Gregor Stemmrich

These courses offer detailed engagements with key works of art - masterpieces to material culture across a range of media from different times and places - to develop the critical apparatus of visual analysis. They introduce the methods and fundamental concepts of art history by taking one work of art and constructing around it a web of diverse objects and practices that allow us to grapple with the meanings of art and its histories within global and trans-historical perspectives. Among the questions we ask throughout the course are: What is art? What is art history? What are the institutions that shape the practice and dissemination of art? How is art affected by histories of cultural exchange? What is the nature of tradition? The course will be conducted through both lecture and discussion. Evaluation will be through written assignments, PowerPoint presentations, and active class participation. No previous knowledge of art history is required.

These courses offer detailed engagements with key works of art masterpieces to material culture across a range of media from different times and places to develop the critical apparatus of visual analysis. They introduce the methods and fundamental concepts of art history by taking one work of art and constructing around it a web of diverse objects and practices that allow us to grapple with the meanings of art and its histories within global and trans-historical perspectives. Among the questions we ask throughout the course are: What is art? What is art history? What are the institutions that shape the practice and dissemination of art? How is art affected by histories of cultural exchange? What is the nature of tradition? The course will be conducted through both lecture and discussion. Evaluation will be through written assignments, PowerPoint presentations, and active class participation. No previous knowledge of art history is required.

The 1960s experienced the emergence of new approaches to the making of art, while the art world became international to an unprecedented degree. Pop art and Minimal art used painting and sculpture as a means to confront contemporary culture with itself. In Fluxus, Video art and Performance artists found ways to involve the viewer. Earth art and Conceptual art were stretching the traditional boundaries of art in order to find a new grounding, while other artists experimented with sound, light, and movement in a way that led to a crossing of boundaries between dance, sculpture, music, and theater. All this happened in many places at the same time. The course will consider in detail many individual works of art while at the same time pursuing a comparative approach to the various outcomes of the new aesthetics. It will make it clear that the art of the 1960s is foundational for almost all further developments of art.

The 1970s and 80s saw a number of significant shifts in the art world and new approaches to art making. Some of the most radical outcomes of art movements of the 1960s only emerged in the 1970s and 1980s with so-called "institutional critique", whereas a strong resistance to exactly this genealogy made itself felt in a wave of neo-expressionist painting (Arte Cifra, Neue Wilde, figuration libre, Transavantguardia, New Image Painting). This was countered by the "picture generation" whose image production was based on photography and related to discussions of "postmodernism" and of "appropriation". Female artists gained in stature to a previously unprecedented degree (especially in video and photography) and made gender-issues and relations of power a major theme in art. It became clear at the same time that the phase of the dominance of American art after World War II was over. This lead to a more widespread and diverse circulation of ideas. The course is based on a comparative approach, highlighting commonalities as well as differences between various artistic endeavors.

This course offers engagements with the problems and methods of Art History at an advanced level. It examines in detail works of art that reflect upon tradition, aesthetic experience and art practice in complex ways and does so by situating these examinations in rich historical and theoretical frameworks. The course is open to anyone who has completed either Foundations of Art History I or II and at least one Art History elective but it is designed especially with Art History juniors in mind because the course is, in part, a useful preparation for Capstone work in the senior year. The course is a requirement for all students pursuing the Art History track.

The capstone experience in Art History provides seniors with the opportunity to work closely with a faculty mentor and to conduct extensive research on a topic of their choice. The program consists of a capstone seminar, taken in the first semester of the senior year, and a year-long individualized thesis tutorial. During the capstone seminar, Art History students will refine a thesis topic of their choice, develop a bibliography, read broadly in background works, and undertake research and/or creative work. In the tutorial, students will work on a one-on-one basis with a faculty mentor to hone their research and produce successive drafts of a capstone project. The capstone experience will culminate in the public presentation of the work and defense before a faculty panel.

Prerequisite: Must be a declared Art History Major and Senior standing.

During the spring semester, Art History students will work on a one-on-one basis with a faculty mentor to hone their research and produce successive drafts of a capstone project. The capstone experience will culminate in the public presentation of the work and defense before a faculty panel.

Prerequisite: ARTH-UH 4000

Gardens are as diverse as cultures, but the idea of the garden is common to various cultures through the ages and across continents. What do gardens tell us about the human condition? How do gardens relate to the individual and the idea of community? How do they reflect philosophical ideas? In which ways do the real and imagined interfere with each other? Is a garden a representation of nature or culture or both? How does a garden relate to spiritual needs and sensual experience (smell, sound, sight, tactile and kinesthetic bodily feeling)? How is the idea of the garden distinguished from but related to the notion of a natural landscape? We will look at Zen-gardens and rooftop gardens, monastic and palace gardens, sculpture and pleasure gardens, mythic gardens in various religious traditions. The course is conceived as neither a historical survey nor a typological compilation but chooses diverse examples and representations of gardens from various cultures and historical periods in order to explore the ways in which gardens reflect the human condition.

What does art do to us? This course centers on the concept of "Art and Agency," coined by anthropologist Alfred Gell, which holds that art works carry an agency factor that affects human beings - their mode of thinking, their emotions, their actions, their aesthetic experience. This concept has impacted the way art historians, in academia and the professional museum world, think about and display works of art. Through class discussions and visits to the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, the course will examine a host of related ideas: the rhetorical concept of "energeia," camouflage, iconoclasm, "animism" in prehistoric rock art, Western and Asian landscape imagery, medieval relics and miracle imagery, anthropomorphism and witchcraft in the early modern period, and the idea of "living presence" in abstract expressionism.

What is memory? We tend to think it will be activated when the right moment comes, but our experiences may belie our thinking, such as when we forget a name just when we need it. A variety of disciplines and theories approach the phenomenon of memory: cognitive science, computer science, biology, psychology, sociology, media theory, theory of perception, philosophy, history, cultural history and art history, trauma theory, heritage studies. And we can observe a huge variety of attempts to preserve memories: monuments, memorials, museums, libraries, archives, rituals, writing, film, and even ephemeral forms such as blog posts or status updates (nothing gets lost in the Web!). The course allows students to sample these various approaches without being restricted to any one of them as they explore fundamental questions about the relationship between memory and human identity: Is memory everything we can remember, or everything we can forget? How can we know memories from dreams or fantasies? Do we remember things as they really were or as they never were? Is memory what we take for granted and thus an impediment to creative thinking, or is it the prerequisite of creative activity?

The capstone experience provides seniors with the opportunity to work closely with a faculty mentor and to produce a senior thesis project. Projects may range in form from a creative art project to a theoretical, curatorial or historical research project. Students will be issued studio space for the senior year and will be expected to produce a body of artworks and a critical reflection paper based on their capstone research topic. The capstone experience will culminate in the spring with a public exhibition and a defense before a faculty panel. Students in this course are expected to use the fall semester to research and experiment in the studio by producing a series of artworks in progress (based on their capstone topic) which will be further developed during the spring term. Students will also produce an artist statement and begin drafting their critical reflection paper which will be further developed and submitted during the spring semester. Weekly class meetings will consist of short seminars, studio sessions, group critiques and one-on-one studio visits.

Prerequisite: Declared Visual Arts major and senior standing