Topics in The History of Art

An in-depth study of a particular topic in the history of art. It may be an examination of a specific artist, group or movement or an exploration of a particular theme or issue in art.

Current Semester Information

290A: Tps:Ecology Medieval Art

Tps:Ecology of Medieval Art

This course examines the rapidly shifting period from 1200-1500 in Western European culture when the first urban explosions since the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century occurred altering both the environment and its human subjects, when key inventions and advances such as the plow and the windmill changed the working relationship between nature and humanity, and when texts and images were first dedicated to try to understand the meaning and purpose of nature and the natural, and the relationship of humanity to both. In treating the ecology of medieval art, we will study not only art objects produced by and of the natural environment, but also the interaction of living beings to and within that environment produced by those objects. Three primary natural phenomena will guide our work: I list them and some examples of what we will study: landscape (garden (of Eden and beyond), forest, Holy Land), rocks (magical and real, gems and Stonehenge in the medieval imagination) and animals (dragons that soar, pelicans that symbolize Christ, pigs that go on trial). At stake in this course are the conceptualizations of nature and the natural, the role of memory and primitivism in articulating nature in conjunction with culture, and the symbiotic agency that nature and humanity have to each other.