Course Description: Art in the Western world from the late 18th century to the present.

Content
includes the Neoclassicism and Romanticism of David, Goya, Ingres, Turner, Delacroix; the
Realism of Courbet; the Impressionists; parallel developments in architecture; the new sculptural
tradition of Rodin; Postimpressionism to Fauvism, Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, geometric
abstraction in sculpture and painting, modernism in architecture in the 20th century, and after the
First World War, Dadaism and Surrealism. Also covers some developments since 1945, such as
Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and aspects of contemporary art. Study of the
collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim
Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art is included.

Readings: You have two textbooks for this course: Petra Chu, Nineteenth-Century European
Art (3rd edition, 2011, ISBN-10: 0205707998, softcover); and H.H. Arnason/Elizabeth
Mansfield, History of Modern Art (6th edition, 2010, ISBN-10: 0136062067, softcover). Copies
of the Chu textbook are available at the NYU bookstore, and there is also a copy on reserve at
Bobst. Because of the exorbitant cost of the Arnason and Mansfield textbook, we are not using
the newest (7th) edition; we recommend that you purchase a used copy of the 6th edition online
(the NYU bookstore should also have some used copies). A copy of the Arnason and Mansfield
textbook is also at Bobst. Additional readings for lectures and sections appear as scanned PDFs
on our NYU Classes site.

The grade breakdown is as follows:

Class participation and exhibition review: 10%

First paper (visual analysis, 800-1000 words, due February 24): 15%
Midterm (in class on March 12): 20%
Paper 2 (comparative visual analysis, 1400-1600 words, due April 23): 25%
Final exam (two parts; in class on May 7 and take home essay due by 5 pm on May 8): 30%

Attendance policy: Class attendance and participation are absolutely mandatory and will be
factored into your final grade.

Students with special needs: Students who require accommodations should contact Professor
Martin, Francisco or Ben at the beginning of the semester to make the necessary
arrangements. Because art history exams require special equipment, we need to know of your
needs as far in advance as possible.

Syllabus and Assignments:

*NB: Readings should be done prior to the lecture or section under which they are listed

1/27 Introduction/The French Academy and the Salon

Arnason and Mansfield, Ch. 1: The Origins of Modern Art, History of Modern Art (6th
edition), 1-16
Further (optional) reading: Thomas Crow, The Salon Exhibition in the Eighteenth Century
and the Problem of Its Public, in Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris, 1-22

1/29 Rococo to Neoclassicism

Janson, History of Western Art, 761-74
Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, 36-47; 58-62
Denis Diderot on Boucher and Greuze, Salon of 1765 (excerpt)

Further reading: Andrew McClellan, Watteaus Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in
Eighteenth-Century Paris, Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 3 (1996), 439-453

2/3 French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire

Chu, 99-107, 115-32
Janson, 823-25

Further reading: T.J. Clark, Painting in the Year Two, Representations, 1994, 3-63

2/5 Romanticism and the Rise of Landscape

Janson, 821-22, 825-32
Chu, 207-13
Carl Gustav Carus, excerpts from Nine Letters on Landscape Painting (1815-1824), 101-107

Further reading: Julian Barnes, Shipwreck, in A History of the World in 10 Chapters

(1990), 125-39

2/10 July Monarchy, Photography, and Orientalism

Chu, 214-25; 230-35; 244-53; 279-82

Further reading: Linda Nochlin, The Imaginary Orient, 1983, 289-99

2/12 NO CLASS (College Art Association annual conference; make up with museum visit
TBD)

2/17 Courbet, Realism, and the Painting of Modern Life

Chu, 255-65, 283-98, 362-63
Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life (1863), excerpted in The Nineteenth-Century
Visual Culture Reader, 37-42

Further reading: T.J. Clark, Preliminaries to a Possible Treatment of Olympia in 1865, in Art
in modern culture, ed. Francis Frascina and Jonathan Harris (1992), 104-120

2/19 Art and Architecture of Victorian Britain

Chu, 321-59
Walter Pater, The School of Giorgione (1877), in Art in Theory 1815-1900, 830-833

2/24 Second Empire Paris; Haussmannization

Chu, 267-75, 360-61, 366-68
Bergdoll, The City Transformed, European Architecture, 241-57

**FIRST PAPER DUE

Further reading: Anne Wagner, Art and Propriety, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1986), 209-244;
300-306

2/26 Impressionism
Chu, 385-407
Griselda Pollock, Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity, in Art in modern culture, 121-135

Further reading: Edmond Duranty, excerpts from The New Painting (1876), in Art in Theory
1815-1900, 576-585

3/3 Post-Impressionism
Chu, 409-414; 425-37; 472-80

Further reading: Gauguin, excerpt from Noa Noa

3/5 Art Nouveau and Symbolism

Chu, 461-72; 480-86; 496-500
Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), in The Nineteenth-Century Visual
Culture Reader, (2004), 51-55

Further reading: Joris-Karl Huysmans, A Rebours (Against the Grain), 1884, access online
through Bobst

3/10 Expressionism and Viennese Secession

Chu, 486-93; 504-15
Janson, 955-63
Ernst Kirchner, Manifesto of Die Brcke, 65

3/12 MIDTERM

SPRING BREAK

3/24 Fauvism/Experiments in Color and Form

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 6

3/26 Cubism and Abstraction

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 8

Further reading: Rosalind Krauss, In the Name of Picasso, in The Originality of the Avant-
Garde and Other Modernist Myths (1986), 23-40
Leo Steinberg, The Philosophical Brothel [1972], reprinted in October, 1988, 7-74

3/31 Futurism and Constructivism

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 10
F.T. Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto, 1909
http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

4/2 Dada
Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 11
Marcel Duchamp, Apropos of Readymades (1961)

4/7 De Stijl and Bauhaus

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 13 and 14

4/9 Surrealism
Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 15

4/14 Modern Architecture

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 21
Janson, 1080-85
Watch for lecture: Pierre Chenals film Larchitecture daujourdhui, 1930 (ca. 10 min)
http://www.cca.qc.ca/en/cca-recommends/1596-l-architecture-d-aujourd-hui-the-film

4/16 American Art before World War II

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 16 (up to Documents of an Era: American Photographers
between the Wars, p. 387)

4/21 Revolution and Social Reform

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 18 (from Documents of an Era to end of chapter, pp. 387-97
Diego Rivera, "The Revolution in Painting," Creative Art (January 1929), xxvii-xxx

4/23 Abstract Expressionism

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 19 (up to Drawing in Steel: Constructed Sculpture, p. 428)
Watch for lecture: Hans Namuths film Jackson Pollock 51 (ca. 10 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cgBvpjwOGo&feature=player_embedded

**SECOND PAPER DUE

4/28 Pop and New Dada

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 19 (start with This is Tomorrow: Pop Art in Britain, pp. 482-
506

Further reading: Hal Foster, Introduction to Pop, 2010

4/30 Minimalism and Conceptual Art

Arnason and Mansfield, chapter 20 (start with From New Media Mobilized, pp. 534-556);
chapter 22, pp. 587-593; chapter 23, pp. 630-37
Glazer, TK

Further reading: Sol LeWitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, 1967:

http://www.tufts.edu/programs/mma/fah188/sol_lewitt/paragraphs%20on%20conceptual%20art.
htm
Robert Morris, Notes on Sculpture (1966), 222-35

5/5 Some Aspects of Postmodern and Contemporary Art

Arnason and Mansfield, pp. 686-94; skim chapters 26 and 27

5/7 FINAL EXAM (Part I)