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This course will look synoptically at painting in France between 1789 and 1906. It will aim to introduce the main painters and movements, and give an overall sense of French painting's historical trajectory over 120 years, but its main emphasis will not be straightforwardly chronological or stylistic. Some lectures will be broad discussions of large topics, such as Classicism, History Painting, and Modernism, with images drawn from the whole century. Other lectures will focus on a single picture in depth: David's Sabine Women, for instance, or Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte. Other lectures will focus on a single artist's career and still others on an historic period. Among the problems to be considered are the changing notions of history and the vicissitudes of History painting, the shift from Classicism to landscape painting and contemporary subjects, painting's imbrication in a colonial discourse, the relationship of art to revolution, modernism and its relationship to both modernity and tradition, the rise and fall of a public sphere for art-making, the role of women painters and the gendering of representation, intimacy and decoration, and mysticism. Since so much important scholarship has been published on nineteenth-century French painting, this course will also introduce students to a wide range of art historical methodology, including socio-historical, feminist, psychoanalystic, Marxist, and formalist.
Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.
COURSE FORMAT: Lecture
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ART Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE
Last Updated on MAR-18-2003
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459