This seminar explores the conceptualization and employment of matter in modern and contemporary artistic practice. Matter will be considered plainly as constituent material having mass and occupying space, but also as material means for expression, action, and the formation of thought. We will probe the material process of Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Beuys, Robert Rauschenberg, Eva Hesse, Richard Serra, Robert Irwin and other artists in context of broad understandings of these practices as performing a social or even epistemological role.  

(Offered as ARHA 352, EUST 352 and WAGS 352.)  In this research seminar, we will explore how sickness and healing were understood, taking examples over centuries.  We will analyze attitudes toward bodies, sexuality, and deviance--toward physical and spiritual suffering--as we analyze dreams of cures and transcendence.  We will interrogate works by artists such as Grünewald, Goya, Géricault, Munch, Ensor, Van Gogh, Schiele, Cornell and Picasso, as well as images by artists in our own time: Kiki Smith, the AIDS quilt, Nicolas Nixon, Hannah Wilke, and others.

(Offered as ARHA 385, EUST 385, and WAGS 310.) This course will explore the construction of the monstrous, over cultures, centuries and disciplines. With the greatest possible historical and cultural specificity, we will investigate the varied forms of monstrous creatures, their putative powers, and the explanations given for their existence-as we attempt to articulate the kindred qualities they share. Among the artists to be considered are Valdés Leal, Velázquez, Goya, Munch, Ensor, Redon, Nolde, Picasso, Dalí, Kiki Smith, and Cindy Sherman.

(Offered as ARHA 383 and ASLC 319.) An examination of the history of chanoyu, the tea ceremony, from its origins in the fifteenth century to the practice of tea today. The class will explore the various elements that comprise the tea environment-the garden setting, the architecture of the tea room, the forms of tea utensils, and the elements of the kaiseki meal.

An advanced level interdisciplinary studio course focused on the development of a personal and independent body of work, and the technical and conceptual problems associated with such a project.  Students concentrating in any visual medium or across mediums are welcome and encouraged to enroll.

This course will examine the approaches of various contemporary artists to creating collaborative work.  Over the last two decades a growing number of artists have adopted a mode of working that is radically different from the usual modernist model.  These artists are working as collaborators with people or groups outside the world of art--with children, senior citizens, sanitation workers, or residents of a particular neighborhood.  The artists often create work with, not for a community, and share decision making with people not ordinarily given a place in the world of muse

What would it be like to “behold”? Without diminishing the value of objective observation, analysis, cultural and historical positioning of works of art, this seminar will offer a working hypothesis concerning the act of “beholding” as a deliberate and disciplined means of entering into the thrall of the art of individual works of art.

(Offered as ARHA 270 and BLST 293 [D].) The course of study will examine those African cultures and their arts that have survived and shaped the aesthetic, philosophic and religious patterns of African descendants in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti and urban centers in North America. We shall explore the modes of transmission of African artistry to the West and examine the significance of the preservation and transformation of artistic forms from the period of slavery to our own day.

(Offered as ARHA 253 and EUST 253). This course means to ask the question: What would it be like to engage with the paintings of Jan van Eyck, Roger van der Weyden, Hieronymous Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, Jan Vermeer and Rembrandt van Rijn as a consciously embodied person and to reclaim in such a direct encounter the rejuvenating powers of erôs, insight and wisdom residing within ourselves and in the art of works of art with which we would behold.

The human image was at the core of what are understood as the first steps into modern sculpture. We will look at the beginnings of the modernist approaches to the human image in sculpture and continue through its use by a wide variety of contemporary artists.  Students will build sculptures based on the head and the figure, working from life, as well as from memory and imagination.  From initial studies in clay from observation, students will move on to a variety of self-directed projects using the human image as central subject matter.