This course examines Western art—painting, sculpture and architecture—from the earliest Paleolithic cave paintings to the dawn of the Renaissance in the 14th century. We will talk about the changing style–the overall appearance of art–during this time, learning to recognize art from different periods and cultures. We will learn to do a formal analysis of art, assessing the use of visual elements and principles of design that contribute to the appearance, impact and meaning of a work of art. However, the focus of the course will be on interpreting art in its social, cultural and political context. We will use art as a “window” into the cultures that produced it, and we will use our knowledge of these cultures to amplify our understanding of their art.

The historical period covered in this course saw major developments in Western civilization and we will understand the art of this period in terms of these developments: 1) the evolution of social organization from migrating hunting and gathering, to the establishment of small towns, larger city states and finally empires; 2) changing economic organization, with division of labor possible in larger city states, and changing modes of labor from gang slavery in the Ancient and Classical worlds to family-based economic units (serfdom) in the Medieval period; 3) the emergence of different models of governmental organization, from Greek democracy and the Roman Republic to empires with absolute rulers (e.g., the Roman Empire) to the hereditary kingdoms of Medieval Europe; 4) changing notions of gender, for example the association of women with nature—either positively in fertility cults or pejoratively in being seen as having rationality overwhelmed by “animal instincts” such as lust and emotions; 5) changing notions of sexuality and the body, from the Greek and Roman celebration of the body as a source of beauty and pleasure to the Medieval Christian view of the body as a source of sin and corruption; 6) notions of “otherness”, for instance in the negative image created by the Greeks and the Romans of the “barbarians” outside their borders or in Christian Europe’s negative construction of Arabs and Islam in the Medieval period; 7) the rise of the World’s major religions—the polytheistic religions of the Ancient world (often based on nature gods), of Greece and Rome, and of Hinduism; the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; as well as Buddhism, which has no god; and 8) religious divisions that continue to be important in Western civilization, such as the division of Christianity into East (Orthodox) and West (Catholic) or the conflict between Christianity and Islam. Because much of the art we will consider in this course is religious art (religious institutions and the state were the two principle patrons of art during this early period; private art patronage only becomes significant in the Renaissance), we will necessarily have to become conversant with the major religions in order to understand their art.

Furthermore, many aspects of contemporary American culture have their roots in this early time period. Our democratic republic was based on the governmental views of the Greeks and the Romans, our city designs and urban planning also go back to Greece and Rome, as do many of our architectural methods and styles. The Greek temple form is arguably the most influential architectural form in the West. American sports culture, which arose in the late 19th c. (the Olympics were only re-instituted in 1896 after having been banned in 394 AD by the Christian Roman emperor Theodosius, who saw them as part of “pagan” culture) is directly based on the Greek celebration of the male body. Athletes in Greece had the same larger than life status as do contemporary American athletes, and modern stadium design is based on the Roman Colosseum, which itself comes from the Greek theater form. The war on terror and the current tension between the Christian West and the Islamic Arab world has a long history, beginning in the Medieval period. Thus, while we will be learning about the art of the Ancient world, the Classical World and the Medieval World, we will also be learning about the origins of our own culture and about the background to many contemporary issues, such as the disparate ways of understanding the world—by observation, science and reason (begun by the Greeks), or by faith and religious doctrine (as in Medieval Europe).