CLASS 4738 - Image Love, Image Hate

(crosslisted)
(also ARTH 4738, VISST 4738) # (CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

V. Platt.

This course explores the passionate feelings and dramatic responses that images can provoke in their viewers. Beginning with Graeco-Roman antiquity, we will focus on the paradigmatic myths of Pygmalion and Narcissus, erotic responses to statues of Aphrodite, and acts of violence against images, such as the Roman practice of damnatio memoriae. We will then trace the continuity of these themes and practices right up to the present day, from the agalmatophilic motif (or doll fetish) in Prosper Mérimée’s novel The Venus of Ille and the ballet Coppélia to films such as Die Puppe and Lars and the Real Girl, and from religious iconoclasm in Byzantium, the Protestant Reformation and Islam to various forms of political iconoclasm, including image destruction practiced by the Suffragette movement and during recent uprisings in the Arab World.