The history of painting and the trajectory of radical exhibition models in the post-war period have always seemed divergent, even antithetical: the former pursued autonomy, then, more recently, returned to narrative and figuration, while the latter took cue, both morphologically and discursively, from installation, sited, and conceptual art. This course counters such assumptions by examining post-war painting in tandem with key moments in curating (eg. Alanna Heiss' PS1; Okwui Enwezor's Documenta XI; Jerome Sans and Nicolas Bourriaud's Palais de Tokyo; and Dan Cameron's Prospect 1). The course's second half, at once more speculative and hands on, uses the Painting Gallery as a test site for mounting an exhibition or exhibitions, with emphasis on the peculiarities that painting - bounded, rectilinear, and flat - presents. Readings to include Bruce Altschuler, Julie Ault, Thomas Crow, Thierry de Duve, Hal Foster, Brian O'Doherty and others.
The course has a fee for two field trips to New York.
Elective; Senior and above

An introductory level course for Painting majors. Students will develop drawing skills and insights and consider basic visual language issues. Syllabus is coordinated with Painting I.
Must also register for PAINT 4501
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This course will provide the foundation for the creation of an archival painting practice for both traditional and contemporary painting methods. Topics covered will include tools, preparation process for both canvas and wood panels, sizes and grounds, drying oils, varnishes and resins, pigments, solvents, painting procedures, and the care of finished paintings. A historical overview of traditional methods and materials including egg tempra and oil paint will be covered, in addition to modern alkyd resins and acrylics. RISD's Environmental Health & Safety practices that pertain to painting practice and painting studio safety will be an integral part of this course. A short research paper is required to supplement studio work.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This course presents the graduate student with a series of problems intended to develop drawing as a tool for inquiry into a terrain outside the well-known beaten paths of his/her past studio practice. Expanding the role for drawing in studio experimentation is a goal. Work will be done outside class. There are critiques each week. Graduate major requirement
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This period is designed for the students to evaluate and analyze the directions he/she established as an undergraduate. Criticisms of the student's work will be aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses and help the students clarify fundamental objectives. Group and individual critiques will occur by resident faculty and visiting artists and critics during the semester. Successful completion of this course is a prerequisite for continuance in the program.
Graduate major requirement
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This period is designed as an advanced critique course which involves visits by resident faculty, visiting artists and critics, with special reference to current issues and concerns in contemporary art.
Graduate major requirement
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This course offers a more painterly approach to the intaglio process. The students will produce applications of intaglio, such as collographs, large color monotypes and collage. Growth of imagery and technique will be encouraged through medium. A portfolio of prints will be produced.
Major requirement, Painting majors only

An introduction to the basic language of the painting discipline. Emphasis on the plastic and formal considerations necessary for work that willbecome an increasingly personal statement.
Must also register for PAINT 4519
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

The primary goal of this course will be to shift the responsibility of direction, problem-solving and problem- development from the Faculty Instructor to the student. But this will be accomplished with a great deal of faculty involvement and support. The class will begin with group assignments which will become increasingly independent. Group and individual critiques will continue as an integral part of the curriculum, with an emphasis on contemporary art and criticism.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This will be a continuation of directions established in Painting III. Student work will be evaluated through group and individual critiques. Visiting Artist lectures will be important to the issues of contemporary art emphasized at this level. The department will schedule an individual review with a Faculty Committee for each student during this course.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This is an intensive program designed to test the student's ability to design, organize, and complete a project of his or her choosing.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This course would address many practical issues to do with becoming a professional artist after graduation. Some of these issues are: the commercial gallery, the not-for-profit gallery, museums, graduate programs, auction houses, grants, documentation of work, archival storage of work and restoration of artwork. Professionals from the gallery, museum and other fields will be invited to the class to share their expertise with the student. Artists will be invited to talk about their professional experiences. It is a seminar class addressed particularly to the senior painting student.
Major elective, Painting majors only
Nonmajors by permission of instructor

This is a course in which first-semester seniors who have already demonstrated unusual commitment, ambition and initiative within their majors will pursue and discuss independent work in a setting that reflects, as closely as possible, the interdisciplinary conversation that actually takes place around advanced art practice today. The course is intended to allow those working within medium-specific vocabularies to test how their work will make meaning in an art world in which a variety of disciplinary histories and conventions coexist, clash, and inform one another, as well as to provide an opportunity for students whose work bridges two or more disciplines (or involves performance/new genres/post-studio approaches) to learn from one another and from faculty capable of addressing all of these sorts of practices. This is a demanding critique course with additional seminar components (readings, screenings, discussions, slide presentations, etc.), and as such students can expect a workload equivalent to a core studio requirement within their major.
Acceptance into the course will be based on a GPA of 3.25 or greater as well as the recommendation of faculty and department heads from the student's major and on review of previous work. Candidates will be identified in discussions between the instructor and department heads during the preceding spring semester. Successful completion of ARTH-H490/PAINT-4507 (Contemporary Art & its Discourses) or equivalent coursework is a prerequisite, ensuring students have a shared understanding of the art historical context for interdisciplinarity. The maximum enrollment is limited to seminar-size (c. 15 students) in order to provide sufficient attention to each student's work in group and individual critiques while still allowing for seminar-style discussions.

"Three Critics" will offer graduate students the opportunity to get inside the art critic's head and learn how writers think about the visual. Students will be exposed to a wide range of viewpoints and discourse on contemporary art issues as defined by the interests of three different, practicing critics. Each critic will become part of the RISD community for approximately one month, conducting 3 sessions on campus and one in New York or Boston. On-campus meetings will consist of lectures, reading and writing assignments, group critiques and one-on-one studio visits. Off-campus trips will include visits to museums, galleries and artist studios. Small groups of students will be expected to lead several classes. Outside coursework and full participation in class discussion required for successful completion.
Graduate major requirement
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration
Requirement for second-year graduate Painting graduate students. Five additional seats available for Fine Arts graduate students. For admission, students submit a one-page writing sample to the Graduate Painting Coordinator.

As some art has moved off the wall and out of the defined zone familiar to painting, an investigation of the space of the floor and the room has become common practice for many contemporary artists. This course will help students to conceptualize and create installations, working with materiality and site specificity as well as display strategies, 3D composition and measured and drawn space. While developing critical criteria as appropriate to individual student interests and areas of research, a hands-on examination of various current and historical installation approaches will take place. Whether temporary or permanent, still or interactive, and whether incorporating projection, video, sound or lighting - -installation's roots and history will inform course critiques and discussions will incorporate assigned readings.
This can substitute for the Paint requirement Painterly Prints with permission of Department Head
Major elective, Junior Painting majors only

Ubiquitous, fluctuating, and invisible; our ordinary landscape is a slippery target for artists to access and explore. This course examines different approaches to historical and contemporary landscape painting. Each week students will be asked to complete both studio based assignments as well as read companion texts on relevant artistic practices. Classes will consist of group discussions about assigned readings, individual meetings, and group critiques. Particular focus will be given to landscape art tactics from mid 20th century to today.

This course is a laboratory sited at the crossroads where drawing and the physical world overlap, perform, and deploy one another. Logistically speaking, assignments will address the challenges implicit in making work beyond the rectangle of the page. We will engage this subject through a combination of studio-based assignments, readings, and in-class discussions and critiques. In specific terms, we will be working through a series of studio-based assignments that will aid us in our interrogation and engagement of the mimetic, sublime, and theatrical notions of space. Together we will arrive at an understanding of these terms by using Miwon Kwon's text "Promiscuity of Space: Some Thoughts on Jessica Stockholder's Scenographic Compositions" as a roadmap for our inquiries. Kwon's essay presents an alternative narrative to the claims made by Rosalind Krauss in her influential text Sculpture in the Expanded Field. In Kwon's essay there is a prompt to investigate connections between Krauss' "Expanded Field of Sculpture" and the 'field' of Color Field paintings. This course takes the possibility of a connection between these spatial locations to its logical conclusion via the medium and activity of drawing in 3-D space.

A course dealing with color from a larger star shaped perspective. Through an exploration of culture, race, fashion, film, painting, sculpture, music and sound, we will examine how notions of color are utilized, celebrated, suppressed, expressed and distorted. One text: Chromophobia by David Batchelor will be required. Weekly studio projects will be assigned.

Painting and video have collided. This five week course is an immersive examination of that collision: a multidisciplinary environment focusing on video production, sketching and painting with the goal of opening new creative paths for each student. This process-based course focuses on dynamism and flexibility, the concepts of failure, play, improvisation, multitasking and mediation.
"Each medium has the capacity to open a different kind of aperture to what I am looking at." Terry Winters.
Using historical examples as guideposts, students will examine various historical examples of painters who have engaged with the moving image, and filmmakers who have used painting as a model. Examples include Dadaist abstract animations; German expressionist filmmakers incorporating expressionist paintings as models for their backdrops; as well as Bruce Nauman and Andy Warhol's early investigations into video as a mode of sketching. Additionally, the class will look at work of contemporary artists such as Allison Shulnik, Alex Hubbard, Mark Wallinger, Brian Bress, Shana Moulton, Oliver Herring-all of who inform their video work with a painting mindset. In this context, students are free to exploit the infinite possibilities of this fertile ground.

In this course, students will investigate various approaches to representing the figure in contemporary art. Such things as the historical, psychological and narrative implications of using a human form in a work of art will be emphasized. There will be an exploration of studio-based strategies that will include working from observation and using mediated imagery such as film stills and photography. Students will start with in-class assignments working from a model in an interior that will culminate in a large-scale project that investigates the broader interpretation of figuration. Students will be challenged in technical, formal and conceptual approaches to creating a figurative work of art. While technical instruction will be focused primarily on painting, drawings and collage, students will be encouraged to also work in the media of their choice. In-class assignments will be supplemented with PowerPoint presentations as well as film and video screenings, reading materials, and critiques.

This course is a comprehensive introduction to painting. It will be a marathon of daily painting assignments designed to develop confidence and experience with representational painting. We will examine historical and contemporary trends and paint from life models and photo sources. Fundamental techniques for basic ground preparation, oil painting mediums and direct as well as indirect processes will be taught. Representational painting will be the primary focus but experiences in abstract painting will also be encouraged. We will learn abstract principles that organize composition, depict spatial illusion and describe form while developing a shared language in critiques. No prior painting experience is required and Foundation students considering painting as their major are encouraged to enroll, as well as majors from other departments.

Students are advised not to take a second Wintersession course because of the commitment of time this course will require.

In this Wintersession workshop style class, an experienced designer will help fine arts students learn basic design skills for career building. The entrepreneurial climate of today's art world rewards the prepared and those who achieve an "identity " in their promotional materials that matches and augments the spirit of their art. For both on line and print needs the young artist must be able to achieve quick and effective communication to promote one's work. Examples of projects might include the creation of an artist's web site, creating other forms of on line presence, a poster for artist curated shows, an exhibit invitation, designs to showcase one's own work in multiple formats, the ability to size and manipulate images for applications and approaches to online archiving and record keeping. There will be a focus on basic proficiency with pertinent programs taught and a critical look at materials already created by contemporary artists. This is a class to prepare you for the day after graduation.

For most artists and thinkers, the final work is merely the tip of the iceberg, built on a solid foundation of prior study and research which often goes unseen by the public. In many ways the success of a work of art hinges on the development of this foundation, yet how it is built can be highly personalized, a mysterious process unique to its creator and his or her experiences. In this course we will examine how the fine artist might go about this task in a world ruled by rapidly changing technology, defined by what many perceive to be information overload. How does the artist sort through it, and what strategies can be devised to find one's own way through the maze of contemporary culture? We will look at examples of creators who have built such foundations, from Carl Jung's "Red Book" to Gerhard Richter's "Atlas", as well as to the work of contemporary artists, to see how this might inform our own studio practices. Our readings and discussions in philosophy, psychology, and the science of information will provide the backdrop to studio projects and critiques, ultimately mapping a course toward an enrichment of the artist's work.

How do artists generate ideas for art making? Painting has gone through many rebirths and has always been met with new obstacles. With the onset of the digital age, how is it possible to generate ideas that can draw on our own experiences and feed back into the realm of painting? This class focuses on breaking down how we perceive and process our own experience. How can we build new relationships in terms of how material is extracted and transmitted from our daily lives?
Using methods of painting as a vehicle, this class will investigate both physical and conceptual processes of art making. Topics like the readymade, will lead this investigation. Traditional drawing and painting materials (which may or may not be familiar) are utilized by engaging with common activities. Instead of solely drawing from a still life or model, students will produce drawings from observing film and music. Students will look in depth at their own routines and rituals. How can documenting events from daily life be transcribed into art? How can something experienced through senses other than sight be given a visual form?

"I'm interested in how a thinking process can meander in unpredictable ways. like child's play, learning that doesn't have a predetermined end." - Jessica Stockholder "My fan mail is enormous. Everyone is under six." - Alexander Calder For many of us art-making began as an activity that was indistinguishable from play. The major objective of this class will be to critically examine the overlap between play and art-making. We will explore the range and depth of the use of the toy in contemporary art from a painterly perspective, with an eye towards possible new toy inventions as well as investigating modes of play in studio practice. Readings and lectures will explore the complex meanings and range of materials used in the contemporary art toy, as well as the status of toys as important cultural artifacts and the roles they played particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. We will look at artists who have appropriated and subverted common toys in their own practice, as well as those who employ strategies that can productively be considered in light of ideas about play. Demos, class projects and homework assignments will include new takes on traditional toys.

Pop-Culture is a consumerist culture based on popular taste. For better or worse, that phenomenon permeates everyday life in the western world. One of art's greatest traits is the ability to reflect and react to the culture from which it is created. Mix-media communicates the attitude of pop-culture by unapologetically borrowing from a multitude of sources in order to form a unique identity. This course explores the materials, iconography, and the values of pop-culture in order to develop strategies for painting. The assignments and readings will challenge students to think about the meanings associated with materials while also building observational rendering skills. During the fifth week, students will develop their own projects for review in a final critique. Group critiques will not only focus on formal issues like form, space, depth and composition, but will also examine the process, the materials, their meaning and appropriateness to the content or conceptual elements of the work. Students will be graded on engagement in class discussions, thoughtful investigation in their work, critical thinking, advancement of skill, and attendance.
This is an undergraduate elective. Estimated cost of materials: $125.00. All majors are welcome. All levels of experience welcomed. Space limited to 15 students.

This intensive course is designed to immerse students in select, salient debates impacting the direction and parameters of contemporary painting. The goal is not only to introduce and familiarize, but also to collectively and actively generate possibilities for and within the medium. Six overlapping nodes, or case studies, each accompanied by readings and a list of relevant artists, guide our investigation: Endings and Beginnings, Monochromania, Photoshop Killed the Photographer Killed the Painter, Market Mechanisms (and Academic Exercises), Regional Painting, and Narrative. When possible, current exhibitions will be discussed. The course will be seminar style sessions interspersed with critique and discussion of the work of enrolled students.
Major elective, Painting seniors only

This studio-based course will provide the foundation necessary to understand basic color theory and practice in painting, art, and design. An historical and cultural perspective will be introduced to inform ongoing color studies executed in the studio. Students will acquire the vocabulary to articulate color phenomena and the means to exploit the expressive potential of color in their work. Color studies will be principally created with gouache, and a variety of other materials and means will also be explored. Lectures, demonstrations, and museum visits will supplement studio work. A short research paper is required.
Elective; Open to all majors

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.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration
Also offered as ARTH H490 for non-painting majors Requirement for Junior Painting Majors Also offered as ARTH-H490 for non-painting majors

This is a hands-on, project-based introduction to computers and digital multimedia for artists. The course is designed to be an ongoing discussion on art, design and personal work informed by digital images, sound, video, animation, interactive multimedia, and the Internet.
Major elective, Painting majors only

A continued examination and development of drawing skills. This course is coordinated with Painting II.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This course examines the definition of drawing in the twentieth century. The student, while working from the basis of their own thematic and formal agenda, is directed to explore contemporary approaches to drawing. Through assignments and weekly group critiques, they will seek to broaden the conceptual basis for their work.
Majors take this class or Paint 4521 or Paint 4597
Major elective, Painting majors only

This period is designed for the student to evaluate and analyze and pursue the directions he/she established in Grad Paint Studio Critique I. Group and individual critiques will occur by resident faculty and visiting artists and critics during the semester.
Major graduate requirement; Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This period is designed for development and presentation of a body of work supported by a written thesis in consultation with resident faculty, visiting artists and critics during the semester. A final exhibition of work will be evaluated by a jury of Painting Faculty Members.
Graduate major requirement
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This first-year graduate seminar approaches painting as a technical skill, a historical practice and an intellectual project. Weekly sessions begin with group discussions of key readings about recent painting. Readings are organized in three sections. The first looks backward, to the problem of medium that preoccupied modernist painting and, residually, contemporary practices until the 1980s. The second section looks at two phenomena, the academy and the art market, and their effect on how painting is produced, disseminated, discussed and received. The third, the most speculative, looks laterally at a range of contemporary practices from the 1990s to the present.
Graduate elective

This course offers a more painterly approach to the intaglio process. The students will produce applications of intaglio, such as collographs, large color monotypes and collage. Growth of imagery and technique will be encouraged through medium. A portfolio of prints will be produced.
Major requirement, Painting majors only

This is a comprehensive course designed to test the student's ability to create, complete, and document a Degree Project of his or her choosing. The Degree Project should be a distinct, carefully conceived, exhibition-ready body of work which reflects the issues and objectives of your art. The Senior Degree Project is distinct from your Woods-Gerry Gallery exhibition, although its work can overlap with that exhibition.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

Working with a wide array of materials, different approaches to physicality and surface, and inventive methods of deploying color other than by brush, this "painting" course will make works that occupy the space of the wall familiar to painting -- but not its most traditional conventions. With a deep engagement in process and informed by readings and targeted artists and art historical movements, students will explore materiality and visual culture. Shopping for "art supplies" will take place as much at Home Depot as at Utrecht. Employing the recycled and trash, the found and gathered, and the manufactured and the natural, the art made will be critiqued for both presence and meaning. From duct tape to cotton balls soaked in acrylic paint -- one finds context, from varying thicknesses of rope dipped in polymer mediums to woven plastic shopping bags -- one finds structure, and from paint squirted from plastic ketchup bottles to fake fur -- one finds attitude.
Course open to all majors.

The purpose of this course is to continue development based on Painting I. Individual expression will be encouraged through a series of larger works which require greater time and organizational skill. Experimentation in different painting media, including oil, acrylic, watercolor and mixed media will be encouraged. Group and individual critiques are required. Outside work will be assigned.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

The primary goal of this course will be to shift the responsibility of direction, problem-solving and problem- development from the Faculty Instructor to the student. But this will be accomplished with a great deal of faculty involvement and support. The class will begin with group assignments which will become increasingly independent. Group and individual critiques will continue as an integral part of the curriculum, with an emphasis on contemporary art and criticism.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This will be a continuation of directions established in Painting III. Student work will be evaluated through group and individual critiques. Visiting Artist lectures will be important to the issues of contemporary art emphasized at this level. The department will schedule an individual review with a Faculty Committee for each student during this course.
Major requirement, Painting majors only
Registration by Painting department, course not available via web registration

This course is a continued examination of drawing. It takes as its subject the concept of the ground and its relationship to image and mark. Collage, water based media and dry media will be used. Restricted to Sophomore, Junior, Senior