Provost’s General Education Development Program Competition, 2005

 

Name(s) and Academic Title(s) of Principle Investigator(s)

     Michael Orwicz, Associate Professor of Art History, Michael.Orwicz@UConn.edu

     Robin Greeley, Associate Professor of Art History, Robin.Greeley@UConn.edu

 

Title: Introduction to Western Art II: The Renaissance to the Present, A World Perspective

Sponsor: Department of Art & Art History

 

Course Format:  100-level undergraduate lecture course. Designed for approximately 125 students, but scalable upward to 275 students, depending on TA support for grading and sections. The 3-credit course will be taught weekly in two lecture periods of 50 minutes each, and one discussion section of 50 minutes.  Grading will  be based on essay-format exams, short written assignments and discussion participation. New WebCT and digitalized imaging technologies (ArtStor, digital image scans, etc.) will be introduced to enhance classroom instruction and student study capabilities.

 

Course Objective: This course examines the development of Western visual arts within a global perspective. It explores transformations in the forms, and the social, political and cultural functions of visual culture, in relation to the West’s fundamental interconnection with societies, economies and cultures, from the 15th to the 21st centuries.

            Art history departments across the U.S. have long been plagued by the problem of how to update the outmoded ‘great masters’ approach to surveys of Western art. Solutions have ranged from presenting a thematic rather than chronological survey, to a ‘world’ approach in which a variety of  non-European artistic traditions get a far too brief look-in alongside Western art. These approaches, however, consistently neglect a strong address to an essential aspect of Western culture: that it is inextricably linked to “its others,” and that definitions of ‘Western’ culture necessarily exist only in relation to its ‘non-Western’ counterparts. This course proposes therefore to rewrite the Western survey from a multicultural perspective. Critically examining key traditions of visual art, it focuses on the interactions –dependences, influences, mutualities—by which ‘non-Western’ cultures shaped ‘Western’ art. Our aim is to introduce students to the analysis of the historical past as a means of understanding contemporary issues, conflicts and connections in a global perspective.

            In addition to lectures, this team-taught course also seeks to institute discussion sections and to utilize new web-based digital imaging services (ArtStor, etc.) to provide a much enhanced pedagogical environment (no UConn art history courses currently use either pedagogical tool).

 

Relation to General Education Goals: This course addresses the following General Education components: Group 1: Arts and Humanities, and Group 4/International: Multiculturalism and Diversity. Addressing both components simultaneously is, in fact, an integral aspect of the course’s approach. There are no prerequisites. Through lectures, discussion sections and short written assignments, students will engage critically with the various practices and processes of visual representation as they have intersected with diverse historical, social and political conditions. Rather than artificially separating and opposing the cultural development of the ‘West’ to the category of ‘non-West,’ this course investigates their historical interdependence.

 

Course description and rationale: This course proposes a thorough revamping of the traditional Art History survey of Western Art from the 15th to the 21st centuries (taught here at UConn as ARTH 138).  Beginning with 1492, which initiated a truly global world history, we will look at how key international episodes of cultural and social interaction have contributed to shaping Western art production. These include, among others, the growth of maritime trade and international banking in Renaissance Italy; Dutch trade in the East Indies; Spanish colonization of the New World; the slave trade and its various cultural manifestations; the European “Age of Empire” and its effects on Enlightenment humanism; Manifest Destiny and U.S. landscape; Modernism and cultural globalization. The course will examine how these diverse economic and social interactions endowed the visual arts with a range of cultural and political functions and meanings, and contributed to transformations in their forms, structures and in their very conceptions as art objects. We will look therefore at changes in the relationship between artistic perception and production, and the various technologies of expansion and cultural interaction. Thus, the great artistic achievements of Renaissance and Baroque Europe will be considered within the context of  growing European dependence on New World resources to feed the growth of capitalism; the art of the Reformation-Counter Reformation is considered in light of religious wars waged in Europe, Asia and the Americas.  Similarly, Picasso’s seminal development of Cubism – and its radical restructuring of Western visual perceptions-- cannot be understood outside of his appropriation of African cultural forms and the colonial process through which it emerged.  Likewise, we will explore how African, Egyptian and Caribbean artists’ appropriations of European Surrealism as an anti-colonial maneuver offered counter-strategies to imperialism which,  in turn, affected European artistic and political practices.

            What this course intends, therefore, is not simply a catalogue of historical connections or visual interpretations of non-West by West (or vice versa). Rather, it investigates categories of thought and bodies of knowledge as they are fundamentally shaped by such cultural interactions. The aim of the course will thus not be merely to counter Western stereotypes about the ‘other,’ but rather to understand ourselves --and our multicultural heritage-- through our thinking about other cultures.

            To provide a balanced, scholarly approach to often volatile issues, a range of texts will be used. Among them: E. Sullivan, "European Painting and the Art of the New World Colonies," in Converging Cultures (1996); S. Alpers, “The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art,” in The Art of Describing (1984); E. Said, “The Scope of Orientalism” in Orientalism (1978); CLR James, from The Black Jacobins (1980); A. Hourani, “The Age of European Empires,” in A History of the Arab Peoples (1991); J. Beaulieu et al., Orientalism’s Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography (2002); M. Alloula, The Colonial Harem (1991); F. Barker et al., Europe and Its Others (1985).

 

Relationship to PI scholarly research: The 19c and 20c aspects of this course relate directly to our research on Mexican modernism (Greeley) and on the relationship of the French Revolution to the Haitian Revolution (Orwicz). Both PI’s research on Nationalism and visual culture in France and in Latin America (19th/20thC) focus on issues developed in this class. In both cases, we have found it impossible to analyze historical and aesthetic developments in Europe apart from those in the Americas (and vice versa); such cross-continental comparisons provide insights not otherwise available. Greeley taught a limited version of this Gen Ed course as a Visiting Professor at MIT (Fall 2003), with great success.

 

Evaluation of course objectives:  Evaluation will be carried out in several ways: Entry and exit surveys will allow an assessment of student expectations for the course, as  well as how those expectations and perceptions changed over the semester. A comparison will be made of this course with ARTH 138: Western Art II (which concentrates only on a non-global, non-interactive notion of ‘Western culture’—see above) of student interest and student learning. We hope and expect that this new course will prove more intriguing and more beneficial to students.

 

Name of supporting program director/department head. Support Statement:

Judith Thorpe, Head, Department of Art & Art History. Support statement attached.

 

To: Hedley Freake

From: Robin Greeley (robin.greeley@uconn.edu); Michael Orwicz (michael.orwicz@uconn.edu),

Re: Provost’s General Education Development Program Competition, 2005

      proposal for new Introduction to Western Art II: The Renaissance to the Present, A World Perspective (Department of Art & Art History)

Date: 27 April 2005

 

Sorry for not clarifying these issues in the original grant proposal. We hope this will help, but are happy to provide further clarifications if you wish.

 

1. Clarify the teaching objectives of the course.

 

            This course addresses the essential goals of Groups I and IV of the General Education guidelines. Exploring the historical development of Western visual arts within a global perspective will encourage students to critically understand the evolution of European cultural and artistic traditions -- and subsequently those of the United States (i.e. the “Western Arts”)— as fundamentally and inextricably linked to the social, economic and cultural transformations of the Non-Western world from the Renaissance onward. Investigating the history of Western art as part of the cross-cultural interconnections and socio-economic interdependencies that shaped Europe’s growth will significantly expand students’ perceptions of their own cultural heritage and its connections to the longer historical process of globalization. Key to our approach is to engage students exploring visual images not merely as a means of ‘illustrating’ history, but as a crucial mode through which the major social transformations in the modern period could/can be imagined, assessed and critiqued.

 

            Students will be encouraged to assess how the historical transformation of the so-called “Western” visual arts was itself embedded in complex social and economic interactions between the West and its Others. This approach is designed to facilitate critical historical thinking, to encourage students to integrate knowledge from a range of different disciplines, to relate developments in the visual arts to social and historical interactions, and to develop the analytical skills of comparative visual analysis and description. By exploring Western art from the perspective of the interactions, conflicts and mutualities that shaped relations between Western and Non-Western worlds, we wish to convey to students that to understand Western culture and society, it is imperative that one comprehend the global relationships in and through which it developed. Without such a perspective, it becomes impossible to grasp the social and economic systems under which we live today and which have been so crucial to our historical development. Most importantly, lacking such a perspective makes it impossible to do anything more than blunder our way blindly towards the future.

 

            Other objectives of the course coincide with the wider agenda of General Education courses here at UConn. We aim not merely to introduce students to a variety of societies and cultures, but also to give them insight into the historical framework within which such diversity developed. We aim to give students the opportunity to actively learn and discuss these ideas, so that they can become more intellectually sophisticated and thus more capable of making informed critical judgments about the world around them. In a phrase, we aim to teach our students in a manner that will help them become better, more knowledgeable and socially-conscious people well-prepared for the challenges of their role as world citizens.

 

2. Describe the work that will be done during the grant period in support of the development of the course.

 

            This course will be developed over two stages of summer research. In June-August 2005, we will focus on gathering a critical bibliography, selecting and developing the art historical and historical case-studies we intend to be our focus, and researching the secondary literature in order to supplement our existing areas of expertise.  These areas  include Robin Greeley’s expertise in cultural relations between Latin America and Europe/USA from 1492 to the present; and Michael Orwicz’s in aspects of 19c European interests in the Middle East, North America and the Haitian Revolution.

 

            Some of the issues we will research include the slave trade, in which four continents were linked in a major economic venture that has had an enormous cultural impact. Another key example we will research is the Dutch trade wars with Spain, Portugal and England in the 17th century. Such examples are fundamental to explaining not only the economic growth of capitalism, but also such issues as the mutual impact of Dutch and Indian culture on each other, for instance; or the way in which the famous paintings by Vermeer are crucially influenced by Dutch mapping techniques developed precisely because of Holland’s international trade needs. A third example might be the Enlightenment invention of museums, as displays of 18th century Europe’s philosophical and material attempts to order a world enlarged through trade and conquest.

 

Here are some of the major areas we will research in relation to the Western arts:

 

15c-16c:

Italy and the rise of trans-state banking commerce

Mediterranean trade & Africa:

            Sudanese & Guinean gold. Conflict with silver from the Americas.

European trade in Turkey, the Levant & the Middle East.

17c:

Dutch: long distance trade (‘Indies to Indies’ trade); rise of great banking enterprises.

Africa, the Americas and the slave trade

18c:

Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, & the rational ordering of the world.

Rise of nations and nationalism

India, China & the economic collapse of European markets in late 18c

18c-20c: Age of Empire

20c-21c: Postcolonialism/postmodernism: something new? or a continuation of patterns of globalization?

 

            In the second phase of research (June-August 2006)  we will focus on the material pedagogical needs of the course; this involves researching, photographing and digitalizing the images necessary to teach it. While we have many already in our slide collection, these are not digitalized for use in the classroom. As this amounts to hundreds of slides that need to be digitalized, photo-shopped and otherwise made fit for use, it’ll take some time and effort. We intend to use ArtStor as much as possible for these digitalized images, but ArtStor currently has very few of those we need. ArtStor is also by no means easy to use in these large classroom situations, and we will use the summer of 2006 to work with ArtStor staff to effectively integrate this important resource, only recently acquired by the University, into our teaching.

 

            In order to further enhance the pedagogical environment, we also will research and digitalize the many images that neither we nor ArtStor have. For example, while we already have images of the Benin Bronzes in their present British Museum location, we do not have (nor does ArtStor) period photographs of the Benin Bronzes as the prize of the British army expedition against a regional anti-colonial uprising circa 1890. Or, another example: images of prints after Peter Paul Rubens’ famous painting of St. Ignatius Loyola. These prints were produced specifically to be exported en masse to the New World as part of the Catholic Church’s Counter Reformation efforts, and subsequently heavily influenced a wide range of artistic production in the Americas. We expect that researching and digitalizing such images will take a significant amount of time.

 

            We will also use June-August 2006 to carefully plan not only the syllabus, lectures and discussions sections, but also the readings for the students. There is no textbook currently available for this sort of course. As you no doubt know, finding readings written at the appropriate level for Gen. Ed. undergraduates often takes some time. Among some we will consider:

E. Bassani & W. Fagg Africa and the Renaissance (New York 1988);

K. Esielonis from Gauguin’s Tahiti: the politics of exoticism (1993)

E. Barkan, "Aesthetics and Evolution: Benin art in Europe." African Arts (1997);

E. Sullivan, "European Painting and the Art of the New World Colonies," in Converging Cultures (1996);

S. Alpers, “The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art,” in The Art of Describing (1984);

E. Said, “The Scope of Orientalism” in Orientalism (1978);

CLR James, from The Black Jacobins (1980);

A.     Hourani, “The Age of European Empires,” in A History of the Arab Peoples (1991)

J. Beaulieu et al., Orientalism’s Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography (2002);

M. Alloula, The Colonial Harem (1991);

Picton, John, “Undressing ethnicity: Contemporary British Artist Yinka Shonibare,” African Arts (autumn 2001).

 

            Another key aspect of this second phase of research is to develop a WebCT site for the course. Such a site will provide an important anchor for the students; on it we will post the course readings and study images, as well as a discussion forum through which we can help the students and better monitor their progress and reactions to the course materials and structure.

 

We hope this will help clarify our intentions for this new Gen. Ed. course. If you have any further questions, please contact us.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Robin Greeley

Michael Orwicz