Mon/Wed 6-7:30 p.m., Meyerson Hall, B13

Instructor: Jane Niehaus

Home phone: 215 790-9833 (call after 9 a.m. and before 11 p.m.)

E-mail: jniehaus@sas.upenn.edu

Office Hours: I am available to see anyone in the class as our schedules permit.

Please call me at home or contact me via e-mail to arrange a time to meet.

Text Book - available at the Penn Book Center, Samson and 34th Street:

Honour, Hugh and John Fleming. The Visual Arts: A History. 5th edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000 (on reserve in Fisher Fine Arts library). If you plan to use the 4^th edition, please refer to http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/spr99/102/syl99.html for corresponding page numbers (note that although some of our lectures combine lectures from that syllabus they follow the same order).

Course description: History of Art 102 studies achievements in European painting, sculpture, and architecture from 1400 to the present. The course requires that students learn 1) to analyze the formal qualities of particular paintings, sculptures, and buildings, 2) to place them in a cultural context, 3) to recognize selected major works, and 4) to become familiar with recent issues of interpretation. These issues include questioning the definition of "art" for its makers, patrons, and audiences; studying the significance of museum collections and exhibitions; and considering the cultural meanings of depictions of political events, of religious figures, of gender and class in "ordinary" people, and of nature.
 

Wed. Sept. 8:

· Introduction to the course

Reading: Honour & Fleming: Introduction, pp. 12-31.

Mon. Sept. 13:

· Early Italian Renaissance; Renaissance Art in Later 15-c. Italy

Reading: H & F: 422-430, 436-439

Wed. Sept. 15:

· Renaissance Art in Later 15-c. Italy cont.; Renaissance Art in Northern Europe in the 15th and early 16th c.

Reading: H&F 439-455, 430-435, 461-473

Mon. Sept. 20: Quiz

· High Renaissance in Florence and Rome, 16th c.; Early High Renaissance in 16th c. Venice

Reading: H&F 473-494, 455-461

Wed. Sept. 22:

· Early High Renaissance in 16th c. Venice cont.; "Mannerism"; Art of Spain and North of the Alps, 16th c.

Reading: H&F 495-513

Mon. Sept. 27: First Paper Due

· 17th c. Roman Baroque Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture

Reading: H&F 574-579

Wed. Sept. 29:

Meeting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mon. Oct. 4: Quiz

· Baroque Art in 17th c. Flanders and Spain

Reading: H&F 580-585; 595-598

Wed. Oct. 6:

· Dutch (Protestant) Baroque; Baroque Art and Architecture in England and France

Reading: H&F 599-614

Mon. Oct. 11:

· The Eighteenth Century: Rococo

Reading: H&F 614-628

Wed. Oct. 13: MIDTERM EXAMINATION

Mon. Oct. 18: No class; Fall Break

Wed. Oct. 20:

· The Eighteenth Century: Reform and Neoclassicism

Reading: H&F 629-639

Mon. Oct. 25:

· The Nineteenth Century: Early Romanticism

Reading: H&F 642-659

Wed. Oct. 27:

· The Nineteenth Century: Later Romanticism

Reading: H&F 659-670

Mon. Nov. 1: Quiz

· The Nineteenth Century: Historicism & Realism; Photography

Reading: H&F 671-691

Wed. Nov. 3:

· The Late Nineteenth Century: Impressionism

Reading: H&F 706-721

Mon. Nov. 8:

· The Late Nineteenth Century: Post Impressionism

Reading: H&F 721-729, 735-739

Wed. Nov. 10:

· The New Architecture: Art Nouveau to the International Style

Reading: H&F 729-735, 799-800

Mon. Nov. 15: Quiz

· Early Twentieth Century: Modernism; `Primitivism'

Reading: H&F 740-769, 772-786

Wed. Nov 17: Class at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Mon. Nov. 22:

· Early Twentieth Century: Modernism wave II: Cubism, Futurism, De Stijl

Reading: H&F 786-799

Wed. Nov 24: Class canceled; Thanksgiving Break

Mon. Nov. 29:

· Dada and Surrealism.

Reading: H&F 801-821

Wed. Dec. 1: Second Paper Due

· Architecture, Art, and Political Agendas before WW II; Architecture since 1945

Reading: H&F 821-833; 857-861

Mon. Dec. 6: Quiz

· Art since 1945: Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art

Reading: H&F 834-849

Wed. Dec. 8:

· Recent Art

Reading: H&F 830-857; 862-887

December 15, 6-8 p.m., Meyerson B13 FINAL EXAM

1. PARTICIPATION. Class sessions will be a combination of lecture and discussion. Your participation in class discussion is a component of your grade. Completion of assigned readings by class time is essential to your class participation.

2. QUIZZES. There will be several five quizzes, to ensure that you are absorbing the material at the most productive rate. The quizzes will consist of 10 slide identifications (artist, title, date). They will include material since the last quiz to the most recent lecture. Studying for the quizzes is a good time to review the course material, and will prepare you for the midterm and final. The lowest quiz score will be eliminated.

3. MIDTERM AND FINAL EXAMINATION. The Midterm will call for two kinds of responses: (1), short answers that identify objects (by artist or architect, title, date, and

location if architecture) and state their significance, and (2), brief comparative essays (analyzing two objects). The final examination will include the same types of sections as the midterm, plus a longer essay. Absence from the exams will be excused only by a medical excuse from Student Health or by a note from an academic advisor in your School Office attesting to other circumstances; there will be no make-up examination for the midterm.

4. WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS. There will be two papers: one short (1-2 pages) initial exercise in visual analysis due the third week of class, and a longer paper (5-7 pages) (descriptions follow).

5. GRADING SCHEME. Quizzes: 10%; Mid-term exam: 25%; Final exam: 35%; long paper 20%; class participation and formal analysis paper: 10%.

6. STUDY AND REVIEW ARRANGEMENTS: You will be provided with a slide list of the material covered in class. That list will be honed slightly after the lecture. A majority of the images are reproduced in your textbook, but some of them are not. To help you study, the reduced list and corresponding images will be placed on the web approximately two days after the lecture, at: http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/cgs/fall99/102/index.html. For exams and quizzes, you are responsible for all of the material placed on the web (i.e. the web list is your final study guide). You are not responsible for every image in the book, nor for images that were on the slide list, but not on the web.

PAPER ASSIGNMENT 1
 

First, select an advertisement from print media that appeals to you (i.e. newspapers or magazines and not video, web-based, or radio - no audio or moving pictures). In a one and a half page paper (double-spaced), analyze the content of the image and the visual means by which the content is achieved.

In analyzing the ad, first clearly identify for your reader the topic you are addressing (hint: an initial, careful description of the image is the key). Second, analyze the ad, its message, and the means by which they are conveyed. Clearly, the ad is intended to try to induce the person viewing it to perform some kind of action or actions. How is this achieved? What are the messages? Is there a single one? Are there secondary meanings? If there is a hierarchy of meanings, how is this made clear? How is all this conveyed to the viewer? Who is the intended audience for this ad? How do you know who the target audience is? What is the role of text?

In responding to these questions and whatever other issues you deem appropriate in the face of the content of your selected subject, be as specific and articulate as you can.

Be sure to include either a photocopy or the original ad with your paper.

This is a visual analysis assignment. You may consult your textbook if you wish, but reference to passages in your book or any other research is neither expected nor required.

SECOND PAPER ASSIGNMENT
 

Write a five- to seven-page essay (double spaced, do not exceed 8 pages, nor manipulate margins, font....) on a single painting or sculpture in the Philadephia Museum of Art, from the period this course covers: 1400-Present (European or American, which was not covered in class). Analyze the work of art formally (consider composition, light, color, medium, etc.) and indicate how its visual qualities shape the meaning of its subject. Discuss its placement in the museum (see "Guidelines for assessing Museum Displays" below). Explain the historical antecedents of its theme (use as your sources your texts and notes from the lectures), citing specific paintings or sculptures discussed in the course. Finally, devote at least one page of the essay to an analysis of the questions that you would ask about this work were you to undertake a full-scale art historical analysis of its meaning. Use your text and notes from the lectures as your sources for vocabulary and points of view. Document your references to the readings or lectures by parentheses in your text, such as: (Honour and Fleming, p. 404; Niehaus, lecture June 9).

It may help you to purchase (from the PMA gift shop) a postcard or notecard of the work of art to assist you in the writing process—or to locate an image on the Web. If you do find an image, include it with your paper.

Additional research is not necessary for this assignment; however, if you would like a point of reference for the artist whose art you are writing about, consult the 20 volume "Grove Dictionary of Art" in the Fine Arts Library—it’s in the reference section by the computer terminals, and is also on CD (it’s also on the Web, but you must subscribe for access). You may also want to consult: James Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art. N7560.H34. 1979b in the reference collection of the Fine Arts Library.
 
 

Guidelines for Assessing Museum Displays

· Judge the effects of the museum architecture, both exterior and interior, especially in the approach to the museum and in the museum lobby.

· In exhibits, pay attention to the directions in which you seem to be pointed. Judge the effects of the lighting and the spacing between objects.

· Assess the placement of the individual objects in relation to the viewer, the information on the labels identifying the individual work, and the wall texts that give more general and historical context (if indeed there are such labels).

· Ask yourself: What does the curator want me to see? What does the curator want me to know about what I am seeing?

· What is the meaning--artistic, cultural, historical--about the groupings within rooms?

· Why are these images or objects placed adjacent to each other?

· Why are these groupings placed in adjacent rooms?

· Would there be a more satisfying installation of these objects?

· Would there be a more satisfying or enlightening interpretation of these objects?
 
 

Writing clearly is thinking clearly; ideally what you mean cannot be separated from what you write.

1. Make sure that your paper eventually reflects an overall organizational plan. Some writers begin here; others finish here through revision.

2. Use clear topic sentences for each paragraph. Check your overall pattern of organization for logical flow.

3. Aim for clarity. Use short sentences, developing one idea in each sentence, but vary the sentence structure.

4. Aim for precision: choose one subject for your sentence instead of two, one adjective or adverb instead of two. Rely on nouns and verbs.

5. Carry out your analysis with specific examples.

6. Use a rich vocabulary. An apt metaphor causes an idea to spring to life.

7. Avoid: the passive voice; too many linking verbs; gerunds or "ing"-words.

8. Begin early; allow time to revise.

If you really feel the need for more specific help writing this paper, consult the first few chapters of:

Sayre, Henry M. Writing about Art. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, c1995.

Location: Fine Arts Library (Furness Library) Reserve

Call Number: N7476 .S29 1995