The Arts of Latin America

Catalog description

This introductory course provides a critical survey of Latin America art from Spanish military conquest of the New World to the development of conceptual art (1521 to ca. 1980). We will learn to observe and describe different kinds of artifacts, made in a broad array of media (painting, sculpture, urban form, photography, engraving, and drawing, among others) to explicate the social context in which they were produced and circulated. By taking into account their constant dialogue with European ideas and models, we will analyze how colonial encounters, national formations, and cultural exchange took place in the region, and how identity, ethnicity, politics, and the sacred have been depicted in different historical moments.