Art History for Image Makers
What image makers borrow from art history: slow looking and visual lineage, classical proportion and medieval symbolism, Renaissance perspective, Baroque light and Rembrandt lighting, Romantic and Realist landscape, Impressionist color, photography and painting, modernism and the Bauhaus, Surrealism and early experimental film, Pop and appropriation after Warhol v. Goldsmith, Native American, African American and contemporary art, and a capstone visual lineage essay.
VIS-130 Year 1 3 credits 12 lessons · 5 h 40 min
Offered by HSM University · Visual Media Foundations
This is the American version of this course. See the Canadian version.
What you'll learn
- Analyze images through slow looking, formal vocabulary, context and visual lineage
- Explain classical and medieval conventions such as proportion, contrapposto, hierarchical scale, iconography and the gold ground, and evaluate claims about the golden ratio
- Construct and interpret one-, two- and three-point perspective and relate horizon and vanishing points to camera height
- Describe chiaroscuro, tenebrism, Rembrandt lighting and Dutch window light and express lighting contrast in stops and ratios
- Distinguish the sublime, the picturesque and Realism and explain the political meanings of landscape imagery
- Apply color theory, including complementary harmony and simultaneous contrast, to analyze Impressionist and modern images
- Trace photography's invention and its dialogue with painting from the daguerreotype and calotype through pictorialism to straight photography
- Explain the principles of Cubism, abstraction, the Bauhaus, the New Vision and Constructivism and their influence on design and photography
- Analyze Dada, Surrealism, German Expressionist film and Soviet montage and their legacy in contemporary media
- Evaluate Pop Art, conceptual art and appropriation, including fair use after Warhol v. Goldsmith and Canadian fair dealing
- Describe Indigenous and contemporary art traditions in Canada and the United States and apply protocols for respectful engagement
- Plan, make and write about an original image in documented dialogue with a historical artwork
Course content
12 lessons · 5 h 40 min total · final exam
- 1 Why image makers study art history 32 min · quiz
- 2 Classical and medieval foundations 29 min · quiz
- 3 The Renaissance: perspective, the window and sfumato 29 min · quiz
- 4 Baroque light: chiaroscuro, tenebrism, Rembrandt and Vermeer 29 min · quiz
- 5 Romanticism, Realism and landscape 25 min · quiz
- 6 Impressionism and color 28 min · quiz
- 7 Photography's invention and its dialogue with painting 27 min · quiz
- 8 Modernism: Cubism, abstraction, the Bauhaus and Constructivism 27 min · quiz
- 9 Surrealism, the avant-garde and early experimental film 25 min · quiz
- 10 Postwar art, pop and the mass-media image 28 min · quiz
- 11 Contemporary, Indigenous and digital art 27 min · quiz
- 12 Capstone: a visual lineage essay 34 min · quiz
- E Final exam 20 questions
Description
What image makers borrow from art history: slow looking and visual lineage, classical proportion and medieval symbolism, Renaissance perspective, Baroque light and Rembrandt lighting, Romantic and Realist landscape, Impressionist color, photography and painting, modernism and the Bauhaus, Surrealism and early experimental film, Pop and appropriation after Warhol v. Goldsmith, Native American, African American and contemporary art, and a capstone visual lineage essay.
Part of the Film & Photography stream, typically taken in year 1.