Art History Survey II: Renaissance to Contemporary Art

Summer Session 2017

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Course Details

Southwestern Community College District, Chula Vista, CA
School of Arts and Communication, Visual Arts Department

This course is a survey of the visual arts from Renaissance to the Modern Era. Emphasis is placed on the various aesthetic approaches, philosophies and artistic orientations around the world in historical and contemporary perspectives. This course is intended for humanities majors and all students interested in art and/or art history. This class looks at a series of argumentative strategies within art and visual culture. Meant to serve as a primer to some of the contemporary discourses on art, the class will focus on the various ways to understand art through codes of representation and formalism, as well as how its interpretation varies according to the historical context in which it is articulated. The significance attached to such interpretations not only depends on the artist’s intentions but also by society, politics, tradition and economics. The class then will analyze competing modes of interpretation and methodologies of meaning-making that can be applied to visual culture.