Undergraduate Courses in Art History 2013-2014

The period from 1400 to 1700 saw the emergence of a number of new social functions for art. This
course will explore the role of visual culture in the formation of identities across various social
spheres in early modern Europe. The functions of selected works will be analysed in relation to civic
identity, religious controversies, the rise of absolutism, capitalism and colonialism, and the spread of
new visual forms of knowledge about the self and the world.

Course Requirements:  
Attendance at lectures and class discussions is mandatory. If you have to miss a class, be sure to get
notes from a classmate and review the images (on MyCourses) that were discussed in class.
Midterm Exam: 25% (Thursday Oct. 17, in class)
Research Assignment 35% (2 parts: Oct 29 and Nov 12)
Final Exam: 35% (TBA, during final exam period)
Participation: 5%

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This lecture course provides an introduction to the visual arts and architecture of the “long” eighteenth century. Focusing primarily upon developments in Britain, France and their North American colonies ca. 1660-1850, we will consider key issues of the period including competing conceptions of the public for art, claims for modernity against established traditions, and the agency of art in negotiating the politics of class, race, gender and distance within and between industrializing, imperial states. Exploring the
dynamic, evolving encounters between visual art and Enlightenment science/technology will constitute a core, centralizing concern throughout the lectures and readings.

Course Requirements:
Attendance is mandatory at all class meetings. If you have to miss a class meeting, be sure to get notes
from a classmate and to look at the key images on the course website discussed in that class.
Your grade will be determined by four factors:
25%) mid-term examination (Oct. 10, in class)
40%) term paper (due in class December 3)
25%) final examination (TBA, during final exam period)
10%) participation (participation includes attendance, performance on any
in-class assignments or quizzes)

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What is Canada? Who is Canadian and what defines Canadian art? Shirking the assumed
universal consensus, this course begins with these fundamental questions which engage with the
intersection of national, racial, gender, sexual and cultural identity. Canada has a legacy of
cultural and racial diversity which is often suppressed by Eurocentric romanticized narratives of
British and French nation-building. Canadian histories and art histories have often disavowed the
presence of the First Peoples, female and people of colour artists. This course creates a more
inclusive narrative. It is issue-driven and introduces students to aspects of historical Canadian art
of various genres and media and the pressing political, social and cultural debates which inform
Canadian Art History.

Course Assignments:
Research Resource Assignment: 15%
Response Essay (McCord): 25%
Mid-Term Exam: 25%
Final Paper: 35%

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At first glance, this course will appear somewhat traditional:  it looks at major artistic movements in the history of European art, examines oil paintings that are often described as “masterpieces”, and focuses on well-known artists who are regularly called “geniuses”.  Yet this class will be critical of these terms and histories.  The point of the class is to learn about the works themselves, the context in which they were produced, and the historiography of Realism and Impressionism. Through an investigation of the various theoretical and methodological approaches to looking at art and visual culture, students will learn to look and read critically.

While most recent approaches to teaching the art and visual culture of this period have focused on thematic concepts, this course will also incorporate classes devoted to individual artists in order to further critique the concept that ‘Impressionism’ and ‘Realism’ were/are static terms.  We will question the categories of “the real”, “realism”, “impressionism”, “the modern” and “modernism” to look at the problems with categorization and the difficulties of writing art’s histories. 

The course readings consist of articles, essays and chapters from the nineteenth century to the present, as well as texts from survey books.  The surveys are from the 1970s to the present – this will allow us to examine the historiography of these well-researched “isms”. Some recommended readings have also been included in the course pack (to help with essay writing, studying, and enriching one’s understanding of the material).

Method of Assessment:
Museum Assignment:  15% (due Thursday October 24)
Mid-Term Exam:  30% (Thursday October 17)
Quizzes: 3 x 5: 15% (Thursday Sept 26, Thursday Oct 14, Tuesday Nov 26)
Research Paper:  40% (due Monday December 2 by 4pm)

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Students will be introduced to a variety of themes and approaches in recent art practices
from the 1980s to the present, with a view to considering Western and non-Western
artworks. Students will explore how contemporary art practices have reinterpreted and
expanded definitions of traditional art forms such as painting, sculpture, textiles and
photography. In particular, student will learn about the developments of newer art practices
such as performance art, land art, installation art and consider how new media arts like
video art, kinetic art, sound art, digital art and internet art have shaped the landscape of
artistic production in the last 30 years. Students will be introduced to key fields of research,
historical lineages and contemporary critical debates that have informed current art practice.
Themes that  will  be addressed:  postmodernism;  representation;  visuality;  identity;
embodiment; sexuality; memory/archive; participation; intermedia; (bio)technology; and
globalization. Students will also be encouraged to critically reflect on the relationship of art
practice to the networked economy of the global art market with reference to international art
fairs, biennales, art institutions, art media and art education.

Course Assessment:
Case Study (20%)
Midterm Paper (30%)
Exhibition Visit and Review (20%)
Term Paper (30%)

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This course will examine the production of First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists in Canada from the 1990s to the present. A diverse range of contemporary art practices – including painting, drawing, photography, film, performance, installation and new media art – will be considered in relation to key aspects of the cultural, political and social life of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Much of the work examined reflects and responds to the continuing legacy of colonization and successive Canadian governments’ policies of assimilation and segregation. Artists, artworks and exhibitions examined will therefore be both historically and contemporarily contextualized. We will discuss the impact of the Indian Act, the Residential School System, the establishment of Reserves and conflicts surrounding sovereignty and status, as well as the ongoing Idle No More movement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the continuing pursuit of decolonization. The course is divided thematically, rather than chronologically, with weekly topics addressing significant aspects of Aboriginal art and culture in Canada today. These themes include: the construction of “the imaginary Indian;” colonial representation; museum and exhibition strategies; gender, sexuality and feminism; queer indigeneity; cultural commodification and re-appropriation, humour and irony; segregation, sovereignty and decolonization. We are fortunate to be undertaking this course at a time when some major exhibitions of contemporary Aboriginal art are taking place both in Montreal and throughout the country at large. Students are required to attend the group exhibition Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and are encouraged to visit other exhibitions and events related to the topics of the course.

Course Requirements:
Critical Exhibition Review, 20%
Research Paper Proposal, 10%
Research Paper, 35%
Final Exam, 30%
Participation, 5%

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This thematic survey of Northern European art explores the development of painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts in the Low Countries, France, Germany, and England from about 1400 to about 1560. The emphasis will be on major Netherlandish and German painters: Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Pieter Bruegel. Through interpretation we will consider the social, political, and religious functions of artworks in public and private life, exploring the needs and interests of patrons, artists, and beholders. Topics to be addressed include the significance of artistic materials and techniques including the revolution of the print medium, the changing conception of the artist, the role of gender in art making and viewing, the explosion of secular imagery in art, and the dramatic cultural transformation brought about by Renaissance humanism, the Protestant Reformation, and the “discovery” of the New World. The course will include at least one required independent visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Course Requirements:
Midterm Exam 25% (October 17)
Term Paper 40% (November 14)
Final Exam: 35% (TBA, during final exam period)

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This is an advanced seminar on art historical methods, focusing on the question of how we “think” art (what “is” art? how do we evaluate something we think of as “art”? where do the models for understanding and even defining “art” come from?). The ultimate goal of the course is for students, by questioning the history of how the idea of “art” came to be, to gain a fuller understanding of art history, the discipline that reciprocally defines and constructs “art.” To focus our discussion, we will trace key historical and methodological issues with attention to key debates in contemporary art history and theory.

Requirements/Method of Evaluation:

ARTH400    
1. Participation, including discussion leader and SSHRC application draft 30%    
2. Proposal of Research Paper and Research Paper Presentation 30%    
3. Response Essay (in class) 40%    

ARTH401    
(PAPER)    
4. Research Paper 100%    
 

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Seminar Content and Objective:

Since the late 1990s, spatial art practices—a category that has expanded to include installation art, relational interventions, new media environments, intelligent architecture, augmented reality and net localizations—have set about a significant re-articulation of the aesthetics of space. This shift is one in which artistic practices invested in the critique of space have moved away from the 1970/80s demythologization of space (the disclosure of the discursivity of specific sites) to engage with its materialization and singularization—processes that have encouraged non-dualistic connections between the spectator and the environment, as well as the spectator’s mobilization in space. The shift has been a progressive yet contrasting one. Site-specific activities emblematic of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s concurred to problematize the notion of space as a passive receptacle of objects and subjects. This problematization took different forms. It included the Minimalist integration of the gallery space in the spectator’s perceptual experience of the art object; institutional critique; the turning of space into place; the production of counter-monuments; and the unfolding of site as what art historian Miwon Kwon, in her influential One Place after Another (2004), identified as a “discursive vector” (a vector rooted in language and context). Many of these practices shared the democratic impulse to disclose what art historian Rosalyn Deutsche, in her as equally influential Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics (1998) and exemplary analysis of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s installations, designated as the hidden conflicts and exclusions constitutive of social space. In the last two decades or so, these critical practices have not so much disappeared than been re-articulated, with varied success, in participatory practices that explore the primacy of matter—the materiality of space, objects, bodies, and beings—as a modality by which the artwork can be endowed with some form of dynamism.  
 
The main objective of this seminar is to examine this “new materialist” shift in contemporary art and the redefinitions it has endeavored to set about—redefinitions of notions and practices of agency, perceptibility, corporeality, criticality, mediality and mediation, spatial politics, representation, and temporality. Deemphasizing the representational dimension of the artwork to reemphasize its reception; moving away from the view that to perceive an artwork is mainly to produce internal representations of it; probing the vivacity of non-human and human relationships; searching for unperceivable properties of matter; seeking to problematize the boundaries of the mind and the body: recent artistic practices engaged in new materialism partake of an interdisciplinary concern—including the disciplinary fields of philosophy, political science, science studies, media studies, feminist studies, postcolonial studies, and intellectual history—for overlooked, rediscovered and novel reconfigurations of dichotomies fundamental to Western thought: nature/culture, interiority/exteriority, body/mind, and human/non-human. To account for this shift, the seminar will investigate the relationalities set into play in these reconfigurations, examining artworks and analytical models that address the ways in which they attempt to complicate Western dichotomies: relational aesthetics; anthropomorphism; tangled thingness; animism; vibrancy; topology; intro-action; co-affectivity; the mangle of practice; autopoiesis; flowing mediation; embodied interfacing; the moving-situatedness of participants in mobile network cultures; ecology and material participation. These models will be addressed critically and historically, so as account for the ways in which they work and don’t work; the ways in which the spectator entangles with the environment but also blocks that entanglement through disengaging operations. Artists whose work will be investigated as pivotal players of new materialism include: Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Blast Theory, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Seiko Mikami, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Pierre Huygue, Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Hirschhorn, Mark
Lewis, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Alba D’Urbano, Diller & Scofidio, Chris Marclay, Ernesto Neto, Ann Hamilton, Carsten Höller, Zeger Reyers, Jimmie Durham, Marjetica Potrč, Superflex, Natalie Jeremijenko, Francis Alÿs, Fischli & Weiss, Joachim Koester, Sadr Haghighian, and Kobe Matthys.  
 
Overall: seminar participation ...........................................................................................  20%
October 24: One-page single-space outline of your research topic (to be submitted to all
members of the seminar) ……………..………………………………………………………………. 20%  
November 28/29: 20 min oral presentation discussing the subject, hypothesis & corpus of
your essay ……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 20%
December 6: 18-20pp essay on artwork(s) of your choice, dealing with the topic of the
seminar ................................................................................................................................. 40%

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To understand the arts of medieval Spain, according to the authors of The Arts of Intimacy, one
must untangle a web of lived intimate memories and cultural associations among Christians,
Jews, and Muslims. This course aims at such an untangling by examining the diverse visual
cultures of the Iberian Peninsula from the late antique “barbarian” invasions through the late
fifteenth century. Within this broad historical survey, we will trace a series of cultural networks
and shared visual cultures. The first half of the course examines the Visigothic transformation of
Late Roman Iberia, followed by the Arab invasions of the eighth century and the ensuing cultural
and political ties to extra peninsular Islamic powers in the eastern Mediterranean and North
Africa. Turning to Northern Spain in the second half of the course, we will examine the Christian
efforts at Reconquista, which culminate in the fall of the kingdom of Granada and the expulsion
of the Jews in 1492. Central to this shift in power is the construction of cultural ties with royal
and ecclesiastical centers north of the Pyrenees, and the promotion of pilgrimage and its role in
shaping artistic practice. Throughout the course, particular attention will be paid to the role of the
visual in the concept of “convivencia” among Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and the visual and
material theorization of frontier zones. Finally, the seminar will also consider the historiography
of medieval Spain, which will be situated within larger medieval art historical debates.
 
This intensive upper-level seminar is intended for students with a strong foundation in art history
preferably with a background in medieval art.

Course Requirements:
Participation (50%)
Research Project (50%)

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As a result of expanded trade networks, increased ease of mobility and proliferation of scientific experimentation, objects from diverse parts of the globe were actively circulated throughout Europe during the early modern period. The presence of these objects coupled with investigations into the mechanisms of how things work resulted in the production of new information about the world. These emerging ideas and concepts often directly contradicted values and beliefs held for centuries. As such, systems were required to deliver information in a clear and comprehensible manner to the public. As shall be seen, visual culture served a critical role in the organization and dissemination of many forms of knowledge and was one of the central means by which the public came to understand the world and their place within it. This seminar thus considers the role of images and objects in informing how emerging concepts of the world and the body came to be understood by early modern men and women. We will explore the importance of visual culture to a number of key aspects of knowledge dissemination such as commercial gain, the formulation of the public sphere, defining gender roles, exerting authority, the practice of collecting and the impact of colonization and exploration.

Discussion leader: 15%
Annotated bibliography: 15%
Presentation of Research Topic: 20%
Written Research Paper: 30%
Participation, Attendance and Questions on Assigned Readings: 20%

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Description to come.

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For additional information about the Museum Internship follow this link.

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This course offers an introduction to the major artistic monuments of the ancient world from the Ancient Near East and Egypt through the civilizations of Greece and Rome and beyond. Lectures focus on works of art and architecture from these diverse cultures providing insight into the specific historic contexts in which they were produced and the particular civic, religious and political functions they served. Textbook readings are supplemented by a series of culturally and historically specific case studies and primary sources as a means of providing exposure to a wide variety of material within a critical framework. Students will develop skills in visual literacy and gain a basic understanding of the methods and aims of art historical study. In addition, the later historiography and archaeology of the ancient world will be considered. The course includes mandatory visits to McGill’s Redpath museum as well as the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal.

The course includes mandatory visits to McGill’s Redpath museum as well as the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal.

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This course is a selective survey intended to introduce students to the major artists, monuments,
cities, and subjects of Italian art from 1300-1500. The art of this period, commonly referred to as the
Early Renaissance, was grounded in the exigencies of commune, court, and city. We will consider
the changing role of the artwork in political and religious contexts, and in public and private life,
bearing in mind the varying interests of those who commissioned works of art and those who
encountered them as beholders. From this variety of uses and responses emerge multiple
conceptions of the nature of art and of the role of the artist. We will explore these conceptions
through a range of primary and secondary source readings in which special attention will be given to
the historical figures of artist, patron, and viewer, to technique and studio practice, to Renaissance
art theory, and to the powerful role of art in society. Through the course you will have the
opportunity to become familiar with Italian Renaissance materials in the Montreal Museum of Fine
Arts.

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This course is a window onto our discipline; we will see how different modes of inquiry have
shaped and inspired what art historians do, why we do it and how. The aim of the course it
to illuminate the analytical, political and cultural possibilities of a variety of approaches to
art history. Different methods entail different kinds of questions and concerns. The course is
an opportunity for students to ask themselves: which methods are best suited to your own
developing understandings of what art is and why it matters?

The course consists of two lectures per week. Students need to come to class prepared to
discuss the readings assigned for that week. Given the emphasis on methods – on how art
historians approach a work of art – a number of case studies will be presented for group
discussion in order that students may test different analytic tools and question their
implications for art and art history.

Participation   10% --- 5% Attendance and 5% Discussions
Reading Reports, 3  15% --- Also to be posted on My Courses
Mid-term 20% --- In class Friday February 28th  
Essay Proposal/Bibliography 5% --- Due in class Friday March 14th (at the latest)
Essay 25% --- Due in class Friday April 4th  
Exam 25% --- To be scheduled during the exam period

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This course addresses modern art and theory from World War I to 1950. The geographical focus is on Europe, with case studies from North America, Asia, and Africa that illustrate the global reach, and also the limits, of the European avant-garde. We will address artistic movements including Dada, Futurism, Surrealism, De Stijl, the Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, and will analyze artworks in a wide range of media. A concern with how art of the period attempted to come to terms with a changing political and technological world will be a guiding thread in our discussions. Specific topics of analysis will include: art’s relationship to mass culture; the role of identity and bodily difference, including gender and race, in avant-garde philosophy and practice; technology in art, and its relationship to the body; the question of what constitutes a modern space, whether in architecture or in the representation of cityscapes; the avant-garde’s relationship to both capitalism and socialism; and the importance of the World Wars in shaping art of the period.

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Trans Atlantic Slavery has impacted every facet of social, political, psychic and cultural life. Persisting for centuries, it literally changed the face of the world, forcibly relocating, displacing and marginalizing entire populations, creating the Black Diaspora, new cultures, religions and societies and helping to produce and concretize colonial racial categories. However, scholars of Slavery Studies have often neglected the importance of art and visual culture as a site not only of the documentation of slavery, but as a generative site where slavery and its oppressive colonial ideologies were produced and deployed. This course will explore art and visual culture practice, institutions and objects of relevance to Trans Atlantic Slavery, abolitionism and emancipation. Although the course will cover various regions (ie. the Caribbean, Canada, USA, Europe etc.) and historical moments, the main focus will be on forms of western cultural production of both “high” and “low” art and popular visual culture (painting, sculpture, prints, photography, cinema, dress, performance etc.)

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This course surveys key themes in the development of Chinese art from the earliest times to 1600.
Readings, lectures, and assignments are organized thematically into three sections, each of which
occupies roughly one third of the course. The Art of Ritual examines death rites and other
ceremonial occasions as key contexts for interpreting the earliest works of Chinese art. Exploring
the tensions between recent archaeological discoveries and classical texts, we will discuss how new
object-based studies are changing our perceptions of early China. The Art of Manufacturing turns to
questions of medium and materiality. Tracing the history of the ceramic, enameling, and other
technologies that made China into a manufacturing powerhouse more than a thousand years ago, we
will explore the ways in which objects reveal patterns of technological and commercial exchange
between China and the rest of the world. The Art of Brushwork takes up the arts of painting and
calligraphy (shuhua), which as categories of self-consciously expressive activity come closest to
Western definitions of art. Here we will survey the development of the major script types and
painting genres, highlight the work of some of the most influential artists, and examine the
processes whereby the ubiquitous practice of calligraphy among the educated elite influenced the
formal and theoretical development of painting.
 
No prior knowledge of Chinese or Chinese art is required. However, students are advised that the
reading load for the course is robust, and that they will not only be tested on their mastery of the
material but also on their ability to mobilize knowledge gleaned from the weekly readings to
creatively interrogate our core thematic texts.

I. Two In-class Exams (20% each)
II. Research Paper (30%)
 III. Final Exam (30%)

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Large populations of African peoples came to be a part of western societies from the 15^th century. Through Trans Atlantic Slavery, millions of Africans were forcibly scattered across Europe and the Americas, creating the African Diaspora and becoming subjects of western art and media. Slavery spawned a prolific anti-black racism which is embedded in western filmic and televisual representation. As such, this course shall be attentive to where, how, when and which types of black subjects were allowed to be represented in western film and television at different historical moments. It shall also explore alternative and resistant forms of representation. The course will pose questions of cultural access and control, production, representation and audience. Although mainly American productions shall be discussed, other regional contexts will also be explored.

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Medical Performance in Visual Culture and Contemporary Art:

The seminar examines the place of performance and performativity in contemporary cultural practices (visual culture, as well as visual and performing/performance arts) that are tied to the field of medicine. Drawing on research from the disciplines of art history, cultural studies, communication and media studies, disability studies, performance studies, architecture, design, and the medical humanities, we will attend to both the social performances that are intrinsic to the notion of “medical performance” (e.g., the “sick role,” stigma, the hyper- visibility/invisibility of ailing bodies, etc.), and to the aesthetic, political and ethical dimensions of these practices. Medical performance will be approached through case studies addressing: pain and/as performance; visual culture and public health; disability and performance; pathographies in the visual and performing arts; surgical performances; participatory medicine; and the performativity of art and design in healthcare spaces. Through the course of the semester, we will collaboratively develop a working definition of what constitutes “medical performance” across the diverse case studies examined.

Students are expected to be present for all classes, read all required materials, and actively take part in group discussions. Except for guest presentations and the final two classes that will be devoted to students’ presentations, each class will begin with a lecture by the instructor, followed by a directed group discussion pertaining to lecture materials and assigned readings. At the beginning of each class, students will hand in one to two questions based on the assigned readings in order to help orient group discussion.  

-Attendance and participation (15%)
* Students are expected to submit 1-2 discussion questions, based on the required readings, at the beginning
of each class.
* Students are expected to be present for all lectures. Any absence must be justified with a medical note.
 
-Two (2) short response essays (20%)
These essays (2-3 pages in length, 10% each), based on required readings, are due January 14 (Jackie Stacey’s
“Metaphors”) and February 4 (Rosemarie Garland Thomson’s “Dares to Stares”). As an alternative to one of
these assignments, students may opt to write a short response essay to Media@McGill’s conference on
Participatory Medicine (February 13 at 5:30 p.m. in Leacock 232), due February 18.
 
-Draft of term research project (10%)
One-page summary of the term research project, plus a preliminary bibliography, due February 25.
 
-Oral presentation (20%)
A 15-minute presentation of your term research project, to be scheduled on March 25 or April 1.
 
-Term research paper (35%)  
Your term research paper (14-16 pages) is due by 3:00 p.m. on April 4.

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This course will examine modern conceptualizations of corporeality in art, theory and visual culture. It focuses on the dissemination of the body in the context of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century capitalism and ongoing developments of image, knowledge and technology. By exploring interdisciplinary perspectives, particularly the dialogue between art and medicine, this class utilizes the body as a means to question and contextualize nineteenth-century French art and visual culture. We will consider the multiple ways in which representations and theories of the body inform artistic practice, art history, medical knowledge, critical art discourse and social movements.

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Description to come.

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Chinese painting has often been called “the art of the brush.” It was not always so. The
standardization of brushstroke typologies through the publication and dissemination of painting
manuals in sixteenth and seventeenth century China brought to a close more than a thousand years
of negotiation over the appropriate means of measuring quality in painting. This course examines
how and why the character of an individual brushstroke came to be recognized as the primary index
of value by later Chinese connoisseurs. It explores the implications of this recognition for the
formal development of Chinese painting, and traces the trajectories of other measures of quality that
were eventually marginalized. In so doing, the course situates the great monuments of premodern
Chinese painting within the discursive contexts that they engendered and to which they responded.
Together, we will explore how the history of painting in China from early times through the
seventeenth century can be narrated in the languages of its time.
 
No prior knowledge of Chinese or Chinese art is required. All of the primary sources will be made
available in English translation, and in-class discussion will explicate the historical valence of
critical Chinese terms. The course will proceed chronologically, with each session featuring visual
analysis of key paintings and textual analysis of related writings from the middle of the first
millennium to the seventeenth century A.D. By so assessing the primary sources for the history of
Chinese painting, the course provides students with the means to interrogate the secondary literature
in the field and thereby think critically about how the interpretation of Chinese painting can
contribute to analyses of the visual arts in other cultural contexts. It also equips students interested
in other East Asian fields with the knowledge and vocabulary necessary for integrating painting into
broader studies of history, literature, and philosophy.

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For additional information about the Museum Internship follow this link.

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