University Bulletin
Undergraduate Degree Programs
ART H 311
(GA;IL)
Greek and Roman Art (3) Greek and Roman art, with emphasis on painting and sculpture.
ART H 311 Greek and Roman Art (3)
(GA;IL)
(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements.
Art History 311 provides a survey of Greek and Roman art. Included are the Orientalizing, Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic periods of Greece and the Republican and Imperial Rome. Special attention is paid to politics, culture, and literature. The focus of this class is painting, sculpture and architecture; ceramics and other minor arts are also addressed. The course is designed to meet two principal goals. The first is to increase students' powers of visual analysis and help them build a critical vocabulary for discussing an art object's medium, composition, style, and iconography. The second is to foster an understanding of the deep implication of the visual arts in their social and cultural contexts. The course therefore involves significant material relating to political, economic and religious issues. It investigates problems in patronage, function, reception and censorship. It considers such intra- and cross-cultural issues as representations of gender. Requirements include essay exams and at least one paper. As a general education course in the arts, this course provides an introduction to Ancient Greek and Roman art to a student of any major. This course has no prerequisite, and presumes no prior exposure to fine art. Students majoring in Art History will learn in it both the common vocabulary of the field and the outlines of the field that form the foundation for future study.