4.601
Introduction to Art History
Instructor: TBA
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Units: 3-2-7
Level: U
Prerequisites:
This course introduces you to the various social/cultural practices which defined the Western tradition of art production, and the methods used by art history to interpret visual culture within specific historical contexts. We will consider selected works and artistic traditions in Western Europe and the Americas from the fifteenth century to the late twentieth, examining a range of issues that determined the making, appearance and uses of "art" objects. We will look, for instance, at the changing social roles of the artist, craftsperson, and patron in the "creative" process, as well as shifts in the expectations of what the job of art was at different historical moments. We will also consider how images functioned within various relations of power; how, for example, visual culture served to legitimize, naturalize or undermine dominant ideas about race, gender, class and authority. We shall also explore changes in the relationship between artistic perception and technologies of social or cultural domination; and transformations in the social, cultural and political contexts in which visual images acquired various, often contradictory, "meanings". In all cases, we will be looking at changing historical situations, investigating how diverse social and political conditions intersected with the practices and processes of visual representation. Our approach will be thematic and comparative, rather than strictly chronological.
