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ARTH 200 Assignments

Spring, 2012

Tuesday, January 31: review web-page entitled First Assignments. As indicated, include in your journals your "denotative" and "connotative" readings of the Hopper painting. E-mail me your entries.

Thursday, February 2: respond to the assignment for this date included on the First Assignments web page.

Tuesday, February 7 : bring a copy of your draft of your first paper to class to be workshopped. We will be examining contemporary images of women at work. Here I want to draw upon images from advertising. See the page entitled Women at Work presents a few examples I have collected. Review them in advance of the class, and be prepared to identify the codes you see in operation in these. Record your responses in your journals.

Thursday, February 9 : First Paper due. Review the page entitled [Female] Nude. Focus on the comparison of the Venus of Willendorf to the Venus de Milo (aka Aphrodite of Melos). Consider the relevance of the quotations at the outset of the page to your understanding of the comparison. Review the material included on the page entitled The Social Construction of Gender.

The following images are in response to our discussion of Zoffany's Tribune of the Uffizi. These images help us to see the Zoffany painting from a multi-cultural perspective. The first painting is a late 18th century painting while the Fred Wilson work is a 20th century image that uses artifacts that come from the late 18th century.

Liberty was a central concept in Eighteenth century Enlightenment ideology. Our democratic principles as manifested in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution place Liberty as a fundamental human right. Samuel Jennings in the painting above gives visual form to this ideology of Liberty in this painting entitled Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences of 1792. What do you make of this idea of Liberty?

A contemporary artist, Fred Wilson. gives us a stunning alternative vision of this society in this 1992 image entitled Furniture with Whipping Post that he included in an exhibition entitled "Mining the Museum" at the Maryland Historical Society:

Tuesday, February 14: we will return to the page entitled the [Female] Nude. I want to focus in particular on the comparison of the Venus of Willendorf and the Aphrodite of Melos (aka Venus de Milo).

Consider the work of Anna Utopia Giordano in her Venus Project in which she has Photoshopped some of the traditional images of Venus to make her conform to our ideal. I thank Mary Kelleher for sending me this link.

Thursday, February 16: Review the page entitled From Snake Goddess to Medusa. Much of the class will be focused on a comparison of the figure of the so-called Snake Goddess from Minoan culture of the second millenium to the mythological figure of Medusa that was represented in Greek art especially beginning in the seventh century and into the Archaic period. I have asked you to respond to these images in your journals.

Tuesday, February 21: Probably no monument is more symbolic of western culture as the Parthenon constructed between 447-432 BCE. It was created as a monument to Athena and Athens' position in the world. I want to consider it from the perspective of the construction of gender. Review the web page I have created on Gender Construction and the Parthenon. To give a context for construction of gender in Archaic and Classical Art review the web pages I have titled The Classical Body and the Female Figure in Archaic and Classical Greek Art.

Thursday, February 23: read the excerpts included on the webpage entitled The Aphrodite of Knidos and the Invention of the Female Nude in Greek Art.

Tuesday, February 28: respond to the webpage entitled Man the Measure of Things.

I would like to focus our discussion in Tuesday's class to a comparison of the Polykleitos statue of the Doryphoros to Michelangelo's David. In creating the David, Michelangelo was very conscious of the importance of the male nude in Greek art. The David can be argued to be the first monumental nude statue made for public display since Antiquity. Compare these figures:

Thursday, March 1: bring in ads you are thinking about writing on for your Second Paper Assignment .

Tuesday, March 6: we will continue to workshop ideas for the Second Paper Assignment . Feel free to e-mail ads that you feel would be interesting to talk about.

Thursday, March 8: bring in a draft of your Second Paper Assignment to workshop. I want to return to a consideration of Renaissance culture. I want to apply the idea of reading images from the perspective social codes to an important monument of early fifteenth century French culture, the Trés riches heures. On the linked page you will find a discussion of several of the calendar illustrations in this manuscript. For our purposes I want to pay particular attention to the January, February, April, and May images. Look at these images from the perspective of social codes. Pay attention particularly to the question of gender and social class.

Tuesday, March 13: submit your Second Paper Assignment.

Thursday, March 15: It is significant the number of major works of Renaissance art that focus on the question of gender. Any consideration of Northern Renaissance art needs to take into consideration Jan Van Eyck's so-called Arnolfini Wedding Portrait. While scholars debate about whether this is a wedding portrait or not, there is no question that the relationship of the man (Giovanni Arnolfini, an Italian merchant active in the Netherlands) and woman (Giovanna Cenami, a daughter of prominent, Italian merchant family also active in Northern Europe) is central to the content of the painting. Review the webpage I have created for the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait. A significant issue in the painting is the question of the social role of women and marriage as an institution in the fifteenth century. To give you some historical context read the page entitled Women in Renaissance Florence. For more information on the social standing of Jan Van Eyck, review the page focused on Van Eyck as a Court Painter that I have developed for my Northern Renaissance Art class. As I have asked you in the page dedicated to the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait, try to write a narrative based on the painting and its details.

Tuesday, March 27: We will shift our focus from northern Europe to Italy. I want to explore the gender construction of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, but to do this it is important to understand the social and artistic contexts for the painting in order to appreciate the innovations in Leonardo's painting. Today's class will examine these contexts. Read the excerpts from the essay by Dale Kent "Women in Renaissance Florence" which is included in the exhibition catalog entitled: Virtue and Beauty. Also read the excerpts from Patricia Simons's article "Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture." Review also the page I have dedicated to the frescos in the Tournabuoni Chapel. These provide us with interesting insights that gender played in the civic life of Florence.

Thursday, March 29: No survey of western art since the Renaissance can ignore an examination of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. In the context of our discussion of the construction of gender in art, this painting can also claim a central place. To give a recent critical perspective on Leonardo's Mona Lisa, read the excerpts from Mary Garrard's article "Leonardo da Vinci: Female Portraits, Female Nature."

Tuesday, April 3: We will continue our discussion of images of women in Italian Renaissance art, by examining the development of the female nude. We will focus in particular on the Venetian artist, Titian's Venus of Urbino. Although not the first female nude in the Renaissance, this work has come to play a central role in the development of this category of art. I have prepared a webpage on the Venus of Urbino which includes some of the recent scholarly responses to this work. In reviewing this material pay attention to the connections you notice to the material included in the earlier material we have discussed.

Thursday, April 5: We will continue our discussion of the Venus of Urbino. Consider the comparison of the Venus of Urbino to Michelangelo's David (you can find images of this at the end of the Venus of Urbino page). Think about not only stylistic differences, but also conceptions of male and femal in Renaissance culture. Read the webpage entitled Albrecht Dürer: Artist Drawing a Nude . Also consider the page dedicated to an illustration of Amerigo Vespucci Discovering America.

Tuesday, April 10: Read the webpage entitled Albrecht Dürer: Artist Drawing a Nude . As I said at the end of class on Thursday, compare and contrast the two sides of the image, the model's side and the artist's side. Set your comparison up as a binary table [see the Wikipedia article on Binary Opposition]. Also consider the page dedicated to an illustration of Amerigo Vespucci Discovering America. Take the table that you created for the Dürer image and apply it to the Amerigo Vespucci image.

Thursday, April 12: Deadline for e-mailing me your ideas for a topic of your third paper.

I want to follow up on our wide ranging discussion of the Dürer illustration of the Artist Drawing the Nude by considering a comparison between European and Chinese attitudes landscape painting. Consider the page entitled Comparison between East and West. Be advised that I have explicitly asked you to record responses to several questions in your journals. I am going to expect you to be willing to share your responses in class.

Tuesday, April 17: Examination of any of the traditional surveys of Western Art reveals that a good number of the "masterpieces" of sixteenth and seventeenth century art focus on the subject of rape. In a web-page entitled Authoritative and Disciplined Discussions of Masterpieces, I have included excerpts from some of these surveys discussing some of these images of rape. Read these texts and consider how the art historian deals with or does not deal with the subject of rape. These images have been reexamined from a feminist perspective. Read the excerpt from the article by Margaret D. Carroll entitled "The Erotics of Absolutism: Rubens and the Mystification of Sexual Violence" and from the book by Diane Wolfthal entitled Images of Rape: the "Heroic" Tradition and its Alternatives. I realize that this assignment entails a fair amount of reading, but I remind you that the success of our discussion depends on your careful reading and consideration of this material. My intention is to both become aware of a particular category of subject matter in western art and to critically examine how traditional art history has approached this subject.

Thursday, April 19: Bring in a copy of your third paper to workshop.

I want to consider the work of probably the most significant female artist of the seventeenth century, Artemisia Gentilleschi. The daughter of a painter, Orazia Gentilleschi, Artemisia's works present an interesting alternative point of view. Some of her major works focus on female heroes. She especially focused on the Old Testament female figures like Susannah and Judith. These works are illustrated on the linked web page. I have compared Artemisia's paintings to those of dominant male artists. In the case of the story of Susannah and the Elders, I have included the Biblical text that is the source of the images. Read the text carefully and consider how the artists represent these texts. Also consider how Artemisia constructs her female protagonists.

Tuesday, April 24: Deadline for submitting your final draft of your third paper.

We will consider gender construction in 18th century French art. This century began with the period we call the Rococo and ended with Neo-Classicism. French Rococo art is exemplified by the paintings of Antoine Watteau (see the slide list for my ARTH 110 course for examples of Watteau's work). One of the most famous Rococo images is that by Jean Honoré Fragonard entitled the Happy Accidents of the Swing. Read the excerpt from a textbook account of The Swing. The attitudes expressed in Watteau's and Fragonard's art are in marked contrast to that of Neo-Classicism as exemplified by Jacques Louis David's famous painting The Oath of the Horatii of 1784-85:

Do a gender reading of David's painting. Pay careful attention to the binary oppositions employed to distinguish male and female. To give you a context for understanding David's painting read the excerpt discussing the painting and the art of the salon.

Thursday, April 26: We will turn to an examination of nineteenth century art. I have prepared a gallery of examples of Nineteenth-Century Images of Women. Review these images. Select three of these, and outline your gender reading of these images in your journal.

Tuesday, May 1: I want to continue our discussion of Manet's Olympia which we started before we were rudely interrupted by the fire drill. Think about the comparison of the Olympia to Titian's Venus of Urbino and to the Cabenal Birth of Venus. These are illustrated on the page dedicated to Olympia.

Thursday, May 3: we will attend the Art History Conference that will be held in the Hamblin Theater and begins at 9:00 AM. You are encouraged to attend as much of the conference as you can, but I do expect you to attend the morning session.

Tuesday, May 8: I want to consider one of the major artistic statements of Modern Art, Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. I want to examine it in the context it plays in the narratives of the development of Modern Art. This narrative is made manifest not just in the art historical discussions, but in the lay-out of museums. Read the excerpts from Carol Duncan's essay entitled "The MoMA's Hot Mamas." This essay makes explicit the central role the female body has played in the development of Modern Art.

Tuesday, May 15, 9:00-10:30 AM, Fine Arts 166: Final Meeting. You will turn in your Journal and Writing Portfolio. Include in your Writing Portfolio your Final Paper.

We began this course with a consideration of Edward Hopper's painting Office at Night. It is appropriate to end the course with images of women office workers by a female artist Isabel Bishop. I encourage you to read the essay by Ellen Wiley Todd, "The Question of Difference: Isabel Bishop's Deferential Office Girls." I have created a page illustrating a number of Bishop's paintings.