HAA Course Descriptions - Spring 2008
The following courses were offered during term 2084, spring 2008.
HAA 0010 Introduction to Art
This is a Self-Paced course. Workshops meet for the following day(s): 1/12/2008; 2/9/2008; 3/22/2008. This course is an introductory level humanities course, which examines the history of art and architecture from Egyptian times to the 20th century. Students learn what to look for when examining a work of historical art, and how to analyze its relationship to the culture which produced it. Works of art and architecture are discussed as both aesthetic objects and historical documents. Workshop attendance is mandatory except by permission of the instructor.
HAA 0011 Intro to Art/Writing Practicum
This 1 credit writing practicum can be taken by students who are enrolled concurrently in HAA 0010: Introduction to Art. In this w-course, students will write a series of short papers on works of art addressed in the large lecture class or on works located at the Carnegie Museum of Art or other local galleries, honing visual analysis skills. Students may also be asked to write on topics and concerns that are topical in today's art world. All papers will be edited through a draft stage so the student can develop his or her written communication skills on each assignment.
HAA 0020 Introduction to Asian Art
This is a Self-Paced course. Workshops meet for the following day(s): 1/26/2008; 2/23/2008; 3/29/2008. This course is a general introduction to the major artistic traditions of South and East Asia (India, China, Japan). Students will be introduced to great works of art, the basic tools with which to analyze them, and the social, historical, political and ideological contexts, cultures, and religions, from which these works have evolved. Some of the topics to be studied include: ancient civilizations in Indian subcontinent, China, and Japan; Buddhism in India, China, and Japan; Hindu and Islamic religion and art; and Zen and the Art of Landscape Painting. Upon completing the course students will be familiar with important works of Indian, Chinese, and Japanese art and will know something about interpreting them contextually.
HAA 0030 Introduction to Modern Art
This course will address critical issues in Vanguard Western painting, sculpture, photography, and architecture from the 19th century to the present. The first part of the course will be devoted to discussion of the nature, history, and cultural practices of artistic Modernism in the West, with special attention to the work of the Realists, Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Cubists, Surrealists, and the Abstract Expressionists, among others. The last part of the class will explore recent contemporary issues in art.
HAA 0040 Introduction to Western Architecture
This course introduces students to the art of architecture from the ancient world until today, emphasizing the western tradition. The course works both chronologically as a history of phases and styles, and methodologically, examining the contextual issues that give each period a distinctive architecture. Students who take this course will learn to understand and make critical judgments on buildings and be ready for more specialized studies in the history of architecture.
HAA 0061 Introduction to Paintings
This course will help students with no experience in the arts feel comfortable when they visit a museum or discuss paintings. Upon completing this course a student should not only have an easy familiarity with some of the greatest masterpieces of paintings, but he or she should also have attained the background and skill to understand and discuss paintings they might discover in a gallery, antique shop, or home. This course is especially intended for students without background in the arts. Note: Students who have taken Masterpieces 1 cannot receive credit for Introduction to Paintings.
HAA 0090 Introduction to Contemporary Art
This course explores the latest developments in contemporary art in the context of changes in world visual cultures since the 1960s. The first weeks will concentrate on the transformations of artistic practice that occurred initially in Pop Art, and on the Minimal-Conceptual shift in Western art. This will be followed by a survey of the diversification of artistic practice in the 1980s and 1990s, including the emergence of new internationalisms reflecting postcoloniality, global Contemporary Art, indigenous art and digital media. The course will conclude with a consideration of multiplicity of art today.
HAA 0240 Medieval Artistic Patronage
This is a survey of medieval art focusing on some of the major ecclesiastical and secular patrons of the period. The works of art and architecture are studied in relation to contemporary writings - chronicles, inventories, descriptions - that provide documentary evidence for their creation and appreciation. Specific patrons include Justinian, Charlemagne, Herald of Landsberg, Henry the Lion, and Jean de Berry. Prior knowledge of medieval art and of modern languages is an advantage.
HAA 0300 Special Topics - Renaissance: Michelangelo
In this class, students will explore the life and works of Michelangelo. He was thought to be the greatest painter, sculptor and architect of his day, and in his very long career created a spectacular range of artworks, among them, the Pieta, the Sistine Chapel, the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo, and New Saint Peter's. An extraordinary amount of surviving documentary material offers particular insight into Michelangelo's working methods, life, and personality. This course will examine his life and works, with a particular focus on the significant changes in the role of the visual artist that took place during Michelangelo's lifetime.
HAA 0302 Renaissance Art
Transformations in the status, appearance, and meaning of artworks during the European Renaissance have profoundly affected Western visual culture. This course explores the extraordinary experiments of competitive, innovative artists and patrons, going beyond stylistic change to focus on the role of artistic invention in shaping Renaissance society. It considers the shifting functions of the visual arts in Europe between 1250 and 1600. Artists to be discussed include Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, van Eyck, Botticelli, Mantegna, Leonardo, Durer, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. Students will be asked to write short papers on thematic issues throughout the term and, at the end of the semester, they will undertake a more substantial project that engages the research methods of art history.
HAA 0400 Special Topics - Modern: Foundations in Art History
Foundations in Art History is a course designed specifically for students planning to pursue further study in art history. It offers an introduction to the history of the art historical discipline and its research and interpretive methods. Other courses in the art history department introduce students to the what of art history--major works and histories of the arts in specific time periods and geographic locations around the globe. This course, by contrast, is devoted to the how of what the art historian does--how she or he interprets the work of art according to its specific characteristics, the place and time in which the artwork is created, and the changing nature of viewers' responses to it. Through readings spanning art history in East Asia and the West and from the ancient world to the present, weekly discussions will invite us to explore a wide array of interpretive perspectives, to understand where and when such perspectives emerged within the discipline, and how they continue to be used today. Our engagement with these perspectives will be geared toward understanding how each plays a role in the art historian's central task, namely deciphering the meaning of the work of art. Short writing assignments throughout the term will require analysis of a specific artwork chosen from a local art collection such as the Carnegie Museum in light of different interpretative issues and methodologies.
HAA 0402 Women Artists, 1550-1800
The course will study the social and cultural situation of European women from the 15th through the 18th century, focusing on some of the first women artists who had successful careers at this time (S. Anguissola, Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabetta Sirani, Rosalba Carriera, Judith Leyster, Rachel Ruysch, Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Angelica Kauffmann). We will use images of women by both male and female artists as a focal point for discussions of the position of women, attitudes towards women and evidence of the changes that made it possible for women to emerge as professionals in the visual arts at this time.
HAA 0501 American Art
In 1776 few observers would have predicted a brilliant future for American art. Sculpture barely existed, painting was limited to portraiture, and ambitious artists who wanted to tackle more imaginative subjects had to pursue their careers abroad. This course will examine American art and architecture from their beginnings in the Colonial era to their coming of age in the nineteenth century and their rise to international prominence in the twentieth century.
HAA 0640 Art of Japan
This course will survey Japan's diverse artistic traditions from its Neolithic origins to the 19th century. The lectures will focus on Buddhist painting and sculpture, architecture, handscrolls, gardens, zen painting, castles and warrior culture, and wood block prints. Major themes for discussion include the relationship between Japan, Korea, and China; the role of religion in art production; and the social and historical contexts of each major period.
HAA 0690 Chinese Landscape Painting
The famous Chinese landscape painter named Guo Xi of the Sung Dynasty (960-1126) asked "Why the virtuous man takes delight in landscapes". He reasoned that contemplation of a painting of landscape could refresh the mind and heart in as compelling a fashion as wandering among the mountains themselves. The Chinese landscape painter who in his pictures satisfies this longing depicts not merely the out ward and visible forms of nature, but the inner life and harmony that pervade them. The painting is, therefore, symbolic in a sense - not in the classical European manner of poetic and mythological allusion - but symbolic in a wider and less literary way. For the Chinese, landscape painting embodies a total view of life, expressed in the language of rocks and trees, mountains and water. They are exercises in the philosophic study of Nature. This course is an attempt to discover the sources of this symbolic language and to study the ways in which that the Chinese painters invented and used this visual language to discuss the universe.
HAA 0810 Experimental Cinema
This course examines the development of experimental cinema beginning in Europe in the 1920s with Dada and Surrealist films by Marcel Duchamp, Luis Bunuel and others, and continuing in the U.S. and elsewhere after World War II. The films, many of which are non-narrative and some of which are "abstract," will be examined for the ways in which cinema is used for the filmmakers' personal expression. Consideration will be given to the artistic and cultural contexts in which the films were made, and comparisons will be made with other media,including painting and sculpture, and especially experimental video.
HAA 1010 Approaches to Art History: Film and Photography
This course aims to supply students with a broad introduction to the scholarly methods, disputes, and questions that the historical study of film and photography involves. Although part of the course's purpose is to familiarize students with the principal methodologies in art history as a whole, the class primarily strives to let students put such approaches into practice by writing a research paper. Under the supervision of the professor, students will select a particular artist, movement, or development within cinematic and photographic history, conduct research on the subject, and then produce a paper. Students will learn both about the history of photographic media, as well as what it means to produce art historical work on them. HAA 1010 is offered every fall and spring term, but specific topics change every semester.
HAA 1010 Approaches to Art History: Jan van Eyck
This undergraduate seminar is intended for majors who have previously taken Northern Renaissance Art (HAA 0310), Dutch & Flemish Painting (HAA 1300), or another course in early Netherlandish art. The painter Jan van Eyck (died 1441) practically invented the modern art of oil painting, and he is one of the first and most dazzling exponents of a "realistic" vision of his surroundings. During his brief career in the early 15th century, Van Eyck created such artistic icons as the Ghent Altarpiece and the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait. In this course we will discuss readings on such Eyckian problems as the role of Jan's putative elder brother Hubert van Eyck, the authorship and meaning of paintings associated with the artist, his social environment in the Burgundian Netherlands, and his critical reception from his own lifetime to the present. We will also venture away from Van Eyck himself to address other artists who adopted his naturalistic approach to depicting the "real" world. Each student will prepare a major research paper of 10-15 pages as well as doing several short oral and written presentations on a variety of topics. HAA 1010 is offered every fall and spring term, but specific topics change every semester.
HAA 1010 Approaches to Art History: Silk Road
This course is intended to discuss the relations between China and cultures beyond and the Chinese attitude toward the outsiders. The vehicle is a study of evidence from the "Silk Road", or the roads of contact beyond China's dynastic borders toward the west. Recent excavation of sites in which all sorts of artifacts and material evidence dating from at least as early as the fourth millennium BCE document contact among the peoples of north Asia, central and southern Siberia, the Republic of the Altai, Kazakhstan, Mongolia. The course will investigate contact from this early period through the 8th century. HAA 1010 is offered every fall and spring term, but specific topics change every semester.
HAA 1040 History of Architecture Theory
History of Architectural Theory is an upper level reading course that is required for all students wishing to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in Architectural Studies. The objective of the course is to acquaint students with many forms of architectural writing, to examine the emergence and development of core ideas in the Western architectural tradition, and to examine the relationship between architectural ideas and the cultural, political and social contexts in which they were articulated. Texts examined in the course will include classic works on architecture, urbanism and aesthetics, and novels in which architecture is a dominant theme. Drawings, engravings, photography and illustrations will be considered as important components of architectural theory; the format and composition of architectural books will be considered as integral to the ideas they contain. Texts from antiquity to the present will be examined, including the writings of Vitruvius, Perrault, Laugier, Boullee, Pugin, Ruskin, Viollet-le-Duc, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ayn Rand, Jane Jacobs and Robert Venturi.
HAA 1110 Greek Art
Although Greek culture has long been considered the well-spring of European artistic tradition, research over the last 25 years has shown how different from 21st-century Westerners the Greeks really were. The course will survey the development of Greek art and artistic culture from the late Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period (ca. 1450-150 BCE), emphasizing: 1) the enduring role played by Greece in the transmission of Near Eastern forms to the West, and 2) the development of an "Ideology of the Democracy" at Athens, that was promoted by building, an arts program, and "image-bites".
HAA 1160 Roman Architecture
The course will examine the development of Roman architecture from its origins in Etruria and Central Italy to the High Empire (ca. 150 AD). Special attention will be given to 1) the relationship of architectural forms, types and functions to changes in Roman politics and society, 2) the significance of materials and outside influences for the development of local Italian traditions and forms, and 3) the problems of interpreting the development of an ancient building tradition, when the monuments themselves are so fragmentarily preserved.
hAA 1210 Medieval Iconography
What is the Grail? This course takes an interdisciplinary look at the Holy Grail as a focus for the study of the architecture, iconography manuscripts and texts of the Middle Ages. Subject matter from the Old and New Testaments, biblical commentary and exegesis, from the classical tradition, and from the vernacular literature of period is included. Prior knowledge of medieval art and of modern languages is an advantage.
HAA 1400 Special Topics - Modern: Art in the Third Reich
This course examines National Socialist art and the fate of Modernism under Hitler in the years between 1933 and 1945. We will explore the way in which the National Socialist regime enlisted the arts and architecture, through Party rallies, art exhibitions, building programs, and film, in enforcing its dictatorial policies on everything from the extermination of the Jews to sexuality and the war effort. We will also address the impact of the purge of Modern art under Hitler on the work of such noted Modernists as Otto Dix and Kathe Kollwitz, who chose to remain in Germany, and on the art of those who fled into exile, among them John Heartfield, George Grosz, and Max Beckmann. The final weeks of the course will consider critical issues involved in recent, and invariably controversial, attempts in museum building, sculpture, and site-specific installations to memorialize the Holocaust and examine Germany's Nazi past.
HAA 1400 Special Topics - Modern: The American in American Art
This course explores the relationship between the development of modern art and the formation of national identity in the U.S. during the first half of the twentieth century. Artwork will be discussed within the context of contemporary debates regarding art's status as modern and/or American. We will address the role of racial, national and gender identity in the struggle to define a truly American art. Among those artists and thinkers that we will consider are: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keefe, Marsden Hartley, Marcel Duchamp, Stuart Davis, Meyer Schapiro, Thomas Craven, Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson Pollock and Clement Greenberg.
HAA 1404 Modern Sculpture
This course analyzes the major figures in modern sculpture from Rodin to the present. Special attention will be given to the inter-relationships between modern painting and sculpture, particularly in the Cubist period, Surrealism and in the post-World War II era.
HAA 1410 Realism and Impressionism
These movements in 19th Century European art were important in the formation of later modern art currents. The course will consider the major developments leading up to Realism, move on to Courbet, Manet and Degas, and then to the major Impressionist masters, Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro. We will also look at the influence of Realism and Impressionism outside France.
HAA 1490 Art Since 1945
Approaching art from a global perspective, this course introduces students to key terms, developments, and debates in contemporary art, while also examining the critical theory, technological advances, and cultural histories that have transformed the production and reception of art over the last six decades. Relationships among art, media, and the subjects who create and view them, as well as the historical and social significance of these exchanges will be explored. Themes investigated include: perspectives on modernism and the origins of the postmodern condition; appropriation and quotation at the end of history; and the transition from representation to simulation.
HAA 1531 Modern American Architecture
By the time the Civil War ended in 1865, traditional American architectural values had broken down under a barrage of ornament and imported European styles. Something new had to take shape to express the new wealth of post-Civil War America and the new social order that went with it. The next 135 years would see a succession of brilliant architects in Furness, Richardson, the early skyscraper builders in Chicago, Sullivan, the firm of McKim, Meade and White, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies, Kahn, Venturi, Moore, Gehry, Predock, Holl, Arquitectonica, and the pluralists of today. At the same time, these successes also masked major problems: spoiling the land; architecture as social welfare; and the concern for national and regional values as expressed in building. These individual successes and collective problems will constitute the underlying theme of the course.
HAA 1640 20th-Century Chinese Art
This lecture/discussion combined course will offer a general view of the development of contemporary Chinese. It begins with brief discussions about the beginning of Chinese modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the new modern art movement in 1930s, and Mao's revolutionary art of the 50's and 60's. The course, however, will focus on the avant-garde movements in the post-Mao period. Through lectures, readings, videos and discussions, this course will investigate the momentous changes - political, economic, and cultural - which have swept through modern Chinese history and have profoundly impacted on the development of contemporary Chinese art. The course will also examine how rapid modernization, changing political realities, and conflicting global, ethnic, and local identities are transforming centuries-old Chinese visual traditions and the cultural assumptions behind them.
HAA 1880 World Cities
What is a city? The sociologist, the anthropologist, the political scientist, the regional planner, and the geographer all see cities from their different perspectives. But the art historian has an important contribution too: cities have been seen for millennia as works of art. Even cities as seemingly "messy" as Las Vegas or Calcutta have an urban form that the art historian can decipher with special expertise. This course looks at the city, both Western and non-Western, to discover its main patterns of urban form and development. Through lectures and discussions, students derive the basic format by which to analyze these patterns. Pittsburgh itself serves as one of several "test cases" in piecing together that format. (If practicable, students will use camcorders to record their visual impressions of it.) Lectures and readings give students the chronological and typological base from which to sharpen their own analytical skills. The principles derived in the early sessions will be used in the final course segment, in which students work on the form and growth of world cities they have selected to study.
HAA 1901 Independent Study
Independent studies are intended to provide the student with an opportunity to learn more about a specific subject or problem which is not covered, or covered only in a general way, by the regular academic curriculum. The student should approach a faculty member in the area they wish to cover to serve as Faculty Advisor for permission to enroll.
HAA 1903 History of Art and Architecture Internship
The History of Art and Architecture Internship is intended to provide a practical, professional experience for students seeking to enter the museum, gallery and art worlds. It also provides an opportunity for advanced students to execute special projects concerning art works. The internship carries 3 academic credits and can be repeated once for a total of 6 credits. Internships are arranged by the student in consultation with the sponsoring institution and the Department of Art History's undergraduate advisor.
HAA 1910 Special Topics - Architecture: Historic Preservation
Introduction to Historic Preservation will explore the goals, methods, and practice of preserving the historic built environment in the United States. History of the preservation movement, tools and tactics for protecting buildings and landscapes, documentation of historical/architectural significance, and more. This course provides students with a broad background in the field of historic preservation and introduces the skills needed to work as a professional in this field.
HAA 1950 Senior Thesis
This W-course requires the writing of a research paper. The student should discuss a topic with a faculty member and write the paper under that faculty member's supervision. This course is open to History of Art and Architecture majors with an overall QPA of 3.5 and a departmental QPA of 3.5. Successful completion of this course with a A- or higher, and the completion of all requirements for the intensive major will enable the student to graduate with departmental honors.