Undergraduate Seminar (390-0-1)

Topic

Marie Antoinette: Art and Legacy

Instructors

Alicia Caticha

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-319: Mon, Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

"Let them eat cake!" Few figures in Western history are as burdened by myth as Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), the Queen of France in the years leading up to the French Revolution of 1789. The ill-fated queen—married at fourteen, crowned at eighteenth, and guillotined at thirty-seven—has become shorthand for aristocratic decadence, frivolity, and excess. This course reconsiders Marie Antoinette's controversial biography through her role as artistic patron, cultural tastemaker, and enduring muse. Moving beyond the apocryphal legend, we will consider how Marie Antoinette shaped the visual and material cultural of her own time through the study of painting, sculpture, fashion, garden design, and the decorative arts. How did this artistic output help construct (or defy) the myth of Marie Antoinette? How did this fiction influence art, fashion, film, and popular culture from the nineteenth century to the present day? This course invites students to reconsider the artistic life and afterlives of Marie Antoinette and ask the question: doomed queen or misunderstood muse?

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Pre-registration -- Reserved for Art History majors and minors, & Art Theory majors and minors.