Pictures and Power

Catalog description

ARTH 105N Pictures and Power (3) (GA) (GS) (BA) In an era in which information is increasingly visual, and in an age in which our environment is ever more packed with imagery, students need powerful tools with which to interpret, compare, use and challenge images. This class is about the ways in which popular imagery pleases, informs, persuades, and otherwise exerts power. The class will analytically explore popular imagery and the influence it has exerted historically and today. The class will also acquaint students with works of art that have informed, attempted to draw upon or even contested the power of popular imagery. Particular emphasis will be placed on the interrelatedness of imagery; just as religious paintings of the Renaissance often exerted their force their meaning by virtue of their companionship with architectural sites, music and ritual practices, contemporary popular imagery (from graffiti to broadsides to memes) depends upon the larger constellation of events and artifacts in which they are embedded. The class will equip students with interpretive techniques by which they can examine and think critically about the power worked by pictures, those that exerted influence in the past as well as those students are likely to encounter day-to-day, including selfies, fashion spreads, and corporate logos and product labels.