As a student of the nineteenth century, particularly the Neoclassical era (ca. 1750 – 1815), and as a one-time student of the Classical world, I am intrigued by Aby Warburg’s “afterlife” or “survival” of antiquity unto our own time. The artists I will discuss are drawing upon Classical and Neoclassical art works and motifs, reactivating them to question, critique, and explore the artistic and intellectual ideals within those art works. In these moments of inspiration and reincorporation, artists connect to the past. Artists to be discussed include di Chirico, Picasso, Dali, Lily Cox-Richard, Karen LaMonte, Vik Muniz, Kehinde Wiley, and others.

Josef Albers was an artist and educator whose artworks were strongly influenced by his experiences teaching students of all levels in the classroom. At the same time, his teaching was deeply affected by the evolution of his artwork over the course of his career. Albers repeated the notion that he was constantly learning from his students throughout his life. He had a very loose and experience-based approach to teaching that allowed his students to learn from their materials, from one another, and from their own mistakes as much or more than they learned directly from him. This course will explore the relationship of teaching art to making art, using the case study of Albers’ career as our starting point. Students will explore Albers’ work, the work of some of his students including Jacob Lawrence, and the work of other artist/teachers such as Richard Roth.

Color is a significant part of how we view our world. Perhaps most noticeably, it impacts how we view art. An artist’s color choices can dictate the mood of an artwork, its appeal to art collectors, its neighbors in a gallery, and its impression on its viewers. Color as a concept is easily understood when we select examples in the world around us, but it is much harder to define when we think about it abstractly either as light rays bouncing off an object or as something inherent in a material. Art historians, scientists, philosophers, artists, and many others have defined color for centuries – in varying ways and for various purposes. Close looking at a few paintings and objects from the VMFA’s collection can facilitate a discussion of how we experience color, the factors that contribute to it, and the many differing ways that it has been defined. Students will learn about color, the history of color in art, and discuss how their subjective experiences of color may or may not differ from those of their peers.

Look at the evolution of Western art from representational work to fully abstract work and then the return of representation in the mid-to-late twentieth century. Discuss topics such as: what does abstraction mean? How did it become accepted and mainstream? How does an artist arrive at abstract methods? The goal of the talk will be to foster an appreciation for abstraction that goes beyond the surface appeal of the objects, which is rooted in the history of abstraction and its development. Artists to be considered include Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, Jackson Pollock, Norman Lewis, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Josef Albers, Sol Lewitt, Richard Roth, and more.