Department of Art History, Curating and Visual Studies

Question and Requirement: Choose writings of TWO art historians and use them to discuss the subject matter and interpretation of ONE of the following works:

• Botticelli, Primavera
• John Constable, The Haywain
• Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation
• Marcel Duchamp, Fountain art
• Jan van Eyck, Arnolfini Potrait
• Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
• Thomas Gainsborough, Mr and Mrs Andrews
• Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with St John on Patmos
• J.M.W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed
• Giorgione, Tempest
• Kasimir Malevich, Black Square
• Eduard Manet, Olympia
• Mark Rothko, The Rothko Chapel
• Michelangelo, The Creation of Adam
• Titian, Diana and Actaeon
• Diego Velazquez, Rokeby Venus
• Andy Warhol, Brill Soap Pads Box
• Damien Hirst, With the Love of God

You should think about the following in your essay:
• Analyse the texts closely by both art historians. Identify their approach in relation to the types of approaches discussed in this overall module.
• Do you agree with their interpretations and approaches to the work of art in question?
• If not, can you suggest an alternative way in which we should interpret the works you have chosen?
• What issues and debates are prompted by a critical examination of the works in question?
• Make a case for or against the interpretations of the art historians you have chosen to discuss.

Level Two Students need to place special emphasis on the accurate citation of primary and secondary sources.

Essay formatting/referencing:
If you require guidance on referencing, please refer to the Art History Departmental Handbook uploaded onto Canvas, but any consistent system will be acceptable. You must also provide a bibliography.
You will be marked down for poor presentation, grammar and sloppy referencing!
Lecture Schedule

Week 1 (1 October 2015): Introduction to the module [Camilla Smith]
• looking through the module outline
• canvas
• key themes
• assessment
AND: Why does art have a history? [Camilla Smith]
• Ernst Gombrich, ‘Introduction: Psychology and the Riddle of Style’ in Gombrich, Art and Illusion (London, 1977), pp. 3-32.
• Marcia Pointon, ‘Art History as a Discipline’ in Pointon, History of Art. A Student’s Handbook (London, 1997), pp. 21-57.
• Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists (Harmondsworth, 1987).
• Johann Winckelmann, ‘Origin of Art and Reasons for its Diversity among Peoples’ in Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity (Los Angeles, 2006), pp. 111-127.

Week 2 (8 October 2015): Art, subject matter and iconography [David Hemsoll]
• Laurie Schneider Adams, ‘Iconography’ in Adams, The Methodologies of Art (Colorado, 1996), pp. 36-57
• E. H. Gombrich, ‘Aims and Limits of Iconology’ in Gombrich, Symbolic Images. Studies in the Art of the Renaissance II (Oxford, 1985), pp. 1-25.
• Erwin Panofsky, ‘Introduction’ to Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York, 1939), pp. 3-32.
• Mark Roskill, ‘Disguised Meaning in Pictures. Vermeer and Velasquez’ in Roskill, What is Art History? pp. 139-53.
• Roelof van Straten, An Introduction to Iconography (Langhorne, PA, 1994)
Week 3 (15 October 2015): When and what was art? [Camilla Smith]
• Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘The Modern System of the Arts. A Study in the History of Aesthetics Part I’ in Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 12. 4 (1951), pp. 496-527 and Part II in Journal of the History of Ideas Vol. 13. 1 (1952), pp. 17-46
• Neil Mulholland, ‘Definitions of Art and the Art World’ in Matthew Rampley, ed., Exploring Visual Culture (Edinburgh, 2005), pp. 18-33
• Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, ‘Crafty Women and the Hierarchy of the Arts’ in Parker and Pollock, Old Mistresses. Women, Art and Ideology (London, 1981), pp. 50-81
• Luke Syson, Objects of Virtue. Art in Renaissance Italy (London, 2001)
• Evelyn Welch, The Material Renaissance (Manchester, 2007)

Week 4 (22 October 2015): Assessment- how to tackle writing in Art History and tips on how to write your essay assessment for this module. [David Hemsoll]

Week 5 (29 October 2015): What is an artist? [Camilla Smith]
• Emma Barker, Nick Webb and Kim Woods, ‘Historical Introduction: the Idea of the Artist’ in Barker et al, The Changing Status of the Artist (London, 1999), pp. 7-25.
• Philip Conisbee, ‘The Artist’s World’ in Conisbee, Painting in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 1981), pp. 11- 34
• Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, Legend, Myth and Magic in the Image of the Artist (London and New Haven, 1982)
• Matthew Rampley, ‘The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Author’ in Rampley, ed., Exploring Visual Culture (Edinburgh, 2005), pp. 149-62.
• Joshua Reynolds, Discourses 3, 6, 11(Discourses delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy), in Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, eds, Art and Theory 1648 – 1815 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 649-61.
Week 6 Reading Week – no lecture

Week 7 (12 November 2015): The locations of art [David Hemsoll]
• Charles Harrison,’Where is art?’ in Harrison, An Introduction to Art (London, 2009), pp. 7-45.
• Peter Humfrey, The Altarpiece in Renaissance Venice (New Haven, 1993)
• Mark Roskill, ‘Reconstructing how works were displayed. Raphael’s Tapestries in the Sistine Chapel,’ in Roskill, What is Art History? (London, 1989), pp. 105-22.
• Evelyn Welch, ‘The Sacred Setting’ and ‘Sites of Devotion’ in Welch, Art and Society in Italy 1350-1500 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 135-166 and 167-207.

Week 8 (19 November 2015): The Nude [Camilla Smith]
• Kathleen Adler and Marcia Pointon, eds, The Body Imaged. The Human Form and Visual Culture since the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1993)
• Lynda Nead, The Female Nude. Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London, 1982)
• Alyce Mahon, Eroticism and Art (Oxford, 2005). See especially ‘The Rhetoric of the Nude’, pp. 39-64
• Marcia Pointon, Naked Authority. The Body in Western Painting 1830-1908 (Cambridge, 1990)
• Gill Saunders, The Nude. A New Perspective (London, 1989)
Week 9 (26 November 2015): The genres of painting [David Hemsoll]
• Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford, 1999)
• Richard Brilliant, ‘Fashioning the Self’ in Brilliant, Portraiture (London, 1991), pp. 21-42.
• Lynda Nead, The Female Nude. Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London, 1982)
• Shearer West, Portraiture (Oxford, 2004)

Week 10 (3 December 2015): Landscape and nature [Camilla Smith]
• Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford, 1999)
• Jay Appleton, The Experience of Landscape (Chichester, 1996)
• John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape (Cambridge, 1981)
• Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology. The English Rustic Tradition 1740-1860 (Oxford, 1989)
• Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision. Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States (Cambridge, 1993)
• John Rennie Short, Imagined Country. Environment, culture and society, (London, 1991)
• Martin Warnke, Political Landscape. The Art History of Nature (London, 1994)

Week 11 (10 December 2015): Concepts of Style [David Hemsoll]
• James S. Ackerman, ‘A Theory of Style’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 20.3 (1962), pp. 227-237
• Laurie Schneider Adams, ‘Formalism and Style’, in Adams, The Methodologies of Art (Colorado, 1996), pp. 16-35
• James Elkins, ‘Style’ in Oxford Art Online (2010). Available at University elibrary.
• Adam Gecz, ‘Style’ in Geczy, Art. Histories, Theories and Exceptions (Oxford, 2008)
• Michael Hatt and Charlotte Klonk, ‘Formalism: Heinrich Wölfflin and Alois Riegl’ in Hatt and Klonk, Art History. A Critical Introduction to its Methods (Manchester, 2006), pp. 65-95.