19th Century Art 2: 1848–1914 (350-2-1)

Instructors

Thadeus Dowad

Isaac Vazquez

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-329: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

Paris acquired its reputation as a global center of art in the second half of the nineteenth century. But art-making in Paris did not happen in a vacuum. Between 1848-1900, French artists were active players in the city's numerous crises and social transformations, including utopian popular revolutions, foreign occupation, and massive urban reconstruction projects. Nineteenth-century Paris was also the capital of an empire that stretched from North and West Africa to the Caribbean and Polynesia. The foreign bodies and objects that filled the city as a result of these imperial conditions dramatically shaped the evolution of French art.

This course explores art in Paris at the intersection of modern politics, colonialism, and capitalist industrialization. In addition to avant-garde painting movements such as Impressionism and its "post-Impressionist" challengers, we also examine Orientalism and Primitivism alongside academic sculpture, universal exhibitions, and reproductive technologies like photography and the illustrated press. Some of the artists we examine include Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Rosa Bonheur, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Édouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Camille Pissarro, Henri Matisse, and Paul Gauguin.

Class Materials (Required)

N/A

Class Notes

Please use the following link for Art History Waitlist information: https://arthistory.northwestern.edu/courses/2023-2024/registration_waitlist.html

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area
Global Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity