Explores the early careers and art of Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Suzanne Valadon, artists who came of age at the dawn of the twentieth century. Matisse’s family wanted him to be a lawyer; Picasso was a child prodigy; Valadon began her career modeling for the Impressionists. Educated within a traditional model, all three would go on to create radically new art forms, against the backdrop of the artistic, political, and philosophical upheavals of early twentieth century Europe. How did one become an artist at a moment when the very definition of art’s appearance and function was in flux? Topics covered include: the role of personal identity in art making, relationships between artists and models, European encounters with art from Africa, the emergence of abstraction, the art market, and the cultural meanings of art and the artist in the modern world. Makes regular use of the rich holdings of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2019.

How do pictures of places incite pride, wonder, desire, or fear? How can they be mobilized to promote national unity or invite social disintegration? From images of the urban pleasure quarters to scenes of sacred mountains, Japanese artists during the Edo period (1603–1868) produced landscapes, cityscapes, and seascapes to enable people to see and consume the country in new ways. This course focuses on Japanese woodblock prints to unpack how artists invested pictures—such as the renowned Great Wave—with the power to shape attitudes towards nature, belonging, and Japan’s place in the world. (Same as: ASNS 1014)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2020.

Contemporary art can be challenging. Black squares, white cubes, appropriated advertising images, activist posters, street art, and performances all pose to viewers questions of intention, interpretation, and evaluation. Why did twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists redefine traditional media and invent new forms of artistic practice and experience? How do we know when something is “art?” How do we know if it is good art? Topics covered include: abstraction, appropriation, performance, activism, the workings of the contemporary art market, and theories of value and taste.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2020.

Examines crimes against art, including acts of theft, vandalism, and forgery representing challenges to our shared heritage. Students develop skills in art historical interpretation and ethical reasoning as they engage with historical examples including the history and controversies of such noted stolen cultural artifacts including the Elgin Marbles, the Benin bronze plaques, and Chugach burial masks. Examines the billion dollar “black market” for stolen art, and the legal tools for restoring plundered goods through repatriation.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2020.

We are surrounded by objects and images, and our digitized world offers an endless stream of visual content, from ads and games to photos of friends and influencers. How do these material and visual elements shape our experiences and identities? Each of us will answer this differently, but analyzing the material and visual stuff of our lives offers all of us a powerful tool for understanding and shaping ourselves and our experiences. Examining and analyzing the material and visual world around us, we will develop a starter kit of skills in critical thinking, observation, research, and writing. Working with objects from a range of times and places in campus collections—Ethiopian paintings, medieval prayerbooks, Inuk embroideries—we will encounter new ways to think about works of art and architecture and material and visual culture. We will analyze the arguments of researchers and artists and practice developing and presenting our own arguments through a series of short papers.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

Museums say as much about the people who make them as they do about the artwork they contain. Using examples from the history of Islamic art as well as Bowdoin College collections, this course examines issues of ethics, representation, and display in relation to contemporary museums. Provides an introduction to art historical interpretation and analysis, with an emphasis on the idea that museum displays are themselves a source that can be studied in depth.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

During the European Middle Ages (between approximately five hundred and fifteen hundred years ago), artists developed ingenious methods that allowed them to transform raw materials into pictures of things that were absent but that people longed to see: saintly figures described in holy texts, astonishing creatures that supposedly roamed the far reaches of the earth, and marvels that gave evidence of divine interventions in everyday life. Drawing on objects at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, we will examine and analyze some truly remarkable medieval artworks. We will investigate how they were made, who made them, and how they were used. Along the way, we will master the skills of visual analysis, allowing us to translate our vision into words; we will learn about several of the materials and techniques involved in creating artworks in the Middle Ages; and we will explore written accounts that help us understand the creation and function of these astonishing objects.

An introduction to the study of art history. Provides a chronological overview of art primarily from Western and East Asian traditions. Considers the historical context of art and its production, the role of the arts in society, problems of stylistic tradition and innovation, and points of contact and exchange between artistic traditions. Equivalent of Art History 101 as a major or minor requirement.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2020.

Explores theories, pictures, and practices of the human body in art. Studies depictions of the human form as well as arts that activate the body, including calligraphy, spatial design, performance, and ritual. Focuses primarily on East Asia, ranging from early traditions to contemporary examples. Deliberately sets out to challenge a Western-centric understanding of art and art history by developing ideas about the body that don't make a recourse back to the idealized nude. Draws on cross-cultural comparisons to explore themes of difference and global connectivity in art. Topics to be studied include identity, self-representation, the fragmented body, participant art, collective action, and radical hospitality. Examples of formats and artists to be studied include: shrines, scrolls, paintings, and works by Yoko Ono, Lee Mingwei, and Polit-Sheer-Form-Office. (Same as: ASNS 1865)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022.

A chronological survey of the arts created by major cultures of ancient Mexico and Peru. Mesoamerican cultures studied include the Olmec, Teotihuacan, the Maya, and the Aztec up through the arrival of the Europeans. South American cultures such as Chavín, Nasca, and Inca are examined. Painting, sculpture, and architecture are considered in the context of religion and society. Readings in translation include Mayan myth and chronicles of the conquest. (Same as: LACL 1300)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Fall 2019.

This course provides an introduction to the art and architectural traditions of South Asia. Students in this course will acquire a broad base of knowledge in the artistic movements, materials, and techniques of the region in their cultural and political contexts. Topics covered include Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Islamic devotional art, as well as luxury objects, artistic commodities, and folk and regional artistic practice. Students will also gain an understanding of South Asia’s role in the art of global exchange, including the connected histories of the Indian Ocean world, colonialism, and modern national identities. Note: This course is part of the following field(s) of study: South Asia. (Same as: ASNS 1605)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022.

Investigates the intersection of African American life and art. Topics include the changing definitions of “African American Art,” the embrace of African cultural production, race and representation in slavery and freedom, art as source of inspiration for social movements, and the politics of exhibition. Our mission is to develop art-historical knowledge about this critical aspect of American art history, while facilitating ways of seeing and writing about art. (Same as: AFRS 2660)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2019.

Explores the city as the paradigmatic experience and symbol of modern life in Western Europe from the early modern period to the mid-twentieth century through the lens of art. The increasing concentration of people in urban centers produced new forms of political and financial power and created new forms of sociability, bringing people from different places, races, classes, backgrounds, and beliefs together into productive and jarring encounters. Artists both helped shape these new urban geographies and responded to them in their art. Topics covered include the changing infrastructure and visual culture of the urban landscape; public art and the formation of civic identities; new forms of display and sale of art; and artists’ engagement with the physical, social and emotional experience of the city in their artwork. Serves as an introduction to the methods of art history, with an emphasis on close looking and visual analysis.

People around the globe have been traveling and exchanging ideas throughout history. The visual arts have been one of the most effective ways to share ideas, and they also serve as profound markers of the ongoing interchange of ideas between cultures and across time. Students in this course use visual art and architecture to investigate the ways in which people and ideas have moved and developed across cultures, and explore at an introductory level some of the core skills of the discipline of art history. Subject matter centers on specific moments of cultural interchange in the ancient and medieval period (up to c. 1500), across a diverse range of geographic areas. This course offers a starting point for anyone interested in art history.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022.

Students in this course work closely with Bowdoin College Museum of Art Staff to enhance the online presence of an exhibition that will be on view at the BCMA for part of the 2020/21 academic year. Working with medieval art, students are introduced to some of the basic skills of art history and explore digital and online strategies for sharing works of art and cultural knowledge with the general public. Subject matter includes African and European art from the medieval period (c. 500-c.1500). This course offers a starting point for anyone interested in art history.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2020.

Students in this course will be introduced to some of the basic skills and principles of the discipline of art history through the exploration of a select group of monumental buildings from the pre-modern era. Focusing on religious architecture and related monumental arts, including stained glass, mosaics, and architectural sculpture, students will develop skills in critical looking and thinking, and will discover some of the key media, styles, and functions of ancient and medieval architecture. The course will cover many well-known sites, like the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, the Dome of the Rock, and the Cathedral of Notre Dame, as well as lesser-known monuments like the Tomb of the Diver and the Beth Alpha Synagogue. This course offers a starting point for anyone interested in art history, and introduces some of the basic skills of the discipline.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023.

Introduces the techniques and methods of classical archaeology as revealed through an examination of Greek material culture. Emphasis upon the major monuments and artifacts of the Greek world from prehistory to the Hellenistic age. Architecture, sculpture, fresco painting, and other “minor arts” are examined at such sites as Knossos, Mycenae, Athens, Delphi, and Olympia. Considers the nature of this archaeological evidence and the relationship of classical archaeology to other disciplines such as art history, history, and classics. Assigned reading supplements illustrated presentations of the major archaeological finds of the Greek world. (Same as: ARCH 1101)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2019.

Surveys the material culture of Roman society, from Italy’s prehistory and the origins of the Roman state through its development into a cosmopolitan empire, and concludes with the fundamental reorganization during the late third and early fourth centuries. Lectures explore ancient sites such as Rome, Pompeii, Athens, Ephesus, and others around the Mediterranean. Emphasis upon the major monuments and artifacts of the Roman era: architecture, sculpture, fresco painting, and other minor arts. Considers the nature of this archaeological evidence and the relationship of classical archaeology to other disciplines such as art history, history, and classics. Assigned reading supplements illustrated presentations of the major archaeological finds of the Roman world. (Same as: ARCH 1102)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2020.

Explores the art and architecture produced across Europe and the Mediterranean region in the late antique and early medieval periods (c.250-c.1050), with attention paid to how the artistic practices of a number of cultures grew out of the Roman imperial tradition. Students explore the visual characteristics of the art and architecture from this period, and the relationship between early medieval art and the social, religious, and political history of the earlier Middle Ages. Topics include Anglo-Saxon, Byzantine, Carolingian, early Islamic, and Viking art. Students from all majors are welcome.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020.

Surveys and explores the art and architecture of the Islamic world, from its inception in the early seventh century until the eve of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century, with attention paid to the interactions between Islamic peoples and their neighbors in Europe and the Mediterranean. Students will explore a variety of media, including illustrated books, textiles, ceramics, metalwork, and mosaics from the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, and Spain, and will consider questions of gender and race. Students in this hybrid lecture/seminar will acquire a broad base of knowledge while exploring certain topics more deeply through readings and discussions.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2020.

Books are a way of containing and circulating knowledge, but are also objects to be studied in their own right. The richly illuminated manuscripts produced throughout the Islamic world offer an opportunity to study calligraphy, painting, and ornament in their artistic and cultural contexts. Focusing on the collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, this course presents and in-depth examination of the diverse visual traditions and techniques developed over from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Students in this hybrid lecture/seminar will acquire a broad base of knowledge, while exploring material and thematic topics more deeply through readings, discussions, and hands-on workshops. No foreign language knowledge is necessary, but at least one previous class in Art History, Asian Studies, or Middle East/North African Studies is required. (Same as: ASNS 2755, MENA 2126)

Prerequisites: ARTH 1000 - 2969 or ARTH 3000 or higher or ASNS 1000 - 2969 or ASNS 3000 or higher or MENA 1000 - 2969 or MENA 3000 or higher.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022.

This course explores the rich visual tradition of religious art in medieval Europe, with particular attention to the Cult of Saints, a phenomenon that continues to inspire artists working around the globe today. Discussion and research center on College collections, including works from the Wyvern collection, currently on loan at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Through readings, discussions, and object-based research projects, students learn about the production and reception of reliquaries, the representations of saints in illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, stained glass, and other media, and the highly personal ways in which medieval people used the visual arts to interact with the sacred. The course focuses on Europe and the Mediterranean basin, with some attention to similar issues in other regions.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Spring 2021.

Introduces students to art produced in Europe and the Mediterranean from the twelfth though the early fifteenth century. Following a general chronological sequence, investigates the key artistic monuments of this period in a variety of media, including architecture, painting, manuscript illumination, stained glass, sculpture, and the decorative arts. Explores a particular theme in each class meeting through the close analysis of a single monument or closely related set of monuments, as well as those that students may encounter in future studies.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022, Fall 2019.

The High Middle Ages, or Romanesque period (c. 1000-c.1200), was a moment of enormous cultural and technological development, as people, goods, and ideas moved throughout Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. This course introduces students to the visual arts and architecture produced in western Europe with some comparative material from further afield. Topics will include the pilgrimage and the cult of saints, the development of narrative art, Islamic Spain, and the balance between conceptual art and naturalism that marks the style of this period.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

Surveys the history of the decorated book from late antiquity through the Renaissance, beginning with an exploration of the earliest surviving illuminated manuscripts in light of the late antique culture that produced them. Examines uses of books in the early Middle Ages to convert viewers to Christianity or to establish political power. Traces the rise of book professionals (scribes, illuminators, binders, etc.) as manuscript production moved from monastic to urban centers, and concludes with an investigation of the impact of the invention of printing on art and society in the fifteenth century, and on the “afterlife” of manuscript culture into the sixteenth century. Themes to be discussed include the effect of the gender of a book’s anticipated audience on its decoration; the respective roles of author, scribes, and illuminators in designing a manuscript’s decorative program; and the ways that images can shape a reader’s understanding of a text. Makes use of the Bowdoin Library’s collection of manuscripts and early printed books.

In the late nineteenth and throughout the twentieth century, as Japan transitioned from a feudal society to a modern nation-state, Japanese art was mobilized by the avant-gardes and government alike. Examines the wide variety of formats and mediums encompassed in competing claims for modernization, including ink painting, oil painting, photography, ceramics, woodblock prints, and performance art. Interrogates art's complicit role in ultra-nationalism, Pan-Asianism, Oriental Orientalism, colonial ambitions, US military occupation, and post-war reconstruction. Themes covered include: reinventions of tradition, East-West relations, colonialism, trauma, and renewal. (Same as: ASNS 2330)

Examines the multitude of visual expressions adopted, re-fashioned, and rejected from China's last dynasty (1644-1911) through the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Major themes include the tension between identity and modernity, Westernization, the establishment of new institutions for art, and the relationship between cultural production and politics. Formats under study include ink painting, oil painting, woodcuts, advertisements, and propaganda. Comparisons with other cultures conducted to interrogate questions such as how art mobilizes revolution. (Same as: ASNS 2200)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2020.

Examines the history of contemporary Chinese art and cultural production from Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) until today. Traces experiments in oil, ink, performance, installation, video, and photography and considers these media and formats as artistic responses to globalization, capitalist reform, urbanization, and commercialization. Tracks themes such as art and consumerism, national identity, global hierarchies, and political critique. Readings include primary sources such as artists’ statements, manifestoes, art criticism, and curatorial essays. (Same as: ASNS 2201)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Fall 2020.

Examines mural, manuscript, and single-page painting from the fifth to the twentieth centuries. Questions to be covered include the identification and significance of courtly and regional styles, the role of patronage, and the impact of cross-cultural interactions. Through case studies of technique and artistic practice, this course will also situate the primacy of painting within the cultural and historical context of South Asia, including modern ramifications for connoisseurial analysis and the art market. Examples from major historical and cultural movements will include Buddhist monastic painting, medieval Jain and Sultanate manuscripts, Mughal allegorical and historical painting, Rajput and Pahari poetic and devotional scenes, and folk and commercial art. Through studies of these fundamental belief systems and structures, students will analyze diverse perspectives on South Asian history and culture. (Same as: ASNS 2514)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

An exploration of the painting, sculpture, and architecture from Giotto's revolutionary paintings in 1300 through the fifteenth century with masters such as Donatello and up to High Renaissance giants, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Examines art-making and function within the society that used it, including the role of women as patrons, artists and subjects of art. Readings in translation of sixteenth-century artists’ biographies, art criticism, and popular literature. Class will make use of collections in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021, Fall 2019.

Venice is distinctive among Italian cities for its political structures, its geographical location, and its artistic production. I ts resilience in the face of plague, flood and warfare shines forth in the brilliance of city's fabric and in the vibrantly colored art that ornaments it. This overview of Venetian art and architecture considers Venice’s relationships to Byzantium and the Turkish east, Venetian colorism in dialogue with Tuscan-Roman disegno (drawing and composition), and the role of women as artists, as patrons, and as subjects of art. Includes art by the Bellini family, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Canaletto, and Rosalba Carriera, and the architecture of Palladio. No previous work in art history required.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020.

Wealthy rulers vied with one another to collect the rarities being discovered across the world. They collected wonders such as “dragons” and exotic beasts such as giraffes, recording these precious beings in art. They even brought to their courts representatives from the peoples of the Americas, whom they deemed as marvels. At the same time, European culture stressed refinement, cool elegance, and graceful body types in both living humans and art. The resulting artworks show strange, disturbing and intriguing images, all gathered under the term “Mannerism.” Using paintings, drawings, prints and medals from the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, this class studies artists such as Michelangelo, Pontormo, and El Greco in the courts in Austria, France, Spain and Italy. Readings in translation of scientific writings, formulas for ideal beauty and the grotesque, and handbooks for court life and manners. No previous work in art history required.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022.

Surveys the painting of the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Topics include the spread of the influential naturalistic style of Campin, van Eyck, and van der Weyden; the confrontation with the classical art of Italy in the work of Dürer and others; the continuance of a native tradition in the work of Bosch and Bruegel the Elder; the changing role of patronage; and the rise of specialties such as landscape and portrait painting.

Prerequisites: ARTH 1100 or Placement in above ARTH 1100.

Stained glass is considered a hallmark of the European Middle Ages and was perhaps the most important artistic medium of the period. Students in this seminar explore the medium through readings, discussions, and an occasional trip to the museum. Discussion topics will include material and technical aspects of stained glass, its role within political and spiritual discourse, its relationship to architecture, monumental sculpture, and illuminated manuscripts, and the ways in which medieval artists used this medium to display some of the most important stories and ideas of the age. The course focuses on the Gothic period (c. 1140-c. 1500), but students also consider later developments.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023.

The art of seventeenth-century Europe. Topics include the revolution in painting carried out by Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, and their followers in Rome; the development of these trends in the works of Rubens, Bernini, Georges de la Tour, Poussin, and others; and the rise of an independent school of painting in Holland. Connections between art, religious ideas, and political conditions are stressed.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2021.

Seminar. The art of Central Africa inspired European avant-garde artists from Pablo Picasso to Paul Klee. This course explores art as a historical source. What does the production, use, commerce, and display of art reveal about politics, ideology, religion, and aesthetics? Prior to European colonialism, what was the relationship between art and politics in Central Africa? How did art represent power? What does it reveal about gender relations, social divisions, and cultural ideals? The course then turns to the Euro-American scramble for Central African art at the onset of European colonialism. How did the collection of art, its celebration by European artists, and display in European and American museums transform patterns of production, cultural functions and aesthetic styles of Central African art? The course ends with current debates over the repatriation of African art. Note:This course is part of the following field(s) of study: Africa. This course meets the non-European/ US History requirements. (Same as: HIST 2823, AFRS 2823)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2019.

A survey of European art from the advent of photography to the turn of the century. The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of urban growth, increasing political and economic power for the middle and working classes, and revolutionary scientific and technological discoveries. How did the visual arts respond to and help shape the social forces that came to define Western modernity? Questions to be addressed include: What was the impact of photography and other technologies of vision on painting’s relation to mimesis? How did new audiences and exhibition cultures change viewers’ experiences and expectations of art? How did artists respond to the new daily realities of modern urban life, including the crowd, the commodity, railways, and electric light? Artists discussed include Courbet, Frith, Manet, Ford Madox Brown, Julia Margaret Cameron, Whistler, Ensor, Gauguin, and Cézanne.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2019.

Examines major buildings, architects, architectural theories, and debates during the modern period, with a strong emphasis on Europe through 1900, and both the United States and Europe in the twentieth century. Central issues of concern include architecture as an important carrier of historical, social, and political meaning; changing ideas of history and progress in built form; and the varied architectural responses to industrialization. Attempts to develop students’ visual acuity and ability to interpret architectural form while exploring these and other issues. (Same as: ENVS 2431, URBS 2431)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

A survey of photography made and experienced in the United States from the age of daguerreotypes until the era of digital image processing. Addresses the key photographic movements, works, practitioners, and technological and aesthetic developments while also considering the social, political, cultural, and economic contexts for individual photographs. Photographers studied include Watkins, Bourke-White, Weegee, and Weems. Readings of primary sources by photographers and critics such as Stieglitz, Sontag, Abbott, and Benjamin bolster close readings of photographs. Builds skills of discussing, writing, and seeing American photography. Incorporates study of photography collections across the Bowdoin College campus.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022.

A scholarly inquiry into materials and making with an emphasis on historic artifacts made for everyday use. Students will explore fabrication techniques, test the limits of materials, and refine haptic skills through the manipulation of materials, including clay, textiles, wood, and plastic. Through hands-on examination of artifacts in local collections, students develop the language, methodology, and interpretive skills for artifact and material analysis.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Fall 2019.

Examines art produced during Queen Victoria’s reign (1837—1901). The Industrial Revolution gave rise to mass culture and consumer society as well as unprecedented amounts of pollution and environmental damage; the twin engines of capitalism and imperialism spawned Britain’s vast Empire and activism by the working classes, women, and the colonized peoples of the British Empire transformed the political and social landscape. Victorian artists took seriously the question of how art might engage their changing modern world, and their diverse responses illuminate both nineteenth-century modernity and its continuing legacies. Topics may include: the representation of modern urban life and its moral challenges; depictions of the environment in landscape and animal painting; the invention of photography and mass visual culture; the rise of the modern art market; and episodes in the imperialist history of artistic contact, conflict and extraction between Britain and other nations.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022.

A study of the modernist movement in visual art in Europe and the Americas beginning with post-impressionism and examining in succession: expressionism fauvis, cubism, futurism, constructivism, Dada, surrealism, the American affinities of these movements, and the Mexican muralists. Modernism is analyzed in terms of the problems presented by its social situation; its relation to other elements of culture; its place in the historical tradition of Western art; and its invocation of archaic, primitive, and Asian cultures.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2020.

Art of Europe and the Americas since World War II, with emphasis on the New York school. Introductory overview of modernism. Detailed examination of abstract expressionism and minimalist developments; pop, conceptual, and environmental art; and European abstraction. Concludes with an examination of the international consequences of modernist and contemporary developments, the impact of new electronic and technological media, and the critical debate surrounding the subject of postmodernism.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

This course will provide an introduction to the history of women as creators, subjects, and audiences of art in Western Europe and the United States from the Renaissance to the present. How do we (can we?) tell the stories of the forgotten people and identities of the past? What archives and artifacts are available, and how do we account for the gaps? How do we think historically about the variable categories of gender and sexuality? As we grapple with these questions, we will explore a wide range of methods and approaches to visual art that focus on questions of gender and sexuality in an intersectional context, and identify key concepts such as “bodies,” “ideologies,” and “identities.” No previous work in art history required. (Same as: GSWS 2258)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2020.

An investigation of American architecture, sculpture, painting, and decorative arts from their contact-era origins until the Civil War. Emphasis is placed on American art as a distinct tradition shaped by the movement of people and things across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans to a continent populated by indigenous people. Explores how artists engaged and interpreted the world around them in material form, as well as the ways that this production served a host of ideological and aesthetic needs. Methods of art historical interpretation are analyzed and discussed using primary and secondary source readings. Studies original art and artifacts in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and buildings on the Bowdoin campus and beyond.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022.

A survey of American architecture, sculpture, painting, and photography from the Civil War and World War II. Emphasis on understanding art in its historical and cultural context. Issues to be addressed include the expatriation of American painters, the conflicted response to European modernism, the pioneering achievements of American architects and photographers, the increasing participation of women and minorities in the art world, and the ongoing tension between native and cosmopolitan forms of cultural expression. Works with original objects in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

Introduces students to Chinese art from the First Emperors terracotta warriors in the third century BCE to the waning of the country’s dynastic history in the nineteenth century CE. Following a chronological sequence, explores key mortuary spaces, religious objects, court art, and landscape painting with focus on themes of power and politics. Emphasis is placed on understanding changing art formats and functions in relation to socio-cultural contexts, such as shifts in belief systems, foreign imperial patronage, and the rise of literati expression. Readings include primary sources such as ancestral rites, Buddhist doctrines, imperial proclamations, and Chinese painting treatises. (Same as: ASNS 2020)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023.

Investigates the history of museums, exploring recent debates regarding the ethics and responsibilities of museum practices. Examines the origins of museums, considering ways museums have supported particular accounts of cultural history, often in the service of specific forms of political power. Students engage with current debates, ranging from the legacies of colonialism to questions about whose interests museums serve. Students also consider possible ways acknowledging those complex histories and modifying those practices to ensure that museums remain vital in the future. Readings include texts drawn from the history of museums and from the growing field of “critical museum studies.” Class meetings will be held in museum spaces (primarily the Zuckert Seminar Room of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art), allowing students to practice the analysis of their immediate surroundings and to engage in dialogue with museum professionals and other experts.

Identifies and explores key topics in recent publications of contemporary Chinese art. Alongside of subject matter, students analyze usages of socio-political context and methodologies for framing different narratives of contemporary Chinese art. Through studies of individual artists and larger contemporary art trends, students unpack current art histories while also proposing alternative approaches. Readings include monographs, exhibition catalogs, interviews, and systematic reviews of journals. Questions include: What are the challenges of historicizing the present? How does the global art world reconcile the existence of multiple art worlds? How have artists intervened in narratives of contemporary Chinese art? (Same as: ASNS 3070)

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

Both Leonardo and Michelangelo produced hundreds of drawings in the service of their imaginative processes in creating great architecture, sculpture, and painting. In addition, both studied the human body through anatomical drawings, while Leonardo expanded his investigations to the bodies of animals, the movement of water, the flight of birds, and countless other natural phenomena. Exploring the theory of disegno (drawing and composing) as a divinely granted power, considers biographies, letters, and notebooks in translation, as well as scholarly literature on the Sistine Chapel frescoes, “The Last Supper,” and other monuments now known to us only through drawings. Makes use of works from the collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Opportunities for hands-on learning of drawing techniques—chalk, pen and ink, wash, metal point—support investigations of these artists' accomplishments.

Prerequisites: ARTH 1100 or Placement in above ARTH 1100.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2020.

Contrasts two artists -- one male, one female -- whose powerful, naturalistic styles transformed European painting in the seventeenth century. Starting with a close examination of the artists’ biographies (in translation), focuses on questions of the their educations, artistic theories, styles as a reflection of character, and myths and legends of the their lives. Also examines the meanings of seventeenth-century images of heroic women, such as Esther, Judith, and Lucretia, in light of social and cultural attitudes of the times.

Prerequisites: ARTH 1100 or Placement in above ARTH 1100.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

Gender, sexuality, race, and other aspects of identity have come to play a huge role in our public and private lives, and these same issues can be key to understanding how people lived and understood their lives in the past. Through in-class discussion and individual research projects, students in this seminar examine intersections of these concerns with the visual arts produced in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean region (c. 500 --c. 1500), gaining a deeper and richer understanding of how people in the past imagined and depicted themselves and their lives, and negotiated their senses of identity. Specific topics covered will include representations of women and minoritized groups, the roles played by women as makers and patrons of art, and the relevance of modern categories of sexuality, gender, and race in the context of medieval studies. (Same as: GSWS 3350)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2021.

The long-term loan of the Wyvern Collection of medieval art to the BCMA offers an opportunity for hands-on research in a museum setting. Students work directly with medieval works of art to conduct object-based research, develop some of the components of an exhibition, and explore specific aspects of medieval art history. As a group, students develop an exhibition concept and consider questions related to the display of objects. Individually, students research works of art and their cultural context and write museum labels, wall text, and essays. Topics for research and discussion might include religion, gender, and globalism in the Middle Ages or history and theory of collecting and display.

Prerequisites: ARTH 1000 - 2969 or ARTH 3000 or higher.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2019.

Seminar. We live in an image-saturated world: social media platforms, the news, smart phones, remote learning, video games, streaming services, emoticons. We communicate, learn, and express ourselves in a highly mediated world of visual tools and images. Yet all too often we treat images as transparent vehicles of communication, immediately comprehended and obvious to all. This class brings the art historical tools of close looking and visual analysis to the materials of the digital world, from its roots in the nineteenth-century technologies of reproduction to its current screen-based forms, with an emphasis on media and materiality. Topics will vary, but may include early mass media, including wood engraving and photography; family albums and scrapbooks; the news media; the visual architecture of the internet; social media platforms; video games, advertising; digital art; and NFTs. (Same as: DCS 3600)

Prerequisites: ARTH 1000 - 2969 or ARTH 3000 or higher or DCS 1000 - 2969 or DCS 3000 or higher.

Studies competing claims over what it means for contemporary art to be called global. In particular, traces how the controversial category of “global contemporary art” has been used to both perpetuate and resist Western-centered views of the world. Focuses on artworks, exhibitions, and texts that specifically counter Western-centrism in gatekeeping tactics, exclusionary systems of evaluation, and hegemonic art historical narratives. Examples include the 1989 Havana Biennial, 1999 Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, post-colonial critiques, and recent artworks and exhibits that have sought to re-map global cartographies of contemporary art. Students taking this as an ASNS course will concentrate on examples relevant to their focus of study. (Same as: ASNS 3802)

Previous terms offered: Fall 2022.

This seminar explores the changing implications of “Asian art” within global art histories. How has this category been empowering, how has it been limiting, and how does it make us rethink what constitutes both “Asian art” and “global art”? Students will investigate existing art historical models as well as alternative possibilities. Topics to be examined include the impact of theories of cultural representation, transnationalism, deterritorialization, decolonialism, and diaspora on methods for interpreting art, writing histories, and classifying artists. Through a wide range of examples of “Asian art” students will analyze how artists have addressed processes of globalization in their work, how they have sought to position themselves in the world, and how they have been historically positioned in art histories and exhibitions. Comparisons with other geo-cultural and thematic categories will also be used to complicate invocations of difference, belonging, and tradition.

At the turn of the twentieth century, artists in New York and London grappled with the changes of modernity experienced in two of the largest industrialized cities in the Western world. Exploring new artistic styles and subjects, the artists of the Ashcan School and the Camden Town Group engaged new technologies and communication networks; new relationships between the rural, the urban, and the emerging suburban; the changing population of cities; and fights for social justice around questions of class, ethnicity, race, and gender. This course puts these two national stories into conversation, bringing together works produced on both sides of the Atlantic at a moment of artistic and social revolution. The seminar is part of ongoing planning for an exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Students will help generate an intellectual framework for such an exhibition, including exploring the collection and potential themes and comparisons, and learn some of the skills involved in mounting a loan exhibition.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2021.

Explores the commercial art gallery as a distinct institutional form, emphasizing its historical and functional differences from other exhibition venues. The class will draw upon theoretical and historical scholarship on museums and exhibition theory, but the primary focus will be uncovering the history of the commercial gallery in Europe and the United States from the late 18th century to the present, and developing a theoretical paradigm within which to locate the form.

Prerequisites: ARTH 1000 - 2969 or ARTH 3000 or higher or Placement in above ARTH 1100.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023, Spring 2020.

Students enrolled in the Fall 2020 iteration of the course will have the opportunity to produce online content in support of "There Is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in American Art," a forthcoming exhibition at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. (Same as: AFRS 3600)

Prerequisites: ARTH 1000 - 2970 or ARTH 3000 or higher or Placement in above ARTH 1100 or AFRS 1000 - 2970 or AFRS 3000 or higher.

Previous terms offered: Fall 2020.

During his extensive career, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) worked in multiple modes, including woodcut prints for the popular press, watercolors, and paintings. In his depictions of freedmen, maimed Civil War veterans, and untamed nature, he provided a penetrating and often disturbing view of post-Civil War America. Over the past fifty years, interpretations of Homer's work have changed dramatically and broadened to include such themes and lenses as race, social class, and intertextuality. Exploration of Homer's oeuvre doubles as an inquiry into the historiography of American Art. Homer topics under consideration are: Civil War paintings, illustrations of leisure, depictions of women and children in the Gilded Age, and landscape and seascape paintings of the Caribbean and Maine. Close study opportunities include sessions at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Bowdoin College Special Collections, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Winslow Homer Studio in Prouts Neck, Maine.

Prerequisites: ARTH 2000 - 2969.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2023.

The study of things, or material culture, has emerged as a multidisciplinary umbrella for the understanding of everyday life. Material culture encompasses everything made or done -- clothes worn, houses occupied, art hung on walls, even the way bodies are modified. Exploration of object-based approaches to American culture proceeds through hands-on study of things such as grave markers, great chairs, and girandoles in the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the historic house museums of Brunswick. Readings include primary sources and scholarly analyses of objects. Assignments enable students to hone descriptive, analytical, and interpretive writing skills.

Prerequisites: ARTH 1100 or Placement in above ARTH 1100.

Previous terms offered: Spring 2022, Spring 2020.