Special Topics in 19th-Century Art (359-0-1)
Topic
Impressionism
Instructors
Susan Hollis Clayson
Meeting Info
Block Pick-Laudati Auditorium: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM
Overview of class
An art form called "Impressionism" was born in Paris in 1874 when a group of like-minded painters and print-makers showed together in an independent art exhibition. The last of six such shows took place in 1886. Its practitioners continued to hold sway in vanguard circles, and to develop into the 1890s. The key artists were Cassatt, Pissarro, Degas, Caillebotte, Morisot, Renoir and Monet. What were the defining characteristics of this new style called "Impressionism"? The paintings and prints represented only the contemporary urban and suburban world (no history; no religion; no mythology) and in startingly novel ways: the pictures were brighter, more freely handled, and oddly evasive than any made before.
The 2024 celebration of the 1874 exhibition's 150th birthday renewed interest in the history and meanings of Impressionism. The course will take a broad perspective on its interpretation by investigating a wide array of topics: questions of globality, colonialism, and the environment as well as matters of gender, class, modernity, technology, medium and technique. We shall also dip into the work of the successor generation of innovative artists, the so-called "Post-Impressionists" (including Seurat, Signac, Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin).
Together - through your responses to lectures and readings and in the context of class discussion - we will try to make some of the most familiar and admired paintings and prints of the later nineteenth century strange and problematic again.
Class Materials (Required)
No textbook required.
Class Notes
This course does not have a waitlist.
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Enrollment Requirements
Enrollment Requirements: Pre-registration -- Reserved for Art History majors and minors, & Art Theory majors and minors.