Abigail Cain
Matts Leiderstam
After Image (Castle Huntly, Perthshire), 2012
Andréhn-Schiptjenko
Missing your days as an art history undergraduate? Or never had
those days at all? Here’s your chance to go back to school, sans
the price tag. (You can still wear your pajamas to class, though.) These 10
online courses—which primarily focus on the Western world—range from
foundational to niche: Beginners can trace the development of art from cavemen
to Alexander Calder, while more seasoned students can delve into fashion design
or activist art.
Ways of Seeing with art critic John Berger
Best for:
Art historians with a contrarian streak. One
critic dubbed this four-part BBC series “Mao’s Little Red Book for a generation
of art students,” and its opening shot reflects that revolutionary attitude—in
it, art historian Berger takes a box cutter to a reproduction of Sandro
Botticelli’s Venus and Mars (c. 1485). Of course, some of the shock value has
faded since it was filmed in 1972 (an episode unpacking the ways European
artists represented female nudes is today a commonly discussed topic with a
designated term: the “male gaze”), but the series still offers a valuable
primer in how to look at art—and, more broadly, the myriad images we encounter
each day in advertisements and on TV.
What you get:
Four 30-minute episodes, all available on YouTube. For further reading,
there’s a book born out of the series (also titled Ways of Seeing and published
in 1972) that’s become a staple of art history classrooms around the
world.
History of Western Art and Civilization: Prehistory through the
Middle Ages with Beth Harris and Steven Zucker of Smarthistory
Best for:
The (motivated) beginner. Smarthistory
describes itself as an “open textbook” that offers students a thorough
introduction to art history using contributions from more than 200 scholars.
This particular course offers a no-frills approach—learners are guided by a
16-page, heavily linked syllabus. And once you’ve completed the first course,
Smarthistory has compiled two additional syllabi (“History of Western Art: Late
Gothic to Neoclassicism” and “Modern Art in Europe and North America”) that
whisk learners through centuries, concluding in the 1960s with Pop Art.
What you get:
A comprehensive syllabus that links out to videos and articles for
each subject.
Modern Art & Ideas with Lisa Mazzola of MoMA’s Department of
Education
Best for:
Anyone wondering about the difference between modern and
contemporary art. And who better to explain it than the Museum of Modern Art
itself? Mazzola guides learners through four major themes—Places & Spaces,
Art & Identity, Transforming Everyday Objects, and Art & Society—using
works from the museum’s collection to highlight how art has evolved over the
course of the 20th and 21st centuries.
What you get:
Five-week course with two hours of video lectures, readings, and
assessments per week. Like many Coursera offerings, it’s free—unless
you want a course certificate, in which case there is a fee.
European Paintings: From Leonardo to Rembrandt to Goya with
Alejandro Vergara and Jennifer Calles, both of Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Best for:
Enhancing your stroll through the Louvre. This course discusses the
most famous European painters and paintings between the 15th and 19th
centuries, from Leonardo da Vinci to Johannes Vermeer to Francisco de Goya. The
lectures come in digestible, 8- to 10-minute portions that offer both a
biographical look at the artist and a framework for critically examining their
works.
What you get:
Nine-week course with three hours of video lectures and quizzes per
week. This course is archived, so students can no
longer receive a verification certificate.
Seeing Through Photographs with Sarah Meister
of MoMA’s Department of Photography
Best for:
When Instagram isn’t enough. Between social
media, newspapers and magazines, and even television, we’re constantly
inundated with photographs. This course aims to give learners the tools to
understand them, whether they’re displayed in a museum or not. Topics range
from classic examples of documentary photography (including Dorothea Lange’s
1936 Migrant Mother) to more contemporary projects (like Nicholas Nixon’s
four-decade series of portraits of the Brown sisters).
What you get:
Six-week course with one to two hours of video
lectures, readings, and graded assignments per week.
Let This Be a Lesson: Heroes, Heroines and
Narrative in Paintings with John Walsh, Director Emeritus of J. Paul Getty
Museum
Best for:
An in-depth look at a particular type of painting.
Using 11 works from Yale’s collection—from Peter Paul Rubens’s Hero and Leander
(ca. 1604) to Anselm Kiefer’s Die Ungeborenen (The Unborn) (2001)—Walsh
examines the history of history paintings. The category, which encompasses
subjects from the bible, ancient Greek and Roman history, or even more recent
battle scenes, first appeared in the Renaissance. This series of lectures
traces the tradition through the 19th century, when it fell out of fashion, all
the way to the 21st, where it reemerged with the help of artists such as
Keifer.
What you get:
Twelve recorded video lectures, each
accompanied by a list of recommended readings on both the artist and the
painting’s subject.
Fashion as Design with Paola Antonelli,
Michelle Millar Fisher, and Stephanie Kramer, all of MoMA’s Department of
Architecture & Design
Best for:
Those wondering why we wear what we wear. Led
by MoMA’s pioneering senior design curator Antonelli (who’s overseen the
museum’s acquisition of a Boeing 747 and the @ symbol), this course focuses on
a selection of about 70 accessories and garments from around the world, from
3D-printed dresses to kente cloth. One section focuses on silhouettes—how
clothes play a part in the evolution of body ideals across different cultures.
Another examines the planned obsolescence of today’s fast-fashion brands, and
what happens to clothes when they’re discarded.
What you get:
Seven-week course featuring two to three hours
of video lectures, readings, and assessments per week.
Roman Art and Archaeology with David Soren of the University of
Arizona
Best for:
Art historians with a particular penchant for the history part.
What we know about ancient Rome is inextricably tied to the architecture and
art objects that still exist today. Using works that range from Pompeii’s
Alexander Mosaic (c. 100 B.C.) to the Pantheon itself, this class traces the
rise and fall of one of the world’s great civilizations.
What you get:
Six-week course with video lectures, readings, and graded
assignments.
ART of the MOOC: Activism and Social Movements
with Nato Thompson of Creative Time and Pedro Lasch of Duke University
Best for:
Figuring out how art can change the world.
Even the course format itself (MOOC, short for “massive open online course”)
will be interrogated as a method for making art. This course examines social
movements and protests the world over—including AIDS activism, Occupy, museum
boycotts, and the Arab Spring—not for their political achievements, but for how
they’ve influenced artists and other cultural producers. Guest lecturers
include Gulf Labor Artist Coalition, Hans Haacke, and Sharon Hayes.
What you get:
Seven-week course with video lectures, readings, and graded
assignments.
In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting with Corey D’Augustine of
MoMA’s Department of Education
Best for:
AbEx aficionados. Using studio demonstrations and gallery
walkthroughs, this class examines the techniques, materials, and mindset of
seven major abstract painters working in New York in the decades following
World War II. Each week focuses on a different artist: Willem de Kooning, Yayoi
Kusama, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark
Rothko.
What you get:
Eight-week course, with one to two hours of readings, video
lectures, and graded assignments per week. Optional studio exercises.
Abigail Cain
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-art-history-classes-online-free?utm_medium=email&utm_source=19820248-newsletter-editorial-daily-03-24-20&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=st-V
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