WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2023-2024       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Revolutionary France and the Birth of Modern Art, 1789-1900
ARHA 240
Spring 2024
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: RL&L 240, COL 240

This course examines the birth of modern art in the wake of the French Revolution and traces the evolution of modern art throughout what would prove to be an extraordinary century of social transformation and formal experimentation, ending in the Dreyfus Affair and Post-Impressionism. Themes this class explores include the advent of a public sphere for art-making and the relationship between artistic advance and appeals to an ever-widening public; painting and revolution in France and its colonies; the redefinition of history painting in light of the abolition of slavery and the Declaration of the Rights of Man; the expansion of France's colonial empire and the representation of racial difference; the rise of feminism and attempts on the part of women artists to find their own voice in a masculine practice; the destabilization of classicism in light of scientific discoveries and ideas of "primitivism"; and the conflict between the unabashed pursuit of artistic individualism and the need to define collective values and experience. Although these developments took place two centuries ago, they continue to define the field of modern art today.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ART
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (ARHA-MN)(ARHA)(ARST)(FRST-MN)(FRST)
Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89%

Last Updated on OCT-08-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459