Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

• Recognize and critique traditional approaches to art history, considering the way art history upholds racialized and gendered concepts of style, development, and civilization.
• Explain how art is representative of the historical moment in which it was produced, acknowledging the interactions between social, religious, political, economic and technological factors. 
• Analyze the relationships between form, context, and meaning in visual communication utilizing a critical vocabulary. 
• Articulate the relationships between art made from the 1700s through the present, the history of visual culture, and world history to enhance civic and global engagement.
• Apply insights gained from course content to visual culture encountered outside of the classroom.

Assessment tools may include:

• informal and formal responses to discussion questions

• analysis and evaluation of reading assignments

• visual and contextual analysis of art in writing assignments and exams

• journals assessing learning in and out of the classroom

• research projects resulting in papers or presentations

• class field trips

COMPETENCIES AND SKILLS:

• Analyze and work creatively with art historical data, using it to better understand the history of art and visual culture.

• Evaluate primary and secondary art historical sources, assessing their stakes and motives.

• Assess the ways in which art is impacted by the viewer’s vantage point.

• Articulate the relationship between art and its historical, social and political context.

• Recognize and differentiate various styles of art and evaluate how values and interpretations change over time.

• Recognize and identify parallels between the art historical past and the present.

• Conduct a formal analysis of a work of art and articulate the way its elements are interrelated.

• Research and write coherently about art history, using evidence to support arguments.

• Use knowledge gained in the course to study fine art, art history, design, anthropology or history at a four-year institution.

THEMES, CONCEPTS, AND ISSUES:

• Imperialism, Revolution, and Innovation

• The Invention of Art and its implications

• The Invention of Art History and its implications

• Collecting

• Power and Oppression

• Looting and Repatriation

• Imperialism

• Revolutions 

• Picturing the Other in the Age of Imperialism

• Art of Oceania in the Colonial and Postcolonial Era

• Art of Colonial and Independent South Asia and Southeast Asia

• Realism in European and North American Art

• Modernity and Impressionism in European Art

• The Spread of Photography

• Avant-Garde Art in Europe

• African Art, Colonialism, and the Modern World

• European Modern Art at the Turn of the Century

• Political Protest in European and Mexican Art

• Modernity and Identity in East Asian Art

• Modern Art and War

• Modern and Contemporary Art in North Africa, West Asia and Central Asia

• Art of Independent African Nations

• Pluralism and Postmodern Art in Europe and the Americas

• Technology and Art

• Art and the Human Form

• Art and the Landscape

• Constructions of Gender

• The Idea of the Universal

• Abstraction

• Art History and Nationalism

• Diaspora 

• Colonization and Decolonization

• Globalism in Contemporary Art

• Cross-Cultural Influence 

• Active Artworks and Ideas of Use

• Problematizing the Museum Model

• Art in the Age of the Internet

• Language, Legibility, and Translation

• Hybrid Practice