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Academic Year 2004/2005


Truth in Painting
CHUM 309 SP

Crosslistings:
ARHA 343
PHIL 309

This course investigates one of the foundational paradoxes of Western painting: that the obviously fictional representation of three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface was assigned truth status. Over the course of the semester we will examine how questions of truth and fiction have been negotiated in writings on painting and aesthetics since the late eighteenth century to the present. Despite the fact that art is known to be founded on illusionism, theorists and critics have also consistently asserted that art had a relationship to reality, but they defined this relationship in radically different ways. Some found art's reality to reside in its embeddedness in a given cultural moment, others in its relationship to spiritual constants. Some have located art's claim to authenticity in its truth to its materials or medium, while others have found art's claim to truth to center on its critique of dominant values and institutions, and so on. In addition to assessing different value systems, we will also be looking at the very forms through which truth was conveyed in art since the Renaissance, in particular perspective, and how and why it was discarded.
Readings will include texts by Kant, Hegel, Burckhardt, Riegl, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Novotny, Merleau-Ponty, Bell, Fry, Panofsky, Gombrich, Auerbach, Derrida, Podro, Clark, and Fried.

MAJOR READINGS

Readings will include texts by Kant, Hegel, Burckhardt, Riegl, Nietzche, Heidegger, Novotny, Merleau-Ponty, Bell, Greenberg, Fry, Panofsky, Gombrich, Auerbach, Derrida, Podro, Clark and Fried.

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

3-5 pg papers, 10-12 page paper, peer critiques, in-class presentations.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

Instructor uses the enrollment request system and does not respond to emails prior to the beginning of class.

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

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

Prerequisites: NONE

SECTION 01

Instructor(s): Kuenzli,Katherine M.   
Times: .....F. 01:10PM-04:00PM;     Location: DAC300;
Reserved Seats:    (Total Limit: 15)
SR. major: 0   Jr. major: 0
SR. non-major: 5   Jr. non-major: 5   SO: 5   FR: X

Special Attributes:
Curricular Renewal:    Reading Non-Verbal Texts, Writing, Focused Inquiry Course
Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-21-2005


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