Art History 510, Fall, 2001

Historiography and Theory of the Visual Arts to 1960

Wednesday Evening, 5:30-8:30

308 Henry Hall

Peter B. Hales, Professor

Office: 208-A Henry Hall

Office Hours: Tuesdays, 3:30-5:00 and by appointment

Phone: Office 413-2461 Home (847)866-8106

email pbhales@uic.edu

Website: http://www.uic.edu/~pbhales

This course has many goals. Primarily, it is meant to be a rigorous introduction to the sorts of thinking that characterize the discipline of art history, defined quite broadly. This means reading dense and demanding materials, applying the ideas and theories therein to works of architecture, art, and visual culture, and developing both a critical and a historical understanding of the discipline of art history as a result. Finally, the course is designed to develop clear, accurate, engaging writing at a highly sophisticated level.

Requirements: There is a great deal of reading for this class, and it's not easy going. Prepare to discipline yourself. Everyone is expected to do all the reading for each class. This is essential; in a small, intensive discussion seminar, the presence of even one ill-prepared student is glaringly obvious, with humiliating effects. You must be at all classes. In addition, each student is "responsible" for presenting the reading for two classes-- to have a clear sense of what you feel are the most important points, to guide discussion, and to propose some practical tests to use to illuminate the readings-- a work of architecture to "tour," say, (in which case you will need to pull the slides from the slide library) or a single interesting painting or work of design. Everyone is expected to participate in discussions in their own particular (or peculiar) ways; I don't expect you to become a different person, but I do expect loquacious students to learn discipline and listening skills, and shy or reticent students to learn assertiveness and something of eloquence, within the limits of the possible.

The writing assignments are of two types. Each week from week 3 through week 14 (10 papers-- you can skip two, AFTER WEEK 6), you are to produce a clear, brief (about 2 typed pages) analysis of the readings-- what constitute the central ideas of each reading, what ideas link them, and what are the most rewarding and problematic aspects of the work.

In addition, you will produce the "shell" of a research paper-- that is: you will find a topic, do preliminary research, develop a thesis, create a viable bibliography that includes primary and secondary sources-- in other words, do everything except write the paper. In this way you will develop comfort with the processes of research.

All the sober, punitive prose completed, I can now say that this is in fact an exciting course, the chance to begin to do what draws us to universities to do: to engage with and learn from each other and from people distanced from us by time, death and change. In addition, we will be looking at how this particular, odd, discipline came into being-- how it became possible to yoke together Art and History, and then say, at parties and in writing: "I'm an art historian."

1. Opening Week: Introduction: Boundaries, Margins and Disciplines

2. Conflicts and Paradigms: Art History in the World and in the Academy

This week you will not write; instead, go to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art, and spend some time considering those institutions as reflective of philosophical paradigms or models for what art's history is and how to present it.

Henri Zerner,"Crisis in the Discipline" editorial,

Oleg Grabar, "On the Universality of the History of Art,"and

O.K. Werckmeister, "Radical Art History,

all from special issue of Artjournal (xerox handout)

Artjournal Art History Survey Special Issue, Fall 1995 (in grad student office-- read it there only, please!!)

Hans Belting The End of the History of Art, part I (xerox handout)

Olu Oguibe, "In the 'Heart of Darkness'", from Art History and Its Methods (AHM)

3. The Philosophical Dichotomy: Idealism and Experience and the Critical Consciousness

Plato, The Republic; Aristotle, Poetics

This week we will spend about half the class discussing the methods of art-historical research, and the nature of research work as a real (rather than a required or obligatory) activity.

4. Prototypes: Art History, Art, and History

Vasari, Lives of the Artists: Introduction; Part I- all; Part II- Preface, Ghiberti, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Piero, Alberti, Botticelli; Part III- Preface, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, "The Author: To Artists of the Art of Design

Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art? Part II (xerox handout)

5. Germans: Idealism and the Search for Order

Johann Winckelmann, "The History of Ancient Art," in AHM;

Johan Goethe, "Of German Architecture," in AHM;

Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" , and "The Critique of Judgement" (excerpts xeroxed)

G. W. F. Hegel, " Philosophy of Fine Art" ( excerpts, xeroxed)

6. Art History Conceived as a Discipline: the 19^th Century

Jacob Burkhardt, "Reflections on History" in AHM

Alois Riegl, "Late Roman Art Industry" in AHM

With luck, we will be able to continue our discussion of the practicalities of art historical writing. To this end, please read the ubiquitous Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Art

7. Architecture: Criticism and Revival

John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture

William Morris, "The Revival of Architecture," in AHM

8. Connoisseurship and Stylistic Analysis

Giovanni Morelli, "Italian Painters," in AHM

Heinrich Wolfflin, Principles of Art History

Paul Frankl, Principles of Architectural History" in AHM

Roger Fry, "Vision and Design," in AHM

Henri Focillon, "The Life of Forms in Art," in AHM

Disruptions: Marx/Freud

9. Karl Marx, Capital

By this time, you should have chosen a topic for your research project, and be prepared to present it to me for approval over the next week or so.

10. Marxism(s) in Transformation: Orthodoxies to Social Histories

Arnold Hauser, "The Philosophy of Art History", in AHM

Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design

Nikolaus Pevsner, "An Outline of European Architecture," in AHM

Clement Greenberg, (on reserve)

11. Psychoanalysis and the Psychohistorical

Sigmund Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious

Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood

12. Critiquing Freud

Richard Wollheim, "Freud and the Understanding of Art" (on reserve)

Meyer Schapiro, "Leonardo and Freud: An Art-Historical Study," Journal of

the History of Ideas XVII, 147-178 (on reserve).

This week we will also spend some time discussing each of your research projects, and the steps taken (and left to be taken) to develop it.

Expansions: Art History and/as Cultural History

13. Iconographical Analysis, Iconology, and Art History as Cultural History

Erwin Panofsky, Meaning In the Visual Arts

14.High Modernism: Architecture as Heroic Humanism

Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style

Siegfried Giedion, (on reserve) from Mechanization Takes Command

15. High Modernism: Formalism and Painting/Respite and Solace

Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture

16. Yes: Finals Week Expands When Filled: Project Hand-In and Pizza Party

Expect to talk informally about the research project and, most importantly, about the process itself, by which you went from seeking an idea to a (quasi) finished product.