ARTH 1148 - FWS: Writing the Object: Rembrandt’s Golden Age at the Johnson Museum

Fall. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

First-Year Writing Seminar.

L. Pincus.

This FWS capitalizes on the extraordinary loan of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings to the Johnson Museum for academic year 2014-15. Constructed around the physical artifact, we will incorporate methods of art-historical research and writing, based on close looking at paintings and prints. A central theme of art history—the vexed relationship between words and images—runs through the course as we examine the works through history, culture, and theory. Artists include Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Rembrandt, Pieter de Hooch, Gabriel Metsu, and Jan Steen, with subject matter ranging from history painting (biblical and mythological stories) and scenes of everyday life, to self-portraiture, and experiments in still life. We will often meet in the Museum to study the relationship between objects and the words that confront them. (FWS)