FINE ARTS 206 - Western Art of the 19th and 20th Centuries Mary Prevo, Instructor Department of Fine Arts Office: Winston 108

Click here for Blackboard Please note that Quiz pages are unfinished. Requirements Grading Schedule Quizzes/Exams Research Paper Attendance Honor Code Study Page, Final General Links Hampden-Sydney College Library Paper Style Sheet Art History on the Web Museums Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Course Description A survey of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe and North American in the modern age.  After a short introduction to the early 19th-century, lectures focus on the historical outlines of the major art movements from Impressionism in the later 19th century to the beginnings of Post-Modernism in the 1980's.  The class will include at least one day-long field trip.  Short writings and quizzes will supplement the midterm and final grades. The major writing project will be a research paper on one artist or work of art. Text Arnason, H.H.  History of Modern Art:  Painting, Scultpure, Architecture, Photography. Fifth edition revised by Peter Kalb.   New York, N.Y.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 2003.  Available in College Bookstore.  You may also purchase the text used on-line or elsewhere.  Additional readings will be assigned in class.  The student may wish to purchase either or both of the following Spring Break books (also available in the College library and Longwood University Library): Berger, John. Ways of Seeing:  A Book. London:  British Broadcasting Corporation: New York: Penguin, 1977, c. 1972. Wolfe, Tom.  From Bauhaus to Our House. New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, c1981. Goals To hone the student's skills of visual analysis To hone the student's ability to translate visual analysis into written prose To develop the student's understanding of the historical place of the objects studied and to understand their connections to one another and to the culture from which they emerge. Requirements Preparation (readings as assigned in schedule), attendance, and  participation  Response writings posted on Blackboard, total 50 points Quizzes, total 50 points Mid-term exam, cumulative, 100 points Final, comparisons and essays cumulative, 100 points A research paper on an artist or art work, 100 points Grading Your final grade will be determined by the total number of points you gain out of a maximum of 400. This is then divided in four to determine your grade.  I do not grade on a curve. The grading scale is as follows:   100 - 94% A 74 - 77% C 93 - 90% A- 70 - 73.5% C- 89 - 87.5% B+ 69 - 67.5% D+ 84 - 87% B 64 - 67% D 80 - 84 % B- Below 63.5% F 79 - 77.5% C+

Schedule (subject to revision) - top of page

 

Week	Class Topic	Text Reading
1	Various Modes of Visual Analysis
	Sources of Modern Painting Reading :  Mainardi. “The Political Origins of Modernism.”  Art Journal.  Vol. 45, no. 1 (Spring 1985)	Ch. 1
2	Realism (First Response Paper)	Ch. 2
	Impressionism
	Early Photography Reading :  Pollock.  “Modernity and the Spaces of Feminity.”  Vision and Difference.  1988, pp. 70-127
3	Post Impressionism	Ch. 3
	Quiz
	Sources of Modern Architecture	Ch. 4, Ch. 12
4	Art Nouveau and Beginning of Expressionism	Ch. 5, Ch.12
	Quiz
	Modernism	Ch. 6
5	Fauvism (Second Response Paper)	Ch. 7
	Expressionism in Germany	Ch. 8
	Sculpture in the Early XXth Century	Ch. 9
6	Cubism	Ch 10
	Futurism - Quiz	Ch. 10, Ch. 11
	Abstraction in Russia and de Stijl	Ch. 11
7	Dada and New Objectivity (Third Response Paper)	Ch. 13
	School of Paris  -- Paper topic selected	Ch. 14
8	Surrealism	Ch. 15
	Midterm
9	Spring Break – Read John Berger, Ways of Seeing, or Tom Wolfe, Bauhaus to Our House
10	Modern Architecture (Fourth Response Paper)	Ch. 16
	International Abstraction	Ch. 17
	International Abstraction	Ch. 18
11	American Art Before WWII
	Quiz	Ch. 23
	2nd Wave of International Style Architecture	Ch. 19
12	Abstraction and North American Sculpture	Ch. 20
	Europe Post-War
	Paper due	Ch. 21
13	Pop Art and European New Realism (Fifth Response Paper)	Ch. 22
	60’s Abstraction	Ch. 24
	70’s Pluralism	Ch. 25
14	Post Modern Architecture	Ch. 26
	80’s
	Quiz
15	Catch up
16	Last Day of Class – Review

Attendance, Class Participation and Decorum

You are responsible for all material in the assigned reading, the images shown in class, and reproduced in the text. Class attendance is a requirement of the course. Please see the college catalogue for class attendance policies. More than three unexcused absences will result in a warning letter from the Dean of Students.  Repeated unexcused absences following the warning letter will result in being withdrawn from the class failing. Absences totaling 25% or more will result in an automatic F. If a student arrives after roll is taken, it is the student's responsibility to place his or her name on the class roll no later than the end of that class period. Failure to do so will result in an unexcused absence.  Excused absences are outlined in the college catalogue.  Please notify the instructor prior to the class you will miss for an excused absence.

Using class time effectively is as important as showing up. Think of classes as guided study sessions. The more effectively you use them, the better you will do, and the less time outside of class you will need to spend preparing for exams. Use classes to ask questions, review main themes, try out interpretations, and practice applying analytical terms to examples. Above all, take good notes. Force yourself to make a thumbnail sketch of each slide shown. Note the artist, title and medium of the work and a date. Remember the overall topic of the lecture and analyze why it is included. If you learn better from audio materials, tape classes and edit them later, but you still need to sketch the images shown. Without a written or audio record, you have nothing to review. Without review, learning is inefficient at best.

 Quizzes

Quizzes will include, but are not limited to, slide identifications and comparisons. A complete identification includes the maker and the maker's culture, title of the work, medium, and date produced.

Response Papers

About every two weeks you will be required to post a 250-word response to a work of art from the period just covered in class.  This posting will be made to the classroom Blackboard page under discussion groups.  If the work is not reproduced in the textbook, the student will provide a link to an image on-line.  

Mid-term and Final Exams

Each exam will have three parts: Slide identifications; slide comparisons; and essays. The last two parts will be cumulative.

Exams and quizzes must be taken when scheduled. Make ups will be scheduled only by prior consent of the instructor, and only for compelling reasons (as determined by the instructor). If a student, without gaining prior consent, is unable to take an exam due to sudden illness or some other extraordinary event, the instructor must be notified immediately. If I cannot be reached directly or by phone, you may leave a message on my voice mail (ext. 7057). Unexplained absences from exams will result in a F.

Research Paper

Each student will select an artist and develop a five to seven-page paper on an artist or a work of art. The topic will be selected and approved by the end of February. 

Click here for Art History Paper Style Sheet (including bibliography and footnote styles)  

Please remember that the type of material that must be documented (i.e. footnoted) includes: controversial or distinctive arguments and opinions, facts that are not a matter of broad general knowledge, statistics other than those your tabulate yourself, all quotes, and paraphrases or summaries of an author's argument. All direct quotes over two lines in length must be indented and single-spaced.

To preserve my sanity, PROOF READ YOUR WORK BEFORE YOU HAND IT TO ME. That means read it out loud to see if it is in English. Would you want your mom to read it aloud to your dad, your aunt to your uncle, your high school English teacher to your college English prof? I will read drafts of work.  Anything put under my office door will be read and returned by the next class period if at all possible. Submitting drafts is not a substitute for submitting the finished paper.

Honor Code and Plagiarism

The college honor code will be enforced. Plagiarism is the intentional use of another's words or argument without proper credit. This includes copying passages from a source without both attribution and quotation. If you have reproduced the language of your source without quotes and footnote, you have committed plagiarism whether or not you have cited the source and the page number. This includes passages that a student may have modified: for example, changed verb tenses, omission or replacement of occasional words, reshuffling of phrases, sentences or paragraphs, combining of different sources. Writing a bad paper in you own words is far better than writing a good one using the words of someone else. One way to avoid inadvertent plagiarism is to close all your books when writing, and consult them only for specific facts or direct quotes. Also proofread your paper with plagiarism in mind.

Extra Credit

Extra-credit assignments may be arranged with the instructor. These assignments must be approved in advance by the instructor. They are worth a maximum of 10 points. No extra-credit assignment will be accepted as a substitute for a class requirement. The assignment is either an analytical book review, 3-5 pages in length, a second paper following the requirements of the paper as listed above, or reviews of exhibitions.

Top of page