4.661
Theory and Method in the Study of Architecture and Art
Studies theoretical and historiographical works pertaining to the fields of art and architectural history. Members of seminar pursue work designed to examine their own presuppositions and methods. Preference to PhD and other advanced students.
Fall 2015
Topics
- Styles / Teleology
- Images / Theories
- Formalisms / Objects
- Aesthetics / Cultures
- Objects / Receivers
- Matter / Making
- Exhibitions / Institutions
- Feminisms / Gender / Queer Theory
- Archives / Authors
- Media / Spectators
- Psycho / analytics
- Posts
Readings
- Wölfflin, Heinrich. Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art . Dover Publications, 1950. ISBN: 9780486202761.
- Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy . Oxford University Press, 1973. ISBN: 9780198173212.
- Panofsky, Erwin. Perspective as Symbolic Form . Zone Books, 1991. ISBN: 9780942299526.
- Clark, T. J. The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers . Princeton University Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780691002750.
- Nochlin, Linda. Women, Art, and Power: And Other Essays . Harper and Row, 1988. ISBN: 9780064358521.
- Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures . 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN: 9781403992468.
- Preziosi, Donald ed. The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology . 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780199229840.
- Wölfflin, Heinrich. Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art . Translated by M. D. Hottinger. Dover Publications, 1950, pp. 1–32, 62–72, and 226–37. ISBN: 9780486202761.
- Riegl, Alois. “The Main Characteristics of the Late Roman Kunstwollen.” In The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Art Historical Method in the 1930s . Edited by Christopher Wood. Zone Books, 2003, pp. 87–103. ISBN: 9781890951153.
- Panofsky, Irwin. “Introduction and text (with particular emphasis on Part III).” In Perspective as Symbolic Form . Zone Books, 1993, pp. 1–72.
- Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” In Poetry, Language, Thought . Translated by Albert Hofstadter. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2013, pp. 17–76. ISBN: 9780060937287.
- Derrida, Jacques. “Restitutions of the Truth in Pointing [Pointure].” In The Truth in Painting . University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 301–15. ISBN: 9780226143248. [Excerpted in Preziosi.]
- Judd, Donald. “Specific Objects.” Art Yearbook 8, 1965, as anthologized in Thomas Kellein. In Donald Judd: Early Work, 1955–1968 . Distributed Art Publishers, Incorporated, 2002, p. 6. ISBN: 9781891024511.
- Rowe, Colin, and Fred Koetter. “Crisis of the Object: The Predicament of Texture.” In The Yale Architectural Journal Perspecta 16 . MIT Press, 1980, pp. 50–85. ISBN: 9780262150569. [Also in Collage City]
- Harman, Graham. “The Third Table.” In The Book of Books . Edited by Christov Bakargiev. Hatje Cantz, 2012, pp. 540–2. ISBN: 9873775729512.
- Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. Excerpts from “Reflections on Poetry” and “Aesthetica.” In Art in Theory 1648–1815: An Anthology of Changing Ideas . Edited by Harrison, et al. Wiley-Blackwell, 2001, pp. 487–91. ISBN: 9780631200642.
- Bourdieu, Pierre. “Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception.” In The Field of Cultural Production . Edited by Randal Johnson. Columbia University Press, 1993, pp. 215–37. ISBN: 9780231082877.
- Peirce, Charles Sanders. “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs.” In Philosophical Writings of Peirce . Dover, 1955, pp. 98–119.
- Saussure, Ferdinand de. “The Nature of the Linguistic Sign.” In Course in General Linguistics . Open Court, 1998, pp. 832–5. ISBN: 9780812690231.
- Richter, David. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends . Translated by Wade Baskin. Bedford / St. Martin’s, 2006. ISBN: 9780312415204.
- Eco, Umberto. “Introduction.” In The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts . Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 3–15.
- Baxandall, Michael. “Conditions of Trade.” In Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy . Clarendon Press, 1972, pp. 1–28.
- Parshall, Peter. “A Darker Side of Light: Prints, Privacy, and Possession.” In The Darker Side of Light: Arts of Privacy, 1850–1900 . Lund Humphries, 2009, pp. 3–39. ISBN: 9781848220218.
- Gell, Alfred. “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology.” In The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams . Edited by Eric Hirsch. Bloomsbury Academic. 1999, pp. 159–86. ISBN: 9781845204846.
- Latour, Bruno. “Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects Too Have Agency.” In Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor–Network Theory . Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 63–86. ISBN: 9780199256044.
- Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” anthologized in Rosen and “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun.” In Visual and Other Pleasures . Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 198–209 and 14–40. ISBN: ISBN: 9780230576469.
- Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press, 1992, pp. 115–31. ISBN: 9780896084339.
- Randolph, Adrian W. B. “Donatello’s Bronze David – Sodomy and Sodality.” In Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics, and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence . Yale University Press, 2002, pp. 183–92. ISBN: 9780300092127.
- Diana, Agrest. Section 1 of “Architecture From Without: Body, Logic, and Sex.” In Architecture From Without: Theoretical Framings for a Critical Practice . MIT Press, 1991, pp. 173–95. ISBN: 9780262011150.
- Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” In Image, Music, Text . Hill and Wang, 1977, pp. 142–8. ISBN: 9780809057405.
- Nochlin, Linda. “Why have there been no Great Women Artists?” In Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays . Harper and Row, 1988, pp. 145–78. ISBN: 9780064358521. Also in the same volume, skim “Women, Art, and Power.” (1988): 1–36.
- Derrida, Jacques. Excerpts from Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression . Translated from the French by Eric Prenowitz. University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 9–11 and 57–60. ISBN: 9780226143675.
- Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” In Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader . Edited by Philip Rosen. Columbia University Press, 1986, pp. 286–98. ISBN: 9780231058810.
- Silverman, Kaja. “Suture.” In The Subject of Semiotics . Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. 194–236. ISBN: 9780195031775. (Also excerpted in Rosen: 219–35.)
- Ernst, Wolfgang. “Dis / Continuities: Does the Archive Become Metaphorical in Multi-Media Space?” In New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader . Edited by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun and Thomas Keenan. Routledge, 2005, pp. 105–23. ISBN: 9780415942249.
- Wang, Jing. “Positioning the New Modern Girl.” In Brand new China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture . Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 68–107. ISBN: 9780674026803.
- Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” In Écrits: A Selection . Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan Norton. W. W. Norton & Company, 1982, pp. 1–7 and “Translator’s note,” vii–xii. ISBN: 9780393300475.
- Wölfflin, Heinrich. “Prolegomena to a Psychology of Architecture.” In Empathy, Form, and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893 . Edited by Robert Vischer. The Getty Center For The History Of Art, 1993, pp. 149–90. ISBN: 9780892362592.
- Holl, Steven. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology in Architecture . A and U, 1994, pp. 40–42. ISBN: 9784900211483.
- Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (French: La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savoir) . Translation by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. University Of Minnesota Press, 1984, pp. xxiii–17. ISBN: 9780816611737.
- Coombes, Annie. “Inventing the Post-Colonial: Hybridity and Constituency in Contemporary Curating.” In The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology . Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 39–52. ISBN: 978-0192842428.
- Bosker, Bianca. “Manifestations of Westernization.” In Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China . University of Hawaii Press, 2013, pp. 37–66. ISBN: 9780824836061.
- Evening Session: In-class presentations, 10 minutes max.
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: Permission of instructor G (Fall) 3-0-9 units Can be repeated for credit.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2015
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.