Art History 291 - COLQ:TOPICS IN ART HISTORY

Topics course. Why have individuals and groups been moved to destroy art? How has art been construed as both essential, bewitching, and dangerous? We shall consider representational imagery in ancient Greece and Rome, and in Judaic and Islamic traditions; the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy; 16th-century Northern European iconoclasm and the coincident wholesale destruction of indigenous American art; the Counter-Reformation validation of religious imagery; the French Revolution; and attacks on works of art in the modern world. We shall also consider censorship and philistinism, and when (or whether) campaigns of renovation and restoration can legitimately be called iconoclasm. Group II

Topic: Iconoclasm.