HAA 11 Landmarks of World Architecture
David Roxburgh, Lisa Haber-Thomson
Tuesday & Thursday - 12:00pm - 1:15pm
Examines major works of world architecture and the unique aesthetic, cultural, and historical issues that frame them. Faculty members will each lecture on an outstanding example in their area of expertise, drawing from various periods and such diverse cultures as modern and contemporary Europe and America, early modern Japan, Mughal India, Renaissance and medieval Europe, and ancient Rome. Sections will develop thematically and focus on significant issues in the analysis and interpretation of architecture.
16D Northern Renaissance and Baroque Painting and Sculpture: Van Eyck to Bruegel
Joseph Koerner
TBA
Surveys the major monuments of Netherlandish and German painting and sculpture between 1400 and 1600. Special attention will be given to questions of function, genre, and relations between art and literature.
61P Introduction to Southern European Sculpture
Felipe Pereda, Shawon Kinew
TBA
An Introduction to the art and ornament of sculpture in Southern Europe during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
HAA 96A Architecture Studio I: Transformations
Elle Gerdeman
Wednesday & Friday - 1:30pm - 4:15pm
Architecture assembles multiple models, surfaces, and materials; it is not a single monolithic thing, rather it is comprised of disparate parts and organizational systems operating at different scales. Design, the bringing together of these elements, requires sensitivity, registers scale, and renders perceptual effect. This course is an introductory architectural design studio focused on building foundational architectural concepts and design methodologies studied through a process of making. A series of physical modeling/fabrication assignments explore spatial and organizational transformations as a consequence of the changing interactions among material, fabrication technique, and form. Resultant expressions of space, scale, and perceptual effects are discussed and evaluated in relation to a series of course readings that frame the intentions of each assignment within architectural theory and history discourse.
Both studios in the Architecture Studies Track (Transformations HAA 96A and Connections HAA 96B) explore architectural means and methods of design. Each begins from a different scale of inquiry, but converges at a similar end. This studio originates at the scale of material - focusing on specific capacities and effects thereof as well as the details of assembly - and expands from this to an investigation of an occupiable architectural scale in relation to a dynamic site.
The course emphasizes fluency in the visual and spatial communication of ideas through instruction in 2D drawing and 3D modeling techniques. Technical workshops are provided in choreography with serial assignments encompassing drafting and 3D modeling (AutoCAD + Rhino), techniques of fabrication (Rhino to various outputs), 3D printing, and representational processing (Adobe Creative Suite). The studio exposes students to critical architectural thinking and design methods for more broad disciplinary application following. No particular skill set, technical or otherwise, is a required prerequisite for this course; students from all backgrounds are welcome.
HAA 96B Architecture Studio II: Connections
Lisa Haber-Thomson
Tuesday & Thursday - 1:30pm - 4:15pm
The practice of architecture fundamentally asks us to continuously engage with, and re-conceptualize, the world for which we are designing. As such, architecture as a discipline is not only about designing buildings, but also about challenging us to imagine new ways of seeing the world. This studio takes on the challenge through a series of design exercises focused on understanding, engaging with, and reimaging the urban condition. Throughout the course, we will approach architectural design as both a method of producing urban environments, and also as an avenue through which to understand our cities. We will be directly confronting the social, political, and environmental contexts that are necessarily implicated in any design process.
Both studios in the Architecture Studies Track (Transformations HAA 96A and Connections HAA 96B) explore architectural means and methods of design. Each begins from a different scale of inquiry, but converges towards a similar end. This studio originates at the scale of the urban site, and begins with a set of design research assignments that ask students to imagine the city from the perspective of a non-human agent. Extrapolating abstract principles from these agents, we will be mobilizing the possibilities of architectural representation to reimagine the city through mapping, diagraming, and collage.
The studio culminates in a design proposal for a site in Harvard Square. Students will be given an architectural brief, and will produce projects that address existing site conditions, programmatic space requirements, and projected users of the site. Technical workshops will provide all the necessary skills required for the course, and will allow students to develop aptitude in architectural drawing, mapping, rendering, and simple animation. No existing expertise or technical proficiency is necessary for this course. Students from all backgrounds are welcome; we will be encouraging interdisciplinary thinking throughout the design research process.
HAA 97R Sophomore Methods Tutorial
Yukio Lippit
TBA
Group tutorial, offers an introduction to the methods and research skills of art and architectural history.
HAA 98BR Junior Group Tutorial
Yukio Lippit
TBA
Group tutorial, offers concentrators the choice of several study groups investigating a particular field of art of architectural history.
HAA 100R Sophomore Excursion Course
Jinah Kim, Gulru Necipoglu-Kafadar
TBA
This course introduces sophomore concentrators to on-site study of art and architecture through the case study of a particular geographic and cultural area. This year: India
HAA 120N Art of the Timurids in Greater Iran and Central Asia
David Roxburgh
TBA
Critical examination of the arts of the book, portable arts, and architecture sponsored by the Timurids (1370-1507), a dynasty founded by Timur (Tamerlane). Emphasis will also be given to primary written sources in translation.
HAA 161G Francisco de Goya : Art as Testimony, the Artist as Witness
Felipe Pereda
TBA
This course is about two things. First it’s an introductory course to the art of Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) at the time of the Enlightenment and early Romanticism. It will look into his formation in the institutions of the Old Regime (Travel to Rome, member of the Royal Academy, Court Artist) and explore how Goya challenged this artistic culture, exploring new ideas for the meaning of art, of its public and of the role of the artist in society. Second, the course will discuss Goya’s work (from his early “caricatures,” the Caprichos, to the Disasters of the War) in relation to modern debates about testimony, witnessing and trauma. The class will take place, half in the seminar-room, half at the museum’s study-room looking at prints and drawings from his own work and other contemporary masters.
HAA 170G Planning Harvard Square
Suzanne Blier
TBA
HAA 171X Exoticism & Orientalism
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth
TBA
Explores cultural and artistic engagement with the trope of the “other” in 18th-and 19th-century France. Paintings, drawings, prints, travel books, and architectural decor are considered in broader social and cultural contexts. Different interpretive paradigms are also discussed. Special emphasis is placed on the distinction between the 18th and the 19th-century forms of aesthetic curiosity about otherness. Issues of knowledge, power, subjectivity, sexuality, embodiment, imagination, documentation, and visual geography are addressed. Artists include: Watteau, Boucher, Liotard, Van Loo, Delacroix, Chasseriau, Gérôme, Renoir. Objects from Harvard Art Museum will be examined. There will also be an excursion to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
HAA 179P Press/Reverse/Resist: Introduction to print in contemporary art
Jennifer L. Roberts
TBA
We are told that print is dead. But the codes and processes of printmaking continue to shape contemporary art, culture, and technology in powerful ways. The most basic physical fact of printing -- its use of pressure in the creation of images and texts -- makes it an ideal tool for confronting questions of oppression and resistance. The collaborative qualities of printmaking are models for new understandings of distributed creativity and intelligence. The image reversals that occur in all print processes open ways of thinking about the world from a critical perspective, approaching it from "the other side.” Even the most advanced digital information technologies draw on the traditions of print in fundamental ways. This course will provide an introduction to printmaking processes and will trace the life of print in art of every medium since 1960. Along with the lectures, there will be frequent study sessions with original works in the Harvard Art Museums, and hands-on print workshops. Artists covered will include (among many others) Robert Rauschenberg, Glenn Ligon, Christiane Baumgartner, Andy Warhol, Ellen Gallagher, Julie Mehretu, Edgar Heap of Birds, Willie Cole, Corita Kent, Richard Hamilton, Ed Ruscha, and Jasper Johns.
Jinah Kim
TBA
The course explores the history of Indian painting based on the collections of Harvard Art Museums and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. We will investigate the theory of pictorial form in India and its relationship to the society at large against the historical currents by probing the development and changes in artistic styles and material culture of painting production. We will pay particular attention to the role of media, such as palm-leaf, birch bark, paper, and pigments, along with consideration of changing symbolic and material meanings of color. Regular visits (sections) to the museums and conservations labs to examine the paintings in person are to be scheduled throughout the semester.
HAA 188P Edo Painting
Yukio Lippit
TBA
Islamic Ornament: Aesthetics of Abstraction and Theories of Perception
Gulru Necipoglu-Kafadar
TBA
Course Description: Critically explores the historiography and interpretations of Islamic ornament. Themes include ornamentality and abstraction, theories of perception, orientalist discourses on the so-called "arabesque," resonances of non-figural abstraction with modernism and postmodern aesthetics
HAA 272M Painting and Mass Culture after 1945 : Rauschenberg, Warhol, Hamilton, Richter
Benjamin Buchloh
TBA
This graduate seminar (qualified undergraduates will be admitted after interview), will investigate the complex relationships between painterly practices and mass cultural formations (photography, advertisement, television) from 1955 – 1965. The limited focus on two American and two European artists, and on one specific decade will allow us not only to study individual works in greater detail, but it will also provide time to pursue parallel readings in historical contextualization. These would include not only the study of actually occurring interactions with the newly expanded culture of technological and industrial media (e.g. exhibition design, advertisement commissions for artists), but also the more specifically art historical questions concerning the belated reception of Duchamp, Dada and photography in post WWII cultural production. The critical reflection of the epistemological shifts defining the nature of painting in the changing dialogues with action painting and abstract expressionism will be of equal importance, as will be the questions concerning the redefinition of the place and functions of the artist in post WW II consumer and spectacle culture.
HAA 310B Works of Art: Materials, Forms, Histories
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth
Friday - 12:00pm - 2:45pm
A series of team-taught workshops designed to sharpen skills in the observation, analysis, and historical interpretation of works of art and architecture.