ARTH 584/ GRMN 579/ COML 579
Winckelmann
M 1-3

Instructor: Catriona MacLeod

	Celebrity-scholar, literary stylist, cultural monument, pagan hero, self-made man, homosexual codeword, murder victim: despite his humble origins in Prussia, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68) enjoyed a meteoric career as an archaeologist and art historian in Rome and came to define a century. His developmental view of culture and his celebration of Greek art challenged prevailing ideas and established new paradigms. The seminar will pay careful attention to Winckelmann’s most important writings, including “Reflections on the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks” (1755), the “History of Ancient Art” (1764), and his famous descriptions of statues such as the Belvedere Apollo and Laocoon group, while keeping in mind the context of mid eighteenth century Rome. The lasting impact of Winckelmann’s Greek subject matter, his aesthetic theory, and his literary style will be traced, with readings ranging from Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Walter Pater, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Thomas Mann, to the troubling reincarnation of Winckelmann’s statues in Leni Riefenstahl’s Fascist Olympic films. Finally, Winckelmann’s central role in the field of queer studies will be explored, via a consideration of his representations of the male body beautiful and of his own status as a codeword for homosexual desire. All readings and discussions in English.
	Syllabus (MS Word) Images