Art & Ideas

A combined visual and thematic introduction to Western art. The form and content of painting, sculpture, architecture, and graphics will be studied through a series of themes and purposes. Students will investigate the interplay of form and meaning of art objects from multiple eras through such themes as death and the macabre, entertainment, power and politics, religious beliefs, and landscape and the environment. The course introduces many of the issues associated with the visual arts including iconoclasm, restoration, aesthetic quarrels, and questions of cultural property. This course is designed for non-art majors to fulfill institutional core requirements in aesthetics, and is not open to students who have taken ART 256 or ART 257 respectively.