Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture in Europe: The Art World en masse

This course will survey the visual arts in Europe over the course of the long nineteenth century, from history painting of the French Revolution to avant-garde experimentation in the years leading up to World War I. This was a period of dramatic social and artistic change that included revolutionary upheavals, growth of urban centers, expansion of empire, technological developments, and the challenging of artistic conventions and institutions. Looking across media, painting, sculpture, print, photography, decorative arts, textiles, magazines, newspapers, and advertising, the course will introduce students to artists, practices, and key aesthetic movements of the nineteenth century, such as Romanticism, Orientalism, and Impressionism. Engaging with themes of labor, class, gender, and colonialism, the course will expand and reframe existing art historical narratives of this period.