| Professor Lisa Claypool email Lisa Claypool |
Office: Library 321 Office Hours: Monday 12:30-4:00 |
Course Description (Spring 2008)
This course is an introduction to art history as a field of cultural production, examining and analysing works of Chinese art and architecture from the imperial period (2500 BCE-1911) through today. Our approach will focus on the methodology and practice of art history, taking up issues such as modes of seeing, text and image, production (such as we find on the page of sketches to the right), art and politics, and so on. In order to make sense of this complex body of work, however, there also is a very loose historical framework to the course (we will begin by locating "origins" and end with art now). This course, however, is not a historical survey.
One primary aim of the course is to help you develop an understanding of how Chinese art terms and histories can illuminate study of objects and paintings in European and American cultures. The course also raises questions about how European and American art historical concerns have driven Chinese studies. We will ask: is Art History global? By exploring possibilities for intercultural interaction and translation, it is hoped that we will come away from the course particularly sensitive to description of visual forms and with a solid foundation in the main concepts and procedures used by art historians in analyzing visual cultures and in writing histories of art, no matter if they are distant from us in time and space or right next door.
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