Art History 291 - COLQ:TOPICS IN ART HISTORY

Topics course. A major artistic genre, portraiture invites us to examine historically changing notions of identity, personal and collective, private and public. Within a broad time span (antiquity to contemporary practices), the main focus is on Western paintings created between 1400 and 1900. Through the combined study of visual examples and art historical approaches, we will explore such issues as: strategies of self-fashioning; tensions between norm and individuality, realism and idealization; the roles of portraits and self-portraits in cementing social roles and manufacturing gendered bodies. Prerequisite: at least one 200-level art history course. Enrollment limited to 18.

Topic: From Eyes to I: The Art of Portraiture.