Art History

The course explores the relation between the two terms ‘visual’ and ‘culture’ as constructions, examining visual forms of expressions, such as painting, photography, advertisement, comics and digital imagery. The course revolves around some of the following questions: What is the difference between the terms art and visual? What are the diverse forms of the visual? How has the visual impacted us today? How does culture determine visual form? With an emphasis on the determining role of visual culture in the wider culture to which it belongs, it draws on images from both western and non-western worlds to be analyzed and placed in their cultural context.

The course introduces the students to the major works of art and art movements of the world by analyzing the visual characteristics of works of art and placing them in their historical and cultural context. It covers sculpture, painting, architecture, print, ceramics, and photography from ancient to modern cultures from east and west. The course seeks to provide the beginning art history student with a range of conceptual, visual and verbal skills essential to the description and analysis of visual forms.

The course explores architecture as a cultural force and its interaction with the environment, in the context of social, cultural, and political realities. It draws examples from ancient Classical, Renaissance, Islamic, Asian, and Modern architecture comparing form, function, concept, association, and intent. Students will be introduced to the fundamentals of architecture and art, design, space, structures, styles, theories and development of architecture.

The course offers a broad view of Modern Asian Art, including painting, photography and print of China, Japan, Tibet, Nepal and India for a selective and meaningful understanding of its visual culture. The focus is on Tradition vs. Modernity with a wide range of art historical issues and discourses. Emphasis will be placed on thematic issues in visual culture such as movement of people, ideas, images, cross-cultural influences, and variations in the structure of political, economic, and social institutions.

The course traces the development of architecture, painting, and sculpture of China, Japan, India, and Tibet for a selective understanding of its visual culture from the earliest times to 12th C CE. It is a comparative study of the cross-cultural influences and encounters via the silk and spices routes with a focus on ancient civilizations, philosophy, and religious institutions particularly the traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The goal is to understand the traditional Arts of Asia by examining the process of artistic and cultural assimilation that occurred along with movement of people, goods, and images between major cultural regions and substantiated in built environment, city planning, painting and sculpture.

Visual Culture is an emerging field of study, and the course explores the relation between the two terms ‘visual’ and ‘culture’ as constructions by examining visual forms of expression: architecture, sculpture, painting, and photography. It probes into questions on visual perception, visual culture and visual problems. The course also examines generic and particular icons of public culture, such as those found in comics (including Disney characters) and advertisements. Images from both American and non-western world will be analyzed and placed in their cultural, historical and social context. The course will discuss issues of modernity, modernism, urban experience, technology, primitivism, feminism, identity and mass consumerism in visual culture in the context of various movements and theories, such as realism and neo realism, neo-expressionism, surrealism and postmodernism.

Architecture and Urbanism will explore the history and patterns of urban forms in some major cities of the modern world, as it relates to urbanism, environment and community. The course focuses on Natural and Green Architecture as well as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Rating System as an emerging movement and requirement in modern architecture that reconnects man to earth through the built environment, which will provide a new framework to approach buildings and structures.