Art History is an introduction to ways of thinking about the art of Western Europe and covers several major cultures and epochs, from ancient Greece, to the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, to the Modern and Contemporary. Through the eyes of two professors of art history with differing yet complementary approaches to understanding art, you will look at a wide variety of media, including painting, sculpture, and architecture, and discover the diversity of ways that works of art are meaningful to the human experience. Each lesson is broken down into sections that will explore a different angle of a specific period.

In the Historical Foundation section, you will explore the factual and historical foundations of the period covered. In the Art in History sections, you will explore objects from a variety of perspectives, many of which come back to ideas of time, the body, the interrelations of a variety of art forms, the various ways that works of art are experienced, and how striking patterns of evolution seem to emerge within and across distinct periods of art history. In the History in Art sections, you will examine objects and their contexts through a series of case studies, each one dedicated to a different topic relevant to the life of objects we call art. Finally, the Conversation in Art section brings course authors Ross Bresler and Anthony Scibilia together to share ideas on the topics covered in the lesson, culminating with your own opportunity to contribute your knowledge and ideas via a weekly assignment.

As Ross mentions, studying art will help you understand not just your music but also more about yourself. For Berklee students, the idea that you can learn, be inspired and horrified, or be made curious or afraid by thinking about the visual arts is an enormous gift for you not just as a musician but as a human being. Note that this course fulfills an Arts/Humanities requirement for the liberal arts portion of the bachelor of professional studies degree program.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Identify patterns of evolution associated with developments in the history of Western art, from ancient Greece to the contemporary era
• Describe and evaluate the cultural significance of works of art and the role of the artist within their historical and contemporary contexts
• Relate major developments and tendencies in the history of visual arts in the Western world to similar or parallel developments in music
• Write and speak articulately and fluently about the ways in which the histories of philosophy, art, and science are intertwined, and may be creatively understood
• Think critically about how the biographies of works of art provide powerful vehicles for understanding art’s place within society over time