Beauty, Power and the Sacred in Western Art and Culture Spring 2010 HUM Prof. Margaret L. Woodhull

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1 Beauty, Power and the Sacred in Western Art and Culture Spring 2010 HUM Prof. Margaret L. Woodhull Meeting Time: Thursday, 5:30-8:20 p.m. Room: Modular 4 Websites: CUonline Blackboard and my website: Office: MO-01 Office Hours: M 1-5; W 11-2; Th. 3-4 and by appointment Contact Information: Margaret.woodhull@ucdenver.edu Ph.: I. COURSE INTRODUCTION: COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES: From its earliest forms in western culture, art has functioned in the service of ritual and the sacred. Its beauty indexed this sacred function. In the classical era Plato theorized the beautiful and artists manifested it in systematic canons of form in temples and sacred images. Renaissance artists adopted similar measures, designing churches, painting images and sculpting forms to ennoble their religious aspirations. The very power of a beautiful sacred image sparked iconoclastic debates in Byzantine orthodox Christianity. Yet, with the rise of modernism and the decline of the sacred in the 19 th century the power of beauty as a paradigm for the sacred came under fire, and by the late 20 th century art historians, philosophers, and cultural critics found themselves asking, Whatever happened to beauty? Together instructor and students in this course will trace the art and history of the dominance, demise and reincarnation of beauty as a paradigm for the creation of ritual forms in sacred and secular contexts in an effort to understand the power of this concept in Western art and culture. As a humanities based curriculum, this course aims to provide students with interdisciplinary materials through use of philosophical, literary, artistic, anthropological, and theoretically diverse readings relating to the topics covered. During the course of the class, students are expected to exhibit an ability to interpret written and visual data meaningfully and independently in class presentations and written work. Upon completion, students will have read and must understand the diverse concepts and discursive practices presented in the course materials, and they must demonstrate a grasp of these concepts in their final graduate-level written and oral presentations. REQUIRED TEXTS: : Available at Auraria Bookstore: Eco, Umberto. History of Beauty. Trans., A. McEwen. Rizzoli, All other readings are at our course Blackboard site: II. COURSE PROCEDURES: ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION: Because this is a graduate seminar, discussion of assigned readings is key to a full and enriching experience for all participants. Please read carefully and thoughtfully all assigned texts and be prepared to discuss in class. Non-participation in class will impair your final grade (see grading below).

2 Likewise, because this is a graduate course, attendance is required. Please be prompt. Avoid arriving late. More than one unexcused absence--e.g., non-medical or emergency related--will incur a lettergrade drop in your final average. What constitutes a valid emergency is at the discretion of the instructor. Students who miss two or more classes should consider withdrawing from the course. It is the responsibility of the student to withdraw according to university rules. Please read all materials and complete all assignments each week in order to participate in class. In order to pass the course students must complete all assignments with a passing grade. COURSE COMMUNICATION: If necessary, I may communicate with students via in between classes. Each CU student is provided a university account. I consider this to be the official contact for class communication purposes. Please check it regularly so you do not miss contact and important class information. You are responsible for any messages, including assignments and schedule changes, I send you via or announce in class. I will check to ensure that has been received via Blackboard. You also may contact me via at the address above, in addition to seeing me during office hours listed above, or by appointment. Out of courtesy to all participating in this seminar, please turn off beepers and cell phones and put them away during class. Adherence to the Student Conduct Code is expected. CLASS ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING: Students have the potential to make 400 points total on all assignments. Grading for assignments late by one day will begin at 80% of the total possible points the assignment can only yield a B at best for a final grade. Each day late thereafter will incur another 10% penalty. Assignments won t be accepted beyond three days late. All written work for the course should be appropriately formatted with correct end-, foot-, or internal citation notes using the citation styles recommended in any standard writing guide, such as Kate Turabian s A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 7 th rev. edition, Univ. of Chicago Press. Please note that I do not accept assignments electronically. The following is a breakdown of assignments and their values: Short papers: 100 points (10 papers at 10 points each) Class Participation: 50 points Class Presentations: 50 (two brief, in-class presentations explained below; worth 25 points each) Final paper presentation: 100 points Final paper: 100 points CLAS INCOMPLETE POLICY: The faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences passed the following policy relating to the awarding of incomplete grades. This CLAS policy is consistent with the UCD campus policy. Incomplete grades (I) are NOT granted for low academic performance. To be eligible for an incomplete grade, students MUST: Successfully complete a minimum of 75% of the course Have special circumstances beyond their control that preclude them from attending class and

3 completing graded assignments Make arrangements to complete missing assignments with the original instructor. Verification of special circumstances is required. SHORT PAPERS: Each student is required to prepare a 300-word maximum essay on one of the assigned readings for that day. The paper must be double-spaced and properly cited (see note above). Please note I will not read longer papers. The point of this exercise is to assist students in developing clear succinct thinking and articulation. Each paper should provide a synopsis of the principal thesis of the reading or idea and highlight the supporting points and/or evidence elaborated therein. As the class progresses these may become more analytic as you develop a critical sense of the material. These will be due to me at the beginning of class. These papers are designed to prepare you for your final paper due at the end of the semester by ensuring the continuous practice of writing about the subject matter. I will grade the papers on a 10 point basis, with 10 being the highest mark and 1 being the lowest. I recommend that you bring an extra copy of each to class as they will prove helpful in preparing for class discussion. Short papers constitute 25% of your final grade. CLASS PARTICIPATION AND PRESENTATIONS: Throughout the semester each student will present information on a topic related to the week s readings in order to establish discussion points for the class. The presentation will focus on a topic provoked by the readings for that class. The presentation should recap the main points of the reading and provide further critical explication. Images or bullet points should accompany the presentation when appropriate, but keep in mind that visual presentations are most effective when they don t try to provide too much written material. Think about how pictures might provoke conversation. Presentations are best done via Powerpoint. I will bring my laptop each week for this use. Students may bring a disc or portable drive with their presentations and use my computer. It is the responsibility of the student to ensure that any mechanical devices will work with my computer. If you have doubts please provide your own. I will not accept presentations via before class. Presentations are to be no more than 10 minutes in length strictly enforced! Class participation commenting and developing ideas presented in the readings and discussion is required of all students. You must come to class prepared to address questions and ideas the readings have raised. One quarter of your final grade (25%) is dedicated to this portion of the class experience. FINAL PRESENTATION: Your final presentations will be similar to your weekly ones, but will be longer and more formal. Students will present the findings of their research for their final paper. Presentation length will depend on the number of students enrolled. Presenter will read his/her work as if presenting a formal paper at a conference. Details will be discussed in class. Worth 25% of the final grade. FINAL PAPER: Each student must produce a page research paper focusing on an artwork or building and relating to themes we study this semester and situated stylistically within one of the eras we cover. The object should form the focus of the paper or be used as a spring board to address concerns of its era with respect to our class themes. If you cannot decide on an object, I will provide a list from which you may choose to write. You might consider an artwork from one of the local museums (DAM, Kirkland Museum, CAM Denver) or an especially unusual building (e.g., the new

4 wing of DAM, St. John s Cathedral, The Contemporary Art Museum) Additionally, in the course of preparing your research paper you will be required to submit thesis statements, outlines, and bibliographies. Due dates are listed in the class schedule below. The final paper is worth 25% of your final grade. The initial bibliography should have at least 8 bibliographic sources culled from reputable, refereed resources. If you are in doubt as to what this means see me. The thesis statement should be a paragraph-long formulation of your paper topic including a refinement of the questions you intend to ask and the methods you intend to use to resolve them. The outline or conceptually mapped plan should formally layout the process by which your paper will unfold in answering your chosen topic. The final paper will provide an elaborated statement of your thesis; it will offer a detailed statement of the current scholarly research you have consulted; it will provide an analysis of this material and your critique of it as it addresses your thesis issue; finally it will conclude with a statement about the significance of your inquiry, any new ideas or findings you can bring to the subject, and the relevance of these. Please note: Please include any images under discussion along with their relevant information, such as location of artwork, owning institution, and source for the image. These may be photocopies or black and white printed digital images. I will accept no final papers in electronic form. And I DO NOT accept late papers. Plan well! In order to pass this course, students must complete all of the assignments. STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES: Any student with a disability requiring accommodations in this course is encouraged to contact me after class or during office hours. Additionally, students should contact UCD disability support services. PLAGIARISM POLICY: I observe the following definition of plagiarism. The act of appropriating the literary composition of another author, or excerpts, ideas, or passages therefrom, and passing the material off as one's own creation. (as stated at: ). If a student is caught plagiarising, he or she will fail the course. CLASS SCHEDULE: The following is a tentative list of weekly readings, subject to change at the discretion of the professor. CLASS MEETING DATE Jan. 21 READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS DUE FOR THIS CLASS DATE READINGS ARE INTENDED TO BE READ IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY ARE PRESENTED No reading due

5 INTRODUCTION S AND INTRODUCTORY CONCEPTS Class will meet, do introductions, and discuss logistics. We ll take some time to discuss some of the themes we ll encounter this semester. None In class: Selected readings and images discussed Jan. 28 ORIGINS OF A WESTERN TRADITION Roger Scruton, Beauty, Ch. 1, Judging Beauty, and Ch. 2, Human Beauty, pp Rader and Jessup, Art and Human Values, The Affinity of Religion and Art, pp Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, Ch. 1-2, pp Student Presenter: Matza Due: Short paper #1 Feb. 4 ANCIENT GREEKS ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DIVINE, GODS AND MEN Plato, The Symposium, selections on the love of beauty. J. J. Pollitt, Art and Experience in Classical Greece, Ch. 2, Consciousness and Conscience, pp Jean-Pierre Vernant, Mortals and Immortals: The Body of the Divine, in Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, ed. by Froma Zeitlin, Princeton UP, 1991, pp Student Presenter: Kamm, Ernst Due: Short Paper #2 Feb. 11 BEAUTIFUL DESIGNS FOR SACRED STRUCTURES Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, Ch. 3, Beauty as Proportion and harmony, pp Robin Rhodes, Architecture and Meaning on the Athenian Acropolis, Ch. 1, Introduction, pp. 1-26; Ch. 3, Religious Tradition and Broken Canon: The Doric Architecture, pp Student Presenter: Willems Due: Short Paper #3

6 Feb. 18 TOWARDS BEAUTY AND SACREDNESS CHRISTIAN AESTHETICS Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, Ch. 4, Light and color in the Middle Ages, pp Plotinus, selections from On Intellectual Beauty, in D. H. Richter, ed. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 2 nd ed., pp Jeanne H. Kilde, Sacred Power, Sacred Space: An Introduction to Christian Architecture and Worship, Ch. 3, Imperial Power in Constantinian and Byantine Churches, and Ch. 4, From Abbey to Great Church, Fortress to Heavenly City, pp Abbot Suger, selections from De Administratione Student Presenter: Kamm, O Connell Due: Short Paper #4 Feb. 25 WHAT S WRONG WITH AN IMAGE? BYZANTINE ICONOCLASM Averil Cameron, "The Language of Images: the Rise of Icons and Christian Representation" in D. Wood, ed., The Church and the Arts (Studies in Church History, 28) Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm, Princeton UP, 2002, ch. 1, Matter and Memory, and ch. 2, Icon and Idol, pp Student Presenter: Mileham, Ernst Due: Short Paper #5 Mar. 4 THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE MONSTROUS IN MEDIEVAL CULTURE Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, Ch. 5, The Beauty of Monsters, and Ch. 6, From the Pastourelle to Donna Angelica, pp Umberto Eco, On Ugliness, trans., A. McEwen, Rizzoli, 2007: Ch. 3, The Apocalypse, hell and the devil, and Ch. 4, Monsters and Portents, pp Alison Stones, Nipples, Entrails, Severed Heads and Skin: Devotional Images for Madame Marie, in Hourihane, ed. Image and Belief: Studies in celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University Press, 1999, pp Student Presenter: Prugh, Villegas

7 Due: Short Paper #6 Mar. 11 THE CULT OF BEAUTY IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, ch. 7 Magic beauty between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ch. 8, Ladies and heroes, David Hemsoll, Beauty as an aesthetic and artistic ideal in late fifteenthcentury Florence, in F. Ames-Lewis and Mary Rogers, eds., Concepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art, Ashgate Press, 1998, pp Student Presenter: Matza, O Connell Due: Short Paper #7; Initial Bibliography for paper March 18 RENAISSANCE MANNERISM TO ENLIGHTENME NT BEAUTY Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, ch. 9, From Grace to Disquieting Beauty, ch. 10, Reason and Beauty, pp Elizabeth Prettejohn, Beauty and Art: , Ch. 1, Eighteenth-Century Germany: Winckelmann and Kant, pp Student Presenter: Mileham, Prugh Due: Short Paper #8 March 25 April 1 THE SUBLIME AND ROMANTICS THE SECULARIZATIO N OF BEAUTY SPRING BREAK: NO CLASSES Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, ch. 11, The Sublime, and ch. 12, Romantic Beauty, pp Edmund Burke, Selections from A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, in Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, eds., Critical Theory since Plato, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; Revised Edition, 1992, pp. Hugh Honour, Romanticism, Ch. 2 The Morality of Landscape, pp Student Presenter: Martorano, Ogle Due: Thesis statement and outline; three questions raised by the readings April 8 INSTITUTIONS, RITUALS, THE Cuno, James. The Object of Art Museums, in Cuno, ed., Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust, pp

8 SACRED AND THE PROFANE IN THE MUSEUM Donald Preziosi, Hearing the unsaid: art history, museology and the composition of the self, in E. Mansfield, ed., Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline, pp Andrew McClellan, From Boullee to Bilboa: the museum as utopian space, in E. Mansfield, ed., Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline, pp Student Presenter: Martorano, Smith Due: Short Paper #9 April 15 QUESTIONING THE BEAUTY CANON IN MODERN TIMES I: MODERNITY AND UGLINESS Umberto Eco, History of Beauty, ch. 13, The religion of beauty, pp Umberto Eco, On Ugliness, Ch. 12 Iron Towers and Ivory Towers, and Ch. 13, The Avant-Garde and the Triumph of Ugliness, pp Student Presenter: Ogle, Villegas Due: Short Paper #10 April 22 QUESTIONING THE BEAUTY CANON IN MODERN TIMES II: POST 1945 ISSUES Adam Jolles, Tactile Turn: Envisioning a Postcolonial Aesthetic in France, Yale French Studies 109 (2006), pp bell hooks, Black Beauty and Black Power: Internalized Racism, in Killing Rage: Ending Racism, pp Suzi Gablik, The Re-enchantment of Art, Selections TBA Student Presenter: Smith, Willems Due: TBA April 29 FINAL PRESENTATIONS May 6: LAST CLASS, FINAL PRESENTATIONS No Readings Due Begin Final Presentations Complete Final Presentations No Readings Due

9 Friday, MAY 7 Note: This is not a class day, but you have until today to turn in your final paper if you wish FINAL PAPERS DUE BY 5:00 TODAY in my mail box in the MHMSS office or the mailbox outside MHMSS office Please observe the following CLAS Key Registration and Academic Deadlines and Policies:

A-H 624 section 001. Theory and Methods: Kant and Hegel on Art and Culture. Wednesday 5:00 7:30 pm. Fine Arts 308A. Prof.

A-H 624 section 001. Theory and Methods: Kant and Hegel on Art and Culture. Wednesday 5:00 7:30 pm. Fine Arts 308A. Prof. 1 A-H 624 section 001 Theory and Methods: Kant and Hegel on Art and Culture Wednesday 5:00 7:30 pm Fine Arts 308A Prof. Anna Brzyski Office Hours: W 2:00-4:00 pm and by appointment Phone: 859 388-9899