ART 331 - Seminar in Northern European Art

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2023/24a: Picturing Sex, Interrogating Desire. This course is a study of questions of sexuality in early modern Northern European art. Drawing on what Jean Baudrillard once called the “superimposition of objects of desire,” we attend to works of art designed to inspire and interrogate bodily yearnings. In addition to discussing specific works and passages—those shells parodying genitalia, those daggers intimating penetration, those mirrors choreographing looking—we address how works of art picture as well as provoke—in other words, thematize—desire. Our emphasis primarily lies on early modern imagery, yet, acknowledging that any discussions of early modern sexuality are necessarily discursive, we also embrace recent criticism that lends investigative lenses. The objective of this seminar is to map the contour of the changing relationship between provocative imagery and collusive viewership in early modern Northern Europe. Haohao Lu.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS