XII. Course Descriptions
Art History
School of Fine Art and Music
Students with a special interest in particular courses in Art History should consult the School concerning prerequisites.
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Some Art History lecture courses at the 2000- and 3000-level are offered on alternate years only and many Art History seminars
have variable content. For course offerings and course descriptions please see the home page for the School of Fine Arts &
Music www.uoguelph.ca/sofam/
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Many Art History lecture courses are reading-intensive while seminar courses are writing and presentation-intensive.
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Honours major students in Art History are required to take two 4000-level seminars (excluding ARTH*4620), preferably in their 7th and 8th semesters. Please see the individual course descriptions for pre-requisites and restrictions
for these courses.
| ARTH*1510 Art Historical Studies I F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course considers the visual arts in the Western tradition from prehistory through the Middle Ages. Emphasis will be placed
on historical and critical analysis of key monuments and on the prerequisite technologies, as well as on various ways of looking
at the visual past and present.
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*1520 Art Historical Studies II W (3-0) [0.50] |
| A consideration of the visual arts in the Western tradition. Emphasis will be placed on historical and critical analysis of
key monuments and on the prerequisite technologies, as well as on various ways of looking at the visual past and present.
Focus will be on the visual arts from the Renaissance to today.
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2050 Modern Latin American Art F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course is an introduction to the study of visual culture and theory from South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean
featuring art from the 20th century to the present.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in odd-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2060 Aboriginal Arts in the Americas F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course offers an introduction to the aboriginal cultures of North, South, and Central America with special emphasis on
the pre-contact period. The interdisciplinary approach will take into account recent debates about methodology, ethnocentricity,
and aboriginal viewpoints.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2070 Art of the USA W (3-0) [0.50] |
| In art, the 20th century has been referred to as "The American Century." Artists in the USA have a tradition of creating new
visual languages, of using new ideas and technologies, and of representing the vanguard. Where did these ideas originate,
and how has the USA determined our notions of what art is? This survey course focuses on modern American artists, on the evolution
and growth of modern visual culture, and on how technologies and societies impact on artistic taste.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2220 The Visual Arts Today F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course is an introduction to contemporary visual culture, its current controversies and its historical roots. The avant-garde
movements of the modern period and the impact of new technologies and media will be examined within a rich historical context.
Topics will include international exhibitions, selling art, art and popular culture, censorship, and the relation between
words and images.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Restriction(s): |
ARTH*1220 This is a Priority Access Course. Enrolment may be restricted to particular programs or specializations. See department for more information.
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2280 Modern Architecture W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course is an investigation of architectural theory and practice within the social and spatial complexities of national
and international life.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in odd-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2290 History of Photographic Media S (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course is an introduction to the history of photography through to its application in contemporary visual arts. |
| Offering(s): |
Offered through Distance Education format only. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2480 Introduction to Art Theory and Criticism F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course provides an overview of some of the most significant methodological approaches and critical practices used by
art historians to write about visual culture. Traditional methods of art historical analysis include connoisseurship, iconography,
and formalism. With these we will be exploring newer interpretative models and multidisciplinary approaches such as structuralism,
semiotics, post-structuralism, and psychoanalytic theory as well as political theories such as feminism and socio-cultural
theory.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Restriction(s): |
This is a Priority Access Course. Enrolment may be restricted to particular programs or specializations. See department for more information. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2490 History of Canadian Art F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course provides an overview of the visual arts in Canada from the earliest times to the present, with emphasis on the
diverse contributions made by the First Nations, by French and British colonization, and by subsequent settlers from a great
variety of different cultural origins.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2540 Medieval Art F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course considers visual arts during a period when the Christian church built a new synthesis out of the legacies of the
late Roman Empire and its "barbarian invaders".
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2550 The Italian Renaissance W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course will investigate the art, architecture, and visual and material culture of Renaissance Italy in its political,
social, religious, intellectual and theoretical contexts. Topics can include artistic training and practice; methods, materials
and techniques of art-making; science and perspective; patronage; collectors and collecting; public monuments and domestic
art; Renaissance theory; humanism; artistic biography; and other thematic contexts.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2600 Early Modern Art W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course is a study of visual culture as it was transformed by the revolutions - industrial, political, and colonial -
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*2950 Baroque Art W (3-0) [0.50] |
| The visual arts in an age of religious crisis and the growth of great trading empires will be examined. |
| Offering(s): |
Offered in even-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
2.00 credits or (ARTH*1510 or ARTH*1520)
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3010 Contemporary Canadian Art F (3-0) [0.50] |
| The wide range of contemporary Canadian visual arts, from painting to new technological media, from 'high' culture to punk,
will be examined in the context of specifically Canadian social and historical conditions during the modern and post-modern
periods.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in even-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3060 Public Art W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course explores the ideas, designs and processes of artworks and projects conceptualized to be situated or staged in
public spaces. The objective of this course is to identify and investigate the contexts surrounding selected works of public
art, which may include media works, sculpture, and landscape installation, from a global perspective.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in odd-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3150 Space: Roman Art and Urbanism W (3-0) [0.50] |
| Roman art and urbanism from the Early Republic to the end of the imperial period. The course will survey the developments
of Roman art with an emphasis in architecture, sculpture and painting. It will illuminate the development of the urban space
in the context of cultural, social and political life. (Also listed as CLAS*3150).
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in even-numbered years. |
| Equate(s): |
CLAS*3150 |
| Restriction(s): |
ARTH*3530, ARTH*4500 |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3210 Critical Issues in Art History W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course will provide an in-depth examination of the critical issues driving contemporary art. Though the specific topic
will vary, the goal of this course is to establish a facility with the fundamental terms by which to analyze the cultural,
economic, technological and visual conditions that shape the artworks of our time.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in odd-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History, including ARTH*2480.
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3220 Nationalism & Identity in Art F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course considers issues of identity formation and representation as they intersect with the agendas and interests of
the nation state. The course looks at questions of power and exclusion, theories of representation and notions of centre/periphery,
cultural hybridity and border-crossing in the age of globalization. It will examine the representation of identity in cultural
institutions (including museums, and international art events) in cultural policy, and in cultural forms (fine art and popular
culture, journals and periodicals).
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in even-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3320 Lives: Aspects of Western Art W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course examines how the theory and practice of art history has often been informed by biography and other constructions
of stereotypes and social practices concerning the ‘Artist’, the artist’s audiences, and the various contexts that inform
artists’ lives, real and imagined.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in odd-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3330 Display: Visual Culture in Western Europe W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course examines the role of images in sacred and secular contexts: manuscripts, reliquaries, architectural sculpture,
tapestries, and liturgical display in Romanesque and Gothic Europe.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in even-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3340 Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course considers selected topics in the Renaissance and/or Baroque period(s), with emphasis on the political, social,
economic, gendered, and aesthetic meanings of works of art.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3460 English Art, 1750 to Present F (3-0) [0.50] |
| In conjunction with the London Semester, this course will survey the visual arts in England from the mid-18th century to the
present. Visits to galleries, museums, libraries, studios, and other cultural institutions will supplement lectures and stress
the experience of actual works of art.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
Admission to London Semester |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3520 Idea: Art Since 1950 F (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course provides an analysis of the visual arts of painting, sculpture, photographic media and non-traditional media World
War II to the present. Selected artists of North America and Western Europe will be considered, as well as the institutions
of the art world.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in odd-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3600 Topics in the Long Eighteenth Century W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course examines themes and issues in European art and visual culture of the long eighteenth century (1680s-1830s) through
case-studies in select national, regional and/or global contexts that engage with artists' careers, institutions related to
artistic practice, and relevant theoretical and critical discourses.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in even-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Restriction(s): |
ARTH*3310 |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3620 Museum Studies F (0-0) [0.50] |
| This seminar course will be offered in conjunction with the staff and facilities of the Gallery of Guelph and will deal with
historical matters relating to the role of the art museum in western life and the critical day-to-day management of a contemporary
one. Students will participate, when possible, in the preparation of a current or forthcoming exhibition in the Gallery.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
7.50 credits or 1.50 credits in Art History. |
| Restriction(s): |
ARTH*4620.
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*3780 Gender and Art W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course considers how the practice and reception of the visual arts intersect with constructs of gender in contemporary
and historical contexts.
|
| Offering(s): |
Offered in even-numbered years. |
| Prerequisite(s): |
10.00 credits including 2.00 credits in Art History. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*4310 Topics in Art & Visual Culture I W (3-0) [1.00] |
| This seminar course is designed to explore one or more issues in Art and Visual Culture depending on the expertise of the
instructor. Students should consult the department for specific offerings.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
10.00 credits including 1.00 credits in Art History at the 3000 level. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*4320 Topics in Art & Visual Culture II F (3-0) [1.00] |
| This seminar course is designed to explore one or more issues in Art and Visual Culture depending on the expertise of the
instructor. Students should consult the department for specific offerings.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
10.00 credits including 1.00 credits in Art History at the 3000 level. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*4330 Topics in Art & Visual Culture III W (3-0) [1.00] |
| This seminar course is designed to explore one or more issues in Art and Visual Culture depending on the expertise of the
instructor. Students should consult the department for specific offerings.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
10.00 credits including 1.00 credits in Art History at the 3000 level. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*4340 Topics in Art & Visual Culture IV F (3-0) [1.00] |
| This seminar course is designed to explore one or more issues in Art and Visual Culture depending on the expertise of the
instructor. Students should consult the department for specific offerings.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
10.00 credits including 1.00 credits in Art History at the 3000 level. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*4350 Topics in Art & Visual Culture V F (3-0) [1.00] |
| This seminar course designed to explore one or more issues in Art and Visual Culture depending on the expertise of the instructor.
Students should consult the department for specific offerings.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
10.00 credits including 1.00 credits in Art History at the 3000 level. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*4600 Individual Study - Art History S,F,W (3-0) [0.50] |
| Each student establishes, in consultation with the faculty member who has agreed to supervise the course, the content of this
special study within the area of expertise of that instructor. Students should plan their project and submit their proposal
to the Director of the School (or designate) by the last day of classes in the semester prior to the one which they plan to
enroll in ARTH*4600.
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
14.00 credits, including 6 credits in Art History. |
| Restriction(s): |
Instructor consent required. |
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
| ARTH*4800 Experiential Learning F,W (3-0) [0.50] |
| This course provides an opportunity for independent study based on Art History related voluntary or paid experience. Evaluation
will be based on the student’s performance on related work assignments at the host institution as well as any assignments
determined by the relevant instructor. Written proposals/rationales, signed by the appropriate instructor, must be submitted
to the Director of the School for approval by the last day of course selection in the Fall (for Winter) or Winter (for the
following Fall semester).
|
| Prerequisite(s): |
A minimum of 14.00 credits including 2.50 credits in Art History. |
| Restriction(s): |
Registration is limited to students registered in BA:ARTH specializations with a minimum cumulative average of 70% in all
Art History course attempts. Instructor consent required.
|
| Department(s): |
School of Fine Art and Music |
