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Visual Culture

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Art 208 Italian Renaissance Art and Culture

   • UIdaho  • College of Art and Architecture  • Department of Art & Design      
   
 

Art History, Theory, and Visual Culture Courses:

Art 100 World Art and Culture
Art 202 Early Modern Art and Aesthetics
Art 205 Visual Culture
Art 208 Italian Renaissance Art and Culture
Art 213 History and Theory of Modern Design I
Art 302 Modern Art and Theory
Art 303 Contemporary Art and Theory
Art 313
History and Theory of Modern Design II
Art 323 History and Theory of Modern Typography
Art 404/504 Michelangelo: Painter, Sculptor, Architect
Art 407 New Media
Art 409/509 Visual Studies
Art 508 / Phil 508 Critical Theory and Continental Aesthetics



Art 100 World Art and Culture: An introductory historical survey of art and culture in Western and non-Western contexts. Major cultural sites, monuments, image traditions and technologies will be examined alongside the historical, religious, political, economic, and aesthetic contexts which produced them. Cultures studied include China, Islam, Pre-Columbian civilizations in North and South America, Africa, India, Japan, Oceania, the ancient Near-East, Greece and Rome, Western Medieval, the European Renaissance, and Western and non-Western Modernism. A theoretically comparative approach will be followed, towards an understanding of both similarities and differences between Western and non-Western cultural production.

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Art 202 Early Modern Art and Aesthetics:
A survey of the major artistic movements and theoretical developments in European art and aesthetics from c. 1750-1880. The close study of the principal artists of the period will include the examination of concomitant historical, philosophical, political, and cultural developments that informed the theoretical and artistic advancements in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century art. Special consideration is given to the philosophical, theoretical, and political groundings of European Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism.

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Art 205 Visual Culture:
An introduction to the interdisciplinary approaches in art history, visual studies, film and media studies, sociology, and the general field of cultural studies that constitute the study of visual culture. Visual culture addresses the societal, cultural, economic, aesthetic, and political dimensions and provocations of images and the visual in our contemporary world. This course offers a broad introduction to the most important critical and theoretical methods for the analysis, critique, and evaluation of visual culture examining both classic and contemporary texts of cultural critique by writers such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Guy Debord, Fredric Jameson, Pierre Bourdieu, Craig Owens, Jean Baudrillard, W.J.T. Mitchell, Judith Butler, and Martin Jay, among others. Students will become acquainted with various critical strategies while considering a broad range of topics and issues related to visual culture.

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Art 208 Italian Renaissance Art and Culture: A study of painting, sculpture, architecture, and art theory in Italy from c. 1350-1600. The art of Giotto, Duccio, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Alberti, Donatello, Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Andrea Mantegna, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Bramante, Palladio, Giorgione and Titian, among others, is examined along with the broader components of Italian Renaissance culture.

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Art 213 History and Theory of Modern Design I: This course explores the historical and theoretical components of design from the Industrial Revolution to WWII. Products, furniture, textiles, packaging, advertising, industrial design, and graphic design will be studied in terms of their historical development, theoretical components, and their translation and application within contemporary concepts of design in various professional fields. Throughout the course we will critically examine and address the theoretical and critical vocabulary of contemporary design. Topics considered include industrialization and modernism; design and propaganda; design and the modernist avant-garde; design and nationalism; design, multinational corporations, and global economics; design, promotion, profession, and management; the politics and economics of design, and design and advertising.

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Art 302 Modern Art and Theory:
A study of the major artistic movements and theories in modern art from c. 1880 to world war II. Beginning with late nineteenth-century modernism, the course closely examines the historical, societal, cultural, philosophical, and theoretical frameworks from which modern art and theory emerged. Modernist movements to be considered include Neoimpressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, German Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism.

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Art 303 Contemporary Art and Theory:
A survey of the principal artists, movements, theories, and artistic strategies since world war II in Europe and America. Important movements examined include the New York School, Neo-Dada, Post-Painterly Abstraction, British and American Pop, Minimalism, Conceptual art, Earthworks and Environments, Performance art, Neoexpressionism, and the various strategies within contemporary art.

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Art 313 History and Theory of Modern Design II: Study, analysis, and critique of design history and theory from 1945 to the
present. Historical and theoretical analysis of the emergence of the industrial, product, graphic, and information design professions
in America and Europe, and the relationship between design, corporations, and global products. Other topics under consideration
include Swiss design, the New York School and the American poster movement; the emergence of Japanese design; semiotics and
design; postmodernism and design; and design and new media.

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Art 323 History and Theory of Modern Typography: Historical and theoretical survey of typography and graphic technologies from the invention of writing to the present. The course begins with the study of writing before the printing press and continues detailing the origin of European typography and design for printing through the Industrial Revolution and the invention of photography. The study of typography in the modernist era follows, including close examination of Bauhaus and Neue Typographie, the Swiss Neue Graphik and subsequent developments in America and abroad. A detailed study of the practical, historical, and theoretical implications of digital typography will conclude the course.

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Art 404/504 Michelangelo: Painter, Sculptor, Architect:
This course will examine the life and work of Michelangelo Buonarroti, arguably the most consequential figure in western art. While considering Michelangelo's paintings, drawings, sculpture, and architectural projects, we shall study and critically evaluate the theoretical, theological, philosophical, political, and economic contexts from which works like the Sistine Ceiling, the David, and the Medici Chapel emerged. Furthermore, we will examine Michelangelo's role in the development and anticipation of Mannerism and the Baroque, as well as his contribution in shaping many of the notions we associate with modern art, concepts such as artistic genius and subjectivity.

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Art 407 New Media: Study, analysis, and critique of the cultural, technological, and aesthetic dimensions and practices of
new media. The course entails a detailed examination of the genealogy, historical and cultural ramifications of the computer as an
expressive medium. We will study the history of the computer and the digital, from its pre-conception in literature and science, to its
various manifestations today in information, political, aesthetic, technological, and cultural contexts. Throughout the course students
will analyze and evaluate the constantly changing provocations of new media in terms of communication, language, art, design,
architecture, and the general ontological issues of time and space.

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Art J409/J509 Visual Studies: Examination, evaluation, and critique of the expanding interdisciplinary field of visual studies.
Visual practices, technologies, communicative, and epistemological models and structures are studied in terms of their implications
for art, design, architecture, and cultural and scientific practices and production in general. The historical, theoretical, and aesthetic
provocations of visualization in such varied fields as biology, medicine, law, forensics, genetics, and information technologies is
addressed as well as the cultural dimensions of the social ubiquitousness of the visual in general.

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Art 508 / Phil 508 Critical Theory and Continental Aesthetics: This seminar introduces and examines principal texts on art and aesthetics from the major figures in continental thought. The texts we will study and discuss encompass the most foundational, innovative, and influential thinking on art and aesthetics in the modern and postmodern eras. The concentration on art and aesthetics itself has emerged as a crucial area of inquiry in various disciplines and its import for artists, architects, designers, critics, and cultural historians is continuously growing. Throughout the semester students will become critically engaged with the texts as they become familiar with the most relevant and critically rigorous theoretical strategies articulated today. Students will be encouraged to address the possible relevancy and application of the various theoretical frameworks within the purview of their own aesthetic and critical disciplines. Topics to be examined in terms of aesthetics Nineteenth-Century German Aesthetics; Phenomenology and Poststructuralism and Deconstruction, and Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Writers considered include Immanuel Kant, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, Fredric Jameson, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Jean François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guittari, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, and Judith Butler.

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