Course Listings

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This course deals with the Renaissance art of Flanders, France, and Germany. Some of the topics to be discussed include ideals of beauty, images of female virtue, death and the maiden,dances of death, art and the economy, illusionism and symbolism, saints and sinners, mysticism and spirituality, faith and heresy, heaven and hell, heroes and humanists, witchcraft and alchemy, patronage, and Renaissance theory. Some of the artists covered in the course include Van Eyck, Vander Weyden, Memlinc, Bosch, Breughel, Holbein, Durer, and Grunewald.

Concepts of modernity and modernism are vigorously debated in contemporary art history and cultural theory. This course analyzes topics in modernism and avant-garde art movements in France from 1850 to 1900. We discuss the 1860s as critical to modern art's development before it became a dominant cultural revolution. Modernism's energies and transitions that distinguish the period are treated as they relate to all media of the visual arts. With the rise of modern Paris, the engendering milieu of politics, technology and social thought is explored. Woven into this network of ideas, practices, and movements from Realism to Art Nouveau, are works of artists, novelists, poets, critics, and playwrights who first transgressed rules governing traditional art. Included are: Courbet, Baudelaire, Manet, Pissarro, Seurat, Redon, Gide, and Cézanne, among others. Reading classic modernist texts that forever changed art and the artist's role, we view The Art Institute of Chicago's The Modern Wing.

This course considers the architectural history of Chicago in urban and suburban settings from the early 19th century to the present day. Initially, the early history of the city and its building practices as well as the key role that parks and open space played in determining the city's character are studied. The course then explores the first Chicago School of the 1880s and early 1890s, including buildings by William Le Baron Jenney, Burnham & Root, Adler & Sullivan, and Holabird & Roche; the work of Prairie School architects, focusing upon the residential design of Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries; and modernism before, during and after Ludwig Mies van der Rohe came to Chicago. The course ends with a discussion of how currently practicing architects have built upon these traditions or have diverged from them. We also explore the city's buildings and landscapes through illustrated lectures and field trips.

This course examines British, French, and American art during the Romantic period, a time of critical change. From 1765-1865, Europe and America witnessed political revolutions, civil war, economic upheaval, and social dislocation. In paintings, prints, and drawings, artists responded to their environment and looked forward to the modern age. Challenging the classical canon, Romantic artists produced new forms of expression that communicated high hopes and desperate uncertainty. This course discusses a wide range of artwork, examine original works of art, and covers primary and secondary texts as we discover the artistic and cultural transformation in the age of Romanticism.