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LART 603 The Intuitive Eye
The Role of Vision in Art
Dr. Karen Stock
Contact information and office hours:
Office:
McLaurin 104
Phone: 323-2659
E-mail:
stockk@winthrop.edu
[e-mail is the best way to reach me;
please note your name and LART603 in subject line]
Office hours: tba
Web site: http://faculty.winthrop.edu/stockk/
This class
will be taught from an art historical vantage point with
numerous investigations into philosophy and sociology.
Issues to
be Explored
1. Explore
the hierarchy of the senses. Is vision the most noble and
reliable?
2. The
relationship between text and image. How does our role change
between being a viewer versus being a reader.
3. Is visual
art closer to truth or illusion? Is there any way to be
objective when interpreting art?
4. How does
sight help to define our place in the world and our sense of
individuality?
ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING
1. A
“position” paper (l,000 to l,500 words), in response to Balzac’s
“The Unknown
Masterpiece” Take a position arguing the protagonist’s genius
or insanity. This will be
followed
by a “re-positioning” later in the semester that uses readings
from the class to
change or
sharpen argument. (25%)
2. Critical
review of material for one class, presented informally to the
seminar and
as a
formal paper (25%). Look over the readings and pick a topic you
would like. The
Martin
Jay chapters are so long and dense that I would encourage you to
take a piece of
the
chapter as the subject of your presentation.
4. Choose an
artist or philosopher that we have discussed in class (there are
many to
choose
from) and go into greater depth regarding their work. The
project includes a
written
proposal , an informal oral presentation to the seminar, and a
formal
paper of 2,000 to 3,000 words. Together these three separate
assignments are
worth
(50%) of the grade.
TEXTS
l. Martin
Jay, Downcast Eyes : The Denigration of Vision in
Twentieth-Century French Thought. (1993)
2. John
Berger, Ways of Seeing. (1991)
3. Honoré de
Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece. trans. Richard Howard.
introduction Arthur C. Danto. (2001)
All other
readings will be posted online as PDF documents on my website.
The listed readings are always open for revision and as the
class develops we can decide on the pace and depth of
discussion.
January
First Class cancelled. Prof. Stock will be returning from
China. Please read the Balzac and chapter one of Berger.
2nd
meeting - Class introduction. Discussion of Balzac’s
Unknown Masterpiece.
Chapter One of Berger.
3rd
meeting - Martin Jay, Chapter One: The Noblest of the
Senses: Vision from Plato to Descartes. 21 – 82.
[Greek Art, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Leonardo Da Vinci,
Baroque, Dutch Art]
4th
meeting - Jay, continued. and Svetlana Alpers, “Art
History and its Exclusions: The
Example of Dutch Art” 183-199. in Feminism and Art History:
Questioning the
Litany eds. Norma Broude
and Mary Garrard.
5th
meeting - Norman Bryson, “The Gaze and the Glance” 87
– 131 in Vision and Painting:
The Logic of the Gaze.
(1983)
Berger, chapter 3 and chapter 5.
6th
meeting - Jay, Chapter Two: Dialectic of Enlightenment. 83
– 147
[Voltaire, Locke, Louis XIV “The Sun King,” Rousseau, French
Revolution, Jacque Louis David, Diderot, Molyneux,
Romanticism, Realism, Photography]
7th
meeting - Michael Morgan, “The Background to Molyneux’s
question” 5 – 15. in
Molyneux’s Question: Vision Touch and
the Philosophy of Perception
(1977)
WJT Mitchell chapter 5 “Eye and Ear: Edmund Burke and the
Politics of Sensibility” (116 – 149) in Iconology:
Image, Text, Ideology (1987)
8th
meeting - Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life.”
Deborah Bershad, “Looking, Power and Sexuality: Degas’ Woman
with a Lorgnette,” (95 – 105) in Dealing with Degas:
Representations of Women and the Politics of Vision. Eds.
Richard Kendall and Griselda Pollock. 1992.
Griselda Pollock, “The Gaze and the Look: Women with Binoculars
– A Question of Difference” 106 – 130. in Dealing with
Degas.
9th
meeting - Jay, Chapter Three: The Crisis of the Ancien
Scopic Regime: From the
Impressionists to Bergson. (149 – 209)
[Proust, Merleau Ponty, Cezanne, Marcel Duchamp]
10th
meeting - Berger, Chapter seven
Benjamin, “Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Mitchell, “Meta Pictures” 35 – 82 in Picture Theory:
Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (1994)
11th
meeting - Movie Sunset BLVD.
12th
meeting – Michel Foucault, “This is Not a Pipe” ; Duchamp
TBA
13th
meeting -
Begin
oral presentations on research projects
14th
meeting - Presentations continue.
15th
meeting - Presentations continue.
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