ARTH 472
Timelines Spring 2022
Division I
This is not the current course catalog

Art is really time-consuming–to make, to view, to use, to understand. We enshrine it, excavate it, curate it, deploy it and sometimes we deliberately destroy it. We are always telling stories about the stuff. We seem to think that we control these many fabled things, though they meddle endlessly in the spaces between self and other, human and divine. Great art can be inspiring, enabling people to transcend time, or it can be traumatizing, making time stop altogether. Or both! To explore such powers, we will begin in the 19th century, when commonplace notions of past and present wobbled seriously with the invention of photography and the avid pursuit of archaeology. Thereafter, we will concentrate on the period between 1870 and 1930 and operate across time and space, with particular reference to the Middle East, where art has figured in many religions and also many conflicts. There will be no single story-line, but rather a series of case studies, ranging from iconic paintings and sacred spaces to photojournalism. Along the way, creativity and iconoclasm will be recurring themes. Choose this class if you are curious about the agency and power that art wields in our lives.