ARTH 388 Narration and Art

• Tuesdays, 2:45 - 5:30 pm
• Instructor: Tim Chandler

Narratives have served a crucial role in both the creation of art and in art history because the process or action of telling a story is one of the simplest ways to engage an audience. This effect is studied in literary criticism through narratology, which focuses on the function and structure of narratives and how their audience perceives them. In the visual arts, one of the most powerful ways of constructing a narrative around an artist or artwork is through the medium of biography, which has been a pillar of art historical writing since the genesis of the discipline. This course will look at the various ways that biography and the visual arts have intersected: In books, in art historical texts, in artworks, in art criticism, in film, and in museology. In studying this array of media, we will tease out the relationship between storytelling and the visual arts and discuss themes and topics such as mythmaking, power, resistance, and world-building. In this course, students can expect to develop frameworks for discussing artworks through literary and discourse analysis, incorporate creative writing into academic work, and familiarize themselves with Critical Studies in Artist Biography.