College Catalog Archives

Kris Cohen

Modern and contemporary art history.

William Diebold

Ancient and medieval art, manuscript illumination, art historical method.

Daniel Duford

Ceramic sculpture, block printing, drawing and graphic novels.

Marc Ganzglass

Sculpture, exhibition design, publication.

Dana E. Katz

Renaissance, baroque, and colonial Latin American art and architecture; Jews and the visual arts; methodologies of art history.

Michael Knutson

Painting, drawing, printmaking.

Akihiko Miyoshi

Photography, digital media, drawing.

Geraldine Ondrizek

Sculpture, installation, drawing, artists’ books. On sabbatical 2015–16.

Michelle H. Wang

Art and archaeology of early China.

Art majors at Reed study both art history and studio art, which the department sees as complementary disciplines. Introductory courses provide a foundation and an intensive experience in the practice of art or creative scholarship for both prospective majors and nonmajors.

In studio art, the 200-level courses stress formal, technical, and conceptual topics in a broad range of projects. More independent exploration, which might involve further work in the traditional core media or branch off into more experimental forms, is encouraged in 300-level courses. In art history, the introductory course introduces students to the discipline of art history through a detailed, methodologically based examination of a particular body of art. Advanced courses acquaint students with selected periods, movements, or issues in art and in the various methods of art historical research, as students learn to refine their powers of critical observation by looking, talking, and writing at length about individual works of art and other art-historical questions.

The advanced student may undertake independent work in areas of special interest. In recent years majors have often supplemented their program at Reed with a semester or year of studio art, architecture, museum training, or art history research at cooperating institutions in Europe, the United States, or elsewhere, as well as with summer internships at major museums.

Art history facilities include a large conference room equipped with slide and digital projection equipment, a visual resources collection, and a first-class gallery. These offer students the possibility of working closely with original objects.

The studio arts building contains classrooms for painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, photography, and digital media; a gallery/critique space; a seminar/projection room; faculty offices and studios; private senior studios; and a lounge.

The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery shows art of national and international stature through traveling exhibitions and those curated by the gallery director and faculty members. For more complete information on the gallery, see the “Educational Program” section of this catalog.

Requirements for the Major

For students doing a studio thesis: four units of art history, including Art 201 and at least one course in non-Western art; seven units of studio art, including Art 161; Humanities 210, 220, or 230; and Art 470. At least one semester of a 300-level studio course should be completed before the thesis year. For students doing an art history thesis: 6.5 units of art history, including Art 201, Art 300, at least one course in non-Western art, and one course at the 400 level; four units of studio art, including Art 161; Humanities 210, 220, or 230; and Art 470.

No art major, except one who transfers with junior standing, may use more than one unit of studio art and one unit of art history from outside Reed to fulfill departmental requirements.

Interdisciplinary majors are normally allowed to waive two units from the departmental requirement, one each from art history and studio art.

Applicants planning to major in art are not normally considered before successful completion, or reasonable certainty thereof, of Art 161 and 201. Transfers from other colleges, for whom in some cases one of these introductory courses may be waived, are expected to take a comparable amount of coursework at Reed (one unit of art history and one unit of studio art) before they can be considered as majors.

Normally, before taking the junior qualifying exam, students should have taken the following courses at Reed (in addition to Art 161 and 201): for students planning a studio art thesis, at least one unit of studio art at the 300 level; for students planning an art history thesis, three units of art history.

Senior Thesis

The senior thesis encourages students to pursue a significant, clearly defined project through individual initiative and independent work, culminating in a unified body of art or historical study.

Pacific Northwest College of Art Program

Reed students are eligible to apply to a joint program with the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). The joint program requires five years: the first and second years at Reed, followed by a two-year course of full-time study at PNCA, and a fifth year combining work at both institutions. Graduates of this program receive a bachelor of arts with a major in art from Reed and a bachelor of fine arts from PNCA.

Students interested in this course of study are strongly advised to meet with the Reed chair of the joint program before the end of their first year. Although application to the program occurs in the fourth semester, it is important that students be aware of the requirement differences for the Reed art and joint program majors. Applicants to the program are recommended by the Reed chair, and acceptance is contingent upon successful completion of at least 16 units of Reed credit, including at least three units of studio art and one unit of art history at Reed.

Art 161 - Visual Concepts

Full course for one semester. This course introduces the concepts and processes of studio art through multimedia. The work will involve traditional and nontraditional approaches to representation and abstraction, and investigate such problems as appropriation and the media, symbolism, narrative, temporality, and site specificity. The focus of the course may vary each semester, depending on the interests and areas of expertise of the faculty. Areas of focus may include painting, printmaking, photography, digital media, sculpture, or the artist’s book. This course serves as the prerequisite to 200-level studio courses. Studio.

Art 201 - Introduction to the History of Art

Full course for one semester. Basic art historical methods and examples of recent scholarship are examined in relationship to a chronologically, geographically, or thematically defined body of art. Credit may not be earned for this course if it is taken after passing a 300-level art history course. Lecture-conference.

Art 240 - Art and Language

Full course for one semester. This course will explore text as the crucial element that links a number of avant-garde movements of the twentieth century when artists take cues from literary works. Technically the course will cover page design, typography, letterpress, and block printing. Students will complete projects that explore the classical use of the page and roman lettering, the potential of the printed word to convey meaning through graphic and pictorial poetry, and creating a sculptural piece of concrete poetry. Readings will include technical and historical information on typography and Essays on Art and Language by Charles Harrison. The works of William Morris, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Ed Ruscha, Xu Bing, Alison Knowles, and Jenny Holzer will be referenced. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 261 - The Art of Printing, Publishing, and Distribution

This course will cover the practical techniques and conceptual methods underpinning the production and distribution of printed matter in the arts. The history of radical thought in arts (and politics) parallels the history of print. From the populist broadsides of Ben Franklin and the manifestos of Dada and surrealism to Fluxus books and contemporary artist-run publications, the technology of print has always been vital to the unfettered distribution of ideas. In this class we will learn fundamental skills for designing and printing text and image-based works in a variety of media, including letterpress, block printing, silk screen, and Xerox as well as print-on-demand and digital publishing. As an integral part of our work in the studio we will develop practical strategies for dissemination through an in-depth look at the history of distributed art forms, including posters, pamphlets, currency, stamps, mail art, subscription services, and web-based media. Readings on artist books, printing, and publications by Johanna Drucker, Robert Kinross, Maria Gough, and Simon Cutts will supplement a broad survey of artists working in distributed forms including Dan Graham, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Ed Ruscha, David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey, Allison Knowles and Dick Higgins. Enrollment limited to 15. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 262 - The Figure

Full course for one semester. This course explores the human body and its representations. Studio exercises focus on traditional Western approaches to rendering the human form from the Renaissance forward, investigating gesture, proportion, tone, and perspective through close observation and anatomical study. Students will have the opportunity to work in charcoal, ink, and a variety of other 2-D media, and will learn to build armatures and work figuratively in clay. The second half of the term will explore more experimental approaches to working with the human form. Although the course is primarily a studio course, short readings and written assignments touch on key issues in art criticism and theory, including expressionism, abstraction, phenomenology, poststructuralism, and feminism. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 264 - Intaglio Printmaking

Full course for one semester. This explores the technical, formal, and conceptual aspects of printmaking through such thematic assignments as organic/inorganic, interior/exterior spaces, self-representation, appropriation, relationships of images and words, and a final project involving narrative (representation of extended time and expanded space). Intaglio printmaking includes drypoint, etching, sugarlift, aquatint, and multiple color processes. Additional work will include printing an edition of an image for exchange with class members, and studying master and contemporary prints in the Reed and other local collections. This course is offered in alternate years. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 265 - Relief Printmaking

Full course for one semester. We explore the technical, formal, and conceptual aspects of printmaking through such thematic assignments as organic/inorganic, interior/exterior spaces, self-representation, appropriation, relationships of images and words, and a final project involving narrative (representation of extended time and expanded space). Relief printmaking includes woodcut, linocut, stencil, collagraph, multiple and subtractive block chiaroscuro, and multiple-color printing. Additional work will include printing an edition of an image for exchange with class members, and studying master and contemporary prints in the Reed and other local collections. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio. This course is offered in alternate years.

Art 271 - Painting I

Full course for one semester. The class explores color structure, interaction, and illusions (transparency, luminosity, atmosphere), through abstraction and various compositional strategies. Major projects involve creating a “shape alphabet” and a series of variations on it; paintings in which there is a close correspondence, or a tension, between image and support; paintings that focus on process and nontraditional techniques; and an independent final project that builds upon previous work in the class. Weekly slide lectures focus on color and composition in representational and abstract painting. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 272 - Painting II

Full course for one semester. The class extends many of the color relationships and compositional models from Art 271 to an exploration of different styles of representation and genres, including still life, interior and landscape spaces, portraiture and self-portraiture, and narrative painting. Weekly slide lectures focus on how different artists have explored these genres over their careers. A sketchbook of compositional and color studies of historical and modern paintings is also required. Although Art 271 and 272 are conceived as a yearlong introduction to painting, with a progressive sequence of projects, Art 272 may, with consent of the instructor, be entered at midyear. Prerequisite: Art 161 and Art 271. Studio.

Art 281 - Sculpture I: The Language of Structure and Scale

Full course for one semester. This introductory course introduces the structural principles and communicative possibilities of materials and their formal three-dimensional relationships. Development of the student’s ability to apply formal visual principles such as scale, weight, and mass is emphasized. Each project addresses one of the three scales of sculpture: the architectural, into which the body fits; the human, to which the body relates; and the intimate, which relates to the hand or head. We will study the fundamentals of wood fabrication including joinery and lamination, plaster molding, and metal fabrication. Throughout the course slide lectures and readings on the work of artists and architects will demonstrate how they have addressed these problems in the past. Prerequisite: Art 161 and sophomore standing, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 282 - Sculpture II: The Expanded Field

Full course for one semester. A studio sculpture course exploring the mechanical form and functions of the body, the transformation of materials, architectural form, and landscape. Until the twentieth century representation of the human form was central to sculpture. In modern and contemporary art, the scale of sculpture is directly related to the human form and phenomenological experience. This course will parallel the history of sculpture as a temporal and spatially dynamic form. Readings and discussions on figurative sculpture, fashion, performance art, the “ready-made,” contemporary architecture, and landscape sculpture will be covered. Technically we will focus on metal fabrication, welding, sewing, and large-scale outdoor construction. Prerequisite: Art 161 or 281 or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 283 - Object Lessons

Art 290 - Art and Photography I

Full course for one semester. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of photography through both film and digital photographic processes and investigates the use of photography in the context of contemporary art. The class will cover camera operation, principles of exposure, basic understanding of light, film development, and darkroom/digital printing. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of photography are explored through shooting assignments, readings, slide presentations, and critiques. Students will learn to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 295 - Digital Imaging/Processing

Full course for one semester. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of digital media. Technical and conceptual units will be presented both in a historical context and in light of contemporary arts practice. We will explore the link between art, technology, and the computer through readings, slide presentations, and class discussions. Topics will include the nature of the digital document; the relationship of digital forms to traditional hand-based media; the machine/digital aesthetic; and intersecting discourses of art, new media, and the sciences. Students will learn to acquire, manipulate, and print digital images. The class will also explore the use of the computer as an autonomous art tool through programming and examine the possibility of process-based art. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Enrollment limited to 12. Prerequisite: Art 161, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 296 - Digital Video/Interactive Art

Full course for one semester. We will explore artistic concepts and technologies involved in the creation of video art and interactive time-based art. Students will learn nonlinear video editing (Final Cut) and interactive graphical programming (Max/MSP/Jitter) while being exposed to the history and discourse of video art and new media art. Class time will be spent in lectures, viewings, lab work, critique, and occasional field trips. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Enrollment limited to 12. Prerequisite: Art 161 or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 300 - Junior Seminar (Art History)

One-half course for one semester. This course is designed for declared art history majors with junior standing, and is limited to those art history juniors (of whom it is required as part of the junior qualifying examination in art history). This team-taught course will introduce students to innovative examples of art-historical scholarship. The theme of the class will change yearly to engage a broad geographical and chronological range of topics. A major task of this seminar is to prepare students to design and research a topic, compose and annotate a bibliography, and write and revise a 20-page research paper by the end of the semester. This experience, in turn, will prepare them to write their senior art history thesis. Prerequisites: Art 201 and two 300-level classes in art history. Conference.

Art 301 - Recent Writing about Art

One-half course for one semester. This course is intended for, but not limited to, junior and senior majors in art and art history. This team-taught course will introduce students to innovative examples of recent art historical scholarship, spanning a broad geographical and chronological range of topics. Texts will be read with an eye to understanding the methods currently engaged within the discipline of art history and within other fields to interpret visual artifacts. The course also will offer a forum for participants to test the applicability of these interpretive strategies through presentations of their own work. Prerequisites: Art 201 and at least one 300-level course in art history or studio art. This course may be repeated for credit. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 302 - Visual Cultures of South Asian Nationalism and Globalism, 1757–Present

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 303 - Miracles and Images in East Asia

Full course for one semester. This course explores the function and status of images in religious and cultic contexts (primarily Buddhism), focusing on questions about enlivening, agency, and affective response. Recent scholarship on the cult of images in East Asia and the West provides a framework for an in-depth analysis of what makes an image alive, what are its expected behaviors, and how activation alters the subject-object relation. Particular attention will be devoted to issues about materiality, the role of the senses, visualization practices, and visibility and invisibility, as well as destruction, circulation, and display. Developing as a sequence of interrelated case studies, the course will focus mainly on ancient examples that include Buddha’s footprint and shadow, self-generated images, the cult of relics, and ominous apparition, without sacrificing an investigation of the miraculous in the contemporary world. Prerequisite: Art 201 or Humanities 230, or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 307 - Monumentality, Ornament, and Decline in the Architecture of Early Modern India, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 308 - Gothic Architecture and Art

Full course for one semester. This class will examine Gothic art and architecture. Attention will be given to the contexts of its production, especially in France, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, and of its reception, both in the Middle Ages and since the eighteenth century. Students will study Gothic buildings and the art produced in the ambient (Saint-Denis, Chartres, Bourges, Amiens, Reims, and the Sainte Chapelle) and the modern reception of the Gothic in architecture (Horace Walpole; the Gothic revival), art (William Morris), and literature and film (Victor Hugo; Walt Disney). Topics include the definition of the Gothic; the Gothic as a French and/or courtly style; the encyclopedic nature of Gothic thought, building, and art; the unity of Gothic art and architecture; and the appeal of the Gothic in the modern period. Prerequisite: Art 201, a course in medieval culture, or permission of the instructor. Conference.

Art 310 - Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts

Full course for one semester. This course examines the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance courts during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Concentrating primarily on the dynastic centers of Milan, Mantua, Ferrara, and Urbino, the course explores the ways in which Renaissance art operated in the service of the court as a powerful tool of statecraft. We will consider the union of art and politics by examining the patronage of the secular princes, while also analyzing how the visual identity of the state intersected with representations of gender and religious difference in the Italian Renaissance city-states. The course will provide new insights into famous works by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea Mantegna and place their work within a larger discourse that incorporates less well-known local art by painters including Cosimo Tura and Dosso Dossi. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 313 - Art and Life in Renaissance Florence

Full course for one semester. In Lives of the Artists Giorgio Vasari describes how “the arts were born anew” in Renaissance Florence. The city’s streets and piazzas, palaces and churches, paintings and sculptures all give visual form to the cultural and social changes that affected Florentine life. In its study of artists such as Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, this course concentrates on the 15th and 16th centuries as a period of innovation, in terms of both artistic theory and practice. Through an examination of Florence’s public, ecclesiastical, and domestic spaces, we will consider how visual and material culture served as markers of civic identity and social distinction. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Lecture-conference.

Art 316 - Medieval Manuscript Illumination

Full course for one semester. This course examines the manuscript book from its origins in late antiquity, tracing its development through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. The emphasis will be on illustrated manuscripts in their context: what they were, how they were made, and the ways in which they were used. Rather than providing a chronological survey, this course will consider some of the fundamental issues in the history of manuscripts, such as the origin and nature of the codex, the relationship of text and image, the problem of illusionism in manuscript illumination, and the interaction between manuscripts and printed books. Readings and lectures will be supplemented by the detailed study of medieval manuscripts in the Reed College collection. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Lecture-conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 320 - Iconoclasm

Full course for one semester. Iconoclasm, the purposeful destruction of images, and aniconism—the refusal to produce images—have been recurring phenomena throughout the history of Western art. Whether iconoclasm is an exclusively Western practice will be one of the subjects considered in this course. Prominent examples of iconoclasm and aniconism across time include the ancient practice of destroying the monuments of previous rulers; the prohibition on images in the Hebrew Bible; Christian iconoclasm in medieval Byzantium and in the wake of the Protestant Reformation; state-sponsored destruction of images during the French, Russian, and Nazi revolutions; vandalism; and contemporary attempts to censor the visual arts. Long neglected by art historians, the study of iconoclasm is now considered central to understanding the historical function of images. By examining theories of iconoclasm and selected case studies, this course will attempt to understand the phenomenon and its importance for the study of past art; over the course of the semester each student will conduct a detailed examination of an iconoclastic incident of his or her choice. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Lecture-conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 332 - Art and Archaeology in Early China

Full course for one semester. This course will explore artifacts excavated in China from the height of the Neolithic period (c. 4000–2000 BCE) to the end of the eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE). Excavated objects from these periods rarely have accompanying textual explanations. Instead, we rely primarily on archaeology, which provides the raw material for understanding the distant past and constructs temporal narratives that account for the categorical differences between artifacts. With the rise of material culture studies in the field of art history, enigmatic objects that fell within the domain of archaeology may now have art-historical explanations. The course is organized chronologically by archaeological site. Secondary textual sources and comparative studies with other sites will be used to refine our understanding of artisans and their craft and the social and cultural functions of objects. What types of training did artisans undergo? What sources (manuals, tacit knowledge, guild practices, etc.) provided the necessary skills for artisans to work? How was labor divided and what were the social structures in place that dictated artisans’ modes of production? How were these objects used and circulated by the living and the dead? Prerequisite: Art 201, or Humanities 230, or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Art 334 - Art and Politics in Modern China

Full course for one semester. This course focuses on late nineteenth- to twenty-first-century Chinese visual culture and its political implications. The course, organized loosely around four historical moments in the past one hundred years of Chinese history, emphasizes parallel narratives constructed by the rise of specific technologies that were employed for visual production. We begin with the major transition from the imperial Qing dynasty to the tumultuous Republican period in 1911, paying close attention to the discussions on Western and Chinese artistic practices that arose at this critical political junction. We then turn to art production under Mao Zedong beginning in 1942, with his famous talks on literature and art presented in Yan’an, in which art became an integral part of his social and political platforms. From there we examine the visual objects produced during and shortly after the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. Finally, we will seek to critically examine the political, economic, and social changes that have transformed China into one of the most exciting geographic regions for thinking about contemporary art, and the ways in which artists have chosen to depict and negotiate their changing realities. Prerequisite: Art 201, or Humanities 230, or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Art 340 - Art and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century

Full course for one semester. This conference will engage students with a critical history of nineteenth-century art and visual culture in Europe (especially France, Britain, and Belgium) and its imperial domains in North and Central Africa, the Near East, and South Asia. It will thus explore how nineteenth-century art and visual culture instantiated the psychological, physical, and imaginative experiences of empire. In so doing, the conference offers an entwined history of global power and modernity. Students will read key theoretical texts on Orientalism, postcolonialism, and alternate/global modernities, and examine the conditions and possibilities for dominance, transculturation, and subversion at intersections of power and visual culture. Prerequisite: Art 201, Humanities 220, or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 341 - The Emergence of Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Europe

Full course for one semester. This conference will offer a critical survey of nineteenth-century European (primarily French, German, Belgian, and British) architecture that traces the ways in which architecture was consolidated as a “modern” discipline and practice during this period. In this vein, the conference will examine architecture’s contentious entanglements with drawing, urban planning, craft, financial speculation, and industrialization. In addition, it will pay attention to the formalization of the discipline of “architectural history” in the nineteenth century as a result of changing technologies in print culture, humanist debates about restoration and preservation, and colonial archaeology. Prerequisite: Art 201, Humanities 220, or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 347 - Figuring Relation in and after Modernity

Full course for one semester. One of the features of modernity and its aftermath has been the continual transformation of collective life by technologies of mass mediation. The aim of this course is to understand the formal strategies of art’s explorations of collective life as well as the social and political imperatives driving this work. We will examine not only the ways that art practice has taken group life as its subject, but also the ways that art has addressed its viewers, thereby constituting them as particular kinds of groups. Most of our case material will come from art genres that have insistently addressed the question of collective life, including constructivism, situationism, mail art, minimalism, installation art, performance art, video art, site-specific art and net.art. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 352 - The Art of Capitalism

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 354 - Performing Mediation: Video Art from the Studio to the Database

Full course for one semester. The video medium implicates various popular media, including home video, cinema, television, and, more recently, webcams and online video. We will study the aesthetic precursors of video art as well as the histories of the popular media with which video art is historically and technologically enmeshed. Central to our discussions will be questions of media, and in this we will draw both from art history’s focus on medium specificity and media theory’s focus on mediation. A wide range of video practices will be covered (analog, digital; closed-channel, broadcast, networked; in and outside the Americas). A significant portion of the semester will be spent on feminist video art—its politics of address, its affect, and its historical relationship to theories of gender, sex, and sexuality. Videos will be viewed in class, and students should expect to watch videos outside of class each week as well. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 360 - Art and Photography II

Full course for one semester. The course will introduce advanced topics such as color, large-format, and medium-format photography. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of photography are explored through projects, readings, slide presentations, lab work, and critiques. Class time will be spent in lecture, slide presentations, lab work, critique, and occasional field trips. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Enrollment limited to 16. Prerequisite: Art 290 or consent of the instructor. Studio.

Art 361 - Intermediate Photography and Digital Media I

Full course for one semester. This intermediate studio course provides a forum for more advanced and independent work for students who have completed the introductory sequence in photography or digital media. It will function as both a studio intensive and a junior seminar, with regular discussion of articles in contemporary media arts and theory, as well as selected historical writings and works. Assignments will be open-ended, providing thematic guidelines, which build on skills and conceptual awareness from the introductory courses. Assignments will also respond directly to individual and group interests. Possibilities include electronic visualization, collaborative video or still production, documentary, large-format photography, mural printing (photographic and digital), and hybridization of traditional and electronic photography. Topics of reading and research will include the aesthetics and politics of visual truth, the collective imagination of popular culture, the science and psychology of optics and seeing, and the indexical as a mode of representation. Class time will be spent in lecture, slide presentations, lab work, critique, and occasional field trips. Students must be highly self-motivated and will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Prerequisites: Art 291 or 296 or consent of the instructor. May be repeated for credit. Studio-conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 365 - Intersection: Architecture, Landscape Sculpture

Full course for one semester. This advanced studio sculpture course explores architectural and landscape-based works. Reading and research will focus on artists and architects from the 1970s to the present who use public process and sustainable materials to design and build innovative forms within urban spaces. The class will create a set of potential design solutions for a site in Portland. Studio training will include drafting, drawing, and planning strategies and building scale models in wood and metal. Knowledge of Google SketchUp and or Photoshop desired. Prerequisite: Art 161 and Art 281 or 282, or consent of the instructor. Studio. 

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 368 - Image and Text: The Book as a Sculptural Object

Full course for one semester. This course explores the significant role artists’ books have played among the avant-garde of eastern and western Europe and the United States from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. The structural format book works take and their social and political functions will be viewed, discussed, and fabricated. The course will cover binding both codex and accordion books, reproducing images using palmer plates, and setting and printing type and images using a Reprex letterpress. Reed’s special collections will provide a spectrum of professional artists’ books, including magazine works, anthologies, diaries, manifestos, visual poetry, word works, documentation, albums, comic books, and mail art. We will read and discuss essays relating to each studio problem. Prerequisites: Art 161 and one 200-level studio course or consent of the instructor. Studio-conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 371 - Intermediate Painting, Drawing, and Printmaking I

Full course for one semester. The first part of the course will involve exploratory drawing toward a project to be proposed and executed over the rest of the semester. The project might involve continued work in drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, or two-dimensional mixed media. The course serves as a junior seminar with weekly discussions of critical essays and articles, and short papers. Past readings have focused on modernist art and theory from 1940 to 1970; postmodernism and critical issues in art since 1970; nineteenth and twentieth century aesthetics; notions of beauty in contemporary art; pictorial representations of irony; and artist self-representation and intentionality. Prerequisites: Art 264 or 265, or Art 271 and 272, or consent of the instructor. May be repeated for credit. Studio-conference.

Art 373 - Internet Literacy, Culture, and Practice

Art 381 - Intermediate Sculpture and Multimedia

Full course for one semester. This studio and junior seminar course focuses on specific topics in contemporary art and criticism concerning sculptural installation works. Technical instruction may include sculptural and architectural model building, wood and metal fabrication, lighting, sound works, video works, and cloth and alternative material fabrication methods. Topics covered change from year to year and include installation and performance art, electronic media, collaboration, and documentation of installation. Critical theory covered may include a history of installation and performance, postconceptual practice, the role of the artist in society, the material semiotics of feminism, and the aesthetic criteria of modernism to minimalism. Prerequisites: Art 281 and 282, or 292 and 295, or consent of the instructor. May be repeated for credit. Studio-conference.

Art 390 - The Imperial Enterprise: Arts at the Qing Court (ca. 1679–1799)

Full course for one semester. The consolidation of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) led to a level of visibility of the ruling house that had little antecedents in China’s past. New historical research has deeply changed our understanding of the universal empire the Qing envisioned for themselves, but what role images and works of art played in shaping imperial claims still calls for investigation. From a markedly interdisciplinary perspective, this course focuses on about 100 years of court production and explores the practice of painting in relation to contemporary decorative arts, palatial architecture, and conventions of display and ritual performance. Critical issues will consider intercultural and intermedia exchange, the role of European artists, workshop organization and knowledge transmission, and the relationship between technology, labor, and time. Emphasizing an integrated approach to the art produced for/in the palace, this course reframes Qing court art as a modernized incarnation of a long-standing tradition of imperial visuality. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Lecture-conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 393 - A View from the Studio

Full course for one semester. The social construction of the artist in China has evolved on a contentious relationship with notions about labor, production, and the spaces designed for it. This course traces a long trajectory from early descriptions of the unruly, eccentric painter to the canonization of the amateur scholar-painter in the sixteenth century. Central to our discussions will be issues about knowledge transmission, master-pupil exchange, rivalry, and the relationship between the studio as site of intellectual cultivation and the workshop, the boudoir, and the monastery. What happens when the idea of the world as studio turns into an understanding of the studio as world? Prerequisite: Art 201, humanities 230, or consent of the instructor. Conference.  

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 398 - “The Yangzhou Dream”: Art and Culture in Yangzhou, ca. 1600–1900

Full course for one semester. Throughout its long history, the city of Yangzhou has stood as the paradigm of the novel and the worldly. The city has also suffered repeatedly from violence and destruction, and the “Yangzhou Dream” reminded everyone of the transience of pleasures and the passing of time. Relying on a wide range of sources that include maps, guidebooks, private diaries, paintings, drama and storytelling, this new course will reconstruct the Yangzhou mediasphere and the vicissitudes of its enterprising population. Issues that will be covered include, but are not limited to the notion of the “local” vs. the imperial, interregional and international networks of exchange, the relationship between written and oral culture, elite and vernacular arts. No knowledge of Chinese is required. Prerequisite: Art 201 or humanities 230, or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 408 - Renaissance Space

Full course for one semester. “Whoever holds the piazza is master of the city,” writes the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Cavalcanti. The master of the city was no neutered subject; Cavalcanti’s remarks demonstrate how urban geographies were in fact gendered in the early modern period. Whereas men occupied the piazza and its public architecture, women were ensconced within the folds of the private interior. This course will explore the representations of space in visual and textual culture to reveal how the spatial relations of the Renaissance city articulated the power and social controls delineating the contours of community. Included in our discussion will be the art of Botticelli and Titian; the architecture of prostitutes, patricians, and nuns; and contemporary treatises by Alberti. Prerequisites: two 300-level art history courses. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 410 - Medievalism: Modern and Postmodern

Full course for one semester. This course will study medievalism, the postmedieval interest in the Middle Ages, with an emphasis on the period from the European Enlightenment to the present. Medievalism is of interest because it has been seen as both quintessentially modern (most recently in Alexander Nagel’s Medieval Modern) and quintessentially postmodern (e.g. Bruce Holsinger’s The Premodern Condition). A major goal of the course will be examining these positions. While a primary concern will be with visual medievalism, the course will also consider in detail medievalism in history, literature, and popular culture. The course will culminate in a small exhibition of material drawn from Reed College’s collections. Prerequisite: two 300-level art history courses or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 417 - Exhibition Design Seminar

Full course for one semester. In 1934 and 1935, the exhibition Eugenics in New Germany, organized by the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden, was on display in California and Oregon. Reed College was one of the exhibit locations. This seminar will plan and design an exhibition to mark this event. Students will research the original exhibition and its context. The seminar will try to determine the best way to represent this piece of history to a modern public. In particular, the feasibility and desirability of recreating the original exhibition at Reed will be considered. The goal of the seminar is to plan and design the exhibition and write a catalogue, labels, and other texts. (The actual installation of the exhibition will not be possible during the course.) Through this process, students will become acquainted with a range of issues involved in representing the past through the medium of exhibitions and museum studies. Prerequisite: Two 300-level art history courses or consent of the instructor. Conference.

Not offered 2015—16.

Art 421 - Theories of Form

Full course for one semester. Form is at once the site and source of art’s most hermetic instincts while also anchoring a set of theories wherein the border between art and world erodes most completely. No wonder the concept can seem hopelessly incoherent. And yet, aesthetics has never been able to do without theories of form, and many important thinkers of art and aesthetics have felt some concept of form to be essential to practices that take critique and critical pedagogy as their goal. What are the boundaries and extensions of form? Is it more like an object or a relation? When is it political? How does form become historical? When form is used to bracket out the world, how is this accomplished and at what expense? This class will ask such questions by surveying a range of thinkers writing from 1900 to the present who have thought in a sustained way about form as an object of study, a site for the crossing of aesthetics and politics. Due to the often recondite nature of our subject, we will spend significant time with each of our authors. Specific artists and artist materials that we consider will be driven by student interests and local accessibility. Prerequisite: Art 201 and two 300-level art history courses. Conference.

Art 470 - Thesis

Full course for one year.

Art 481 - Independent Projects or Independent Reading

One-half or full course for one semester. Independent courses are usually offered only to students already admitted to the division as art majors. Such courses cannot be used to satisfy the basic course requirements of the department. Prerequisite: approval of instructor and division.