Africana Studies 263: Maryse Condé, literature and visual art: French Caribbean creation in contemporary art
Professor Françoise Sémiramoth
Students read two novels by Maryse Condé—Tituba, Black Witch of Salem and The Gospel According to the New World—from geographical, historical, and artistic perspectives and note connections with Condé’s homeland of Guadeloupe, a French-speaking Caribbean island. In Object Lab they explore the creative process and the impact of color to prepare for their final project, in which they put an excerpt from Condé’s text into visual form. Students delve into color theory with the Anni Albers print here and the Josef Albers painting on view under Art Studio 304. Learning more about Guadeloupe, they consider the Tamil population brought as indentured workers in the late 19th century and documented in photographs as seen here.
Art History 106: An Invitation to World Architecture
Professor Michelle Apotsos
Students in this introductory art history course study architecture as concept, space, and practice, thinking critically about its influence on human experience. They explore a different theme each week, connecting with art in Object Lab for both class discussions and short response papers. Discussing architectural models, students think about how the Ilé Orí fragment models a particular view of the self as a shrine containing a person’s essence and identity. Students analyze the Dogon granary door in a writing assignment about gender and architecture, as the door lock depicts an ancestral pair that was believed to have the attributes of both genders.
Art History 216: Modernism, Anti-modernism, and the Avant-garde, 1900-1950
Professor Catherine Howe
Students encounter the key artistic movements and aesthetic debates in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe, the USSR, Mexico, and the United States. They situate the crucial artistic movements of the period within their social, political, economic, and historical contexts. In the class and Object Lab, they focus on how the work of women artists contributed to the aesthetic and philosophical motivations that shaped the avant-garde. The Lamentation photograph is the result of two female modernists collaborating and pushing their respective artistic medium—Barbara Morgan with photography and Martha Graham with dance. They also consider the abstraction of Georgia O’Keeffe, as seen in the painting under Art History 264.
Art History 264: American Art and Architecture, 1600 to Present
Professor Michael Lewis
This course focuses on the social, ideological, and economic forces that shaped architecture, painting, and sculpture in the United States. Themes include Puritan attitudes toward art and making art in a commercial society. Students use Object Lab for close-looking assignments, such as writing a formal analysis of one of these works with a partner and giving presentations about the artists and specific paintings. They explore tension between the ideal and the real in trompe l’oeil, or “deceives the eye,” paintings like the still life by John Peto.
Art Studio 235: Intaglio Printmaking
Professor Alyssa Sakina Pheobus
Intaglio printmaking is a graphic medium in which the surface of a metal plate is transformed, inked, and pressed onto paper to create an image. Students practice drypoint (drawing directly into the plate with a metal stylus), etching (“biting” an image into the plate using selective acid exposure), and aquatint (using acid to create a range of tonal effects). The prints displayed here use different combinations of intaglio processes and are all from larger series that relate to themes of conflict, loss, and violence. The prints serve as inspiration for the students’ own art-making and consideration of how to tell compelling stories. Students will experiment with their own plates, collaborate with one another, and create their own print series.
Art Studio 304: Color Theory: The Poetics and Politics of Color
Professor Rit Premnath
Grappling with a wide range of perceptual, formal, and theoretical approaches helps students understand and control their use of color. They begin with hands-on exercises in color theory from Josef Albers’ book Interaction of Color and study his painting here. Students consider the effect of complementary colors, such as with the blue and orange in the paintings by Josef Albers and Colleen Browning, as well as the visual effects of using small quantities of saturated color. Drawing inspiration from all of the art on view, they explore their own interests through self-directed, sustained art-making projects.
Chemistry 117: Roses are Red, Violets are Blue: ChromatoLOGy, the Origins, Uses, and Perception of Color
Professor Lee Park
Students consider color, starting with its physical and chemical origins and moving to measurement and description from a scientific perspective. They learn how the chemical properties of a specific pigment affect how it can be applied by artists, mixed with other pigments or binders, and change over time. They do a deep dive into blue here, comparing data from these works with samples of ultramarine (lapis), azurite, Prussian blue, cobalt smalt, and indigo in their lab to identify the specific blue pigments used. Exploring complementary colors and the perception of color like the Art Studio 304 students, they also study the Josef Albers painting as well as this Victor Vasarely print.
Dance 103: Historical Research in Performance Studies
Professor Munjulika Tarah
Students analyze the historical and sociopolitical contexts of movement-based performances. Starting with the still images here, they learn to describe what they see as objectively as possible and then develop their own interpretations. Focusing on relationships between the body and motion, they critique how the artist represents movement in a two-dimensional image.
They also think about representation and cultural appropriation in performance. For example, they compare Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero’s depiction of indigenous people with how white choreographers in the United States appropriated Native American dances and costumes with limited understanding of their original contexts.
Latina/o Studies 205: Latinx Visual Arts
Professor Kevin Cruz Amaya
This course introduces students to Latinx visual arts and the histories of the communities from where this artistic production emerges. The selection here exemplifies the varying ways that Latina/o/x artists explore their sense of belonging in the United States and shows the breadth of media encompassed by the category of Latinx Art. Prints, like those by Teddy Sandoval and Patssi Valdez, are a well-documented medium in Latinx art history. Photography, however, as seen in works here by Christina Fernandez and Rubén Ortiz-Torres, is a medium that is now gaining scholarly recognition.
