Amsterdam and the Global Dutch Golden Age

Catalog description

This course examines the visual and material culture of the Dutch Golden Age, centered in Amsterdam, as the product of global forces. Rather than solely tracing the domestic consumption of international goods or the ways in which Dutch demands shaped artistic production in Batavia (Indonesia), Brazil, South Asia and North America, this seminar critically examines concepts of influence, exoticism and cross-cultural exchange. We will focus on objects and art works produced in , imported and exported through Amsterdam. By investigating the economic realities that enabled the flourishing of Amsterdam as cultural center, this course seeks to complicate readings of seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture (particularly genre scenes and still-lifes) as culturally introspective.