Kris Cohen
Modern and contemporary art history.
William Diebold
Ancient and medieval art, manuscript illumination, art historical method.
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.
Barbara Tetenbaum
Book arts and printmaking.
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, alternative 100-level introductory courses lead to 200- and 300-level courses in the general fields of drawing, painting, and printmaking; sculpture, installation, and image and text; and photography, digital media, and internet literacy. 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.
Art history facilities include a large conference room equipped with 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.
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 two 100-level art courses in different disciplines; Humanities 220, or two units from Humanities 211, 212, 231, and 232; 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 (or approved equivalent), at least one course in non-Western art, and one course at the 400 level; four units of studio art, including two 100-level art courses in different disciplines; Humanities 220, or two units from Humanities 211, 212, 231, and 232; and Art 470. No art major, except one who transfers with junior standing, may normally 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 two 100-level art courses in different disciplines and Art 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 two 100-level art courses in different disciplines and Art 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. Students should inquire with the art department about appropriate substitutions.
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 170 - Introductory Drawing
Full course for one semester. An introduction to studio art through the processes, concepts and subjects of drawing. Work in the first half of the semester involves the apprehension of landscape spaces and natural forms through contour, shape, gesture, and chiaroscuro, leading to the study of the human form and self-representation. The second half of the semester focuses on spatial representation (isometric projection and Western perspective, and chiaroscuro) in still life and architectural spaces. The final project is a series of eight drawings exploring a particular interior or exterior space each student has chosen. Throughout the semester there are also nontraditional assignments that involve working from memory, working from nonvisual sensory experiences, abstraction, and collaboration. Art 170, 173, and 175 are alternative prerequisites for Art 271 (Painting I) and Art 272 (Painting II). Enrollment limited to 18. Studio.
Art 171 - The Figure
Full course for one semester. Making an image of the human body is one of the most basic artistic acts. It involves sympathy with another body, self-identification and empirical observation. As practiced by Western artists it serves as both the basic roots of drawing and the height of artistic facility. In this class we explore all dimensions of the studio practice of rendering the figure. The course begins with observational drawing moves through figure sculpture and finally ends with portraiture. We will create a rigorous studio practice centered on the act of drawing. Readings, homework assignments, and discussions will unpack traditions based in gender and race. Through field trips to galleries and museums we will look at the uses of the figure in art history and contemporary art. The bulk of the studio work will be done in class. An average of one to three hours outside of class per week is expected. Aside from the work of observing and sussing out the details of the figure, classes will include discussions of assigned readings. Enrollment limited to 18. Studio.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 173 - Intaglio Printmaking
Full course for one semester. An introduction to studio art through the processes, concepts, and subjects of printmaking. Intaglio printmaking includes drypoint, linear etching, aquatint, soft ground, sugar lift, and multiple tone and color processes. In the first half of the semester these techniques will be introduced and applied to thematic projects involving natural and manmade forms, landscape and architectural spaces, self-representation, relationships of images and text, etc. Two large projects will occupy the second half of the semester: a class-sized edition of a print on an agreed-upon theme, and a final project, a large, complex image or a sequence of images, involving several processes. Additional sketchbook work will study the styles and compositions of master and contemporary printmakers. The class will also study prints in the Reed College collection, the Portland Art Museum, and local galleries. This course is offered in alternate years with Art 175. Art 173, 175, and 170 are alternative prerequisites for Art 271 (Painting I) and Art 272 (Painting II). Enrollment limited to 18. Studio.
Art 175 - Relief Printmaking
Full course for one semester. An introduction to studio art through the processes, concepts, and subjects of printmaking. Relief printmaking includes woodcut, linocut, stencil, collagraph, nonrectangular shaped and puzzle-piece blocks, subtractive block chiaroscuro, and multiple-block/multiple-color printing. In the first half of the semester these processes will be introduced and applied to thematic projects involving natural and manmade forms, landscape and architectural spaces, self-representation, relationships of images and text, etc. Two large projects will occupy the second half of the semester: a class-sized edition of a print on an agreed-upon theme, and a final project, a large, complex image or a sequence of images, involving several processes. Additional sketchbook work will study the styles and compositions of master and contemporary printmakers. The class will also study prints in the Reed College collection, the Portland Art Museum, and local galleries. This course is offered in alternate years with Art 173. Art 175, 173, and 170 are alternative prerequisites for Art 271 (Painting I) and Art 272 (Painting II). Enrollment limited to 18. Studio.
Art 180 - 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 focus on the social and political significance text-based works have in society. They will include Essays on Art and Language by Charles Harrison; The Futurist Moment by Marjorie Perloff; interviews with Glenn Ligon and Lorna Simpson; and essays on Ian Hamilton Finlay, Ed Ruscha, Xu Bing, Alison Knowles, and Jenny Holzer. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Art 181 - Architectonic Structures
Full course for one semester. This course introduces students to the structural principles and communicative possibilities of sculpture and architecture. Each project addresses one of the three scales: the architectural, into which the body fits; the human, to which the body relates or which the body physically inhabits; and the intimate, which relates to the hand or head. We will study the fundamentals of wood and aluminum fabrication, including handcrafted joinery, lamination, steam bending, wall construction laser cutting, and 3-D printing. Readings will focus on the application of craft-based architectural construction and the direct impact this has on society through communal projects, new types of housing, and personal agency. Students will be exposed to diverse, international contemporary artists and architects. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Art 182 - Material Objects
Full course for one semester. A crafts-based course that focuses on the form, function, and concept of handmade objects in our society. The class will learn skills in hand-built and thrown clay forms, casting and fabricating with ceramics, wax, paper, cloth and glass. The assignments will explore the poetic language of each material, fusing the analog and the digital, and will focus on cooperative and community-based works that can emerge from these mediums. Readings will focus on social practices and culturally significant, politically motivated works made for and with communities. Students will have technical workshops with studio assistant in glass and ceramics weekly. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Art 190 - Art and Photography I
Full course for one semester. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of photography through 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, digital processing and printing. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of photography are explored through assignments, readings, slide presentations and critiques. Enrollment limited to 12. Studio.
Art 195 - Digital Imaging and Coding with Processing
Full course for one semester. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of digital imaging. Technical and conceptual units will be presented in a historical context and that of contemporary art practice. The class will cover digital camera operation, as well as the use of scanners, phones, tablets, and other digital tools and techniques to produce work. We will explore the link between art, technology, and the computer through readings, slide presentations, and class discussions. Students will learn to acquire, manipulate, and print digital images using Photoshop and Illustrator. Students are meant to develop a solid understanding of these digital imaging practices as well as an adaptable approach to emerging technologies. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. No prerequisite. Enrollment limited to 12. Studio.
Art 196 - Digital Video and Coding Interactivity
Full course for one semester. We will explore the use of the moving image, digital video, and interactivity as related to art. Students will be exposed to the concepts and visual strategies surrounding digital media, and techniques of nonlinear, nondestructive video editing and interactivity. We will look at the various ways in which artists employ these technologies and tools in their works through readings, class discussions, and slide presentations. First, students will deal with moving image as a medium as practiced in art and will be exposed to media software such as Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. Then, we will take apart and reexamine the moving image and the tools artist use to edit the moving image in an attempt to expand our understanding of the medium through a graphical programming environment for video, music, and data called Max/MSP/Jitter. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Enrollment limited to 12. Studio.
Not offered 2020–21.
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 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: one 100-level studio art course, consent of the instructor based on senior standing, or consent of the instructor. Studio.
Not offered 2020–21.
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 170, 173, or 175, or consent of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 18. 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. Prerequisite: Art 170, 173, or 175, or consent of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 18. Studio.
Art 282 - Sculpture in the Expanded Field
Full course for one semester. A studio sculpture course exploring the human body as a site for transformation through clothing, performance, and architectural construction. We will explore wearable works as well as spatially dynamic and temporal art form, directly related to the human form and phenomenological experience. Readings and discussions will focus on feminist theory, queer theory, and critical race theory, and the representation of the body throughout art history, fashion, and performance art. Technically, we will focus on metal fabrication, welding, and sewing. Prerequisite: Art 181, Art 182, or any 100-level studio course or consent of the instructor. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Art 284 - Craft and Culture
Full course for one semester. This is a studio art course covering the craft of ceramics and glass, their historical and cultural context, and contemporary culture’s engagement with these craft forms. The course will focus on how and why artists have explored materials, methods, and strategies of craft over the last seven decades. Many have chosen to expand on their own cultural histories of craft while others have been experimental. In all studio work, the labor and process will be focused on with an eye to training and practice as the core of the craft. Projects will be both utilitarian and conceptually based. Students will advance their skills in hand building, throwing, glazing, glass casting and 3D ceramic printing. Discussion will cover crafts subversion of the so-called “fine art” and the political stance that the works take. New perspectives on subjects that have been central to artists, including popular culture, feminist and queer aesthetics, and recent explorations of identity and relationships to place will be explored. All students will keep a research notebook/sketchbook in which they will respond to all readings, research artists, and design projects. Prerequisite: Art 181 or 182. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Art 291 - 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. Prerequisite: Art 190 or consent of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 16. Studio.
Art 292 - Drawing with Light
Full course for one semester. The course will explore photography as an experimental medium, studying light as the subject matter through different practices and techniques. Students will experiment with image manipulation, combining both digital and analog processing, color and monochromatic outputs, and traditional and experimental modes of image capture and output on different supports. Class time will include visits to museums, field trips, technical demonstrations, darkroom work, and group critiques. This course is designed to expand the student’s photographic vocabulary; to encourage experimentation, utilizing a variety of materials and techniques; and to push the boundaries of what makes a photograph. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of light are explored through projects, readings, slide presentations, lab work, and critiques. Additionally, students will learn to develop content-driven art, focusing on the relationship between form and content, subject matter and meaning. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Prerequisite: One 100-level studio art course or consent of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12. Studio.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 293 - Internet Literacy, Culture, and Practice
Full course for one semester. Students will develop an understanding of the technology and the issues surrounding the internet and the web through studio activities, readings, and online and/or physical fieldwork. Students will gain literacy in web development languages (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). We will cover the history of the use of computers and networks as a tool for empowerment and for creating art. We will explore topics such as hypertextuality, nonlinearity, interactivity, authorship, web as archive, net neutrality, and the open-source movement. With the newly acquired literacy in hand we will investigate how the convergence of the web/social media with social practice/activism reconfigures the ways in which artists and citizens view, participate in, understand, and narrate real-world issues. Prerequisite: Art 195 or 196, or consent of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 12. Studio.
Art 294 - Photography in the Expanded Field
Full course for one semester. This course will invite students to question the limits of the photographic medium through its history and its ever-changing definition. This class is a space to experiment and expand the notions of photography as a medium, challenging the technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities of photography through projects, readings, slide presentations, lab work, and critiques. Students will produce work exploring photography in relation to other media from drawing to installation. Class time will be spent in lectures, slide presentations, lab work, critique, and occasional field trips. The course is designed for intermediate self-directed students. Students will be expected to respond to assignments with technical competence and critical clarity. Prerequisite: Art 190 or consent of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 16. Studio.
Not offered 2020–21.
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 304 - Matisse
Full course for one semester. This course explores the work of Henri Matisse across the cultures, environments, myths, and media that supplied the major motifs of his oeuvre. Rather than tour these motifs from the vantage of Matisse’s elevated position in the canon, we will reexamine Matisse through the lens of his subjects, including North African architecture and design, the gendered space of the decorative interior, the infiltration of painting by photography and sculpture, and modern theories of psychology and race. Prerequisite: Art 201. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 306 - Surrealism
Full course for one semester. “‘Transform the world,’ said Marx, ‘change life,’ said Rimbaud; these two mottoes are for us one and the same.” With this mandate, the French poet and author André Breton established the revolutionary ambitions of surrealism, an avant-garde movement founded in France in the 1920s. Yet how exactly did surrealism propose to merge psychological and political revolutions? This course sets out to answer this question by mining surrealism’s central artistic strategies and critical operations, from its invention of automatism and chance procedures to its radical formal experiments with the novel, sculpture, photography, and film. Readings may address topics including the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, notions of the “primitive” and the abject, feminist critiques of desire and the gaze, concepts of collectivity and the “workless” community. We will share our focus between surrealism’s first decades in interwar France and its diasporas in Mexico, Egypt, Japan, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia. This class includes a significant surrealist practicum, through which we will test the relevance of surrealist tactics for transforming our contemporary world. Prerequisite: Art 201. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 308 - Gothic Architecture and Art
Full course for one semester. This class will examine Gothic art and especially architecture in western and central Europe from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. The focus will be on Gothic buildings and their related artistic decoration (sculpture, stained glass), but we will also consider other media (manuscript illumination, metalwork, ivory carving). The study of Gothic architecture has been one of the most historiographically rich in the Western tradition of writing about the visual, so there will be special emphasis on art- and architectural-historical methods. Prerequisite: Art 201 or a course in some aspect of medieval culture, or permission of the instructor. Conference.
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.
Not offered 2020–21.
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.
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 their choice. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Lecture-conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 321 - Moving Pictures: The Migration and Manipulation of Images in the Early Modern Period
Full course for one semester. Images in the early modern period moved further and more regularly than at any other time in history up until that point. While scholars have increasingly taken an interest in the movement of early modern images in recent years, we still lack a study that takes into account the many different ways in which images were understood to move. This class is an attempt to understand and synthesize the early modern concept of movement in its many forms, and by extension the role and status of images. We will explore movement from the micro to the macro, and both literal and figurative. Topics will include the transportation of images between Europe and the rest of the world, representations of travel and movement, translation and mistranslation, prints that were meant to be altered and interacted with, automata, affective and miraculous images, and works of art that were meant to make viewers move in particular ways. Prerequisite: Art 201, or permission of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 322 - Early Modern Things
Full course for one semester. Things expose relations in and between societies that inform the past. As Arjun Appadurai argues, “Even though from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context.” In this course, we will mobilize early modern things to explore what inanimate objects reveal about the animate world. We will study the social significance and cultural value of such things to look at and beyond their materiality. In particular, we will examine objects such as clothing from England, earthenware from Italy, featherwork from the New World, and carpets from the Ottoman Empire to rethink how such things construct biography, impact memory, produce ambiguity, and dictate taste. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Art 323 - Global Early Modern Visual Culture
Full course for one semester. This course explores art produced around the world during the sixteenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries, a period of intense contact between cultures with widely varying ideas about what constitutes art. Out of this contact came a myriad of strange works of art that speak to the pressures of often violent colonial and economic encounters. We will look at the impact on European art of contact with Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas, as well as the ways in which European art and culture changed the local traditions of art making in the rest of the world. We will consider what happens to culturally specific forms and styles when they cross cultural, geographical, ideological, political, and theological boundaries. Among the topics we will discuss are the Italian Renaissance nude, miraculous images in New Spain and Peru, Mughal miniatures, African ivory carvings, one-point perspective, Protestant European printed representations of Native Americans, Japanese iconoclasm, and chinoiserie. Prerequisite: Art 201 or permission of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
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 231 and 232 (previously numbered Humanities 230), or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 334 - Art and Propaganda in Modern and Contemporary China
Full course for one semester. This course focuses on twentieth- to twenty-first-century Chinese visual culture and will be organized loosely around four phases of art production during the past hundred or so years. It begins with the major transition from the imperial Qing dynasty to the tumultuous Republican period in 1911, paying close attention to 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, the rapid pace of China’s economic growth has also greatly affected its visual material. In the last half of the semester, we will seek to critically examine the process in which China has become 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 231 and 232 (previously numbered Humanities 230), or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Art 344 - Visual Art in Spanish Baroque Literature
See Spanish 344 for description.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 346 - Introduction to Media Studies
See German 346 for description.
Art 351 - Making Space
Full course for one semester. Space isn’t an empty, neutral vehicle in which artworks simply appear for public consumption. While an artwork makes the space for its own display, spaces do their own work to determine the range, impact, and execution of an artwork within them. But when all space is necessarily coded as real estate, all but the most famous and privileged artists will struggle to make space not just for their own work, but to support other artists and build various forms of community. In this, present-day Portland is both an exemplary and a distinctive case. This art history class will visit a number of art spaces that are commonly understood as small, alternative, or experimental, although this in no way predefines their relationship to institutionality. Each week we will spend time with and, most weeks, in a different space around Portland, talking to the people who established and run those spaces. In these conversations, we will ask about their engagement with their communities, why and how they established their space, the uses and valences of institutionality, and the relationship between art’s attempts to make space and the ongoing processes of gentrification in and around Portland. Participating spaces/collectives include home school, Physical Education, Pochas Radicales, Portland Museum of Modern Art, Sunday Painters Group, The Residency in the Garden, and more. We will meet once per week, in the evening, for 3 hours in order to facilitate travel. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 353 - Making an Exhibition
Full course for one semester. This course will conceive, research, and execute an exhibition in Reed’s academic museum—the Cooley Art Gallery. The exhibition will be curated from nearly 100 works of art given to Reed over the last decade by the Peter Norton Family Foundation. The works are contemporary, with a special emphasis on artists of color and LGBTQ artists. Many of the works address the body, and explore race, gender, sexuality, and marginalization. Students and faculty will collaborate with the director of the Cooley Gallery to organize the exhibition and design its installation. Students will also research and write the materials accompanying the exhibition. The exhibition will open in the Cooley in the fall semester of 2022. To inform the exhibition, the course will also study the history and theory of museums, especially museum exhibitions related to the artworks donated by Norton. Prerequisites: Art 201. Conference.
Art 356 - Resisting Sculpture
Full course for one semester. This course surveys major works of twentieth-century sculpture through episodes of resistance, considering both sculpture that resists conventional modes of display, circulation, or consumption, and the sculpture of resistance, placed in the service of progressive social or political positions. Beginning with sculpture’s turn-of-the-century challenge to the ideological functions of the monument, we will examine topics such as the ready-made’s negotiation of the commodity form, the traffic of non-Western objects in the interwar avant-garde, resistance and absorption in minimalism, and site specificity and public address in postwar sculpture. We will discuss how artists engaged theories of sculpture that defined the medium through resistance as a physical property and consider how these theories converged with the political force of sculpture over the course of the last century. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 361 - Intermediate Photography and Digital Media
Full course for one semester. This studio course provides a forum for more advanced and independent work for students who have completed the introductory and intermediate sequence in art, photography, or digital media. The course is designed for advanced self-directed students seeking an interdisciplinary critique course. This class is a space to experiment and expand your practice, and to gain insight and feedback into the work you are making. Readings and lab work will respond directly to individual and group interests. Class time will be spent mostly in doing critiques and individual studio visits, but also doing lectures, slide presentations, lab work, 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: one 200-level studio art course or consent of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 16. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Not offered 2020–21.
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. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Prerequisite: one 100-level studio art course and Art 281 or 282 or consent of the instructor. Studio.
Not offered 2020–21.
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. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Prerequisites: one 100-level studio art course and one 200-level studio course or consent of the instructor. Studio-conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
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. Prerequisite: Art 271 or 272, or Art 173 or 175 with the permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 18. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Art 374 - New Media/Old Media—Experiments in Optical Media and Computation
Full course for one semester. The course will examine and experiment with various forms of old and analog media combined with new and speculative twenty-first-century media technology to see if they can be productively remade and integrated into contemporary art practices. Our goal is to defamiliarize photography and new/digital media by finding alternative uses, or by revisiting a time when they had not separated themselves into distinct and different discourses looking at historical devices, methods, and tools that shared common aspirations and limitations. Technical, aesthetic, and conceptual possibilities are explored through studio workshops, projects, readings, slide presentations, lab work, and critiques. Students must be highly self-motivated and will be expected to design independent projects. Prerequisite: two 200-level studio art courses; or two of Art 190, 195, or 196; or one of Art 291, 292, 293, or 294. Enrollment limited to 16. Studio.
Art 382 - Installation/Participation
Full course for one semester. An advanced sculpture/multimedia course investigating research-based and social art practices including the intersection of art, science, and society. Students may make work in any 2-D, 3-D, or time-based medium they are comfortable with, including performance and electronic media, to create installation-based works that inform and immerse the viewer. All sculpture construction shops and tools are available, including laser cutting, 3-D printing, and casting. Weekly readings will include contemporary art theory, feminist theory, and critical race theory, and will center on artists working directly with social and political issues at the intersection of art, science, and society. Prerequisite: Art 181, Art 182, or any 100-level studio course, or consent of the instructor. Students are required to attend workshops and do studio work outside of class times. Enrollment limited to 15. Studio. May be repeated for credit.
Art 393 - Chinese Calligraphy
Full course for one semester. This course is a survey of the history and aesthetics of Chinese calligraphy from the late Eastern Han (25–220 CE) through the Song dynasty (960–1279). In addition to familiarizing students with the calligraphy of these periods, this course also seeks to bring into conversation early Chinese theories on writing and contemporary art, historical literature, and the relationship between words and images. Some questions that will guide the general theoretical arc of the course include 1) how the origins and development of the Chinese writing system inform its later incarnations a an inextricable part of literati art; 2) what it might mean to emphasize the look of writing more than its linguistic characteristics; and 3) how closely the notion of being able to know calligraphers through their calligraphy matches the actual practice of writing and self-cultivation during this period. Prerequisite: Art 201. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 395 - China Through the Lens
Full course for one semester. This course explores the evolution of photography in China from the 1840s to the present. We will examine how China and the Chinese have been represented through the medium, focusing on the changing uses and purposes of photography as China underwent profound social, political, and cultural transformations. As we encounter different genres of photography and agendas for making photographs, we will consider how photography was integrated into Chinese artistic practices and everyday life, helping to form new national and social identities. Topics include photography as handmaiden to imperialism, as fine art, as social documentation, and as a medium of transnational exchange; we will also investigate its relationship to print media, interactions with older media, and uses as propaganda. Prerequisite: Art 201, or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 397 - Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art in a Global Context
Full course for one semester. This course explores key figures, movements, and issues in Chinese art and visual culture from the late nineteenth century to the present. We will pay special attention to the intercultural encounters and connections from the era of international treaty ports to contemporary global art circuits. By examining key artists and landmark exhibitions in historical sequence, this course considers how aesthetic concerns, expressed through a variety of media from ink painting to video installation, engaged with the unfolding seismic sociopolitical and economic transformations in China. To trace the contours of the modern and contemporary Chinese art scene, we will also analyze primary sources including not only visual works produced but also writings by artists, group manifestos, and exhibition statements that bring into focus major debates and issues. We will consider recurring questions over modernity and tradition, political participation and representation, nationalism and transnationalism, and in relation to an expanding art world and art market. Prerequisite: Art 201 or consent of the instructor. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
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.
Art 412 - Art-Historical Interpretation
Full course for one semester. This course examines in detail some of the fundamental methods of art-historical interpretation and the strategies that have been developed to deal with them. Topics of special attention include the social history of art, phenomenology, gender and race studies, and the relationship between art history and art criticism. To assess these issues, the course will concentrate on recent scholarship on French painting of the second half of the 19th century, especially the art of Édouard Manet. This limitation allows us to take advantage of a diverse body of high-quality scholarship and to use the collections of the Portland Art Museum. Scholars who will be studied in depth include Carol Armstrong, T.J. Clark, Michael Fried, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Linda Nochlin, and Griselda Pollock. Prerequisite: two 300-level art history courses. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
Art 418 - Notations
Full course for one semester. This course explores the theories and methods associated with the study of notational systems. More specifically, the course begins by asking, what is a notation and how does it produce meaning? This foundational work requires understanding the relationship that notations have with more commonly found terms in art history: representation, signification, and language. The course will build on these theoretical approaches by applying them to three types of objects—writing, maps, and diagrams—while keeping in mind the close relationship that each of the categories has with forms of art making that are more traditionally found in the art historical canon, such as painting, sculpture, or architecture. How do notations inform or challenge our understanding of art history as a discipline? Can a study of notations broaden the scope of art history, not only in its subject matter and medium, but also in its temporal and geographic scope? Prerequisite: Art 201 and two 300-level art history courses. Conference.
Not offered 2020–21.
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.
Not offered 2020–21.
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.