Elaine O'Brien

Art 108 :: Nineteenth Century

Course Description:

This “nineteenth-century” art history course does not begin, as you might expect, in 1800 or end in 1900.  It begins instead in the mid-18th century with the Enlightenment, the passing of the Old Regime in Europe, and the Rococo.  It then opens onto the revolutionary era at the turn of the century with Neo-Classicism and Romanticism; then to Realism, photography and the rise of avant-garde modernism at mid-century; ending in the 1870s with the formal radicalism of Impressionist painting and the emergence of modern art institutions.  Our subject is the art of Europe and the US but we will consider non-Western production as well: art traditions profoundly transformed by Western modernism.  By studying the origins and dynamics of modern art as it took shape in the first modern century, you will reach a deeper understanding of the forces that continue to shape visual culture today.  

Prerequisite: Art 1C: Global Modern & Contemporary Art

Evening shower at Ōhashi Bridge by Utagawa Hiroshima, 1857

Clare Pollard, Curator of Japanese Art at the Ashmolean (museum in Oxford, England) discusses a print by Hiroshige.
Landscape prints by Hiroshige were among the first Japanese prints to arrive in Europe and America.
They were a profound influence on Impressionism and were in the collections of many leading Western artists,
including Eduard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh and JM Whistler.