Though it treats a variety of topics, the course is not a comprehensive survey. Our visits to the nineteenth-century European galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art will complement the lectures and readings by suggesting the myriad other artists, works, and issues that exist at the time. I also urge anyone who wishes to explore material beyond those offerings to consult a textbook on Reserve in Fisher Fine Arts Library: Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson, 19th-Century Art.
Papers
The first due Oct. 6: a formal analysis essay, 3-4 pages long, based on your own observations on a painting from this period examined in person at a museum (locally, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation; your choice otherwise). I will hand out guidelines early in the course to help you. The second, a research paper due Dec. 1;.an 8-10 page research paper with endnotes or footnotes to support your arguments on a subject expanding upon a point drawn from this period of European art history. Guidelines with suggested topics forthcoming.
Examinations
Both examinations involve slide identification and essays on the readings and lectures. The midterm is fifty minutes long. The two-hour final will encompass material, including slides, covered throughout the entire semester.
Digitalized images will be available on a course study website, with individual lecture images that you are responsible for knowing for the exams available about a week after the lecture. Internet address to be announced.
Required readings are listed, in abbreviated form, under the class date to which they relate, and are more fully cited at the end of the syllabus. They were selected for their variety of topic and method. We will treat them analytically (rather than try to memorize their "facts"), and I will distribute yet more guidelines to help you shape your approach for purposes of discussion. Stay on schedule, as I refer to the texts in the lecture We will broadly discuss the readings in class sessions devoted entirely to them (see the Course Schedule below). As noted above, the midterm and final examinations will have specific questions on the material. Two books among them are recommended for purchase and will be available at the Penn Book Center, 130 S. 34th Street: Stephen F. Eisenman, ed., Nineteenth Century Art. A Critical History [$33.50] and Paul Smith, Impressionism. Beneath the Surface ($16.95).
COURSE SCHEDULE
September
8 Introduction and preliminary lecture on Realism and Manet.
15 Impressionism I
Readings due: Frascina, 15 (from Invisible Pictures)-36 (the artist); Lindsay. Begin reading Smith, most of whose text you will use for the three Impressionism lectures. You should have all but Cézanne (Chapter 5) read by the third Impressionist session (September 29).
22 Impressionism II
Readings due: House, Shiff, Levine, and Smith in process.
29 Impressionism III
Readings due: Callen, Smith, to p. 143; Frascina, 214-217 (Monet's Nymphéas).
October
6 Group discussion of the Impressionist readings. First paper due
13 Post-Impressionism I (Neo-Impressionism)
Readings due: Eisenman, 274-287; Hutton.
20 Post-Impressionism II (Cézanne and Van Gogh)
Readings due: Smith, Chapter Five (Cézanne), Eisenman, 288-303, 337-350.
27 Group discussion of the Post-Impressionist readings/Midterm review
November
3 Mid-Term Exam [50 minutes]
10 Gauguin, the Pont-Aven School, and the Nabis
Reading due: Sidlauskas.
17 Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists
Reading due: Dijkstra, 272-332.
24 Group discussion of readings on Gauguin, Nabis, and the Symbolists
December
1 Sculpture. Second Paper due.
Reading due: Wagner
8 Exam Review
15 Final Examination [two hours]
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Full citations for readings
All readings are on Reserve at Fisher Fine Arts Library. In the case of confusing citations, the key search word for the entry in the Course Reserve website is highlighted in bold.
Anthea Callen, "Degas' Bathers: Hygiene and Dirt—Gaze and Touch." Desk Pamphlet: xerox from Richard Kendall and Griselda Pollock, ed., Dealing with Degas. Representations of Women and the Politics of Vision.
Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity
Stephen F. Eisenman, ed., Nineteenth Century Art. A Critical History
Francis Frascina et al, Modernity and Modernism
John House, "Framing the Landscape," in his Landscapes of France. Impressionism and Its Rivals, 12-29.
John G. Hutton, "Utopianism and the Retreat from the Grande Jatte," Chapter 4 of his Neo-Impressionism and the Search for Solid Ground.
Steven Z. Levine, "Décor/Decorative/Decoration in Claude Monet's Art." Desk Pamphlet: xerox from Arts Magazine 51, 6 (February 1977), 136-139.
Susan Houghton Libby, "An Adjustable Means of Expression: A Selection of Edouard Vuillard's Decorative Works of the 1890s." Desk Pamphlet: xerox from Studies in the Decorative Arts, 1-2 (Spring 1994), 25-47.
Suzanne Glover Lindsay, "Berthe Morisot: Nineteenth Century Woman as Professional," In T.J. Edelstein, Perspectives on Morisot, 79-90.
Richard Shiff, "Corot, Monet, Cézanne, and the Technique of Originality." Desk Pamphlet: xerox of Chapter 8 of his Cézanne and the End of Impressionism.
Susan Sidlauskas, "Psyche and Sympathy: Staging Interiority in the Early Modern Home." Desk Pamphlet: xerox from Christopher Reed, ed., Not at Home. The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture, 65-80.
Paul Smith, Impressionism. Beneath the Surface.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Going Native. Paul Gauguin and the Invention of Primitivist Modernism." Desk Pamphlet: xerox from Norma Broude and Mary Garrard, ed., The Expanding Discourse.
Anne M. Wagner, "Rodin's Reputation." Desk Pamphlet: xerox from Lynn Hunt, ed., Eroticism and the Body Politic.