Painting Place: France as a Center of Artistic Modernism, 1850-1915

1 unit

How did Paris become a center and source of avant-garde painting in the mid-to-late nineteenth century? What was the relationship between the dynamic urban space of the city and the development of modernist painting? How did the French countryside offer an even wider range of subjects and inspire new directions for modern painters of the period? This course offers an historical introduction to French painting of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exploring the careers, paintings and cultural milieu of canonical figures including Courbet, Millet, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, Cézanne, Bonnard, Matisse, Picasso and Léger. It also discusses the historical, social, economic and cultural factors behind the rise of major avant-garde artistic movements, including Realism, Impressionism, Symbolism, Fauvism, Cubism, and Fauvism. Assignments will take advantage of the museums in Paris and in the south of France to offer students the opportunity to engage directly with original works of art. Field trips will include the Musée d'Orsay, the Matisse Chapel in Vence, the Maeght Foundation, and the Léger Museum, as well as optional meetings at the Centre Pompidou and the Museé de l'Orangerie in Paris, and the Museé National Marc Chagall and the Matisse Museum in Nice. We will use a small book on modern art, supplemented by primary source readings in French by artists and critics.