Nicole Boyd

Open, Seminar—Spring

ARTH 3115

How did Baroque viewers engage with and view Baroque art? Often, these interactions were substantially shaped by the environment where the spectatorial encounter took place. This seminar will contextualize a wide range of aesthetic objects in the social spaces where they would have been viewed and/or used in 17th-century Europe. Classes will explore topics including: the interaction between altarpieces, church architecture, and Christian rituals of devotion; the experience of decorations and furnishings in specialized areas of palaces and villas (e.g. audience chambers, grand halls, studioli, gardens, grottoes); the display of collectables in cabinets of curiosity and the provocation of “marvel”; and the staging of public sculptures, monuments, and festivals in court cities. Consideration will also be given to technology (e.g. telescopes, microscopes), images (e.g. maps, globes ), and texts (e.g. travelogues) which afforded Baroque people access to distant or foreign worlds. Together, we will adopt a mode of interpreting artworks and objects that not only takes into account readily apparent elements of form and design, but also attends to matters of space, embodiment, and cultural practice. We will meditate on the difficulties of representing these historically-contingent and site-specific conditions of spectatorship in the present, addressing modern scholarly and museological practices with a critical eye. Throughout the semester, students will work towards developing their own exhibition revolving around a particular “Baroque space" and its objects. The course will also involve visits to nearby museums and galleries.

Faculty

Nicole Boyd

Open, Lecture—Fall

ARTH 2240

In The Ontology of the Photographic Image (1945), the film critic André Bazin argues that artists active before the invention of photography were “obsessed” with the accurate replication of reality. He charts an evolution from the 15th century, when perspective was harnessed to form “complete imitations” of the natural world, to the 17th century, when “realist” painters were “tortured” by the “immobility” of their images. Bazin’s timeline of artistic practice mirrors a widely held perspective on the character of early modern European art: “naturalism”—an approach to representation concerned with the faithful reproduction of nature—is commonly taken for granted as an inherent quality of painting and sculpture of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, something which marked a linear transition from the pre-modern into the early modern. In this course, we will think beyond this conception of periodization and stylistic evolution. We will consider the many faces of naturalism in European painting and sculpture from the late 14th century through the 17th century, asking: To what extent did early modern artists use nature as a model in their works? What expressive, rhetorical, or practical ends did embracing naturalism (or abandoning it) serve? And how did spectators of the time react to naturalism in art? Lectures will harness case studies from both northern and southern Europe, and put the works of canonical artists (e.g. Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Diego Velázquez) alongside lesser known figures. Major topics will include: the manipulation of technologies like perspective and oil paint; “scientific” representations of the nature by Italian and Netherlandish painters; approaches to rendering the human body; still-lifes and portraits by women painters; discourse on imitation in 17th-century art theory and practice; the relationship between naturalism and conceptions of foreignness; the study of “unseen” nature through microscopes, telescopes, and navigation; and the creation of “alternate realities” in churches, theaters, and Wunderkammern.

Faculty

Nicole Boyd