This course offers the serious student the opportunity to explore, in depth, the history of art from ancient times to the present. Through readings, research, slides, videos, and museum visits, students will view significant artworks from around the world. Writing skills will be important in the context, analysis, and comparison of these works. Students are encouraged to keep a three ring binder, notes to record class discussion on significant historical events, art periods, formalism, technique, materials, styles, and issues that connect these artworks.
Art History Course Objectives Developing critical thinking skills in students:
Students learn to apply decision-making analytical, and problem- solving skills that will facilitate rational, effective lifelong learning. To discuss and write about art, students must fuse the skills that define critical thinking analysis. Inference, interpretation, comparison, contrast, evaluation, synthesis. Moreover the will use critical thinking skills to make connections on different levels-concrete and abstract; personal and impersonal; literal and figurative Increasing cultural literacy:
Students gain an understanding of many different cultural traditions. Art is a reflection of the society that produces it, as well as of the individual artist. Developing visual perception:
Students learn to see rather than just look. The capacity for observation of details in art can be transferred to observation of their natural world. Knowledge and understanding develops as the experience of seeing expands. Understanding creativity, growth, and maturity of a style and/or artist:
Because of the chronological approach, students gain valuable information by observing the evolution of an artist’s work from the beginning to the end of his/her career. Understanding chronological evolution of a style is also important in the study of a pluralistic style. Developing art vocabulary:
The language of two dimensional art, sculpture, and architecture includes the study of the elements of art and principles of design as well as technical terms, stylistic devices, and building methods. Studying media, techniques and processes:
Viewing original works of art in various media, demonstrations of techniques and processes, and “hands-on” experiences provide a better understanding of the arts. Connecting literature and history and art:
To dimensional art and sculptures, as narrative forms of expression, often allude to literature, mythology, religion, and historical events. Understanding Patronage and the economics of art:
Patronage, economics and the “business” of art lend another dimension to the study of art history. Where has the money come from to support the arts and why?
Assignments and Projects · Daily/Weekly · For each unit students will be given a Unit Plan listing the art works, accompanying vocabulary and the assignment. The Unit Plan and assignments will go in the binders.
· Students will also be given a monthly calendar, outlining every unit that will be covered.
· Students are required to read approximately one assigned chapter per week or less in Art Across Time, by Laurie Schneider Adams. There are online resources and an accompanying CDROM
· Videos will be shown to supplement the textbook and students are required to take notes to prepare for quizzes.
· Students will complete cue cards on each piece of art studied throughout the program, and identify the name, date, period/style, artist/architect, patron, original location, material, technique, function, context, descriptive terms, and relevant ideas. · · Students will also us cue cards to make connections between artworks of the same period/culture as well as other periods/cultures.
· Students should be prepared to answer questions in discussions based on reading assignments. Students will often work in small groups to come up with solutions to problems posed by the teacher, or participate in a game/activity to reiterate learning. Some of these activities include:
1. Artist/artwork Speed Dating (students take on the characteristics of an artist/artwork and introduce themselves to each other) 2. Dominoes (students align images of artworks domino style to make conceptual and visual connections) 3. Visual Descriptions (students work in small groups to try to come up with the most complete visual description of an artwork)
· Students will be given pop quizzes on reading assignments as well as an extensive exam at the end of each chapter/unit (these include multiple choice, short answer, and slide questions as well as essays)
Course Calendar
Week One
Why Do We Study the History of Art? Purposes of art, value of art, methodologies of art history, vocabulary of art history, how to describe, analyze, and compare artworks. Pages 1-25
Week Two
Prehistory: Non-verbal history (stone age), Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, tools, materials, Women in Prehistoric Art, Venus of Willendorf Pages 26-40
Week Three
Ancient Near East Objects of ritual, fertility, and life cycles; architecture functional and funerary; polytheism and significant deities; pictures to words: Gilgamesh, Law Code of Hammurabi Pages 51-68
Week Four
Ancient Egypt Gift of the Nile; cycles of death and rebirth; the afterlife; mummification, Book of the Dead; Egyptian polytheism; divine right; pre-dynastic-Ptolemaic; funerary architecture; status and depiction of human body; Hatshepsut; female pharaoh; Amarna period; cross cultural influences. Pages 81-109
Ancient Greece Government, philosophy, literature, and drama. “Man is the Measure of all Things,” Women in ancient Greece, Geometric-Hellenistic styles in the all media, Power and authority, link between mythology an politics, Painting and pottery, Sculpture, architecture, Hellenistic sculpture, human body: stylized-idealized-naturalistic style of architecture, (the canon) Pages 134-188
Week 8
Etruscan/China: Neolithic>1st Empire Contemporary lifestyle; architectural innovations; funerary practices and artworks; comparison of Western everyday objects, writing, funerary art.
Week 9 and 10
Ancient Rome/ Indus Valley Civilization Virgil’s Aeneid, Chronological Roman Periods and corresponding artworks and architecture, sculptural types, Sarcophagi, portraits, Mural Paintings, cross cultural trends, Indus Valley, Vedic, Upanishads, Early Vedas, Buddha and Buddhism, Buddhism, Buddhist architecture, Maurya period, Shunga period, Kushan period
Week 11
Early Christian and Byzantine Art New Religion, Divergence of East and West, Early Christian Art, Centrally planned buildings, Justinian and the Byzantine style, Development of Codex, Late Byzantine Developments,
Week 12
Art Outside the European Tradition Project Presentations
Week 13
Field trip to the Denver Art Museum and two local Galleries.
Week 14
Early Middle Ages/Mesoamerica Islam culture and religious Architecture; northern European art. Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Beowulf; Hiberno-Saxon styles and iconography; manuscript illumination, Carolingian and Ottonian periods/styles; Mesoamerican art and culture; thriving civilizations, beliefs, and artifacts.
Week 15
Romanesque Stylistic v historical; pilgrimage and relics; feudalism and crusades; portal sculpture; regional variations, secular v. religious; Bayeux Tapestry.
Week 16
Gothic Art Hindu and Buddhist Development Origins of Gothic Art in France; Early Gothic Architecture; Elements of Gothic Architecture; Cathedrals; Later Developments, Scholasticism; English Gothic; Spread of Gothic; Buddhist and Hindu Developments
Course Calendar
Week 17
Precursors of the Renaissance 13th century Italy, 14th century Italy, International Gothic Style
Week 18
Early Renaissance 15th century Italy; Early 15th century painting and sculpture; Second-Generation development, Donatello and Botticelli; 15th century Netherlands painting.
Week 19
High Renaissance in Italy Architecture, painting and sculpture; Developments in Venice
Week 20
Mannerism and the Later Sixteenth Century in Italy Mannerism; counter Reformation painting; late sixteenth Century Architecture
Week 21
16th Century Painting and Printmaking in Northern Europe The Netherlands, Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder; Germany, Durer, The Myth of the Mad Artist, Hans Holbein the Younger, Erasmus of Rotterdam
Week 22 Midterm
Mid Term Review and Test Multiple review days with vocabulary and artists bingo and Jeopardy review
Week 23
The Baroque Style in Western Europe Developments in Politics and Science; Baroque style; Architecture; Sculpture; Italian Baroque Painting; Baroque Iin Northern Europe/ Diego Velazquez, Nicolas Poussin
Week 24
Rococo and the 18th Century Political and Cultural Background; Age of Enlightmenment; Rococo Paintings, Rococo Architecture; Architectural Revivals; European Painting; American Painting
Week 25
Field Trip:Return to the Denver Art Museum for a scavenger hunt for art history vocabulary and features.
Week 26
Romanticism: Late 18th early 19th Centuries Romantic Movement; Architecture; Sculpture; Painting in Europe, Goya, William Blake, Gericault, Delacroix; Painting in the United States, Tomas Cole, George Bingham, George Catlin, Folk art.
Week 27
19th Century Realism Cultural and Political context; Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto; French Realism; Photography; English Realism, the Pre Raphaelites; American Realist; French;
Week 28
19th Century Impressionism Urban renewal; Japanese Woodblock Prints; Painting, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Cassatt, Morisot, Monet, views of Paris; French Sculpture, Rodin; American Paintings, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent; Art of Art’s Sake.
Spring Break
Trip to Paris to visit the Louvre, the Orsay, Picasso’s Museum, Rodin’s Home, and take a side trip to Monet’s home in Giverny. (Hi Bill, you’re invited too)
Week 29
Post-Impressionism and the Late 19th Century Paintings; Gauguin and Oceania; Symbolist Movement, Moreau and Munch; Fin de Siecle, Aestheticism, Art Nouveau, Vienna Secession, Henry Rousseau, The Mechanisms of Dreaming.
Week 30
Turn of the Century: Early Picasso, Fauvism, Expressionism and Matisse Picasso’s Blue Period; African art, European Avant-Garde, Picasso and Matisse, Fauvism, Expressionism, Matisse and Fauvism.
Week 31
Cubism, futurism and Related 20th Century Styles Precursors of Cubism; Gertrude Stein; Analytic Cubism; Collage and assemblage; Synthetic Cubism; Futurism; The Armory Show; Harlem Renaissance; Suprematism; Early 20th Century architecture; international style.
Week 32
Dada, Surrealism, Fantasy, and the U. S. between the Wars World War I’s affects on art; Dada; The Cabaret Voltaire; Marcel Duchamp; Jean Hans Arp; Surrealist Manifesto; Surrealism; US. Regionalism and social Realism; Salvador Dali, Joan Miro; Realism sculpture; Hopi Kachinas; photography; Mexican Artists; American Abstract
Week 33
Abstract Expressionism Hans Hofmann and Josef Albers; Hitler on “Degenerate Art;” Gorky, Navajo Sand Painting, Acrylic; Figurative Abstraction in Europe; Sculpture
Week 34
Pop Art, Op Art, Minimalism and Conceptualism English Pop Art; US Pop Art, Painting and Sculpture; Op Art; Minimalism; Action Sculpture, Beuys, Hesse; Conceptualism
Week 35
Innovation, Continuity, and Globalization Government funding of arts; Controversial Art; Return to realism; Environmental art, Developments in architecture, Feminist Art; Plus ça change, memorial art, Video Art.
Week 36
Review for AP™ Exam
Week 37
Review for AP™ Exam/take test
Post Exam
Contemporary Artist Project and Presentation Students research a contemporary artist and create a presentation on their findings.
Course Description
This course offers the serious student the opportunity to explore, in depth, the history of art from ancient times to the present. Through readings, research, slides, videos, and museum visits, students will view significant artworks from around the world. Writing skills will be important in the context, analysis, and comparison of these works. Students are encouraged to keep a three ring binder, notes to record class discussion on significant historical events, art periods, formalism, technique, materials, styles, and issues that connect these artworks.
Art History Course Objectives
Developing critical thinking skills in students:
Students learn to apply decision-making analytical, and problem- solving skills that will facilitate rational, effective lifelong learning. To discuss and write about art, students must fuse the skills that define critical thinking analysis. Inference, interpretation, comparison, contrast, evaluation, synthesis. Moreover the will use critical thinking skills to make connections on different levels-concrete and abstract; personal and impersonal; literal and figurative
Increasing cultural literacy:
Students gain an understanding of many different cultural traditions. Art is a reflection of the society that produces it, as well as of the individual artist.
Developing visual perception:
Students learn to see rather than just look. The capacity for observation of details in art can be transferred to observation of their natural world. Knowledge and understanding develops as the experience of seeing expands.
Understanding creativity, growth, and maturity of a style and/or artist:
Because of the chronological approach, students gain valuable information by observing the evolution of an artist’s work from the beginning to the end of his/her career. Understanding chronological evolution of a style is also important in the study of a pluralistic style.
Developing art vocabulary:
The language of two dimensional art, sculpture, and architecture includes the study of the elements of art and principles of design as well as technical terms, stylistic devices, and building methods.
Studying media, techniques and processes:
Viewing original works of art in various media, demonstrations of techniques and processes, and “hands-on” experiences provide a better understanding of the arts.
Connecting literature and history and art:
To dimensional art and sculptures, as narrative forms of expression, often allude to literature, mythology, religion, and historical events.
Understanding Patronage and the economics of art:
Patronage, economics and the “business” of art lend another dimension to the study of art history. Where has the money come from to support the arts and why?
Assignments and Projects
· Daily/Weekly
· For each unit students will be given a Unit Plan listing the art works, accompanying vocabulary and the assignment. The Unit Plan and assignments will go in the binders.
· Students will also be given a monthly calendar, outlining every unit that will be covered.
· Students are required to read approximately one assigned chapter per week or less in Art Across Time, by Laurie Schneider Adams. There are online resources and an accompanying CDROM
· Videos will be shown to supplement the textbook and students are required to take notes to prepare for quizzes.
· Students will complete cue cards on each piece of art studied throughout the program, and identify the name, date, period/style, artist/architect, patron, original location, material, technique, function, context, descriptive terms, and relevant ideas.
·
· Students will also us cue cards to make connections between artworks of the same period/culture as well as other periods/cultures.
· Students should be prepared to answer questions in discussions based on reading assignments. Students will often work in small groups to come up with solutions to problems posed by the teacher, or participate in a game/activity to reiterate learning. Some of these activities include:
1. Artist/artwork Speed Dating (students take on the characteristics of an artist/artwork and introduce themselves to each other)
2. Dominoes (students align images of artworks domino style to make conceptual and visual connections)
3. Visual Descriptions (students work in small groups to try to come up with the most complete visual description of an artwork)
· Students will be given pop quizzes on reading assignments as well as an extensive exam at the end of each chapter/unit (these include multiple choice, short answer, and slide questions as well as essays)
Purposes of art, value of art, methodologies of art history, vocabulary of art history, how to describe, analyze, and compare artworks. Pages 1-25
Non-verbal history (stone age), Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, tools, materials, Women in Prehistoric Art, Venus of Willendorf
Pages 26-40
Objects of ritual, fertility, and life cycles; architecture functional and funerary; polytheism and significant deities; pictures to words: Gilgamesh, Law Code of Hammurabi
Pages 51-68
Gift of the Nile; cycles of death and rebirth; the afterlife; mummification, Book of the Dead; Egyptian polytheism; divine right; pre-dynastic-Ptolemaic; funerary architecture; status and depiction of human body; Hatshepsut; female pharaoh; Amarna period; cross cultural influences. Pages 81-109
Cycladic Civilization, Minoan Civilization, Mycenaean Civilization, fresco process Pages 117-133
Government, philosophy, literature, and drama. “Man is the Measure of all Things,” Women in ancient Greece, Geometric-Hellenistic styles in the all media, Power and authority, link between mythology an politics, Painting and pottery, Sculpture, architecture, Hellenistic sculpture, human body: stylized-idealized-naturalistic style of architecture, (the canon) Pages 134-188
Contemporary lifestyle; architectural innovations; funerary practices and artworks; comparison of Western everyday objects, writing, funerary art.
Virgil’s Aeneid, Chronological Roman Periods and corresponding artworks and architecture, sculptural types, Sarcophagi, portraits, Mural Paintings, cross cultural trends, Indus Valley, Vedic, Upanishads, Early Vedas, Buddha and Buddhism, Buddhism, Buddhist architecture, Maurya period, Shunga period, Kushan period
New Religion, Divergence of East and West, Early Christian Art, Centrally planned buildings, Justinian and the Byzantine style, Development of Codex, Late Byzantine Developments,
Islam culture and religious Architecture; northern European art. Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Beowulf; Hiberno-Saxon styles and iconography; manuscript illumination, Carolingian and Ottonian periods/styles; Mesoamerican art and culture; thriving civilizations, beliefs, and artifacts.
Stylistic v historical; pilgrimage and relics; feudalism and crusades; portal sculpture; regional variations, secular v. religious; Bayeux Tapestry.
Origins of Gothic Art in France; Early Gothic Architecture; Elements of Gothic Architecture; Cathedrals; Later Developments, Scholasticism; English Gothic; Spread of Gothic; Buddhist and Hindu Developments
13th century Italy, 14th century Italy, International Gothic Style
15th century Italy; Early 15th century painting and sculpture; Second-Generation development, Donatello and Botticelli; 15th century Netherlands painting.
Architecture, painting and sculpture; Developments in Venice
Mannerism; counter Reformation painting; late sixteenth Century Architecture
The Netherlands, Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder; Germany, Durer, The Myth of the Mad Artist, Hans Holbein the Younger, Erasmus of Rotterdam
Midterm
Multiple review days with vocabulary and artists bingo and Jeopardy review
Developments in Politics and Science; Baroque style; Architecture; Sculpture; Italian Baroque Painting; Baroque Iin Northern Europe/ Diego Velazquez, Nicolas Poussin
Political and Cultural Background; Age of Enlightmenment; Rococo Paintings, Rococo Architecture; Architectural Revivals; European Painting; American Painting
Romantic Movement; Architecture; Sculpture; Painting in Europe, Goya, William Blake, Gericault, Delacroix; Painting in the United States, Tomas Cole, George Bingham, George Catlin, Folk art.
Cultural and Political context; Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto; French Realism; Photography; English Realism, the Pre Raphaelites; American Realist; French;
Urban renewal; Japanese Woodblock Prints; Painting, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Cassatt, Morisot, Monet, views of Paris; French Sculpture, Rodin; American Paintings, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent; Art of Art’s Sake.
(Hi Bill, you’re invited too)
Paintings; Gauguin and Oceania; Symbolist Movement, Moreau and Munch; Fin de Siecle, Aestheticism, Art Nouveau, Vienna Secession, Henry Rousseau, The Mechanisms of Dreaming.
Picasso’s Blue Period; African art, European Avant-Garde, Picasso and Matisse, Fauvism, Expressionism, Matisse and Fauvism.
Precursors of Cubism; Gertrude Stein; Analytic Cubism; Collage and assemblage; Synthetic Cubism; Futurism; The Armory Show; Harlem Renaissance; Suprematism; Early 20th Century architecture; international style.
World War I’s affects on art; Dada; The Cabaret Voltaire; Marcel Duchamp; Jean Hans Arp; Surrealist Manifesto; Surrealism; US. Regionalism and social Realism; Salvador Dali, Joan Miro; Realism sculpture; Hopi Kachinas; photography; Mexican Artists; American Abstract
Hans Hofmann and Josef Albers; Hitler on “Degenerate Art;” Gorky, Navajo Sand Painting, Acrylic; Figurative Abstraction in Europe; Sculpture
English Pop Art; US Pop Art, Painting and Sculpture; Op Art;
Minimalism; Action Sculpture, Beuys, Hesse; Conceptualism
Government funding of arts; Controversial Art; Return to realism; Environmental art, Developments in architecture, Feminist Art; Plus ça change, memorial art, Video Art.
Students research a contemporary artist and create a presentation on their findings.