1

Art Humanities: Masterpieces of Western Art

Humanities W1121, Section 14
Fall 2014, T/TH 2:403:55
607 Schermerhorn Hall

Instructor: Anastassiia Botchkareva
Email: aab2037@columbia.edu
Office: Schermerhorn Extension 653
Office hours: Monday 4-6 or by appointment

Art Humanities teaches students how to look at, think about, and critically discuss the
visual arts of Europe and North America. Though chronological, the course is not a
traditional survey of Western art, but a series of analytical case studies of select artists
and their works. Besides examining the formal qualities of architecture, sculpture,
painting, and other media, we will also consider the historical contexts in which these
works were made and understood. Art Humanities is a discussion-based class, and active
student participation is essential. Our regular meetings will be supplemented by field trips
and assigned visits to some of New York Citys vast collection of museums and
monuments.

The Art Hum website can be found at www.learn.columbia.edu/arthumanities
Login: ahar
Password: 826sch

The CourseWorks website can be found at https://courseworks.columbia.edu
Login: UNI
Password: UNI password

Requirements
Class participation (see below) and participation in museum trips: 25%
First paper (due October 13): 15%
Midterm exam (October 15): 20%
Final paper (due December 3): 20%
Final exam (date TBA): 20%

Attendance is mandatory, and absences will be excused only for reasons of religious
observance (with prior notification), illness (with a physicians note), or family
emergency. Missing class without permission will result in a lowered participation grade.
After two unexcused absences, the final grade will be reduced by one letter grade for
every additional meeting missed. In accordance with Columbia guidelines, four
unexcused absences will result in a failing grade.

Museum visits are a key component of this course and participation in two class museum
visits is required. Your Columbia student ID entitles you to free entry to many of the
2

citys museums, including the Met and MoMA, and you are encouraged to visit these and
other collections on your own as well.

Readings are required, and, with the exception of those assigned for the first meeting,
must be completed by the date they appear on the syllabus. Readings will be available
either at Butler Reserves (BR), on CourseWorks (CW), or in the Primary Source Reader
(PSR). The Primary Source Reader can be purchased at the Columbia University
Bookstore, consulted at Butler, or accessed as PDF files through the Art Hum website.

Papers should be typed in double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font and submitted
by the stated deadlines. The first paper will be a formal analysis of 24 pages, and the
second a comparative research essay of 58 pages. Further details will be given when the
assignments are handed out in class.

The midterm and final exam will both involve responding to questions that relate to
artworks and readings we have discussed during the course. You may be shown
unfamiliar works and asked to discuss them in the light of the material with which you
are familiar. Some of the questions will require short answers, and others will involve
longer essays.

Academic integrity is expected of all students in accordance with the Columbia College
Bulletin (www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/universitypolicies.php). Plagiarism consists
of quoting or paraphrasing a book, journal, museum placard, or website without
acknowledging or documenting the source of the lifted material. It also includes
presenting others ideas as your own. You must properly cite the sources you use with
quotations and footnotes. If you are unsure as to what constitutes plagiarism, please ask
me before submitting any assignments. Plagiarism will result in an F (0) for the
assignment in question. So too will cheating during an exam. All instances of plagiarism
and cheating are required to be reported at the institutional level.

















3


September 3 Introduction

September 8 Reading a Work of Art
Roland Barthes, Rhetoric of the Image, in Image-Music-Text, 3251 (CW).
Michel Foucault, Las Meninas, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the
Human Sciences (1966; New York: Vintage Books, 1970), 3-16. (CW).
First paper assignment handed out in class.

September 10 The Parthenon (447432 BC)
Thucydides, Funeral Oration of Pericles (PSR).
Plutarch, Life of Pericles (PSR).

September 15 The Parthenon (447432 BC)
J. J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece, 64105 (CW).
Christopher Hitchens, Lovely Stones, Vanity Fair, July 2009
(http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/07/hitchens200907).
Michael Kimmelman, Who Draws the Borders of Culture?, New York Times,
May 5, 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/arts/09abroad.html).

September 17 Amiens Cathedral (12201269)
Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis (PSR).
Excerpts from the Holy Bible (PSR)
September 22 Amiens Cathedral (12201269)
Pope Gregory the Great, On the Proper Use of Images (PSR).
Michael Camille, Gothic Signs and the Surplus: The Kiss on the Cathedral, Yale
French Studies (1991): 15170 (CW).

September 24 Raphael (14831520)
Giorgio Vasari, Preface to Part Three and Life of Raphael (excerpts from The
Lives of the Artists) (PSR).
Leon Battista Alberti, Excerpts from On Painting (PSR).

September 29 Raphael (1483-1520)
David Rosand, Raphaels School of Athens and the Artist of the Modern
Manner, in The World of Savanarola: Italian Elites and Perceptions of Crisis
(CW).

October 1 Michelangelo (14751564)
Contract for the Piet (PSR).
Contract for Michelangelos David (PSR).
Giorgio Vasari, Life of Michelangelo Buonarrotti (PSR).
Saul Levine, The Location of Michelangelos David: The Meeting of January 25,
1504, Art Bulletin 56 (1974): 3149 (CW).
4


October 6 Bruegel (c. 15251569)
Karel van Mander, Pieter Bruegel of Bruegel (PSR).
Erasmus, Excerpts from Moriae Encomium or The Praise of Folly, 1511 (PSR).

October 8 Bruegel (c. 1525-1569)
Svetlana Alpers, Bruegels Festive Peasants, Simiolus 6, nos. 3/4 (197273):
16376 (CW).

October 13 Bernini (15981680)
Saint Teresa in Ecstasy (PSR).
Ovid, Daphne and Apollo, Excerpt from The Metamorphoses (PSR).
Frank Fehrenbach, Berninis Light, Art History 28 (2005): 1124 (excerpt)
(CW).
First paper to be submitted by the beginning of class.

October 15 Midterm exam (held in class)

October 20 Rembrandt (16091669)
Constantijn Huygens, excerpts from The Autobiography (PSR).
Samuel van Hoogstraten, On the Nightwatch (PSR).

October 22 Rembrandt (1609-1669)
Svetlana Alpers, The Masters Touch, in Rembrandts Enterprise, 1433 (CW).

October 27 Goya (17461828)
Janis Tomlinson, Goya in the Twilight of the Enlightenment, 6077 and 11527
(CW).
Goya, Address to the Royal Academy (PSR).
October 29 Goya (1746-1828)
Advertisement for Los Caprichos (PSR).
Goya, Disasters of War, skim (BR).
Art Hum Website: What is a Print?
Second paper assignment will be handed out in class.

November 3 NO CLASS. ACADEMIC HOLIDAY/ELECTION DAY.

November 5 Manet (18321883)
Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, in Modernity and Bourgeois
Life, 493506 (CW).
T. J. Clark, A Bar at the Folies-Brgere, from The Painting of Modern Life,
205, 23958 (CW).

Visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
5


November 10 Monet (18401926)
Edmund Duranty, The New Painting (PSR).
Thodore Duret, The Impressionist Painters (PSR).

November 12 Picasso (18811973)
Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Excerpt from Cubism (PSR).
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Excerpt from The Way of Cubism (PSR).
Georges Braque, Personal Statement (PSR).
Picasso, Statement to Marius de Zayas (PSR).
Rosalind Krauss, 1907 (on Les Demoiselles dAvignon), in Art Since 1900, 78
84 (CW).

November 17 Picasso (1881-1973)
Rosalind Krauss, In the Name of Picasso, October 16 (1981): 522 (CW).

November 19 Frank Lloyd Wright (18671959)
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Art and Craft of the Machine and In the Cause of
Architecture (PSR).
Jack Quinan, Frank Lloyd Wrights Guggenheim Museum: A Historians
Report, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 52, no. 4 (December
1993): 46682 (CW).

November 24 Le Corbusier (18871965)
Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, Five Points towards a New Architecture
(PSR).
Adolf Loos, Ornament and Crime, in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-
Century Architecture, 1924 (CW).

November 26 NO CLASS. THANKSGIVING.

December 1 Jackson Pollock (1887-1965)
Allan Kaprow, The Legacy of Jackson Pollock, in Essays on the Blurring of Art
and Life, 19 (CW).
Jackson Pollock, Two statements, 1947, 1951, in Theories of Modern Art,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 546-548. (CW)

December 3 Andy Warhol
Thomas B. Hess, Pop and Public, in Pop Art: A Critical History, 100102
(CW).
John Coplans, Early Warhol: The Systematic Evolution of the Impersonal Style,
in Pop Art: A Critical History, 294301 (CW).
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, An Interview with Andy Warhol, in Andy Warhol,
11928 (CW).
Final paper due by the beginning of class.
6


Visit to the Museum of Modern Art

December 8 Conclusion: Arts Others
Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?, in Women,
Art, and Power and Other Essays, 14578 (CW).
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Screen 16, no. 3 (1975):
618 (CW).
Linda Nochlin, The Imaginary Orient, in The Politics of Vision: Essays on
Nineteenth-Century Art and Society, 3359 (CW).
Lowry, G. Oil and Sugar: Contemporary Art and Islamic Culture. (Toronto:
Royal Ontario Museum, 2009) [selections].


Dec 9-19 (date TBA) Final exam