ARHT335

In this class we will focus on artists from France, England and Germany, and the social and political contexts in which their work was produced, exhibited, and understood. We shall consider the Romanticism and Orientalism of Eugene Delacroix; the perverse femininity of Jean-Dominique Ingres’ nudes; Theodore Géricault’s contemporary history paintings; the nationalist landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich and John Constable; the fantastic visions of.l.M.W. Turner and Francesco Goya, and the radical landscape painting of the mid-century Barbizon School that foreshadowed Impressionism. We will explore the Realism of
Gustave Courbet, the call for "Modernity" of Baudelaire; the “misogyny” of Edgar Degas, and the “primitivism” of Paul Gauguin. The “feminine spaces” of Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot and, of course, the “madness” of Vincent van Gogh will bejust some of the notions-or myths-that we will explore in this survey of nineteenth-century art and culture. We will examine the historical stature of these artists and their reputations.