ARTH 4761 - Art and Social Histories(crosslisted)
(also FREN 4761 , VISST 4761 ) (CA-AS)
Spring. 4 credits.
Permission of instructor required. Not open to freshmen. Co-meets with ARTH 6761 . Auditing not permitted. Interested students should send a brief description of background course work to Professor Meixner at llm4@cornell.edu.
L. L. Meixner.
Topic for spring 2014: De-mythologizing Van Gogh & Gauguin
This seminar re-frames Van Gogh and Gauguin through twenty-first century scholarship. Highly mythologized figures, both are receiving fresh attention through major exhibitions, newly discovered archives, and ground-breaking interpretations. We will relate their paintings to larger currents of the late-nineteenth century, particularly French trade with Japan, colonialism in Tahiti, and the exhibition of empire at the 1889 World’s Fair. We begin with Van Gogh and Gauguin at Arles, where Van Gogh combined his “Japanese dream” and French socialism to create the Yellow House, and then trace Gauguin’s construction of the “primitive” at the remote Brittany Peninsula and Papeete (Tahiti). Texts include Van Gogh’s Collected Letters, Gauguin’s fictionalized journal Noa Noa, and the well-known meditations of Martin Heidegger and Meyer Schapiro on Van Gogh’s Shoes (1886).
Add to Favorites (opens a new window)
|