Art History 272 - Revolution, Industry, Empire: The Art of the Nineteenth Century

The Haitian revolution, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the rise of photography: the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of new ways of seeing, knowing, and being in the world. We will consider the ways art objects and the built environment revealed, constructed, and mediated nineteenth-century life. We will study key case studies, from painting and sculpture to advertising ephemera, to understand significant cultural nodes. Our conversations will center around the meaningful role objects play in shaping and constructing social experience, and key concepts elaborated by nineteenth-century thinkers, such as modernism. The course will primarily focus on Europe and the US. Group B