equivalent college course.

A complement to the fall semester History of Design: Antiquity to the Renaissance, this course continues the developmental trajectory of design and the decorative arts beginning in the mid-17th century with Baroque court designers and the unity of style in furnishings and interiors. Following themes will also include: the rise industrial design to serve the middle class consumer, the function of pattern books in the dissemination of taste and style, the pivotal role of expositions and World's Fairs, the inception of design schools and the search for 'good design'. Emphases will be placed on the significant contributions of individual craftsmen and designers and their firms, as well as movements and the institutions that support them, including Morris & Co., the Bauhaus, Droog and many others. Lectures will be supplemented with regular gallery visits to the RISD Museum, highlighting pieces in the collection that best characterize the ingenuity, technology, function, and aesthetic interests of their times.

This course focuses on Japanese woodblock prints, the 17th - 19th century vibrant urban art form that emerged as a portrayal of townspeople's festive pastimes, and became known as ukiyo-e "pictures of the floating world." We will examine evolution of two major ukiyo-e genres, portraits of beautiful women and the Kabuki Theater actors. Discussions will embrace prints by Harunobu and Utamaro, great masters of femininity, and by the leading actor-artists of the Torii and Katsukawa lineage as well as by a bold innovator Sharaku with his emotionally charged close-ups. We will explore the landscape genre in prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige and images of warriors in the art of Kuniyoshi. Considered will be book illustration and single-sheet prints, commercial and deluxe private publications, materials and methods of print production, censorship regulations, as well as customs and traditions of the old Japan as they appear on prints. Students will take two terminology tests and write a research paper.

This course is an historical and critical study of the work of selected masters of animated film. A spectrum of animated film techniques, styles, national schools, etc., will be presented. The course will cover the period from the pre-Lumiere epoch to the end of the 1970's. The relationships between animated film and other visual art forms will also be studied.

Introduction to nineteenth-century Western art, with the emphasis on Europe. Course situates art in its social context, addressing phenomena such as political revolution, urbanization, industrialization, mass culture, and empire. Artists covered include: David, Giricault, Turner, Courbet, Manet, Frith, Eakins, Monet, Morisot, Seurat, Rodin and Gauguin. Format consists of lectures and class discussions.

Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this seminar explores the intersection of fashion and modernity. We will consider relationships linking fashion to the modern city, industrialization, the rise of the periodical press, democracy, and discourses of gender, race, and class. Throughout we will pay particular attention to the role of vision in structuring fashionable production and consumption.

This course will introduce students to the various activities that take place in the Museum, both the public functions and the behind-the-scenes operations. It will also focus on the range of issues that museums in general are currently addressing such as ethics, provenance, audience, and architecture. There will be visits to storage areas with curators to understand the scope of the collection, as well as sessions on topics such as conservation, education, installation, and exhibition development. Written assignments will include preparing catalogue entries for recent acquisitions, developing gallery guides, analyzing current exhibitions and/or devising proposals for reinstallation of the permanent collection. The course is designed particularly for those students who have had little behind-the-scenes experience in museums.
Also offered as GRAD 500G 02 with limited seating for graduate students desiring graduate seminar credit. Register in the course for which credit is desired.

This course will explore the field of art conservation and the care of works of art. Using objects in the RISD Museum's collection, we will explore the mechanisms of deterioration and examine some of the techniques used to preserve them.
Sophomore and above
Also offered as GRAD 500G 04 with limited seating for graduate students desiring graduate seminar credit. Register in the course for which credit is desired.

This experimental seminar is a space for students to explore issues in the history of art and visual culture. You may work, independent-study style, on any topic that specially interests you. Research will be done in dialogue with fellow students and a faculty facilitator. On the first day of class we will discuss topics of common interest, and develop a provisional semester plan and a list of readings. As the conversation develops over subsequent weeks, our plan may be adjusted or even completely revised. Coursework will be tailored to the needs of individual participants. This class is recommended for HAVC Concentrators. Any graduate students interested in the history of visual culture are invited to join this seminar.
Graduate HAVC Concentrators and Graduates

This experimental seminar is a space for students to explore issues in the history of art and visual culture. You may work, independent-study style, on any topic that specially interests you. Research will be done in dialogue with fellow students and a faculty facilitator. On the first day of class we will discuss topics of common interest, and develop a provisional semester plan and a list of readings. As the conversation develops over subsequent weeks, our plan may be adjusted or even completely revised. Coursework will be tailored to the needs of individual participants. This class is recommended for HAVC Concentrators. Any graduate students interested in the history of visual culture are invited to join this seminar.
Juniors and above, For Graduate credit see GRAD-750G-01

The seminar will focus on the theories and practices developed at the revolutionary German art school. Drawing on original statements by Bauhaus figures, as well as a wealth of recent literature, students will consider questions raised at the Bauhaus about the unity of the arts, the role of art and design in politics and the economy, the professional status of women in the arts, and the pedagogy of art and design. Attention will be given to how understanding of the Bauhaus has changed over time, and what the Bauhaus represents today.
Sophomore and Above

This course will study the architecture, sculpture, stained glass, and treasury objects (metalwork and manuscripts) which were the Gothic cathedral. Our study will begin with an examination of the reasons such work was created and explore the stylistic origins of the cathedral in northern France in the early 12th century. We will then look at the cathedral's subsequent development and modification in England, southern France, Italy, and Germany during the 12th through 15th centuries.

This is a workshop course in art-historical methods and theories. This seminar will outline the history of art history from its initial practices through its present alterations. The course will examine traditional methodologies of study and more recent approaches.
Sophomore and above

This course explores Italian art from ca. 1350 to 1600 within a ritual framework. A ritual can be defined as a codified, solemn, event that occurs within specific temporal and spatial cadres upon occasions such as marriage, birth, death, a ruler's visit to a city ('entry'), a calamity, or a feast day. Rituals work through the display of symbolic objects [here understood as 'images'] such as statues, reliquaries, paintings, elaborate costumes, or flags for which the role of artists was primordial. The power of images resides in their ritual use: colorful paraphernalia and sacred objects flaunted in city-wide processions could ward off the plague, honor a local saint, and turn princely entries or funerals into successful events. Through their symbolic and artistic components, rituals create authority, assert identity, define social status, and maintain order in society. We will study the extant objects themselves as visual evidence for such phenomena as well as representations (in the form of paintings and prints) of ceremonies, spectacles, processions, or ritual domestic settings. We will analyze art through inter-disciplinary methodologies: material culture, anthropology, social history, and iconography. Learning about artistic conventions and traditions will guide us to evaluate to what extent works of art manipulate reality in a 're-presentation' - rather than provide a mere illustration.
Also offered as HPSS C503. Register in the course for which credit is desired.

In the 238 years of the Shaker experience in America the artisans and designers of this utopian communal religious group created a world of artisanry and design distinguished by simple practicality and lasting aesthetic appeal. This course examines the visual culture -- the architecture, furniture, woodenware, textiles, drawings, metalwork, and other material evidence of the Shaker experience -- in the context of the Shaker belief that the work of Shaker hands is consecrated by spirituality. Requirements for this course include two Saturday field trips to Shaker villages in Massachusetts and Maine.

Interdisciplinary by their very nature, textile traditions share a global history. Around the world textiles have found place in cultures as signifiers of social identity, from the utilitarian to the sacred, as objects of ritual meaning and as objects of great tangible wealth. The evolution of textile motifs, designs, materials and technology across Asia, Africa and the Americas will be explored utilizing the RISD Museum of Art with frequent visits to the textile and costume collections. We will examine such topics as: the function of textiles in the survival of traditional cultures, the impact of historic trade routes and ensuing colonialism, industrialization and its subsequent effect on traditional techniques of textile manufacture. Students will also have opportunity to examine various methods of textile display, analysis and storage appropriate to items of cultural heritage via case studies of specific objects in the RISD Museum.