Text only

ART 211 

I. TITLE:  Introduction to the History of Art  I

 II. CATALOG DESCRIPTION:  A survey of the history of art from Prehistory through the Middle- Ages

 III. PURPOSE:  This course is designed to give students a critical understanding of the world's artistic traditions.  By understanding how various cultures throughout history have expressed their world visually, students will better understand the diversity of political, economic, religious, social and aesthetic traditions that are the foundation of art.  By examining the critical methodologies employed in the past, they will better understand the origin and application of the evaluative methods used today.  This course emphasizes the analysis of art within particular historical and social contexts, giving students a sense of the history of ideas, and allowing them to critically evaluate the dominant ideologies and complex moral and ethical issues of their own world. (Examples might include the impact of the Persian War on Greek art, the influence of Rome’s “internationalism” on the art of the Empire, the importance of the Guild System in regulating the style of Medieval art, or the importance of Monasticism in architectural design during the Middle-Ages.)

 IV. COURSE OBJECTIVES:  Students will be able to

 A. understand the basic visual vocabulary and the fundamental concepts that underlie the way one visually interprets the world.

 B. understand the role of art and its function within various societies.  Art’s relationship to literature, philosophy, science, politics, economics and the role of the individual in society will be emphasized.

 C. understand art from an international perspective. While the Western tradition is the principal emphasis of this course, art from Asian, Mesoamerican, and Islamic cultures will also be examined.

 V. CONTENT OUTLINE:  The history of art is presented in a chronological format, from Prehistory through the Medieval world.  Within each time period, artistic activities are grouped geographically and thematically, and include examples from Europe, the Americas and Asia.

VI.  INSTRUCTIONAL ACTIVITIES: 

 A. The course will take advantage of the Blackboard Course Information software available.  This software allows online discussions, exchanges of student essays for editing, and greater overall interaction among the students and instructor.

 B.  Both lectures and readings are intended to build student vocabulary and discuss the fundamental concepts of art.    The role of art and its function in society are covered in both lectures and readings.  In lectures and readings both Western and non-Western art are covered.  While lectures with slides are the principal instructional activity, students are also broken into small groups for focused, thematic discussions.  A five-minute discussion among groups of three or four students would be followed by a full class discussion.  (See below for typical topics.) They may also be given gallery projects (when current exhibitions allow) in which they spend time in either the Clara Eagle Gallery or elsewhere on campus applying the principles and vocabulary learned in class by identifying works of art which exhibit specific formal or stylistic characteristics learned in class.
 
 C. Students have reading assignments for each class.  Examinations will include short answer questions and essays.  The examinations themselves are considered instructional activities, because it is here that they are forced to think about the material in a new manner that reveals relationships and ideas not yet considered. The essays are intended to provide for the practical application of the skills learned in writing classes.  As an historical survey of the creations and activities of humanity, this course reinforces the analytic skills taught in both the required HUM and CIV courses.

 D. In addition to extensive writing on examinations, students will write two well-prepared and structured essays outside of class (two to three pages each).  These will include a visual analysis and a contextual analysis.  Considerable time will be spent in class teaching the methods and techniques of writing about art, with in-class practice writings to prepare the students for these assignments.  Students will participate in writing groups of three to four persons, exchanging and editing each other's essays before they are turned in for grading. (Each person in the group will be writing on a different work of art, so these will not really be collaborative projects.)

 E. In the class lectures, discussions, and the written essays, a common critical thinking technique employed is to require students to compare and contrast two works of art or two movements in art which were discussed separately, but never previously compared with one another.  By changing the contexts within which ideas are examined, new associations and new relationships become evident.   They learn to employ methods practiced in class to bodies of work for which this procedure has not yet been used.  In this way, similarities and differences are often brought to light in a manner not possible when works are considered separately, and help to illustrate the importance of social and artistic context in the creation of art.

 F. Other issue-oriented topics considered in classes and essays might include such things as how various cultures perceived and expressed their relationship to a deity, how they perceived and expressed their relationship to nature, to gender roles, how they perceived the function of art, or how art functioned in various cultures in relation to those in positions of power, etc.

VII.  FIELD AND CLINICAL EXPERIENCE:  The class will take advantage of exhibitions in the Clara Eagle and Curris Center Galleries when appropriate.

VIII.  RESOURCES:  The department has a 70,000-slide collection of images of art from all historical periods worldwide.  It also has the Clara Eagle and Curris Center Galleries.  The class will have a Blackboard site on the Internet, which will be used extensively throughout the course.  Additional readings will be posted on this site, students will have online discussions, they can check their grades on the site, they can email each other or the instructor, they can "drop" essays to each other and to the instructor, and they can hold group study and review sessions here for the examinations.  They will also be able to link to numerous relevant sites on the Internet from their Blackboard page, including images of the works of art they will be writing about in their essays.

IX.  GRADING PROCEDURES:  This course maintains high academic standards by requiring the successful completion of four examinations, equally weighted (100 points each).  These include the demonstration of objective knowledge (recognition and identification of major works, understanding of styles, artists’ methods and materials, and general art specific terminology) and the ability to analyze and apply knowledge in the form of analytical essays.  Discussions are not graded as such, but are treated as an educational element in aiding the students’ understanding of the subject and in helping them prepare for the written examinations.

 In the two assigned essays (100 points each), students will be graded on their ability to analyze the subject and form of a particular work of art; on their ability to discuss the relationship between the social and cultural context and the art which a particular society created; on their ability to differentiate which characteristics of an age have had a major (vs. those which have had a minor) impact on its artistic production; and on their ability to critically compare and contrast the influences on and stylistic characteristics of any two distinct societies.  Since a great deal of material is covered in a single semester, and because it includes material to which most students have had very little exposure, the course is considered to be demanding but highly rewarding.

 The completion of course objectives will be demonstrated by the students’ ability to write about art on exams and in essays, using the correct vocabulary, within its social context.  As stated above, the points are awarded as follows:

   4 Exams @ 100 points each  = 400 pts.
   2 essays @ 100 points each  = 200 pts.
      Total =  600 pts.

   90 %  (540 pts) = A
   80 %  (480 pts) = B
   70 %  (420 pts) = C
   60 %  (360 pts) = D
   < 60%               = E

X.  ATTENDANCE POLICY:  Attendance is required and will be taken every day.  More than three (3) absences will result in a reduction of total points earned.

XI.  ACADEMIC HONESTY POLICY:   Cheating, plagiarism (submitting another person's material as one's own) or doing work for another person which will receive academic credit are all impermissible.  This includes the use of unauthorized books, notebooks, or other sources in order to secure or give help during an examination, the unauthorized copying of examinations, assignments, reports, or term papers, or the presentation of unacknowledged material as if it were the student's own work.  Disciplinary action may be taken beyond the academic discipline administered by the faculty member who teaches the course in which the cheating took place.  [See Undergraduate Bulletin]

XII. TEXT AND REFERENCES:  Fred S. Kleiner, Christin J. Mamiya et al, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 11th ed., Harcourt College Publishers, 2001

XIII. PREREQUISITES:  none.