SMFA Boston - Visual and Critical Studies

As the Tufts University department at the Museum School, Visual and Critical Studies is an interdisciplinary area with a strong commitment to offering academic courses that engage artists in both contemporary and historical discourses of visual culture. The art historians who teach in this department situate their subject expertise within critical discussions that inform how we come to understand and analyze a diverse body of cultural objects.

Appealing to the specific interests and investments of Museum School students in the complexities of visuality, the faculty offer courses that consider art-making as productive of identities and institutions, both within particular cultural and geopolitical spheres (such as Post-War Europe, the Northern Renaissance, Pre-Columbian Americas, or early China) and as the genealogies of media and process, such as film, photography, and sculpture.

Drawing upon the resources of both the Museum School and Tufts, our department offers students the opportunity to engage in critical thinking and writing about the historical and contemporary issues that are decisive to all forms of visual practice.

Previous Course Offerings
Below are previous course offerings in the Visual and Critical Studies area. Students must visit mySMFA to see current offerings and register.

Students in the undergraduate, graduate, Studio, and Post-Baccalaureate certificate programs may also take Continuing Education courses for credit.

Histories of Film One - / FAHS 0007 A

Histories of Film/Two / FAHS 0007 B

The two Histories of Film courses are sequential, one semester courses that may be taken separately, but are created as a year-long inquiry into the history of the art of cinema. Constructed as a foundations course we will examine the historical development of cinema from its inception in the late nineteenth century through the present. Presented through a broad historical, aesthetic and critical framework, this course will introduce the student to the study of cinematic representation by focusing on the first half-century of its development in the fall and the second half-century of its development in the spring. By investigating the aesthetic, formal and stylistic devices of film as well as its narrative codes and structures we will consider the evolution of its rich and complex language. Our study will focus on such noteworthy film movements as the early International Avant-garde, German Expressionism, Soviet filmmaking of the 1920s, the classical studio Hollywood film (including genre and authorship studies), postwar cinemas in Japan and Italy, International New Wave Cinemas of the 1960s, post-classical American Cinema, World Cinema, and contemporary independent film practices and more.

Early Modern Sculpture: Rodin-1935 / FAHS 0008 A

To appreciate its radical nature and power one much first understand the social and political atmosphere within which modernist sculpture was made. Beginning with two important works by Rodin, "The Gates of Hell" and the "Balzac" monument, this course will examine sculpture's development from neo-classical monument to self-referential object. Constantin Brancusi, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Jacob Epstein, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, Hans Arp, Vladimir Tatlin, and Marcel Duchamp, to name only a few, are important figurative and abstract artists whose sculpture made important contributions to the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. We will take an in-depth look at their work, as well as Rodin's, and discuss its relationship to its own time and to such contemporary sculptural practices as installation, anti-form, and body art.

David Smith to the Present / FAHS 0009 B

In the 1930's Pablo Picasso and Julio Gonzales collaborated on direct metal sculptures that were both welded and forged. That body of work was to become the inspiration for the early work of David Smith the most influential sculptor in the United States following WWII. By 1965, when David Smith tragically died in an automobile accident, a young British sculptor, Anthony Caro, became his heir apparent and produced the last great body of high modernist sculpture. In the mid 50s, however, neo-dada and proto-pop artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauchenberg, Edward Keinholz, Claes Oldenberg and Lucas Samaras were looking at another model, Marchel Duchamp, with which to challenge the primacy of late modernist practices.

In this course we will discuss the work of the above mentioned artists as well as post WWII European and American figurative sculpture by Marini, Manzu, Richier, Giacometti, Marisol, Lipschitz, and Wotruba. This work will form the backdrop and context for understanding Minimalism and the decades that follow. Articles by Rosalind Krauss, Michael Fried, Robert Morris, Donald Judd and Lucy Lippard as well as Krauss' "Passages in Modern Sculpture" will form the core of our reading material.

Contemporary American Art / FAHS 0012 01

A single-semester survey of the medium of photography ranging from the 18th Century to the immediate present and beyond. We will fully examine the origins in the post-Enlightenment and the enormous growth as part of the Industrial Revolution. This will be followed by an inspection of photography's emergence as the dominant form of visual communication and expression in the 20th Century and quickly move to concentrate on its' current, conflicted status as both an artifact of Modernism and harbinger of the virtual future. Each week will involve a Thursday lecture, followed by a Friday discussion section with assigned readings. Students will write papers, give presentations and execute projects. Class attendance is mandatory, there are no unexcused absences.

Contemporary Art: / FAHS 0018 01

This course investigates the development of contemporary art practice from the immediate post-war until the present. Beginning with a consideration of artistic practice in both the United States and Europe and opening up to a global perspective in more recent years, it traces the emergence of new aesthetic paradigms and means of representations to negotiate contemporary life in the age of spectacle culture. Some of the questions that we will be asking are the following: How did artists attempt to engage a historical context that became increasingly mediated through images? What strategies did they use to simultaneously represent this reality and offer an alternative to it? What models of subjectivity and sociability did they propose to negotiate mass culture in an increasingly globalized world? How did the identity of the artist, the nature of the art object, and the definition of artistic activity change in this context? What modes of temporality, notions of space, and models of the public have been proposed at various historical moments?

These questions will be enriched by the following general objectives. We will 1) study the critical and theoretical debates that nourished and informed contemporary art practice; 2) treat the continuation of an avant-garde tradition after 1945 while defining its specificity in relation to its particular historical context; and 3) relate the transformations in contemporary art practice to a larger shift from modernism to post-modernism.

This course doe not claim to provide an exhaustive catalogue of every important artistic activity since World War II. Rather, specific figures will be examined as case studies of the inter-relationship between aesthetic, historical, and ideological issues from 1945 to the present.

Constructions of Spirituality in Modern and Postmodern Practice / FAHS 0020

Bronze Age of China / FAHS 0021 B

The two thousand year period of Chinese history from about 2000 B.C.E. to the beginning of our era, commonly known as the Bronze Age, was a time of complex, social and political transition. From the village based communities of the preceding Neolithic era, the rise of dynastic rule brought about the consolidation of power and the development of and elaborate ritual and visual culture. In this course, we will explore the major aspects of China's Bronze Age and, in doing so, consider the broader questions of creating a meaningful narrative of the past. The fields of "archaeology" and the "art history" have been developed as ways to understand the remains of scoieties, like that of early China, that now exist only in fragmentary form. We will examine the ways in which these fields approach their study of ancient objects and how they have been affected by contemporary cultural criticism. In studying the Bronze Age of China, we are offered a chance to experience the complicated - and sometimes contradictory - ways in which the past and present come together in the making of "history."

Art and Culture of India / FAHS 0023 A

Although the title of this course might suggest itself as a "survey" of Indian visual culture, the very complexities of the subcontinent world invariably undermine such an enterprise. Rather, this course will focus on the position of objects and imagery in the construction of India's creation narratives, the visualization of attachments to deities and "sacred spaces," the articulation of regional and cultural identities, and the experiences of colonialism. Particular attention will be paid to constructions of physicality and spirituality as they have informed both human and "divine" relationships. Topics will include the early cultural traditions of the Indus Valley, the complex exchanges between Hinduism and Buddhism, the histories of four centuries of European political and cultural presence in India, the relationship between imagery and music, and the performative and spatial aspects of ritual practices.

Post-War European Art 1948-1978 / FAHS 0027 01

This course examines the artistic production of the Central European countries in the first two decades after World War II. Its historical and theoretical scope focuses on three central questions: first, how does avantgarde production after the war incorporate reflections on the engagement with the difficult legacies of the Holocaust and the destruction of European bourgeois humanist models of subjectivity and identity? Second, how does the neo-avantgarde of the post war period reiterate or transform the paradigms of the historical avantgarde of the 1915-1935 period? And third, the question of how artistic production of that period engages with the increasingly powerful structures of advertisment and media production, the world that T.W. Adorno had identified in 1947 as the "culture industry."

The course will be divided roughly into four segments of three weeks each in which European post war art history will be studied according to the various political and cultural configurations of the individual nation states. Thus, the first segment will be dealing with Germany and the particular problems of the reconstruction of an avantgarde culture in the post-fascist period. The second and the third segments will focus on France and Italy as countries that had, in varying degrees, both actively resisted and succumbed to internal fascicization and external occupation whose key problem in the post war period would be the question of whether cultural continuity could at all be conceived after the fascist or collaborationist history.

The last segment will deal with the history of artistic culture in post war Britain. The neo-avantgarde of this country differs dramatically from the others not only by its total opposition to fascism in the period between 1933 and 1945 but also by its increasingly intense assimilation to the models of an American style consumer culture. Thus, it anticipates in many ways the models that would arrive only a few years later in Continental Europ

Space, Place & Society: Landscape / FAHS 0029 01

Focusing on how artists have engaged with their environment from the eighteenth century through the twentieth, this class will subject the topic of landscape to close scrutiny. We will examine how the rise in popularity of landscape art allowed artists to speak more broadly about social issues through the depiction of their surroundings, and we will consider how the evolution of the modern world impacted how artists regard the land and emerging urban contexts. This class will look at parallel developments in Europe and America and will consider how various stylistic movements in 18th, 19th and 20th century painting, as well as photography, graphic arts and even sculpture, have reacted to the significance of space and place, and humankind's impact on the land. Through regular reading assignments, student presentations, and research projects, students will track their own relationship to the land, the city, and the environment in which we live.

"Post": Art from 1980 - Present / FAHS 0031 01

This course offers a conceptually driven introduction to the field of contemporary art practice, as well as its critical themes and theories. It examines art practice from 1980 to the present as a set of diverse techniques, styles, materials, subjects, forms, purposes, and aesthetic traditions that blur the established categories of art and culture to embrace pluralism and heterogeneity. "Post" will treat the dissolution and expansion of artistic practices and relate them to a number of critical debates structured by the larger frameworks of postmodernism, globalization, and mass-media. These include the post-medium and post-museum condition, post-colonialism, post-nationalism, post-industrial, post-trauma, post-collectivism, post-identity, post-avant-garde, and the post-human. In each instance, we will look at the way in which specific artists, working in a variety of cultural and geographic backgrounds, have appropriated, challenged, and revised key concepts and categories to produce an art of the final third of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century.

From Pop Art to Conceptualism: / FAHS 0032 01

This course will explore the artistic practices of American and European artists working in the decade between 1958 and 1968. Its primary focus will be the way in which art practice negotiated advanced capitalism and the increasingly dominant condition of spectacle culture. Rather than proceeding chronologically, this course will approach these practices through four categories. It will begin with performance and examine the legacies of Jackson Pollock and John Cage as they were received and revised by Happenings, Fluxus and Yves Klein. The section on photography will examine the function of photographic imagery (documentary, amateur, advertisement) in its variety of usages in the work of, among others, Andy Warhol, Richard Hamilton, Ed Ruscha, Gerhard Richter, and Eduardo Paolozzi. Issues of language will address the increasing importance of linguistic structures in the art of the decade (analytic proposition, tautology, structural analysis) and its impact on the status of the visual object. Artists to be discussed will include Johns, Nauman, Kosuth, among others. The last category will focus on the critical reflection on architecture prevalent in the decade under consideration. This section will include the works of Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Hans Haacke, DanielBuren, and the Situationist International and focus on their 'deconstruction' of architecture as a site of ideological control and domination.

A Critical Perspective / FAHS 0035 01

When Spaniards arrived in the Americas they encountered a cultural landscape as rich and diverse as their own. Since their advent, there has been a great interest in interpreting the complex language of forms manifested in indigenous art and architecture. Over time, scholarship has generated several competing interpretations of these cultures. What do we know about indigenous cultures and how accurate are hypotheses advanced by scholars? This class provides an introduction to topics such as myth, social history, religion, cosmogony, archaeoastronomy, kingship, and sacrifice as reflected in Pre-Columbian art and architecture by promoting a critical perspective of Pre-Columbian scholarship.

Icons of Latin America / FAHS 0037

The tempestuous history of Latin America has generated some of the most lasting historical and mythical figures in the world. From revolutionary and political figures such as Emiliano Zapata, Francisco "Pancho" Villa, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Fidel Castro, Carlos and Evita Peron, Benito Juarez, and Salvador Allende to artistic, cultural and literary figures such as the Virgin of Guadalupe, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Gaudalupe Posada, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera the images created by, for or about these Latin Americans and their causes have become an integral part of what could be deemed a global cultural landscape. This class examines some of the popular and cultural images generated in creating Latin American icons by exploring their associated myths, histories and misconceptions.

Creating African Women / FAHS 0041 01

Explore issues of image, gender and identity through traditional
African art, the colonial encounter, and the work of women artists
living in Africa and the diaspora.

We will be taking full advantage of the exhibit "Black Womanhood -
Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body" at Wellesley College
and its associated programming.

Discover African Art / FAHS 0042 01

Let extraordinary African images from the distant past to the
post-modern present stimulate your thoughts and challenge your
imagination. We will take a thematic approach to the rich and diverse
artistic heritage of this vast continent, punctuated by case studies of
art in context. A thematic approach allows for an exploration of ideas
that cut across many cultural zones. Case studies provide a more
complex view of artworks, aesthetics, their communicative and symbolic
functions within specific traditional societies.

Renaissance Art: A Transalpine / FAHS 0061 01

Renaissance art frequently is approached with a Florence-centric model, and the aim of this course is to construct an alternative one. We will consider the achievements of Florence in relation to Siena and Northern Italy and will proceed to examine Flemish, French, and German art. While painting will be emphasized, we will also reference important sculptural and architectural developments. The course will focus on the fifteenth century, but we will open with the trecento and will conclude looking forward to sixteenth-century developments. Themes include: patronage (civic, courtly, ecclesiastical, guild, and private), the transmission of style and its connection to workshop, geography, patron, and medium, the relationship between image and text, the role of connoisseurship and authorship in art history, and the significance of the terms "Gothic" versus "Renaissance". Some of the artists to be studied include Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Jean Fouquet, The Limbourg Brothers, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Gentile da Fabriano, Giovanni di Paolo, and Mantegna.

Independent Study / FAHS 0098 01

History of Photography: The 19th Century / FAHS 010

FAHS 0010 (the nineteenth century, fall 2002) and FAHS 0011 (the twentieth century and beyond, spring 2003) are sequential one-semester courses that cover the period from photography's prehistories until the absolute present. We deal with all aspects of the medium (perhaps least of all self-expressive art photography, and the production of individuals is de-emphasized) in favor of a broader, cross-cultural sweep. Learn to look at photography as a reflection of social, cultural, technological, and political events and movements. We

consistently draw parallels between the historical period under examination and work from the present day, with direct linkages to contemporary artists. These courses may be taken separately but they are planned as a yearlong survey. Students taking either for credit must purchase a course reader, write two research papers, give a class presentation, and make a final project each semester. Participation and attendance at all classes required.

Hist of Photography / FAHS 011

A comprehensive treatment of all aspects of photography, from its inception to just last week. While holding to a basic chronological structure, we will attempt to pull together material of differing persuasions from different periods. Classes will feature slide presentations, with trips when appropriate. Each semester may be taken separately, but students should plan to take both semesters to take full advantage of material to be covered.

Medieval and Renaissance Body / FAHS 0115 H

This course will focus upon the representation of the body during the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Europe. Areas of investigation include the scientific/medical body, the Christian body and the body of Christ, the tortured body, the pornographic, erotic and homoerotic body, and the representation of class through costume and body. We will rely on visual and textural imagery found in painting, sculpture, architecture, prints, books, and a variety of other sources. Our examination will scrutinize the often contradictory and unstable meanings attached to images of the body, and our larger project will work toward a greater understanding of how these representations operated within their cultural signifying systems.

Contemporary Art / FAHS 013

This is a one-semester survey of the exhibitions on view in the commercail and nonprofit galleries of New York City and, at times, beyond. Instuctors visit as wide a range of venues as possible, and present slides of the work on display for viewing and discussion in a timely fashion with appropiate contextual material and information. While the sweep of the course content is broad and exhaustive, it is by no means authoritative; it reflects the instructors' preferences for what represents well on slides. Early Modern Sculpture: Rodin to 1935 or its equivalent is a prerequisite for this course.

The Art of Building an Empire / FAHS 0131 01

Ancient American empires left a legacy in their architecture and art, but what role did art play in disseminating their ideas? This class examines how the art and architecture of several empires, especially those of the Aztec and Inca, expressed the social, political, and religious ideals of these complex states. Through lectures, readings, museum visits, and writing assignments students will explore how peoples of the ancient Americas used art and architecture to co-opt and negotiate power conflicts as means of ensuring the fealty of neighboring city-states. Readings, lectures, assignments, and class discussions will examine the strategic ways empires utilized p

Maya Art and Architecture from Kings and the Courtly Elite to Mod / FAHS 0133

Maya Art and Architecture / FAHS 0133 01

For over three thousand years the Maya have inhabited some of the most inhospitable areas of Middle America. Throughout the long occupation, distinct manifestations of this rich cultural tradition have cleverly adapted and forged their existence among changing governments and adverse social conditions, both local and foreign. This class examines the diverse cultural traditions of the Maya as manifested in their visual culture located in now abandoned cities within the jungle and the highlands of Mexico and Central America. What do Maya cultural remains tell us of their glorious past, and how is their culture surviving the assaults of current governments? The class assesses recent developments in hieroglyphic writing in relation to Maya art and architecture to gain a deeper understanding of Maya history and the turbulent past of their ancient brilliant ruling elite.

American Visions: Martin Scorcese and David Lynch / FAHS 0182 A

This course represents a comparative study between two important American directors. We will examine their contemporary visions of American physical and psychic landscapes as well as the unique concerns each has brought to bear upon American cinema in the last three decades. Critically reviewing such works as Mean Streets, Italianamerican, Taxi Driver, After Hours, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ we will examine Martin Scorsese?s cinematic explorations of ethnicity, religion, East Coast urbanism and violence. Concurrently we will turn our critical attention to works by David Lynch such as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and Muholland Drive to explore his uniquely postmodern scripting of small town and West Coast America. Contrary to Hollywood's earlier idealized versions of both settings, in Lynch's vision something has gone terribly wrong. In fact, in Lynch's films the nostalgic surface of seemingly wholesome settings yield dark undercurrents of psychic violence and rage. In contrast to Scorsese's gritty urban realism, which is focused primarily on individuals who inhabit the streets and neighborhoods of New York, we will pay especially close attention to Lynch's cryptic representation of small towns and, in particular, of his representation of Los Angeles?a place seemingly haunted by Hollywood's past. Using very different methods, both directors articulate the sensibilities of a contemporary American cultural landscape.

The Films of Alfred Hitchcock / FAHS 0185 01

This course will provide the student with an overview of the cinematic work of Alfred Hitchcock. Using contemporary cultural theory and feminist film theory we will investigate the various thematic and formal concerns threaded throughout his film work. Through our investigation we will examine his skillful narrative coding of the suspense thriller, his powerful but often disturbing representational treatment of women, the patterns of "looking" and voyeurism inscribed in his work and more.

Survey of Asian Art / FAHS 019

Critical Discourses: Genealogies and Strategies / FAHS 0198 01

This course offers some conceptual tools for reading contemporary critical literature. "Genealogies" involve readings that will situate current perspectives within the context of earlier philosophical, aesthetic, and psychoanalytic precedents, allowing for the identification of the crucial issues that are being critiqued in more recent texts. "Strategies" will examine the mechanisms by which various critical positions operate and will ask you to consider these interventions/disruptions as experiences that can potentially impact your own work.

Available for MFA students, for Tufts elective credit

Issues in Japanese Art / FAHS 021

This course will examine how traditional Japanese imagery often functioned as a boundary between the physical world and that which resisted representation. Both Shinto and Zen visualizations of spiritual experiences involved the acknowledgment of the "void" as a dynamic and vital feature of their practice and the ritual environment. The particular relationship and tension between the seen and the unseen will be traced through a series of historical moments in Japanese visual culture. Although there will be an emphasis on topics in Shinto and Buddhist architecture, painting, and ritual objects, the course will also draw upon material spanning from the earliest Neolithic ceramics to the appropriation of Japanese spirituality in the West.

Art & Culture of India / FAHS 023

Altohugh the title of this course might suggest itself as a "survey" of Indian visual culture, the very complexities of the subcontinent world invariably undermine such an enterprise. Rather, this course will focus on the position of objects and imagery in the construction of India's creation narratives, the visualization of attachments to deities and "sacred spaces," the articulation of regional and cultural identities, and the experiences of colonialism. Particular attention will be paid to constructions of physicality and spirituality as they have informed both human and "divine" relationships. Topics will include the early cultural traditions of the Indus Valley, the complex exchanges betweeen Hinduism and Buddhism, the histories of four centuries of European political and cultural presence in India, the relationship between imagery and music, and the performative and spatial aspects of ritual practices.

Asian/ Painting / FAHS 025

The punctuation of this course's title is deliberate. In writing "Asian Painting" as it is here, two concepts are both identified and separated. Throughout the semester, we will address the relationship between painting, as a cultural production with the Western tradition, and the visual histories of China and Japan. How do our notions of a painting - what it is, what it looks like, and what it does - relate to the processes of mark making in East Asia? Reading from both Western and Asian sources (in translation) will offer a chance to consider these questions from a variety of perspectives.

Independent Study Paper / FAHS 098

An Independent Study Paper that is not coordinated with any of the course offerings is available ONLY to those four-year BFA students who have exhausted the regular course offerings in an area of particular interest OR to advanced BFA students who wish to combine Independent Study with one of the Crosscurrents courses taught by a member of the Visual and Critical Studies faculty. You must be prepared to submit your proposal with bibliography for a 15-page research paper to the instructor with whom you wish to work at Spring Registration. Permission of the instructor is required.

Visions and Voices / FAHS 107

Signifying the Exotic in Medieval and Renaissance Art / FAHS 112

The Medeival and Renaissance Body / FAHS 115

Deconstructing Disney / FAHS 147

20th Century American Topics / FAHS 160

Back East, Out West, Down South: Conceiving America in 20th Century / FAHS 161

This course examines the changing course of national identity from 1914-1945 through scrutiny of work by twentieth-century American painters, photographers, and filmmakers from 1914-1945. Beginning with the New York Dadaists and Stieglitz Circle (Marin, Dove, O'Keeffe, Hartley, Demuth) and the communities of American artists in Harlem, Provincetown, New Mexico, and California during the 1920s-1930s. The course will end with consideration of the concerns of the WPA painters, printmakers, and muralists and the effects of American involvement in World War II. Our primary focus will be to compare the issues raised by marginalized or regional artists and filmmakers to the issues found in mainstream New York art and Hollywood cinema. Some topics include: concepts of individuality/community; nationalism and the 'foreign'; racial and sexual identity; capitalism and technology; social change, leisure, and mobility; and changing definitions of the 'new woman' from the flappers to Rosie the Riveter. Substantial reading and two short papers will be required. Highly recommended for first- or second-year students or for students planning to take Abstract Expressionism-Pop in the spring. Note: This course is offered only once every three to four years.