Picasso: Early Work, Blue and Rose Periods
Utilizing digital images and quotations from Picasso and art historians, this discussion-based course will consider the works of Picasso’s youth in Barcelona, when under the instruction of his painter father, the teenaged Picasso produced works in the conservative and tepid academic tradition that brought him early recognition and success. His Barcelona friends and fellow students the modernistes introduced him to ideas and art works outside this practice, which influenced Picasso to depict street life and other scenes of the world around him.
Abandoning a certain path to success with the academic works of his youth in Barcelona, Picasso adopted as his subject matter beggars, prostitutes, drinkers and other societal outcasts after his move to Paris in 1901. These works utilize a monochrome blue palette that heightens the mood of melancholy, isolation and despair. The influence of the Baroque painter El Greco is especially felt in this period, particularly in the depiction of elongated hands and heavy, flowing drapery of the often solitary figures. The Old Guitarist is one of his best known works from this period.
Beginning in 1904, Picasso’s subject matter began to change in light of his attendance at the circus, a popular form of entertainment in Paris. He then began to depict acrobats, harlequins and other itinerant performers who, like his earlier Blue period subjects, existed on the fringes of society. The recurring motif of the harlequin is usually interpreted as a surrogate self portrait. This group of works is rendered in a predominantly terra-cotta colored or pastel palette, a defining characteristic of the Rose period. His circus-themed Family of Saltimbanques is the major work of this era, and one of his largest paintings. Picasso also produces some of his first prints during this period, and begins working in sculpture; his expressive modeling in clay mirrors his Mannerist treatment of the figure in his paintings and drawings.
This four part course will consider the works of Picasso’s youth in Barcelona while under the instruction of his father and the various art schools he briefly attended in the late 1890s, and will continue through the works of the Blue and Rose periods produced in Barcelona and Paris up to the end of 1905, leading up to the proto-Cubist works of 1906 that revolutionized modern art.
January 23 - February 20, 2020.
Renoir and the Impressionist Portrait
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919), along with fellow painters Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and others, formed the core of the group of radical artists known as the Impressionists, whose sketch-like paintings and independent exhibitions marked them as among the first artists of the modern era. His Luncheon of the Boating Party, a depiction of friends enjoying a leisurely lunch in the countryside, is quintessential Impressionist subject matter, and a key work of modern art.
The fluid, feathery brushstrokes of his Impressionist era pleasure boaters and opera attendees give these works a sense of spontaneity in keeping with his interest in depicting the transitory pleasures of contemporary life. His later works returned to a more tightly controlled, classical technique and subject matter, particularly in his monumental bathers series.This five part course will consider Renoir’s portraits and nudes, which remain his most enduring works. His style and technique varied depending upon the status of the work, whether a commissioned portrait or more casual depiction of family or friends. Renoir’s images of his wife Aline and their children are intimate records of his familial relationships, and are often more frank than the slightly idealized portraits of his patrons.
This course is presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Renoir: The Body, The Senses at the Kimbell Art Museum, October 27, 2019 to January 26, 2020. (https://www.kimbellart.org/exhibition/renoir).
Day 9/19, 9/26, 10/3, 10/10, 10/17
Evening 10/17, 10/24, skip 10/31, 11/7, 11/14, 11/21Berthe Morisot: Impressionism and the Family
Berthe Morisot (1841 - 1895) is widely considered by art historians to be one of the major Impressionist painters, exhibiting in seven of the group’s eight independent exhibitions, yet her work is often overshadowed by her more famous male contemporaries Monet, Renoir and Degas. Morisot’s fluid paint handling and sketchy finish made her work a natural fit for the upstart Impressionists who wanted to portray images of modern life, rejecting academic themes, subject matter and techniques. Her work does not, however, depict street scenes of the boulevards of Paris, or popular entertainments such as the ballet or café concerts as does that of her male colleagues, since her status as a bourgeoisie woman would not allow her to go out in public unescorted to record such images. Instead, her work almost exclusively focuses on the domestic scene, considered to be the proper sphere of a woman of her status; her sisters Edma and Yves and mother Marie are among her favorite models, as are her husband Eugene and daughter Julie.
In conjunction with the special exhibition Berthe Morisot: Woman Impressionist (February 24 – May 26, 2019) at the Dallas Museum of Art, this four part course will consist of three classroom meetings on campus, and conclude with a visit to the museum to tour the exhibition.
Four meetings, 90 minutes each, including one museum visit, museum and exhibition admission included, (skip 2/14).
January 24 - February 21, 2019 (day)
February 21 - March 14, 2019 (evening)
The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam: Its Collection and History
Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890), who along with his contemporaries Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne and Georges Seurat, made up the group of painters known as the Post-Impressionists, artists who extended the innovations of the Impressionists beyond capturing fleeting effects of light and color. Known for his thick impasto and expressive use of color and composition, van Gogh remains one of the most influential and best known artists of all time. His Starry Night (Museum of Modern Art, New York) is one of the most iconic paintings in the history of Western art. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds the largest collection of his works in the world, including 200 paintings, 400 drawings, and 700 letters, most written to his brother and long time supporter Theo, and is one of the most visited art museums in Europe.
Presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Vincent van Gogh: His Life In Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (March 10 – June 27, 2019), this course will consider works made throughout van Gogh’s brief career as an artist, from his early drawings of peasants and first monochrome oil paintings, and continuing through his exposure to the brighter palette of Impressionism and flat color areas of Japanese prints that resulted in his signature style consisting of intense colors applied in his characteristic thick, choppy brush strokes made during his last three years. Quotations from his voluminous correspondence with his brother Theo will illuminate the special bond between the siblings, and highlight Theo’s unshakable faith in Vincent’s art.
Van Gogh’s posthumous reputation will also be explored, particularly how his work was promoted after his death by his sister-in-law Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, and the lengthy build up to the establishment of his namesake museum that displays his work as well as those by his contemporaries, including Monet, Gauguin and Seurat.
Four meetings, 90 minutes each (skip 3/14, 4/18).
February 28 - March 28, 2019 (day)
Claude Monet After Impressionism: The Water Lilies and the Late Series Works
Claude Monet (1840 -1926) is the artist most closely associated with Impressionism, the late 19th century style of painting that revolutionized art theory and practice. His painting Impression, Sunrise (1872) gave the movement its name, and his and the other Impressionists’ policy of showing their work in independent exhibitions during the 1870s that competed with the official government sponsored Salons helped to establish the practice of artists to show and sell their work directly to buyers. Monet’s interest in capturing fleeting effects of light and color in his paintings led him to work quickly and out of doors (en plein air) directly before the motif, which led to harsh criticism of his work by conservative critics decrying the lack of finish and sketchy brushwork.
In the 1890s, Monet began working on paintings of the same motif observed under different conditions of weather and times of day, and was one of the first artists to conceive of a group of works as components of a series, rather than as individual, independent works. The series of haystacks, Japanese foot bridges and Rouen Cathedral facades are prime examples of his conception of painting in multiples a single subject viewed under shifting atmospheric effects. His best known motif from this part of his career is undoubtedly the water lilies, canvases ranging from moderate sized to mural scale paintings that fill a room and create an immersive environment for the viewer.
His carefully cultivated gardens and lily ponds on his property at Giverny provided him with subject matter for much of his work during this period. Monet’s gift to the French state of a cycle of his water lily paintings are today installed in specially designed oval shaped galleries at the Musee de l’Orangerie in Paris.
In conjunction with the special exhibition Monet: The Late Years at the Kimbell Art Museum (June 16 – September 15, 2019), this course will explore works from the final period of Monet’s life, and the complicated negotiations between Monet and Georges Clemenceau (French Prime Minister during World War I) that resulted in the Orangerie installation.
May 2 - 30, 2019 (day)
June 6 - 27, 2019 (day and evening)
Four meetings, 90 minutes each (skip 5/9).
June 6 - 27, 2019 (day and evening)
Four meetings, 90 minutes each (skip 5/9).
Modern Art in the Early Twentieth Century: Fauvism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract Art
October 11 - November 15, 2018
The first half of the twentieth century saw many transformations in the visual arts, often overlapping and at seemingly cross purposes. Yet all the major styles of this period were concerned with innovation and progress, whether in the distortion and eventual elimination of recognizable subject matter, the introduction of themes previously unused in art, or the utilization of novel materials and techniques.
Fauvism is the first major style of the century. The “wild beasts” allowed color to structure their paintings in opposition to the dominance given to line as a way to enclose and define objects. Saturated hues were used to create spatial illusionism rather than traditional modeling and perspective. Bright patches of intense color often separated by bare canvas derived from the Pointillism of Georges Seurat describe both objects and the surrounding space in a mosaic pattern of which each patch of paint is both descriptive of a form and functions abstractly simply as color. Henri Matisse is widely acknowledged as the leader of the group; his Blue Nude of 1907 is a major work from his Fauve period.
The Musee d’Orsay in Paris holds the largest collection of Impressionist and Post Impressionist art works in the world, as well as many other works dating primarily from the mid nineteenth century through the first two decades of the twentieth. The collection includes many pivotal works in the history of modernism, those that altered the course of the painting and sculpture of our time. Housed in a former train station (the Gare d’Orsay), the Orsay opened to the public in 1986, and is one of the most visited museums in Europe.
Cubism changed forever the very conception of form and space, as it broke down the previously sacrosanct boundaries between the two. The influence of the paintings of Paul Cezanne and the sculpture of African carvers allowed Cubist artists to formulate works which gave equal emphasis to objects and the space that surrounds them. This first, or Analytical, phase of Cubism resulted in works with a shallow pictorial depth and earth tone colors that revealed a scaffold-like construction of flat planes that are seemingly lit from multiple light sources. The works of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso were enormously influential on contemporary artists investigating an alternative to the traditional conception of pictorial space practiced since the Renaissance.
Surrealism privileges what the mind can conceive over what is perceived by the senses. This conceptual attitude is a major break with the retinal art of previous periods in art history with their focus on the recording of optical vision. Painters such as Rene Magritte created deadpan images of recognizable subjects placed in bizarre juxtapositions to foster a sense of unease and disquiet in the viewer. Others, such as Joan Miro, used biomorphic, simple shapes and broad areas of color to create dreamlike, otherworldly visions of the subconscious.
The tendency toward greater abstraction is the defining characteristic of modern art in the twentieth century, as artists placed greater emphasis on eliminating recognizable subject matter and concentrated on foregrounding the elements of art itself – primarily line, shape and color. As a result, works of art, particularly paintings, became flatter with less emphasis on depicting illusionistic depth. Abstract paintings often consist of elements that are congruent with the surface of the work, so that the viewer perceives the composition as made of parts that are side by side on the same plane, rather than positioned one in front of another as in traditional illusionistic space. The career of Piet Mondrian, one of the founders of abstract art, is an unqualified encapsulation of the transition from the recording of perceptual images to the completely conceptual invention of the painting’s composition that makes no reference to perceptual phenomena.
One session of this course will be devoted to the small scale works of Salvador Dali. In conjunction with the special exhibition at the Meadows Museum, Dali and the Poetics of the Small (September 9 – December 9, 2018), the meeting will focus on Dali’s minutely detailed, hyper-realistic imagery of bizarre, grotesque and often erotically charged natural and imaginary objects.
The Musee d’Orsay and the Beginning of Modern Art in France
Precisionism: Images of the Industrial World in Modern American Art
September 27 - October 4, 2018 and October 18 - 25, 2018
The International Exhibition of Modern Art held in New York in 1913, better remembered today as the Armory Show, sent shock waves throughout the art world in America. Many contemporary American artists, and the public at large, were presented with their first exposures to modern European art. Works by Cezanne, Brancusi, and Picasso demonstrated the advanced state of the new art: Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, and Matisse’s Blue Nude exemplified that American art seemed provincial and mired in tradition by comparison. American artists responded by adopting the techniques and theories of their modern European counterparts while retaining elements that made their work uniquely American. One result was Precisionism, a movement that portrayed modern American images of skyscrapers, machines and consumer items in a hard edged and soberly objective style that mirrored the influence of the most advanced European art of the time, particularly the Cubism of Picasso and Braque.
The International Exhibition of Modern Art held in New York in 1913, better remembered today as the Armory Show, sent shock waves throughout the art world in America. Many contemporary American artists, and the public at large, were presented with their first exposures to modern European art. Works by Cezanne, Brancusi, and Picasso demonstrated the advanced state of the new art: Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, and Matisse’s Blue Nude exemplified that American art seemed provincial and mired in tradition by comparison. American artists responded by adopting the techniques and theories of their modern European counterparts while retaining elements that made their work uniquely American. One result was Precisionism, a movement that portrayed modern American images of skyscrapers, machines and consumer items in a hard edged and soberly objective style that mirrored the influence of the most advanced European art of the time, particularly the Cubism of Picasso and Braque.
Works by Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ralston Crawford, Gerald Murphy, Niles Spencer, Stuart Davis and others will be discussed and analyzed in the context of those by their European counterparts as well as the streamlined machine esthetic, influence of photography and advertising images which informed them.
In this two part course, an on campus classroom lecture meeting will be followed by a tour of the special exhibition Cult of the Machine: Precisionism in American Art (September 16, 2018 – January 6, 2019) at the Dallas Museum of Art.
The Musee d’Orsay and the Beginning of Modern Art in France
Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, this course will explore works from the collection of the Musee d’Orsay, including those of the Barbizon school artists Corot, Millet, Daubigny and Rousseau who exhibited un-idealized landscapes based on direct observation of nature; the radical works of early modernists such as the Realists Manet and Courbet who were among the first to depict scenes of contemporary life; Impressionists Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Pissarro, Post Impressionists Cezanne, Seurat, Van Gogh and Gauguin, as well as those of their more academic, traditional contemporaries such as Meissonier, Cabanel, Bouguereau and Couture. Works by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian and others chart the progress of modernism toward greater abstraction and emphasis on the subjective, personal expression of the artist so central to the art of the first half of the twentieth century.
At the time many of these works were made, the primary method of acquisition for the French state collections was via purchases from the Salon, annual or bi annual government sponsored exhibitions of contemporary art that drew thousands of visitors, and could lead to state or private commissions and draw students to classes led by the state-honored artist. Traditional works depicting mythological or historical scenes were highly valued by the French Academy in the ranking of subject matter known as the hierarchy of genres, while landscape and still life were deemed inferior. Acquisitions would be held at the Musee du Luxembourg until they were deemed worthy of elevation to the Louvre, the ultimate goal of any serious artist. That changed with the donation to the state of the Caillebotte Bequest, a private collection of Impressionist works that both introduced modern art to the state collections and altered the way works were accessioned by the government. The Caillebotte Bequest, other donations and subscriptions used to purchase important works formed the core of the museum’s most important holdings.Six meetings, 90 minutes each January 25, February 1, 8, 15, 22, March 1, 2018 (day)
March 8, 15, 22, April 5, 12, 19, 2018 (evening)
At the time many of these works were made, the primary method of acquisition for the French state collections was via purchases from the Salon, annual or bi annual government sponsored exhibitions of contemporary art that drew thousands of visitors, and could lead to state or private commissions and draw students to classes led by the state-honored artist. Traditional works depicting mythological or historical scenes were highly valued by the French Academy in the ranking of subject matter known as the hierarchy of genres, while landscape and still life were deemed inferior. Acquisitions would be held at the Musee du Luxembourg until they were deemed worthy of elevation to the Louvre, the ultimate goal of any serious artist. That changed with the donation to the state of the Caillebotte Bequest, a private collection of Impressionist works that both introduced modern art to the state collections and altered the way works were accessioned by the government. The Caillebotte Bequest, other donations and subscriptions used to purchase important works formed the core of the museum’s most important holdings.Six meetings, 90 minutes each January 25, February 1, 8, 15, 22, March 1, 2018 (day)
March 8, 15, 22, April 5, 12, 19, 2018 (evening)
Modern Forms: A History of Sculpture in the Modern Age
Follow the history of modern art through the sculptural works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in this five part course. From its beginnings with the figural works of Auguste Rodin, modern sculpture has developed in parallel with painting, incorporating new themes, working methods and materials into an ever expanding notion of progress and innovation. Unlike traditional academic works, sculptures by the early moderns were often controversial and considered radical when they were first exhibited, derided by conservative critics and hailed by their supporters, thereby securing the reputations of their creators as either scandalous or avant garde.
The major movements and artists of modernism will be discussed and examined, from the sculptures of Rodin and his contemporaries through the works of the Post Impressionist era, Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism, Constructivism, Pop, Minimalism, Hyper Realism, Environmental and Earth Works, Conceptual Art and Installation of the late twentieth century. Explore various media and techniques in the making of sculpture, including both traditional methods of casting and carving, as well as more contemporary procedures of assemblage and construction. A further relationship between sculptural objects and painting will be explored, as artists blurred distinctions separating the two, or alternately, emphasized and heightened their differences.
Major works by Rodin, Degas, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Brancusi, Gabo, Miro, Calder, Hepworth, Moore, Rauschenberg, Johns, David Smith, Serra, and others will be highlighted and placed within their historical and aesthetic context.
Five meetings, including four on campus classroom lectures and a visit to the Dallas Museum of Art and Nasher Sculpture Center to discuss works on view in the galleries.
September 14, 21, 28, October 5, 12
October 19, 26, November 2, 9, 16 Why Is That A Masterpiece? – Ways of interpreting and understanding great art of the modern era
January 12 - February 16, 2017
February 23 - March 23, 2017
Have you ever wondered why some artworks, and the artists who made them, are so famous (or infamous), or why they are considered to be important? Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, this course will explore works of art from the modern era to discover just why these iconic works, and their often equally iconic creators, hold such a fascination for art historians, other artists and viewers. Learn the language of art through these great works as we discuss the usage and meanings of terms such as composition, color, line, shape, volume, perspective, the picture plane and picture space; such art historical terms as the canon of art as taught in government-sponsored academies; the categorization of art known as the hierarchy of genres; and the meaning and origin of the names of art styles such as Impressionism and Cubism. The art will be placed in the historical and social context of its making as we explore the events surrounding the work’s inception and creation, and how the work was received by critics, viewers, and other artists then and now.
The course will focus on ten masterworks by major artists of the modern era. In each of the five meetings, students will discuss two of those works in depth, exploring the artist’s intent and the work’s meaning within the larger historical and esthetic context of modern art. Other works by the same artist, quotations of the artist from their writings and interviews, and critical reviews and texts from art historians will supplement our discussion and enhance our understanding of each work.
The concept of originality is often associated with creativity, and the success or failure of an artwork is closely tied to the artist’s knowledge, appropriation and subversion of tradition, especially in the modern era. The identity and role of the artist in society, including how the gender of both the artist and the viewer determines the interpretation and understanding of the work, are closely bound to the limitations or freedoms artists confine themselves to or re-define.
Late 19th century Impressionism will be represented by seminal works of Edgar Degas and Paul Cezanne; early 20th century objects by European masters Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, iconoclast Marcel Duchamp and Surrealist Rene Magritte. Works by the early American 20th century modernist Charles Sheeler will be followed by pieces of contemporary artists Ellsworth Kelly, Pop painter James Rosenquist and Conceptual artist Sol Lewitt.
This presentation of the course will discuss works different from those included in the first offering of this course last year.
Modern European Art from the Phillips Collection, Washington
April 20 - May 4, 2017
June 1 - 15, 2017
Explore 19th and 20th century modern European art from the Phillips Collection in Washington in this three part course, presented in junction with the special exhibition A Modern Vision: European Masterworks from the Phillips Collection, on view at the Kimbell Art Museum May 14 – August 13, 2017.
This course will chart the progress of the major artists and movements of European modernism as seen through the art on loan from the Phillps Collection, and will be supplemented with discussions of pieces by other major European modernists whose work is not included in the Kimbell exhibition. Works from the nineteenth century will include those by Bonnard, Cezanne, Chardin, Constable, Corot, Courbet, Degas, Daumier, Delacroix, Gauguin, Goya, Manet, Redon, Renoir, Rousseau, Morisot, Rodin, Seurat, Sisley, and Van Gogh; the early twentieth century will be represented with pieces by Braque, Gris, Kandinsky, Klee, Kokoschka, Matisse, Miro, Modigliani, Mondrian, Rouault, and Schwitters. The course will conclude with a visit to the Dallas Museum of Art to discuss European modern art on view in the museum’s permanent collection galleries. Students will compare and contrast works viewed in the classroom via digital images with original paintings and sculptures by those same European masters at the DMA.
The Phillips opened in 1921 as the first museum devoted to modern art in America, eight years ahead of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Today, the Phillips holds more than 4000 works ranging from French Impressionism to those by contemporary artists, and hosts a variety of traveling exhibitions.
American Prints at the Dallas Museum of Art
June 22 - July 6, 2017
Explore the history of American printmaking from the colonial era through the twentieth century in this three part course, presented in conjunction with the special exhibition Visions of America: Three Centuries of Prints from the National Gallery of Art at the Dallas Museum of Art from May 28 to September 4, 2017.
The trajectory of printmaking in America parallels closely the categories of subject matter used in paintings: portraiture, particularly during the colonial era; landscape, especially prominent in nineteenth century works that incorporate images of pristine wilderness areas and the westward expansion of the United States; cityscapes that present images of twentieth century life in modern urban centers; and contemporary works depicting objects from consumer culture, or border on the purely abstract.
Prints have been widely used for centuries as a relatively inexpensive way to disseminate images, and to make the purchase of fine art affordable for collectors. Often, prints reproduce images of works from other media, such as painting, and help to both further the fame of the work and the reputation of the artist. Generally, prints and other works on paper are on view in museum galleries for much shorter periods of time than paintings or sculptures due to their sensitivity to light, and are displayed with subdued and indirect illumination to protect them. This exhibition is thus an opportunity to see in person works that are rarely exhibited, and is a sweeping survey of the history of American art as seen through the medium of printmaking.
Prints by American artists from three centuries will be discussed and compared to paintings or sculptures by those same artists and their contemporaries. Paul Revere, Thomas Moran, Winslow Homer, James A. M. Whistler, Mary Cassatt, John Sloan, George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Diego Rivera, Romare Bearden, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol are just a few of the 100 artists whose works are included in this touring exhibition of 150 prints. Various printmaking techniques, such as lithography and etching, will also be examined.
Monet and Degas: Two Impressionists, Two Exhibitions
Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) is arguably the painter most closely associated with Impressionism, one of the earliest styles in modern art, begun by a group of radical painters in late nineteenth century Paris. Monet’s Impression Sunrise, painted in 1872 and exhibited in the first landmark independent Impressionist exhibition in 1874, gave the movement its name. Yet, before Monet began to paint in the loosely brushed, sketchy and colorful manner characteristic of mature Impressionism, his works were more carefully controlled and somber in their coloring. Under the influence of his teacher Eugene Boudin (1824 - 1898), Monet worked on site, recording the effects of light and color in landscapes and seascapes on small canvases, then transcribing various details into larger works made in the studio, an acceptable and common academic practice at the time.
Monet’s early work will be examined in the context of the styles and attitudes practiced by his contemporaries the Realists (Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet) and the artists known as the Barbizon School, painters who worked en plein air directly before the motif, and who were interested in rendering atmospheric effects of light and color and the science of optics more than in following standard academic practices. Early academic works with mythological subject matter by the incipient Impressionists Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir will also be examined and compared to their own groundbreaking later modern works.
These artists sought recognition and financial success through the only official channel available to them at the time, the state sponsored Salons, annual or bi-annual fine and decorative arts exhibitions that drew thousands of visitors, and could lead to purchases by the state, coverage in the mainstream press, success as a professor of fine arts, and awards and state or private commissions. Rejection by the Salon jury left artists few viable options for promoting, exhibiting, or selling their work. Only after abandoning the Salons did the future Impressionists organize their own independent group shows in direct competition with the official exhibition, a promotional tactic which brought them much needed publicity, and simultaneously marked the beginning of the decline in importance of the Salon.
Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917), along with Monet, is one of the founders of the Impressionist movement. His emphasis on line rather than color as the primary quality of painting and drawing distinguished his work from the landscape wing of the Impressionist group, with their loose, sketchy paint application. Trained in the academic fashion of his day, Degas originally aspired to become a painter of historical and mythological scenes, then considered to be the highest category in the hierarchy of genres, the classification system used to rank works of art by subject matter and relative importance. Yet, he was captivated by the experiences of contemporary life in late 19th century Paris: strolling the newly built wide boulevards which transformed medieval Paris into a modern city, visiting the opera as both a member of the audience and observer of backstage behaviors, and depicting women in the act of performing their toilette. He is mostly closely associated with images of the ballet and ballet dancers, almost always portraying them during rehearsals, unglamorously stretching, yawning, or adjusting part of their costume, or back stage in the company of male season subscribers, who had privileged access to these more intimate areas of the Garnier Opera House. A consummate draftsman, Degas constantly refined his images of dancers, bathers, and prostitutes by transferring an image from one work, often made years earlier, to a new context in a different work. His use of pastel for his finished works, a medium considered an inferior one to oil paints at the time, further distinguished his work from those of his contemporaries. The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, a wax sculpture of a ballerina that incorporated a real tutu and hair ribbon, scandalized the public and critics with its blunt realism when exhibited in the sixth Impressionist exhibition in 1881, and is the only three-dimensional work Degas showed in his lifetime. Degas’ late pastels anticipate expressionism in their use of bright, saturated, non-natural colors organized into large, rather flat planes, and are heavily built up with multiple layers of pastel that encrust the surface with a texture akin to the thick impasto in Monet’s late oil paintings of water lilies and his Japanese bridge at Giverny.
Exploring the full range of Degas prodigious output, we will examine his drawings, paintings, pastels, sculptures and prints, from earlier masterpieces such as The Bellelli Family, an intense psychological portrait of his aunt’s Italian family, to his late bathers of women in often awkward positions, sponging or drying their bodies while seemingly unaware of the viewer’s presence.
This course is presented in conjunction with dual exhibitions of works by these artists: Monet: The Early Years at the Kimbell Art Museum (October 16, 2016 – January 29, 2017) and Degas: A New Vision at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (October 16, 2016 – January 8, 2017). The Monet exhibition includes nearly 60 works from the late 1850s through the early 1870s, before the development of his landmark Impressionist paintings, while the Houston exhibition is a career retrospective including approximately 200 works by Degas from public and private collections.
Six meetings, 90 minutes each. This course does not include museum visits.
September 8 - October 13 and October 13 - November 17, 2016
Modernism at the Dallas Museum of Art
Explore the history of modern and contemporary painting and sculpture at the Dallas Museum of Art. In this three part course, we will meet on the SMU campus to view digital images and discuss iconic works of art from the mid nineteenth to late twentieth centuries, then supplement our classroom discussion with a visit to the museum’s galleries of modern American and European art, the Reves Collection, the contemporary spaces, and the sculpture garden to evaluate works in the museum’s permanent collection. We will examine American art from the 1850s through the twentieth century, Texas Regionalist art, Impressionism and Post Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, abstract art, and post World War II contemporary works, a particular strength of the DMA collection. The galleries at the DMA are regularly re-installed, and this is an opportunity to see works from the collection before they are taken off view.
This course is a general survey of the history of modernism, designed for those wishing a brief introduction to modern artists, works, techniques and concepts.
Three meetings, 90 minutes each.
These meetings will take place on the SMU campus and in the galleries at the Dallas Museum of Art.
June 16 - 30, 2016 (daytime) and July 7 - 21, 2016 (evening)
Picasso the Sculptor
Pablo Picasso is undoubtedly the artist most closely associated with modern art, and one of the best known and most prolific artists of all time. His myriad styles of image making are bewildering in their complexity, from a tightly controlled naturalism to the near abstraction of his analytical Cubism. Yet, while his paintings are the works included among the icons of modern art, Picasso was an equally inventive sculptor, working in styles as varied as his paintings, and in numerous media and techniques, ranging from traditional bronze casting to welded metal assemblages. This course will follow the arc of Picasso’s sporadic sculptural output throughout his career, comparing themes and images from his three-dimensional objects with his paintings, drawings and prints.
Picasso’s work is almost always autobiographical, a chronicle of his thoughts and feelings regarding his personal interests and relationships, and responses to world events. Some of his most powerful works were produced in reaction to the highs and lows of his numerous romantic entanglements, and as a result of his competitive relationships with fellow modern masters Henri Matisse and Georges Braque.
African sculpture and masks, and ancient Spanish (Iberian) sculpture are well documented influences on Picasso’s development of his own sculptural language, particularly in the invention of Cubism, which changed the direction of 20th century art. Picasso’s relationship with Fernande Olivier produced what is widely recognized as the first Cubist sculpture, Head of a Woman (Fernande). In his series of Guitars, Picasso explored the increasingly blurred boundaries between two- and three-dimensional art, using simple geometric shapes and volumes as signs for the anatomical details of the stringed instrument. His welded wire sculptures (Project for a Monument to Apollinaire) incorporate empty space as an element of the piece, while his assemblages of cast off scraps and found utilitarian objects allow the sculptures to shift meanings and suggest multiple, often conflicting readings and interpretations.
Consisting of illustrated classroom discussion, this course is presented in conjunction with the special retrospective exhibition Picasso Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, NY (September 14, 2015 – February 7, 2016), featuring more than 100 sculptures and other works by Picasso.
Four meetings, 90 minutes each
April 7 - April 28, 2016 (daytime) and May 5 - May 26, 2016 (evening)
Gustave Caillebotte – Impressionist Views of Life and Leisure in Modern Paris
Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) is an often overlooked member of the group of artists known as the Impressionists, yet he was a friend, supporter and discerning collector of their works, organizer and participant in their independent exhibitions, and an important painter of modern life and leisure in his own right. His images of pleasure boaters, the boulevards of Paris, of ordinary laborers, and other scenes from everyday life are quintessential Impressionist subject matter, and his Paris Street, Rainy Day is one of the most instantly recognizable paintings in all of art history. Caillebotte occupied a unique position in fin de siècle Paris, having both the desire and means to support his fellow Impressionists by purchasing their often controversial paintings, thereby giving them much needed financial support, and by producing his own highly Realist paintings that combined traditional academic working methods with modern subjects and themes. In this course, Caillebotte’s work will be placed in the context of the sweeping changes brought about by the increasingly rapid pace of modern life in late 19th century France, and compared to the works of his fellow Impressionists Renoir, Monet, Degas, and others. In conjunction with the special exhibition Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye at the Kimbell Art Museum (November 8, 2015 to February 14, 2016), this course will explore Caillebotte’s seemingly casual yet meticulously planned paintings, his frustrated efforts to organize and administer the Impressionist group shows, as well as his enormous contribution to the French state of selections from his personal collection of Impressionist paintings that today form the core of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, itself the greatest repository of modern French painting in the world.
Four meetings, 90 minutes each.
January 14 - February 4, 2016 (daytime)
https://contsturegister.smu.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=163IAH465-D
https://www.kimbellart.org/exhibition/gustave-caillebotte-painters-eye (link to Kimbell exhibition description)
Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism represents a watershed moment in the history of modern art, and for American artists in particular. After World War II, American culture emerged as a dominant force in world affairs, including the fine arts. New York, after subsuming the influence of modern European masters such as Piet Mondrian and Max Ernst who fled the European conflict, emerged as the art capital of the world, supplanting Paris and decades of French hegemony. American artists, still struggling in the first half of the 20th century to create an original American art freed from European constraints, sought solutions by invoking the existential experience of the individual, with the intent to express universal themes of existence using abstract pictorial means. These mid-century artists desired to invoke the sublime, the experience that transcends the mundane and the physical to elevate the viewer to a higher plane of consciousness. These themes of lofty grandeur connect this group to American landscape painters of the 19th century such as Frederic Church and Thomas Cole, who likewise elevated their works through awe-inspiring images of the vast expanses of the American West.
Jackson Pollock is the artist most closely associated with Abstract Expressionism, and his mural scaled drip paintings completely changed the way painting was conceived, made and interpreted. His slinging, dripping method is generally termed action painting, both to invoke the dance-like movement Pollock engaged in while working, and to distinguish his work from the color field wing of Abstract Expressionism, as practiced by such artists as Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.
Presented in conjunction with the Dallas Museum of Art exhibition Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots (November 20 – March 20, 2016), this course will focus on the works of the major Abstract Expressionist painters and sculptors, whose eschewal of imagery signaled the only time so far in American art history in which abstraction was the dominant style. In addition to the works of Pollock, Newman and Rothko, our discussion will include those of Robert Motherwell, whose series Elegy to the Spanish Republic are some of best known works of post WWII art; David Smith, whose welded metal sculptures combined industrial techniques with airy, abstract compositions; Willem de Kooning, whose slashing images from his Woman series combined gestural mark marking with recognizable features; Franz Kline, whose greatly enlarged black and white painterly slashes are reminiscent of Asian calligraphy; Clyfford Still, whose craggy flat planes of jagged color invoke the vastness of the western American landscape; Helen Frankenthaler, whose soak and stain paintings are among the first color field paintings, and Ad Reinhardt, whose near monochrome fields of slightly varied blacks test the limits of human perception. Quotations from the writings of critic Clement Greenberg will help to contextualize the approaches and works of the artists he championed; Greenberg’s attitudes had an enormous impact on the reception and acceptance of Abstract Expressionism and subsequent art.
The DMA exhibition and tour will concentrate on Pollock’s Black Paintings, made in the aftermath of his more famous drip paintings. The Black Paintings are mostly colorless, and therefore blur distinctions between painting and drawing.
Three meetings, 90 minutes each, including two on-campus discussions and a tour of the DMA special exhibition Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots. Museum and exhibition admission included.
February 25 - March 5, 2016 (daytime)
March 10 - March 19, 2016 (evening)
link to Dallas Museum of Art website exhibition description
https://www.dma.org/art/exhibitions/jackson-pollock-blind-spots
https://www.dma.org/art/exhibitions/jackson-pollock-blind-spots
Thomas Hart Benton and American Scene Painting
Painting in the United States from the Depression to the beginning of World War II is often termed American Scene or Regionalism, due to its focus on images of contemporary, but generally rural, life in America. Generally depicting farmers, industrial workers, loggers, and miners, these paintings glorified the ordinary citizen, and elevated the working classes to the status of heroes. Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975) is the artist most closely associated with the movement; his often crowded compositions, elongated figures drawn with writhing contours, and shallow pictorial space thrive with a pulsating energy that revives 16th century Mannerism updated with images of life in the heartland. Benton often worked in mural scale, and received numerous commissions for his work, including for the New School for Social Research in New York, the Missouri State Capitol Building in Jefferson City, and the Harry Truman Presidential Library in Independence. Despite beginning as an abstract painter, Benton later eschewed abstraction in favor of the representational imagery and narrative content for which he is remembered. His influence as a teacher at the Art Students League in New York ironically guided the future Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock on his way to create his enormous drip paintings, major works of American modernism. As abstract art gained ascendency in America and throughout the world, the work of Benton and other Scene painters was marginalized and fell into obscurity. Today, Benton’s work has been reconsidered by many art historians as invaluable depictions of contemporary life in early 20th century America.
In addition to Benton’s work, this course will consider the works of others also classified as Scene painters: Grant Wood (1891 – 1942), whose American Gothic is one of the most recognizable images in art history, John Steuart Curry (1897 – 1946), inspired by his strong religious training, the light-filled paintings of Edward Hopper (1882 – 1967) that are at once dryly descriptive and eerily evocative, and Texas artist Alexandre Hogue (1898 – 1994), painter of Dust Bowl images that sounded a warning about the demands of humans on natural resources.
The course will include a visit to the Amon Carter Museum to tour the special exhibition Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood (February 6 – May 1, 2016)
Two meetings: one on-campus meeting and a museum visit, 90 minutes each; museum and exhibition admission included.
March 31 - April 2, 2016 (daytime)
April 28 - April 30, 2016 (evening)
https://contsturegister.smu.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?&course=163IAH471B-D
link to Carter website exhibition description
link to Carter website exhibition description
Pop Art at the Dallas Museum of Art
November 12 - 22, 2015 (evening)
December 3 - 13, 2015 (daytime)
Incorporating digital images of artworks and classroom discussion, and concluding with a museum visit to the exhibition International Pop at the Dallas Museum of Art (October 11, 2015 – January 17, 2016), this course will explore Pop Art, a style that embraces as subject matter the every day, mass produced objects of American consumer culture. Historically, Pop Art is generally characterized as a reaction by artists against the heroic, subjective and sublime themes of Abstract Expressionist painting as practiced by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Although Pop was the dominant visual style of the 1960s in America, its roots extend back into the 1920s, when American artists were attempting to invent an indigenous modernism independent of then-dominant European precedents. In rejecting abstraction as a working method, Pop artists returned the representation of images to their artworks. Their replication of easily recognized consumer goods such as packaged supermarket foods, comic book images and monumental enlargements of common objects mirrored the way commodities are made in a factory-based culture, and are therefore metaphors of Western style industrial manufacturing, distribution, advertising, and consumption. The Pop artists’ use of images of existing objects for their work descends from the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, who selected manufactured utilitarian objects and exhibited them unaltered as his own work. Although Pop Art is usually associated with American artists such as Andy Warhol, Claus Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein, Pop is a global style, practiced by artists in many industrialized and developing countries worldwide.
The making of a Pop artwork often replicated the same commercial printing or manufacturing methods that produced the objects depicted in the artworks. Expressionist drips, thickly applied paint and other marks of the hand-made were rejected in favor of silkscreen printing, a process commonly used for the making of posters and T shirts that results in a flat, thin coat of paint, and hand painted works that replicated the appearance of mechanical printing.
Stuart Davis and Gerald Murphy are but two early modern American painters to be included in our discussion whose brightly colored, Cubist influenced paintings of urban views and consumer objects anticipated Pop. Working in the 1950s, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg incorporated American imagery and collage techniques into their often heavily impastoed pieces that share characteristics with Pop and often transcend the boundaries between painting and sculpture.
Gustave Caillebotte – Impressionist Views of Life and Leisure in Modern Paris
Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) is an often overlooked member of the group of artists known as the Impressionists, yet he was a friend, supporter and discerning collector of their works, organizer and participant in their independent exhibitions, and an important painter of modern life and leisure in his own right. His images of pleasure boaters, the boulevards of Paris, of ordinary laborers, and other scenes from everyday life are quintessential Impressionist subject matter, and his Paris Street, Rainy Day is one of the most instantly recognizable paintings in all of art history. Caillebotte occupied a unique position in fin de siècle Paris, having both the desire and means to support his fellow Impressionists by purchasing their often controversial paintings, thereby giving them much needed financial support, and by producing his own highly Realist paintings that combined traditional academic working methods with modern subjects and themes. In this course, Caillebotte’s work will be placed in the context of the sweeping changes brought about by the increasingly rapid pace of modern life in late 19th century France, and compared to the works of his fellow Impressionists Renoir, Monet, Degas, and others. In conjunction with the special exhibition Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye at the Kimbell Art Museum (November 8, 2015 to February 14, 2016), this course will explore Caillebotte’s seemingly casual yet meticulously planned paintings, his frustrated efforts to organize and administer the Impressionist group shows, as well as his enormous contribution to the French state of selections from his personal collection of Impressionist paintings that today form the core of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, itself the greatest repository of modern French painting in the world.
Gustave Caillebotte – Impressionist Views of Life and Leisure in Modern Paris
Gustave Caillebotte (1848 – 1894) is an often overlooked member of the group of artists known as the Impressionists, yet he was a friend, supporter and discerning collector of their works, organizer and participant in their independent exhibitions, and an important painter of modern life and leisure in his own right. His images of pleasure boaters, the boulevards of Paris, of ordinary laborers, and other scenes from everyday life are quintessential Impressionist subject matter, and his Paris Street, Rainy Day is one of the most instantly recognizable paintings in all of art history. Caillebotte occupied a unique position in fin de siècle Paris, having both the desire and means to support his fellow Impressionists by purchasing their often controversial paintings, thereby giving them much needed financial support, and by producing his own highly Realist paintings that combined traditional academic working methods with modern subjects and themes. In this course, Caillebotte’s work will be placed in the context of the sweeping changes brought about by the increasingly rapid pace of modern life in late 19th century France, and compared to the works of his fellow Impressionists Renoir, Monet, Degas, and others. In conjunction with the special exhibition Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter’s Eye at the Kimbell Art Museum (November 8, 2015 to February 14, 2016), this course will explore Caillebotte’s seemingly casual yet meticulously planned paintings, his frustrated efforts to organize and administer the Impressionist group shows, as well as his enormous contribution to the French state of selections from his personal collection of Impressionist paintings that today form the core of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, itself the greatest repository of modern French painting in the world.
Four meetings, 90 minutes each.
September 17 - October 8, 2015 (daytime)
October 8 - 29, 2015 (evening)
Still Life Painting – Its History and Significance from Antiquity to the Modern Era
June 11 - June 20, 2015 and June 25 - July 9, 2015
Still life artworks typically embrace common, prosaic objects as subject matter, and are generally depictions of carefully composed arrangements of small portable items such as fruit, foodstuffs, or personal items on tabletops. As a result, because the genre does not include images from history or mythology, still life is generally assigned the lowest position in the hierarchy of genres, the system used by art academies to rank the importance of artworks based on subject matter. Despite its seeming insignificance, still life is often imaginatively used by artists to record images of daily life, as a demonstration piece to showcase an artist’s painterly skills, as well as to impart a moral lesson: that life is fleeting and transient, as illustrated by the vanitas and memento mori themes that often include images of skulls, timepieces, extinguished candles, or perishable items such as flowers. In the modern era, artists enthusiastically embraced its low status to both subvert accepted academic standards and to express their own often idiosyncratic positions on the nature of art and life in the 20th century.
In conjunction with the special exhibition American Still Life, on view at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth from February 7 to August 2, 2015, this course will examine still life works from antiquity to twentieth century modernism, exploring the origins of the genre in European art as well as its uniquely American manifestations. Included in our discussion will be a category that is unique to the genre of still life known as trompe l’oeil, a hyper-realistic technique designed to fool or trick the eye.
The course will conclude with a visit to the Carter Museum to discuss works on view in the American Still Life exhibition.
Three meetings, including one visit to the Amon Carter Museum, 90 minutes each, museum and exhibition admission included.
Why Is That A Masterpiece? – Ways of interpreting and understanding great art of the modern era
January 15 - February 5, 2015 and
March 5 - 26, 2015
Have you ever wondered why some artworks, and the artists who made them, are so famous, or why they are considered to be important? Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, this course will explore works of art from the modern era to discover just why these iconic works, and their often equally iconic creators, hold such a fascination for art historians, other artists and viewers. Learn the language of art through these great works as we discuss the usage and meanings of terms such as composition, color, line, shape, volume, perspective, the picture plane and picture space; such art historical terms as the canon of art as taught in government-sponsored academies; the categorization of art known as the hierarchy of genres; and the meaning and origin of the names of art styles such as Impressionism and Cubism. The art will be placed in the historical and social context of its making as we explore the events surrounding the work’s inception and creation, and how the work was received by critics, viewers, and other artists then and now.
March 5 - 26, 2015
Have you ever wondered why some artworks, and the artists who made them, are so famous, or why they are considered to be important? Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, this course will explore works of art from the modern era to discover just why these iconic works, and their often equally iconic creators, hold such a fascination for art historians, other artists and viewers. Learn the language of art through these great works as we discuss the usage and meanings of terms such as composition, color, line, shape, volume, perspective, the picture plane and picture space; such art historical terms as the canon of art as taught in government-sponsored academies; the categorization of art known as the hierarchy of genres; and the meaning and origin of the names of art styles such as Impressionism and Cubism. The art will be placed in the historical and social context of its making as we explore the events surrounding the work’s inception and creation, and how the work was received by critics, viewers, and other artists then and now.
The concept of originality is often associated with creativity, and the success or failure of an artwork is closely tied to the artist’s knowledge, appropriation and subversion of tradition, especially in the modern era. The identity and role of the artist in society, including how the gender of both the artist and the viewer determines the interpretation and understanding of the work, are closely bound to the limitations or freedoms artists confine themselves to or re-define. The artists themselves will be given a voice with quotations from their writings and interviews as they describe their intentions and often idiosyncratic ideas about their own work and that of other artists.
Faces of Impressionism - Portraits From the Musee d'Orsay, Paris. Four Thursdays, October 2 - 23, 2014
This four part course will bring into focus some of the best known and most studied artworks of the modern era: Impressionist portraiture from the second half of the 19th century, the subject of the special exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum Faces of Impressionism: Portraiture from the Musee d'Orsay (October 19, 2014 – January 25, 2015), consisting of loans from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, largest depository of Impressionist art in the world. (https://www.kimbellart.org/exhibition/faces-impressionism-portraits-musée-d’orsay). The Impressionist artists were concerned with images of the world around them, often painted in a sketchy or unfinished-looking style, which set them apart from the Academic traditions of their more classically trained contemporaries. The special camaraderie they shared is evidenced through their independent group exhibitions set up in opposition to the official government-sponsored Salons, and in their use of each other as subjects for their often controversial paintings. Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion of the approximately 70 works included in the exhibition, we will explore Edgar Degas’ The Bellelli Family, Paul Gaugin’s Self Portrait with Yellow Christ, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Young Women at the Piano, and Edouard Manet’s Portrait of Emile Zola, as well as Impressionist portraits and populated interiors and landscapes from other museum collections. Note: this course does not include an exhibition visit to the Kimbell.
Join this four part classroom voyage through the special exhibition The Age Of Picasso And Matisse: Modern Masters From The Art Institute Of Chicago, on view at the Kimbell Art Museum October 6, 2013 – February 16, 2014. This overview of early twentieth century modernism will focus on loans from the Art Institute to the Kimbell while the Institute’s galleries are being renovated. This exhibition is not a tour, so the Kimbell will be the only venue to show these landmark works.
One Saturday, November 16, 2013, 2:00-4:00 PM
This course will focus on ten iconic modern and contemporary artworks, all supreme examples of each artist’s vision and maturity, and often marking a turning point in their respective careers and the direction of modernism. Over five meetings, we will discuss two works in each class, illustrated by high quality digital images of the work under consideration as well as others by the same artist, and each work will be set within the context of the artist’s larger body of work, and within the backdrop of modernism as a whole. This course is ideal for those who wish to take a sustained look at some of the key works of modern art.
The Age Of Bronze by Auguste Rodin is widely considered to be the first mature work by the founder of modern sculpture, and therefore occupies a pivotal place in the history of modernism. Rodin’s abandonment of academic conventions, such as narrative, and study of the actual appearance of the model led to accusations that the sculpture was cast from life, rather than modeled in clay by the artist.
Georges Seurat’sSunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte is a supreme example of the Post Impressionist style of painting known as Pointillism, for its distinctive pattern of colored dots covering the painting’s surface, and is undoubtedly one of the most famous paintings ever made. Seurat’s cool, analytical style drew heavily upon scientific theories of color and optics, and his calculated method was in marked contrast to the sketch-like, improvisational method of the Impressionists.
Still Life With Plaster Cupidby Paul Cezanne is one of the landmark works of Post Impressionism, and signals Cezanne’s desire to return to painting an emphasis on structure and geometric underpinnings, as opposed to the optical effects of Impressionist painting. His use of passage, or the conflation of one object in the painting with another, created a tension between the depiction of three-dimensional space and the flatness of the picture surface that has resonated through modernism since.
Blue Nude (Memory Of Biskra) by Henri Matisse embraced Matisse’s notion of the decorative in painting, which for him meant the inventive, subjective use of sinuous line and often non-naturalistic color to describe forms, rather than traditional perspective. The painting created a scandal when shown at the Armory Show in New York City in 1913.
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp ushered into the lexicon of art history the word “readymade,” Duchamp’s term of choice for a functional object not made by him, taken from its context as a useable object, and placed within an art gallery context, thereby transforming it into art simply by declaration of the artist. Duchamp’s choice of an ordinary porcelain urinal to be exhibited unaltered by him as an original work of art changed the conception of what an artwork can be, and the role of the artist in society.
Pablo Picasso’s Guernicais one of the most politically charged paintings in modern art history. Recording Picasso’s reaction to the German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, the mural-sized canvas employed the language of Cubism and a stark black, white and gray palette to chronicle destruction and death by one of the first uses of the airplane as a weapon of war.
Charles Sheeler’s glorification of the machine aesthetic reached a pinnacle in Rolling Power, one of six works commissioned by Fortune Magazine in 1939 on the subject of power and American technology. Dubbed Precisionism by critics because of its emphasis on the depiction of machine imagery, crisp, hard edged forms, and reliance on photography as a source for the painting, Sheeler’s work bridged the gap between representational and abstract painting.
Broadway Boogie Woogieby Piet Mondrian is the final completed work by the pioneer of abstract painting. After inventing his distinctive language of flat, primary colored planes bound by vertical and horizontal black lines, Mondrian moved from Paris, then London, to New York City to escape the ravages of the second world war, to find new inspiration in the gridded streets, bright lights and jazz music of the modern city.
Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral is one of the earliest of his drip paintings, made by dripping thinned industrial paints directly onto raw canvas lying on the floor, and a highlight of the Dallas Museum of Art collection. This technique was a breakthrough for Pollock and his work, which was dubbed by critics Abstract Expressionism, for its lack of recognizable subject matter and the existential, heroic attitude assumed by Pollock when making these works.
Campbell’s Soup Cansby Andy Warhol embraced the low imagery of popular culture as appropriate subject matter for works of art. The very ordinariness and ubiquity of Warhol’s imagery came to signify the dominance of American consumer goods and culture worldwide.
The only work on this list no longer in existence, Tilted Arc by Richard Serra was a monumental 120 foot curving steel wall commissioned by the US government to stand before a federal courthouse building in New York City. From the beginning, Serra planned the piece as a site-specific installation, regarding it as belonging only to the space for which it was designed. The resulting court case to have it removed changed how public art in the US is commissioned and installed.
Four Modern Masters will focus on the work of four of the most radical and influential artists of the modern age: Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, and Piet Mondrian. This course is ideal for those who wish to take a more sustained look at the work of these important pioneers. We will devote an entire class meeting to each of these artists, placing their work within the context of their times and within that of modernism as a whole.Auguste Rodin is widely considered to be the first modern sculptor. His frequent employment of rough facture in his finished works that reveal the workings of his hand and marks of the sculptor’s tools, rejection of narrative as an accepted genesis for the work, willingness to alter a work previously considered to be finished, and recognition of the truly three dimensional nature of sculpture in the round all revealed his departure from accepted norms and academic standards. Rodin’s realism concerned both his expression of an often profound emotional content of the figures themselves, and his belief that artists were free to devise their own standards. These concepts were revolutionary in their influence, and changed the direction of sculpture in the modern age. His use of bronze as a preferred medium for his work reaches back to antiquity, and his conception of sculpture as monument links him to the Renaissance works of Michelangelo. Major works to be discussed include his important Age Of Bronze (a highlight of the Nasher Sculpture Center collection), Burghers Of Calais, and Gates Of Hell.
IMPRESSIONISM: TRADITION AND THE BEGINNING OF MODERN ART
April 5-26, 2012
Impressionism is perhaps the most widely known and beloved of all styles in modern art, yet its acceptance when it first appeared in the 1860's was far from universal. Deliberately courting controversy by choosing the low genre of landscape, and scenes of contemporary life, the Impressionists rejected the academic strictures of traditional art, both in subject matter and technique. The Impressionist painters challenged long accepted standards of finish by applying unmixed colors directly to the canvas, often with rough brush strokes that blurred distinctions between finished work and sketch. Yet despite staging their own independent exhibitions apart from the official state sponsored Salons, some the Impressionists still sought acceptance through this more established institution, even as their own working methods and marketing strategies both changed and weakened the Salon system.
Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, this four part course will consider the works of the major, core Impressionists from the beginning of the movement through the end of the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth as the impact of these early modern works continued to influence the course of modernism. While taking a broad view of Impressionist works that are now widely dispersed in museum collections worldwide, many of the paintings discussed with be those from the special exhibition The Age Of Impressionism: Great French Paintings From The Clark, consisting of loans from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, on view at the Kimbell Art Museum, March 11 - June 17, 2012 (https://www.kimbellart.org/Exhibitions/Exhibition-Details.aspx?eid=75). The course will explore major works by the core Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Renoir and Camille Pissaro, as well as important but lesser known artists such as Gustave Caillebotte, and also investigate the works of the Realist painters Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, contemporaries and precursors of the Impressionists and major influences upon them. Also examined will be the origin and context of the word "Impressionism," as well as how the artists to whom it was applied used it to their advantage, and the critical and public reception of these important works.
MODERN AMERICAN ART IN THE JAZZ AGE
May 3-17, 2012
Two on campus digital image supplemented meetings on modern American art of the 1920s will precede a private, guided tour of the Dallas Museum of Art special exhibition Youth And Beauty: Art Of The American Twenties. The exhibition will include more than one hundred thirty paintings, sculptures and photographs by sixty five artists, notably those of Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, Gerald Murphy, and Edward Hopper.
GERALD MURPHY: MODERNISM, AMERICAN STYLE
July 10 - July 17, 2008
Displayed in a magnificent light filled building designed by Renzo Piano, the Nasher is one of the largest and finest private collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. Discover works by such integral artists from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Rodin, Picasso, and Matisse, as well as contemporary artists such as Richard Serra and David Smith.
Four Thursdays, 90 minutes each.
Masterworks of 19th Century Art – David to Van Gogh
July 10 and 12, July 31 and August 2, 2014
The early 19th century witnessed the domination of two seemingly incompatible styles of painting: Neoclassicism and Romanticism, while by mid century these traditions were being challenged by the upstart Realists and Impressionists, which ushered in the beginning of modern art. This two part course will explore major paintings by artists working during this period, moving through such diverse styles as the Neoclassicism of David, the Romanticism of Delacroix and Gericault, the Realism of Courbet and Manet, the Impressionism of Degas and Renoir, and the Post Impressionism of Seurat and Van Gogh. One meeting will focus on important paintings by these artists aided by the use of digital images in a classroom setting, while the second meeting will be held in the galleries at the Dallas Museum of Art special exhibition The Mind’s Eye: Masterworks on Paper (June 29 – October 26, 2014), dedicated to drawings, prints, watercolors, and other works on paper by these same artists, many drawn from the museum’s permanent collection and including some privately owned works. Museum and exhibition admission included, 2 sessions, 90 minutes each,
PICASSO, MATISSE AND A DIALOG OF IMAGES
Four Thursdays, March 6 -27, 2014
Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse are titanic forces in the art of the twentieth century, and like most modern artists, they actively followed and saw each other’s work. They often responded to these works through their own paintings, drawings and sculptures, and in so doing, created one of the richest visual dialogs in the history of art. These responses began around the time of their initial meeting in 1906 when the avant garde writer Gertrude Stein collected the works of both artists, and the dialog was continued by Picasso even after the death of Matisse in 1954. Through classroom discussion and aided by digital images, the course will explore the complicated and often contentious relationship between the two artists, as each would pass through periods of working with their own strengths (color and composition for Matisse, stylistic and technical variance for Picasso), and alternately invading the territory of the other in a game of aesthetic brinksmanship that challenged the other’s mastery of his craft. This dialog includes some of the most radical and progressive works in modern art, such as Matisse’s Woman With A Hat, Blue Nude and Music and Dance murals, and Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein, Three Musicians, and Mother And Child. We will trace the many points of connection and overlap in their lives, their personal triumphs and setbacks, their responses to two world wars, their exhibitions, the dealers and collectors who supported them, the acquiring of each other’s works, and what each had to say about the other.
PICASSO, MATISSE AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY MODERN ART: LOANS FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
October 10 - November 7, 2013
October 10 - November 7, 2013
January 16 - February 6, 2014
Join this four part classroom voyage through the special exhibition The Age Of Picasso And Matisse: Modern Masters From The Art Institute Of Chicago, on view at the Kimbell Art Museum October 6, 2013 – February 16, 2014. This overview of early twentieth century modernism will focus on loans from the Art Institute to the Kimbell while the Institute’s galleries are being renovated. This exhibition is not a tour, so the Kimbell will be the only venue to show these landmark works.
Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, we will explore works in the exhibition as well as those by other artists that helped define modern art in the first half of the twentieth century. Both the course and the exhibition will guide students through the major developments of Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, abstract art, Dada and Surrealism, all of which changed the direction of art history and continue to reverberate through contemporary art. The course will serve as an excellent primer to those visiting the Kimbell exhibition, as well as survey the larger context of twentieth century modern art.
Nearly 100 objects will be on view in the exhibition, including ten works each by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. On the exhibition checklist are Bathers By A River by Matisse; Mother And Child by Picasso, Golden Bird by Constantin Brancusi, part of his highly polished sculptural series of increasingly reductive images of flight; Still Life With Glass, Dice, Newspaper And Playing Card by Georges Braque, who along with Picasso, is one of the inventors of Cubism; Improvisation No. 30 by Wassily Kandinsky and Composition No. 1 (Gray Red) by Piet Mondrian, both pioneers of abstract art; and Personages With Star by Joan Miro, one of the major figures of Surrealism.
MODERN SCULPTURE AT THE NASHER
One Saturday, November 16, 2013, 2:00-4:00 PM
Encounter modern and contemporary sculpture on a guided tour in the light filled galleries of the world renowned Nasher Sculpture Center. This course will explore works from the permanent collection inside the Renzo Piano designed building, and the outdoor garden. We will also tour the special exhibition Return To Earth: Ceramic Sculpture of Lucio Fontana, Fausto Melotti, Joan Miro, Isamu Noguchi, and Pablo Picasso 1943-63, on view September 21, 2013 through January 19, 2014. Two hours, museum admission included.
THE FOCUSED GAZE: A concentrated look at ten modern art masterpieces
Five Thursdays, March 21 - April 18, 2013
This course will focus on ten iconic modern and contemporary artworks, all supreme examples of each artist’s vision and maturity, and often marking a turning point in their respective careers and the direction of modernism. Over five meetings, we will discuss two works in each class, illustrated by high quality digital images of the work under consideration as well as others by the same artist, and each work will be set within the context of the artist’s larger body of work, and within the backdrop of modernism as a whole. This course is ideal for those who wish to take a sustained look at some of the key works of modern art.
The Age Of Bronze by Auguste Rodin is widely considered to be the first mature work by the founder of modern sculpture, and therefore occupies a pivotal place in the history of modernism. Rodin’s abandonment of academic conventions, such as narrative, and study of the actual appearance of the model led to accusations that the sculpture was cast from life, rather than modeled in clay by the artist.
Georges Seurat’sSunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte is a supreme example of the Post Impressionist style of painting known as Pointillism, for its distinctive pattern of colored dots covering the painting’s surface, and is undoubtedly one of the most famous paintings ever made. Seurat’s cool, analytical style drew heavily upon scientific theories of color and optics, and his calculated method was in marked contrast to the sketch-like, improvisational method of the Impressionists.
Still Life With Plaster Cupidby Paul Cezanne is one of the landmark works of Post Impressionism, and signals Cezanne’s desire to return to painting an emphasis on structure and geometric underpinnings, as opposed to the optical effects of Impressionist painting. His use of passage, or the conflation of one object in the painting with another, created a tension between the depiction of three-dimensional space and the flatness of the picture surface that has resonated through modernism since.
Blue Nude (Memory Of Biskra) by Henri Matisse embraced Matisse’s notion of the decorative in painting, which for him meant the inventive, subjective use of sinuous line and often non-naturalistic color to describe forms, rather than traditional perspective. The painting created a scandal when shown at the Armory Show in New York City in 1913.
Fountain by Marcel Duchamp ushered into the lexicon of art history the word “readymade,” Duchamp’s term of choice for a functional object not made by him, taken from its context as a useable object, and placed within an art gallery context, thereby transforming it into art simply by declaration of the artist. Duchamp’s choice of an ordinary porcelain urinal to be exhibited unaltered by him as an original work of art changed the conception of what an artwork can be, and the role of the artist in society.
Pablo Picasso’s Guernicais one of the most politically charged paintings in modern art history. Recording Picasso’s reaction to the German bombing of the Basque town of Guernica, the mural-sized canvas employed the language of Cubism and a stark black, white and gray palette to chronicle destruction and death by one of the first uses of the airplane as a weapon of war.
Charles Sheeler’s glorification of the machine aesthetic reached a pinnacle in Rolling Power, one of six works commissioned by Fortune Magazine in 1939 on the subject of power and American technology. Dubbed Precisionism by critics because of its emphasis on the depiction of machine imagery, crisp, hard edged forms, and reliance on photography as a source for the painting, Sheeler’s work bridged the gap between representational and abstract painting.
Broadway Boogie Woogieby Piet Mondrian is the final completed work by the pioneer of abstract painting. After inventing his distinctive language of flat, primary colored planes bound by vertical and horizontal black lines, Mondrian moved from Paris, then London, to New York City to escape the ravages of the second world war, to find new inspiration in the gridded streets, bright lights and jazz music of the modern city.
Jackson Pollock’s Cathedral is one of the earliest of his drip paintings, made by dripping thinned industrial paints directly onto raw canvas lying on the floor, and a highlight of the Dallas Museum of Art collection. This technique was a breakthrough for Pollock and his work, which was dubbed by critics Abstract Expressionism, for its lack of recognizable subject matter and the existential, heroic attitude assumed by Pollock when making these works.
Campbell’s Soup Cansby Andy Warhol embraced the low imagery of popular culture as appropriate subject matter for works of art. The very ordinariness and ubiquity of Warhol’s imagery came to signify the dominance of American consumer goods and culture worldwide.
The only work on this list no longer in existence, Tilted Arc by Richard Serra was a monumental 120 foot curving steel wall commissioned by the US government to stand before a federal courthouse building in New York City. From the beginning, Serra planned the piece as a site-specific installation, regarding it as belonging only to the space for which it was designed. The resulting court case to have it removed changed how public art in the US is commissioned and installed.
FOUR MODERN MASTERS
October 25 - November 15, 2012
Four Modern Masters will focus on the work of four of the most radical and influential artists of the modern age: Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, and Piet Mondrian. This course is ideal for those who wish to take a more sustained look at the work of these important pioneers. We will devote an entire class meeting to each of these artists, placing their work within the context of their times and within that of modernism as a whole.Auguste Rodin is widely considered to be the first modern sculptor. His frequent employment of rough facture in his finished works that reveal the workings of his hand and marks of the sculptor’s tools, rejection of narrative as an accepted genesis for the work, willingness to alter a work previously considered to be finished, and recognition of the truly three dimensional nature of sculpture in the round all revealed his departure from accepted norms and academic standards. Rodin’s realism concerned both his expression of an often profound emotional content of the figures themselves, and his belief that artists were free to devise their own standards. These concepts were revolutionary in their influence, and changed the direction of sculpture in the modern age. His use of bronze as a preferred medium for his work reaches back to antiquity, and his conception of sculpture as monument links him to the Renaissance works of Michelangelo. Major works to be discussed include his important Age Of Bronze (a highlight of the Nasher Sculpture Center collection), Burghers Of Calais, and Gates Of Hell.
Although employed by Rodin as a studio assistant, Constantin Brancusi broke with Rodin’s conception of the method of making sculptural form. Brancusi’s belief that sculpture should be carved, and not modeled, as was Rodin’s method, and his search for a sculptural essence devoid of emotional expression, led him to reduce his work to simple geometric volumes and smooth, often highly polished surfaces. His tendency toward greater abstraction is exemplified by his work in series, particularly on the theme of the Kiss, Birds In Space, and portrait heads.
Pablo Picasso’s myriad styles, methods and techniques reflect his gargantuan abilities as a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and printmaker. He seemingly effortlessly mastered all manner of depicting his subjects, from highly representational to the nearly abstract. As a co-inventor (along with Georges Braque) of Cubism, his influence reached into subsequent developments in twentieth century art. Some of the works to be discussed are his Blue and Rose period paintings, the pre-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, analytical and synthetic Cubist works, papiers colles, and the politically charged Guernica.
Piet Mondrian’s flat planes of pure primary colors bounded by horizontal and vertical lines are among the first purely abstract art, and the most instantly recognizable. His paintings, writings, even the arrangement of his studio have been enormously influential on subsequent artists. We will examine his early Impressionist influenced landscapes, through his Cubist phase, on to his mature Compositions, to his final sublime pieces created during his last years in New York City.
Pablo Picasso’s myriad styles, methods and techniques reflect his gargantuan abilities as a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and printmaker. He seemingly effortlessly mastered all manner of depicting his subjects, from highly representational to the nearly abstract. As a co-inventor (along with Georges Braque) of Cubism, his influence reached into subsequent developments in twentieth century art. Some of the works to be discussed are his Blue and Rose period paintings, the pre-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, analytical and synthetic Cubist works, papiers colles, and the politically charged Guernica.
Piet Mondrian’s flat planes of pure primary colors bounded by horizontal and vertical lines are among the first purely abstract art, and the most instantly recognizable. His paintings, writings, even the arrangement of his studio have been enormously influential on subsequent artists. We will examine his early Impressionist influenced landscapes, through his Cubist phase, on to his mature Compositions, to his final sublime pieces created during his last years in New York City.
IMPRESSIONISM: TRADITION AND THE BEGINNING OF MODERN ART
April 5-26, 2012
Impressionism is perhaps the most widely known and beloved of all styles in modern art, yet its acceptance when it first appeared in the 1860's was far from universal. Deliberately courting controversy by choosing the low genre of landscape, and scenes of contemporary life, the Impressionists rejected the academic strictures of traditional art, both in subject matter and technique. The Impressionist painters challenged long accepted standards of finish by applying unmixed colors directly to the canvas, often with rough brush strokes that blurred distinctions between finished work and sketch. Yet despite staging their own independent exhibitions apart from the official state sponsored Salons, some the Impressionists still sought acceptance through this more established institution, even as their own working methods and marketing strategies both changed and weakened the Salon system.
Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, this four part course will consider the works of the major, core Impressionists from the beginning of the movement through the end of the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth as the impact of these early modern works continued to influence the course of modernism. While taking a broad view of Impressionist works that are now widely dispersed in museum collections worldwide, many of the paintings discussed with be those from the special exhibition The Age Of Impressionism: Great French Paintings From The Clark, consisting of loans from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA, on view at the Kimbell Art Museum, March 11 - June 17, 2012 (https://www.kimbellart.org/Exhibitions/Exhibition-Details.aspx?eid=75). The course will explore major works by the core Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Renoir and Camille Pissaro, as well as important but lesser known artists such as Gustave Caillebotte, and also investigate the works of the Realist painters Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, contemporaries and precursors of the Impressionists and major influences upon them. Also examined will be the origin and context of the word "Impressionism," as well as how the artists to whom it was applied used it to their advantage, and the critical and public reception of these important works.
MODERN AMERICAN ART IN THE JAZZ AGE
May 3-17, 2012
Two on campus digital image supplemented meetings on modern American art of the 1920s will precede a private, guided tour of the Dallas Museum of Art special exhibition Youth And Beauty: Art Of The American Twenties. The exhibition will include more than one hundred thirty paintings, sculptures and photographs by sixty five artists, notably those of Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Sheeler, Gerald Murphy, and Edward Hopper.
CUBISM AT THE KIMBELL
July 23, 2011
Take a private, guided tour of the summer special exhibition Picasso And Braque: The Cubist Experiment 1910-12 at the Kimbell Art Museum. This focused show will consist of 15 paintings and 20 works on paper made during a period of intense collaboration between the Cubist masters as they revolutionized the development of Western art through radical departures from accepted norms of representation in the Analytical phase of Cubism. This course will be held in the galleries of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Admission included.
THE ART OF COLLAGE: ITS HISTORY AND MEANING
Feb. 24 - Mar 10, 2011
In this three part course, the twentieth century technique of collage will be explored and interpreted. Beginning with the Cubists’ use of pasted papers (papier colle), they as well as other artists from diverse backgrounds began to employ this quick and highly inventive method of making art. Through the use of printed materials such as photographs and tromp l’oeil papers, artists quickly realized and capitalized on the multiple associations of this method, which included political satire as well as works that questioned accepted notions of perception. Collage can incorporate a variety of materials, including anything from other art to discarded found items.
Cubist artists such as Picasso and Braque often drew or painted on the collage after pasting the cut papers. The Dadaists, employing the technique of photomontage (cropped and pasted photographs from diverse sources), made satirical pieces critical of Nazi Germany, often incorporating text from newspapers to create bizarre and unsettling works that challenged the accepted veracity of the photograph as an objective record of perceptual vision. Later, the Surrealists juxtaposed images in bizarre combinations to invoke dreams and unconscious meaning. The Abstract Expressionists, Pop and abstract artists all used collage either as a method of study for larger works, or as finished works in themselves. Many contemporary artists use the concept of collage to make works in more traditional media such as oil painting or metal sculpture.
An optional third meeting will be offered to those who wish to attend a session to make their own collages.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: MID TO LATE CENTURY (ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM; JASPER JOHNS AND ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG; POP ART; MINIMALISM, CONCEPTUAL ART AND EARTHWORKS)
Mar 24 - Apr 14, 2011
Through classroom discussion and the use of digital images, this four part course will explore and discuss the major artists and movements of the second half of the twentieth century.
Many European modern art masters who fled to the U.S. to escape the destruction of World War II exerted a sustained influence on their American counterparts. As America emerged from the war years a superpower, American artists were poised like never before to dominate the art world. With the rise of Abstract Expressionism, New York City supplanted Paris as the world’s art capital. Painters as diverse as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and the sculptor David Smith inherited the influence of the subconscious dream world of the Surrealists and the utopian, abstract vision of Piet Mondrian. The painters' heroically scaled canvases invoking vast pictorial spaces while recording the movements of the painter’s progress in making the work emphasized an existential view of contemporary life.
Following the heyday of mural scaled painting by the Abstract Expressionists, the works of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg returned imagery to American art, embracing common vernacular subject matter. Their work belongs to no specific movement, yet incorporates attitudes and techniques of preceding styles such as Dada and Cubism, and pointed in the direction of Pop Art. Johns paintings of familiar American motifs such as flags, targets and numbers are ironically ambiguous and confound a reading of the traditional pictorial space, while Rauschenberg’s collage approach and mastery of diverse materials are a metaphor for our media-dominated culture.
Pop Art is the most distinctly American style of the twentieth century, in that it embraces American consumer culture of mass produced items, often incorporating humor in its choice of the mundane and ordinary as subject matter. Andy Warhol’s repeating images of Campbell’s soup cans and Marilyn Monroe mirror the mass overload of sensory data in contemporary life, while Roy Lichtenstein’s comic book paintings blurred distinctions between high art and commonplace imagery.
Minimal Art, while coexistent with Pop, is visually and conceptually at an opposite pole. Emphasizing geometry and the purely abstract, much Minimal work is industrial, mathematical and highly self-referential. Donald Judd designed rigorously precise works made of industrial, non-traditional materials that were manufactured by others, while Dan Flavin utilized ordinary florescent lighting to redefine the viewer’s experience of the object and its surrounding space. Conceptual art denied the validity of the art object, placing value instead on the idea of a work of art rather than the making of a physical piece. Sol Lewitt, whose Notes on Conceptual Art are among the landmark writings of contemporary art, began making Wall Drawings in the late 60's, artworks installed by assistants directly onto the walls of buildings according to detailed written instructions. Earth Works or Land Art are often environmentally scaled works placed in remote locations far from cities and outside the typical realm of the art gallery or museum space. Robert Smithson applied simple geometry to massive, site specific works made of dirt and rock by earth moving equipment.
MODERN ART FOR A MODERN AMERICA
January 28 - February 18, 2010
This course will focus on the painting and sculpture of American artists in the modern age. Beginning with colonial painting to briefly establish context, the course will chart the development of the visual arts in the U.S., focusing on the shock of the Armory Show, the 1913 exhibition of modern art that alerted many American artists and the public to advanced developments in Europe; art between the wars, and post WW II art, the period in which American art began to dominate the world stage with Abstract Expressionism, and New York became the center of the art world. The course will conclude with the works of artists whose post modern concepts often reflect their immigrant roots or minority status, and cross genres outside traditional boundaries.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY - BEGINNINGS TO MID CENTURY (LATE IMPRESSIONISM AND FAUVISM, CUBISM, DADA AND SURREALISM, AND ABSTRACT ART)
September 9 - 30, 2010
Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, the major modern works and artists of the first half of the twentieth century will be presented and compared in this four part course. The pace of change and invention in the visual arts was at its peak during this period, as artists experimented with new techniques, materials, and attitudes toward the greatly expanded potentialities of painting and sculpture. The course will show that, while many of these movements are often viewed as rigid and sequential, their borders are in fact more fluid, as they overlapped and competed with each other, and that the artists themselves changed approaches and styles frequently.
This course will begin with an exploration of the late works of artists generally associated with nineteenth century modernism, but who produced works of significance and lasting influence at the end of their careers in the twentieth century and whose lives overlapped such early twentieth century movements as Cubism and the beginning of abstract art. The late, mature works of Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin, usually associated with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, will be recontextualized and shown as anticipating the works and thought of later twentieth century art. This period overlaps Fauvism, the first major style of the twentieth century, in which the "wild beasts," led by Henri Matisse, painted canvases that relied on bright, non-naturalistic color alone to describe objects and structure pictorial space.
The tendency toward the purely abstract is the most distinctive legacy of twentieth century visual art, which succeeded in divorcing art from the world of fidelity to nature and freed artists to explore the limits of their creativity. Claiming a deeply spiritual aspect to their work, artists such as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich pioneered the use of color and form to completely abstract ends as carriers of meaning that are broadly universal and specifically modern.
Cubism is the most radical and influential of all twentieth century movements. The works of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso questioned the very nature of pictorial and sculptural space and challenged assumptions about art held since the Renaissance by dissolving contours of objects, the distinctions between objects and the surrounding space, and altering the role of the viewer in interpreting and understanding their work. These artists’ invention of papier colle and collage introduced mixed media and a sly wit into art, expressing the heterogenous nature of modern life. The works of other important Cubists, such as Juan Gris and Jacques Lipchitz, will also be analyzed.
The iconoclastic movements Dada and Surrealism challenged the established norms of society through anti-art performances and objects. Marcel Duchamp, whose readymades (ordinary objects chosen by Duchamp to be exhibited as art) profoundly altered the role of the artist, spawned diverse movements whose repercussions are still being explored by contemporary artists. Surrealism overthrew the dominance of perception as the only source for visual art by incorporating dreams, the subconscious, and free association as material. The works of Rene Magritte, Joan Miro and others explore the playfulness, childlike simplicity, and often bizarre juxtapositions of the world of the imagination.
FOUR MODERN MASTERS
March 30 - April 20, 2009
Four Modern Masters will focus on the work of four of the most radical and influential artists of the twentieth century: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Marcel Duchamp. This course is ideal for those who wish to take a more sustained look at the work of these important pioneers. We will devote an entire class meeting to each of these artists, placing their work within the context of their times and within that of modernism as a whole.
Picasso’s myriad styles, methods and techniques reflect his gargantuan abilities as a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and printmaker. He seemingly effortlessly mastered all manner of depicting his subjects, from highly representational to the nearly abstract. Some of the works to be discussed are his Blue and Rose period paintings, the pre-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, analytical and synthetic Cubist works, and the politically charged Guernica.
Matisse’s marriage of sinuous line and saturated color with images of the human figure, still life and landscape redefined representational painting and sculpture, and solidified the artist’s role in determining the autonomy of the art object. The infamous Blue Nude, the Back reliefs, and his late paper cut outs will be included.
Mondrian’s flat planes of pure primary colors bounded by horizontal and vertical lines are among the first purely abstract art, and the most instantly recognizable. His paintings, writings, even the arrangement of his studio have been enormously influential on subsequent artists. We will examine his early Impressionist influenced landscapes, through his Cubist phase, on to his mature Compositions, to his last sublime pieces created during his last years in New York City.
Duchamp’s Readymades changed forever the definition of the art object, even as his iconoclasm challenged the prevailing conception of the role of the artist in contemporary society. Viewed will be his early paintings such as Nude Descending a Staircase, Readymades Fountain and Bicycle Wheel, the enigmatic Large Glass, through to his last and secret work The Illuminating Gas.
MODERN SCULPTURE IN THE CITY
October 22 - November 12, 2009
In this four part course, we will investigate the history of modern sculpture, beginning with the works of Auguste Rodin, in two on campus classroom meetings. Two other meetings will be devoted to field trips to the Nasher Sculpture Center to view and discuss the permanent collection, and to the Meadows Museum on the SMU campus to visit the reinstallation of the museum's collection of modern and contemporary sculpture, including the recent acquisition of Sho, a monumental outdoor work by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa.
July 23, 2011
Take a private, guided tour of the summer special exhibition Picasso And Braque: The Cubist Experiment 1910-12 at the Kimbell Art Museum. This focused show will consist of 15 paintings and 20 works on paper made during a period of intense collaboration between the Cubist masters as they revolutionized the development of Western art through radical departures from accepted norms of representation in the Analytical phase of Cubism. This course will be held in the galleries of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Admission included.
THE ART OF COLLAGE: ITS HISTORY AND MEANING
Feb. 24 - Mar 10, 2011
In this three part course, the twentieth century technique of collage will be explored and interpreted. Beginning with the Cubists’ use of pasted papers (papier colle), they as well as other artists from diverse backgrounds began to employ this quick and highly inventive method of making art. Through the use of printed materials such as photographs and tromp l’oeil papers, artists quickly realized and capitalized on the multiple associations of this method, which included political satire as well as works that questioned accepted notions of perception. Collage can incorporate a variety of materials, including anything from other art to discarded found items.
Cubist artists such as Picasso and Braque often drew or painted on the collage after pasting the cut papers. The Dadaists, employing the technique of photomontage (cropped and pasted photographs from diverse sources), made satirical pieces critical of Nazi Germany, often incorporating text from newspapers to create bizarre and unsettling works that challenged the accepted veracity of the photograph as an objective record of perceptual vision. Later, the Surrealists juxtaposed images in bizarre combinations to invoke dreams and unconscious meaning. The Abstract Expressionists, Pop and abstract artists all used collage either as a method of study for larger works, or as finished works in themselves. Many contemporary artists use the concept of collage to make works in more traditional media such as oil painting or metal sculpture.
An optional third meeting will be offered to those who wish to attend a session to make their own collages.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: MID TO LATE CENTURY (ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM; JASPER JOHNS AND ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG; POP ART; MINIMALISM, CONCEPTUAL ART AND EARTHWORKS)
Mar 24 - Apr 14, 2011
Through classroom discussion and the use of digital images, this four part course will explore and discuss the major artists and movements of the second half of the twentieth century.
Many European modern art masters who fled to the U.S. to escape the destruction of World War II exerted a sustained influence on their American counterparts. As America emerged from the war years a superpower, American artists were poised like never before to dominate the art world. With the rise of Abstract Expressionism, New York City supplanted Paris as the world’s art capital. Painters as diverse as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and the sculptor David Smith inherited the influence of the subconscious dream world of the Surrealists and the utopian, abstract vision of Piet Mondrian. The painters' heroically scaled canvases invoking vast pictorial spaces while recording the movements of the painter’s progress in making the work emphasized an existential view of contemporary life.
Following the heyday of mural scaled painting by the Abstract Expressionists, the works of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg returned imagery to American art, embracing common vernacular subject matter. Their work belongs to no specific movement, yet incorporates attitudes and techniques of preceding styles such as Dada and Cubism, and pointed in the direction of Pop Art. Johns paintings of familiar American motifs such as flags, targets and numbers are ironically ambiguous and confound a reading of the traditional pictorial space, while Rauschenberg’s collage approach and mastery of diverse materials are a metaphor for our media-dominated culture.
Pop Art is the most distinctly American style of the twentieth century, in that it embraces American consumer culture of mass produced items, often incorporating humor in its choice of the mundane and ordinary as subject matter. Andy Warhol’s repeating images of Campbell’s soup cans and Marilyn Monroe mirror the mass overload of sensory data in contemporary life, while Roy Lichtenstein’s comic book paintings blurred distinctions between high art and commonplace imagery.
Minimal Art, while coexistent with Pop, is visually and conceptually at an opposite pole. Emphasizing geometry and the purely abstract, much Minimal work is industrial, mathematical and highly self-referential. Donald Judd designed rigorously precise works made of industrial, non-traditional materials that were manufactured by others, while Dan Flavin utilized ordinary florescent lighting to redefine the viewer’s experience of the object and its surrounding space. Conceptual art denied the validity of the art object, placing value instead on the idea of a work of art rather than the making of a physical piece. Sol Lewitt, whose Notes on Conceptual Art are among the landmark writings of contemporary art, began making Wall Drawings in the late 60's, artworks installed by assistants directly onto the walls of buildings according to detailed written instructions. Earth Works or Land Art are often environmentally scaled works placed in remote locations far from cities and outside the typical realm of the art gallery or museum space. Robert Smithson applied simple geometry to massive, site specific works made of dirt and rock by earth moving equipment.
MODERN ART FOR A MODERN AMERICA
January 28 - February 18, 2010
This course will focus on the painting and sculpture of American artists in the modern age. Beginning with colonial painting to briefly establish context, the course will chart the development of the visual arts in the U.S., focusing on the shock of the Armory Show, the 1913 exhibition of modern art that alerted many American artists and the public to advanced developments in Europe; art between the wars, and post WW II art, the period in which American art began to dominate the world stage with Abstract Expressionism, and New York became the center of the art world. The course will conclude with the works of artists whose post modern concepts often reflect their immigrant roots or minority status, and cross genres outside traditional boundaries.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY - BEGINNINGS TO MID CENTURY (LATE IMPRESSIONISM AND FAUVISM, CUBISM, DADA AND SURREALISM, AND ABSTRACT ART)
September 9 - 30, 2010
Through the use of digital images and classroom discussion, the major modern works and artists of the first half of the twentieth century will be presented and compared in this four part course. The pace of change and invention in the visual arts was at its peak during this period, as artists experimented with new techniques, materials, and attitudes toward the greatly expanded potentialities of painting and sculpture. The course will show that, while many of these movements are often viewed as rigid and sequential, their borders are in fact more fluid, as they overlapped and competed with each other, and that the artists themselves changed approaches and styles frequently.
This course will begin with an exploration of the late works of artists generally associated with nineteenth century modernism, but who produced works of significance and lasting influence at the end of their careers in the twentieth century and whose lives overlapped such early twentieth century movements as Cubism and the beginning of abstract art. The late, mature works of Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin, usually associated with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, will be recontextualized and shown as anticipating the works and thought of later twentieth century art. This period overlaps Fauvism, the first major style of the twentieth century, in which the "wild beasts," led by Henri Matisse, painted canvases that relied on bright, non-naturalistic color alone to describe objects and structure pictorial space.
The tendency toward the purely abstract is the most distinctive legacy of twentieth century visual art, which succeeded in divorcing art from the world of fidelity to nature and freed artists to explore the limits of their creativity. Claiming a deeply spiritual aspect to their work, artists such as Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich pioneered the use of color and form to completely abstract ends as carriers of meaning that are broadly universal and specifically modern.
Cubism is the most radical and influential of all twentieth century movements. The works of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso questioned the very nature of pictorial and sculptural space and challenged assumptions about art held since the Renaissance by dissolving contours of objects, the distinctions between objects and the surrounding space, and altering the role of the viewer in interpreting and understanding their work. These artists’ invention of papier colle and collage introduced mixed media and a sly wit into art, expressing the heterogenous nature of modern life. The works of other important Cubists, such as Juan Gris and Jacques Lipchitz, will also be analyzed.
The iconoclastic movements Dada and Surrealism challenged the established norms of society through anti-art performances and objects. Marcel Duchamp, whose readymades (ordinary objects chosen by Duchamp to be exhibited as art) profoundly altered the role of the artist, spawned diverse movements whose repercussions are still being explored by contemporary artists. Surrealism overthrew the dominance of perception as the only source for visual art by incorporating dreams, the subconscious, and free association as material. The works of Rene Magritte, Joan Miro and others explore the playfulness, childlike simplicity, and often bizarre juxtapositions of the world of the imagination.
FOUR MODERN MASTERS
March 30 - April 20, 2009
Four Modern Masters will focus on the work of four of the most radical and influential artists of the twentieth century: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Marcel Duchamp. This course is ideal for those who wish to take a more sustained look at the work of these important pioneers. We will devote an entire class meeting to each of these artists, placing their work within the context of their times and within that of modernism as a whole.
Picasso’s myriad styles, methods and techniques reflect his gargantuan abilities as a painter, draftsman, sculptor, and printmaker. He seemingly effortlessly mastered all manner of depicting his subjects, from highly representational to the nearly abstract. Some of the works to be discussed are his Blue and Rose period paintings, the pre-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, analytical and synthetic Cubist works, and the politically charged Guernica.
Matisse’s marriage of sinuous line and saturated color with images of the human figure, still life and landscape redefined representational painting and sculpture, and solidified the artist’s role in determining the autonomy of the art object. The infamous Blue Nude, the Back reliefs, and his late paper cut outs will be included.
Mondrian’s flat planes of pure primary colors bounded by horizontal and vertical lines are among the first purely abstract art, and the most instantly recognizable. His paintings, writings, even the arrangement of his studio have been enormously influential on subsequent artists. We will examine his early Impressionist influenced landscapes, through his Cubist phase, on to his mature Compositions, to his last sublime pieces created during his last years in New York City.
Duchamp’s Readymades changed forever the definition of the art object, even as his iconoclasm challenged the prevailing conception of the role of the artist in contemporary society. Viewed will be his early paintings such as Nude Descending a Staircase, Readymades Fountain and Bicycle Wheel, the enigmatic Large Glass, through to his last and secret work The Illuminating Gas.
MODERN SCULPTURE IN THE CITY
October 22 - November 12, 2009
In this four part course, we will investigate the history of modern sculpture, beginning with the works of Auguste Rodin, in two on campus classroom meetings. Two other meetings will be devoted to field trips to the Nasher Sculpture Center to view and discuss the permanent collection, and to the Meadows Museum on the SMU campus to visit the reinstallation of the museum's collection of modern and contemporary sculpture, including the recent acquisition of Sho, a monumental outdoor work by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa.
MODERN SCULPTURE: FROM RODIN TO THE NASHER
June 5 - June 19, 2008
June 5 - June 19, 2008
The course will begin with Auguste Rodin, widely considered to be the first modern sculptor, and trace the development of sculpture since his work and career. Discussion will center on how modern sculpture changed focus from an academic discipline to one that emphasized the individual aspirations of the artists themselves. We will utilize high quality digital images in the classroom, and discuss actual works by the artists in the permanent collection of the Nasher. Admission included.
3 Th, 6:30-8:30 p.m. (6/12-6/26) Two class meetings held on the SMU campus; the third offers a private tour of the Nasher Sculpture Center in the Dallas arts district.
GERALD MURPHY: MODERNISM, AMERICAN STYLE
July 10 - July 17, 2008
Held in the galleries of the Dallas Museum of Art, this course examines the life and work of Gerald Murphy, an expatriate American whose bold, colorful paintings of American subject matter were made under the influence of Cubists such as Picasso and Braque. Visit the special exhibition Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy, which includes all known surviving works by Murphy as well as works by Murphy's contemporaries Picasso, Braque, Gris, and Leger. In 1960, The Dallas Museum of Contemporary Arts included Murphy's work in a group exhibition of overlooked early American modernists, and is thus directly responsible for the revival of his recognition as an important contributor to the development of modern art in America. His work is now regarded as anticipating American Pop Art. Admission included.
MODERN ART AND THE SOCIETE ANONYME
June 21 - July 12, 2007 (skip July 5)
Explore the collection of the Societe Anonyme, the first museum devoted exclusively to modern art in America. Founded in 1920 by Katherine Dreier (nine years before the Museum of Modern Art in New York), the Societe was devoted to the promotion and exhibition of the most radical and modern works available. With the able assistance of artist Marcel Duchamp, the Societe showed works by some of the artists now recognized as among the most important in the modern era, including Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kurt Schwitters, and Duchamp himself. The collection is comprised of works by more than one hundred artists, and now belongs to the Yale University Art Galleries. We will visit the European galleries at the DMA one visit, the modern American galleries the second visit, and the special exhibition itself on the third and final visit.
FIFTY MODERN ART MASTERPIECES EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW
April 4 - May 2, 2005
April 18 - May 16, 2006
September 28 - October 26, 2006
February 8 - March 8, 2007
September 20 - October 18, 2007
March 27 - May 1, 2008
September 11 - October 16, 2008
Explore fifty of the most important and best known works in the history of modern art. Through richly illustrated classroom discussions, examine the work of modernist icons such as Manet, Monet, Picasso, Matisse, Pollock and Warhol, and such major movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism.
UNDERSTANDING MODERN ART Section A
February 10 - March 3, 2005
September 8 - September 29, 2005
February 2 - February 23, 2006
Experience modern works by acknowledged masters directly in the galleries of the Dallas Museum of Art. This course will cover works by the early moderns, such as Degas and Courbet, and continue through roughly 1945. Works by European and American artists will be emphasized.
UNDERSTANDING MODERN ART Section B
March 10 - March 31, 2005
October 13 - November 3, 2005
Continue your experience of discussing modern works of art in the contemporary section of this course, world art made since 1945. Held in the contemporary galleries and sculpture garden at the Dallas Museum of Art, this course will allow students to directly experience the works to be discussed, seeing them in context with other contemporary art.
NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER TOUR
May 12, 2005
April 30, 2005
October 6, 2005
October 8, 2005
April 1, 2006
November 4, 2006
March 31, 2007
October 20, 2007
MODERN ART AND THE SOCIETE ANONYME
June 21 - July 12, 2007 (skip July 5)
Explore the collection of the Societe Anonyme, the first museum devoted exclusively to modern art in America. Founded in 1920 by Katherine Dreier (nine years before the Museum of Modern Art in New York), the Societe was devoted to the promotion and exhibition of the most radical and modern works available. With the able assistance of artist Marcel Duchamp, the Societe showed works by some of the artists now recognized as among the most important in the modern era, including Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Kurt Schwitters, and Duchamp himself. The collection is comprised of works by more than one hundred artists, and now belongs to the Yale University Art Galleries. We will visit the European galleries at the DMA one visit, the modern American galleries the second visit, and the special exhibition itself on the third and final visit.
FIFTY MODERN ART MASTERPIECES EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW
April 4 - May 2, 2005
April 18 - May 16, 2006
September 28 - October 26, 2006
February 8 - March 8, 2007
September 20 - October 18, 2007
March 27 - May 1, 2008
September 11 - October 16, 2008
Explore fifty of the most important and best known works in the history of modern art. Through richly illustrated classroom discussions, examine the work of modernist icons such as Manet, Monet, Picasso, Matisse, Pollock and Warhol, and such major movements as Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism.
UNDERSTANDING MODERN ART Section A
February 10 - March 3, 2005
September 8 - September 29, 2005
February 2 - February 23, 2006
Experience modern works by acknowledged masters directly in the galleries of the Dallas Museum of Art. This course will cover works by the early moderns, such as Degas and Courbet, and continue through roughly 1945. Works by European and American artists will be emphasized.
UNDERSTANDING MODERN ART Section B
March 10 - March 31, 2005
October 13 - November 3, 2005
Continue your experience of discussing modern works of art in the contemporary section of this course, world art made since 1945. Held in the contemporary galleries and sculpture garden at the Dallas Museum of Art, this course will allow students to directly experience the works to be discussed, seeing them in context with other contemporary art.
NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER TOUR
May 12, 2005
April 30, 2005
October 6, 2005
October 8, 2005
April 1, 2006
November 4, 2006
March 31, 2007
October 20, 2007
Displayed in a magnificent light filled building designed by Renzo Piano, the Nasher is one of the largest and finest private collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. Discover works by such integral artists from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as Rodin, Picasso, and Matisse, as well as contemporary artists such as Richard Serra and David Smith.
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