Skip to main content

ART701A: Methodology: Art Criticism & Appreciation

Course Description

This course aims to put forward methodological inquiries into perceiving, critiquing and appreciating art and craft practices. The course material is organized according to themes; each theme is discussed from multiple perspectives to present different scholarly approaches to studying visual and material culture.

Course Content

The study material and class discussions

Week 1-2: Las Meninas through ages 

Michel Foucault, “Las Meninas,” in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences (New York: Vintage, 1970), 3-16.

Efrat Biberman, “On Narrativity in the Visual Field: A Psychoanalytic View of Velázquez's "Las Meninas",” Narrative 14, no. 3 (2006): 237-53.

Catherine Soussloff, “Michel Foucault and the Point of Painting,” Art History 32, no. 4 (2009): 734-54.

 

Week 3-4: Chitrasutra and Interpretation

Isabella Nardi,Introduction,” “The Texts, Their Translations And Interpretation,” “The Traditional Concept Of Indian Painting,” And “The Theory Of Rasa” In The Theory of

Citrasátras in Indian Painting: A critical re-evaluations of their uses and interpretations (London and New York: Routledge, 2006).

Parul Dave Mukherji, “Adhyaya 41,” in The Citrasutra of Visnudharmottara Purana (Delhi: IGNCA and Motilal Banarasidass, 2001), 158-84.

 

Week 5-6: Aesthetics/Anti-Aesthetics? 

Theodor Adorno, “Art, Society, Aesthetics,” “Subject-Object,” and “Toward a Theory of the Artwork,” in Aesthetic Theory (London and New York: Continuum, 1997).

Sarah James, “Subject, object, mimesis: the aesthetic world of the Bechers’ photography,” Art History 32, no. 5 (2009): 874-93.

 

Week 7-8: Craft and Knowledge Production

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Indian Craftsman (London: Probsthain & Co., 1909).

Richard Sennett, “Material Consciousness,” in The Craftsman, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 119-46.

Roma Chatterji, “Repetition, Improvisation, Tradition: Deleuzean Themes in the Folk Art of Bengal,” Cultural Analysis 15, no. 1 (2016): 99-127.