Professor Michelli
Location: Tuesday, Thursday; 2.00-3.15 pm	Final Exam: Tuesday, December 19th, 2000; 10.30-12.30

Required set book:

Hugh Honour and John Fleming, The Visual Arts: A History, Prentice Hall Inc, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 5th ed, 2000

BRING THIS BOOK TO CLASS

Introduction

This course covers Western art from its earliest known beginnings to the middle/late Gothic period. One of the most interesting aspects of art is the ever widening range of creative and conceptual possibilities open to artists and the societies that support them (or not). But it is incredibly difficult actually to have a new idea, and by taking the material in date order, we can see what a limited range of things are possible at any time, and how each society expands and reduces the possibilities created by those that went before. As the foundation of your major, you want to leave this course with a good grasp of the ideas, styles and periods, their stimuli and interactions, as well as your personal "take" on the field.

There will be four Review Days. These will include tests on the terminology, formal analysis, and identifications that you have learned up to that point in the course. Prepare for these as you go: Check out the Paradigmatic History of Art, which is designed to go with the Foundation courses. It has interactive pages, explanations that you won't find anywhere else, and lightning self-tests which you can do whenever you like and no one but you will know the score. Simply work logically down the red navigation bar on the left of that site. Students who have used these pages in the past have seen their grades go up by an average 10%.

Also, check out the whole of my teaching website: http://www.ariadne.org/studio/michelli. Apart from the materials for your course, there is a dedicated art history browser, which directs you to sites with a good balance of visual material and sane text - there are some tremendously enjoyable sites out there. Especially, check out the last page, Yes, But is it Art?, which is full of thought-provoking fun. I have also made a dedicated history of stained glass browser, which includes historic and modern stained glass but NO SUNCATCHERS! By familiarizing yourself with these materials, you will gain such an effortless, well-informed grasp on the field of art that this course should be a breeze.

There will also be two Prepared Discussion Days. For these, I will give you a set of study questions. Keep these and your answers carefully. You will need them later as part of a graded assignment.

Finally, class contribution is required. It is tracked and graded through name tags: one tag per contribution, whether this is a question, a comment, or an answer. Apart from terminology, which you are expected to learn and to use accurately, there are few "facts" and many opinions in this field. Be prepared to speculate, and to have (courteous!) disagreements with other students and with the professor. If there are 40 students in the class, think in terms of speaking at least once per class. If there are more than 40 students in the class, students will be assigned to two groups (marked and on the syllabus) who will dominate the discussion on alternate days. In that case, think in terms of speaking at least once on each of your days.

Prepare for your class contibutions by reading the page assignments as set out in the syllabus. In class you will be asked to (a) DESCRIBE the work shown, (b) EXPLAIN what the book had to say about it, (c) ANALYSE the artist's approach, (d) DEFINE any terms.

Keep all your assignments carefully. In the event of any queries, the professor's decision is final unless you can produce the original documentation. The Course Grade will be the average of all your grades, minus the lowest.