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Academic Year 2002/2003

Cezanne and Cubism
ARHA 340 SP

This course will look at French painting on the brink of abstraction in the decades leading up to World War I. We will chart the course from the vivid and evocative landscapes and still-lifes of Cezanne to the difficult and hermetic Cubist paintings and collages by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Rather than seeing the relationship between Cezanne and Cubism as one of seamless continuity, we will plunge into the idiosyncrasy of each body of work and its historiography. Both Cezanne and Cubism raise deep interpretive problems. In acquainting ourselves with the literature on each artist and movement, we will have the opportunity of exploring different art historical methodologies, whether formalist, feminist, psychoanalytic, semiotic, or social. At the same time that we take each body of work on its own terms, we will also identify certain preoccupations common to both. These include, but are not limited to, a redefinition of sensation in light of contemporary scientific theory and a renegotiation of the relationship between reality and the imagination. We will also examine the works in their broader social context, investigating why artists in the late nineteenth and early 20th century felt compelled to shun public discourse and engage in a profound meditation on their medium and its means of expression. We will attempt to recover the strangeness and idiosyncrasy of these two bodies of art, postulating ways that they reflect a profound crisis in European philosophy and epistemology.

MAJOR READINGS

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

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: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ART    Grading Mode: Graded   

Prerequisites: NONE

SECTION 01

Instructor(s): Kuenzli,Katherine M.   

Times: ....R.. 01:10PM-04:00PM;     Location: DAC300

Reserved Seats:    (Total Limit: 15)

SR. major: 4   Jr. major: 4

SR. non-major: 4   Jr. non-major: 3   SO: X   FR: X

Special Attributes:

Curricular Renewal:    Reading Non-Verbal Texts, Writing

Last Updated on MAR-18-2003

Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459