Purpose of the course

An investigation into historical modes and methods of compositional construction in western art. The essential topics covered will be: forms of spatial construction and illusion, the relationship of content to image, and the social and historical relationship of image construction to form. The aim is to give students a broad base for the understanding of the various possibilities of compositional realization, and most importantly to learn to apply these methods to their own work and ideas. Emphasis will be given to expanding capabilities and ideas in regards to their own art. Class will function in a seminar atmosphere while having thematic lectures held often throughout the semester.

Course requirements

1) Execution of compositional drawings/studies relevent to course material.

2) A finished work that represents the flaying of Marsyas as a metaphor. A description of the Marsyas myth can be found in Edgar Wind's Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance.

3) A group of rigorously analytical studies in preparation for the project above.

4) Punctual attendance and participation in classroom discussions.

Bibliography:

Leonard Shlain The Alphabet Versus the Goddess

Thomas Puttfarken The Discovery of Pictorial Composition: Theories of Visual Order in Painting, 1400-1800

E.H. Gombrich Art and Illusion

Camille Paglia Sexual Personae

C. Bouleau The painter’s Secret Geometry

Rudolf Arnheim Art and Visual Perception

--- The Power of the Center

H. Wolfflin The Sense of Form in Art

Edgar Wind Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance

Moshe Barasch Theories of Art from Plato to Winckelmann

Italo Calvino Invisible Cities

John White The Discovery and rediscovery of pictorial space

George Ferguson Signs and symbols in Christian Art

Fred Dubery Perspective and other Drawing systems and John Wilats

Lecture Schedule

1.Apollonian vs. Dionysian Form Sense

Assignment: Two Compositional drawings one apollonian ordered and one dionysian

2.Critique

Assignment: Two Compositional drawings one iconic and one naturalist

3.Symbolic Tableau and Realism

4.A revolution in pictorial space: Bruneleschi's peep show

Assignment: create perspectival drawing with specific psychological effect

5.Florentine Dynamic Harmony

Assignment: create drawings demonstrating Florentine and Venetian modalities

6.Venetian modality: a sfumato of light

7.Metaphorical Composition

8.Dutch Realism and Zones of Light

9.Edge Treatment as Spatial Vehicle

10.Photo-conditioned photo-informed

11Technique Informs Content

Major Formal Modalities

Apollonian/Dionysian

Egyptian-Greek Classical-Hellenistic

Symbolic Tableau

exponents: Cimabue, Giotto, Duccio,

Symbolic Narrative

exponents:Della Francesca, Masaccio, Durer

Protocinematic timed narrative

exponents: Dutch genre- Vermeer, DeHooch, DeWitte, Rembrandt

Light and Atmosphere decentralized space

exponents: Danube school, venetian pastorale, Turner, Lorraine, Rosa open form

Harmonic form dynamic balance

exponents: Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rubens, Caravaggio, Raphael open/closed form

multiple forces interacting

Photographic

exponents: Degas, LaTrec, Katz, Hockney, Sheeler, Beal, Leslie

Chromatic color as form

exponents:Van Gogh, Bonnard, Matisse

Cubism/Futurism Harmonic form in compressed space

Abstract Grid matrix and biomorphic shape