Schedule and Assignments
Fall 2011 Schedule…Subject to adjustment as needed. Each week we’ll be assigning reflections to post here on the site–so beyond the readings (and videos) listed below, there are also writing assignments (usually brief and informal) which we will develop in class.
- Week 1 (August 28 and 30)
- Night at the Museum Follow-up
- Who are We?
- Introductory Exercises and Photobooth Profiles (posted by September 6)
- Week 2 (September 4 and September 6 )
- What is Art? What is an Artist?
- Why Look at Art?
- Art:21 – Jeff Koons (video)
- Art:21 – Yinka Shonibare (video)
- Duchamp and the Ready-Mades (video)
- Levine, Untitled (After Edward Weston, ca. 1925) (video)
- Barnett Newman’s Painting Techniques (video)
- Jackson Pollock’s Painting Techniques (video)
- “I Was Jeff Koons’ Studio Serf” (NY Times article)
- Duchamp’s “In Advance of a Broken Arm” (video)
- What is Art? What is an Artist?
- Week 3 (September 11 and September 13)
- What is Beauty?
- Polykleitos, Diadoumenos (video)
- Botticelli, Birth of Venus (video)
- Gérôme, Pygmalion and Galatea (video)
- A Darwinian Theory of Beauty (video)
- Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (poem)
- Beautiful Music. Find it and tell us how
- What is Beauty?
- Week 4 (September 20) (No class on September 18–Rosh Hashana)
- Context Matters: Churches, Museums, and the Function of Art
- Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (video)
- The Museum
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (video)
- The First Impressionist Exhibition
- Smithson, Spiral Jetty (video)
- Justinian and His Attendants (video)
- Selections from Trauma At Home: After 9/11
- Andrea D. Fitzpatrick, “The Movement of Vulnerability: Images of Falling and September 11”
- Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling
- Context Matters: Churches, Museums, and the Function of Art
- Week 5 (September 27) (No class on September 25–Yom Kippur)
- Art for memory and memorial
- Visit to September 11 Memorial (directions)
- Continuing Memory and Memorial
- Maya Lin on Art21 (and read this)
- Popular Music
- “Has Pop Music Changed?” (radio show–listen to the whole show–about an hour–using the player linked on this page)
- (Discussion of this may have to wait for a later date)
- Art for memory and memorial
- Week 6 (October 2 and 4)
- Photography
- Visit to ICP (on Thursday, October 4, we will meet at ICP–the International Center of Photography at 4:30 PM. DO NOT BE LATE! Meet in front–1133 6th Avenue and 43rd Street. Directions are on this page. We will stay until 530 or 6 PM when the museum closes. BRING YOUR CULTURAL PASSPORT (otherwise you will have to pay for admission).
- And then we will have to grab some dinner and then go to see Luz at LaMama ETC at 730 (74A East 4th Street–btw Bowery & 2nd Ave.). After the performance, there will be an interview and discussion with the playwright.
- What does photography tell us?
- “Viewfinder” by Ethan Canin and “The Photograph” by N. Scott Momaday (these are on a password-protected page. I will give you the password in class).
- American Memory Project
- Photography
- Week 7 (October 9 and October 11)
- October 9 NO Class — Independent Events Scheduling
- October 11–Amanda, our ITF, will lead a class, and asks that (while you should read the entire book) you read chapters 1 and 7 of Ways of Seeing by John Berger and review the online videos. Consider bringing in or sending Amanda a link to a photograph (or an advertisement, especially one that includes a photograph) you would like to discuss.
- Week 8 (October 16 and October 18)
- Performing the Body (finishing up photography)
- Return to the Brooklyn Museum
- Week 9 (October 23 and October 25)
- Read The Tempest by W. Shakespeare
- The Body and Gender
- Gentileschi’s Self Portrait (video)
- Ingres, La Grand Odalisque (video)
- Manet, Olympia (reading and video)
- Cassat, The Loge (video)
- Some Male and Female Body Beauty Thoughts
- October 23, we see “The Tempest” at the Metropolitan Opera. No Class that afternoon.
- Week 10 (October 30 and November 1)
- Why the Arts in New York City? Urban Art and Art of the Urban
- Week 11 (November 6 and November 8)
- (November 4, Jazz Ballet de Montreal at the Joyce)
- Pulling it Together. What do we value, what do we love?
- EB White’s “Here is New York” (on the password protected page)
- Week 12 (November 13) (No Class November 15)
- ADDED Reading Assignment about Oral Performance Art!!!. Read “Quacks, Yokels and Everyday Folk” (by your own professor) here. (And also have a look at the photos which originally accompanied the article here).
- Art and conflict and conflicts over art. The Art of War
- Week 13 (November 20) (No Class November 22–Thanksgiving)
- November 19 Uptown Showdown at Symphony Space
- Week 14 (November 27 and November 29)
- Pulling the schedule back together and beginning the final projects
Weill Recital Hall Debut by Cellist Dane Johansen Tuesday, November 27, 2012, 8pm
- Week 15 (December 4 and December 6)
- No class December 6, Instead, we attend Get it Out There (comedy) at BAM on Wednesday December 5.
- Course Conclusion (December 11)
- Aesthetic Interactions completed and shared
- Recurations posted