ARTH 202-B Perspectives of Art History

• Thursdays, 11:45 am-2:30 pm
• Instructor: Dr. Julia Skelly

ARTH 202 will be a crucial foundation for students interested in, and/or majoring in art history, as it will cover a wide range of canonical (“important”/famous) artworks produced in the Renaissance period, Baroque period, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, and twentieth century. The course will illuminate the fact that there is more than one canon: there is the traditional art historical canon (Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Picasso), but also the modernist canon, the contemporary canon, the feminist art canon, the queer art canon, and (more recently) the global art canon. The survey course, by definition, is not exhaustive; there will always be decisions made based on the instructor’s tastes, methodologies and conscious or unconscious biases. This aspect of art history and the survey course will be foregrounded throughout the term in order to grapple with the fact that the canon is not inevitable or natural, but rather is a human-made construct based on subjective tastes. With that in mind, we will discuss many white male canonical artists, but we will depart from the traditional canon by also examining works by female artists, artists of colour, nonbinary artists and trans artists. The course will help students learn how to undertake productive formal (visual) analysis in order to support thesis statements (arguments) about artworks. Ultimately, it is necessary to understand how art history is constructed as a discipline in order to deconstruct it from a range of perspectives, including feminist, anti-racist and post-colonial perspectives.