The Photographic Muse: The Modern Artist and the Camera

3 units

An examination of the interplay of photography with painting and sculpture in European art from 1850 to the First World War, with an emphasis on the fin-de-siecle. Readings address the history of the medium; the critical debates (starting with Baudelaire ) over photography as a tool of science or of art; the rise of ethnographic photography; the Symbolist ambivalence toward technology; and the development of Pictorialism at the turn of the century. Artists to be studied include Nadar, Moreau, Degas, Rodin, Steichen, Gauguin, Munch, the Nabis, Brancusi and Picasso. Prerequisite, graduate standing.