Admission requirements
See Teaching and Examination Regulations.
Description
Walter Benjamin claimed that Paris was the capital of the 19th century. In the 18th century, the city could with equal right claim to be the capital that witnessed the birth of the modern art world, because several developments came together there c. 1750 that would define it:
the birth of the public art gallery
the birth of academic art history and classical archaeology as academic disciplines
the rise of a new, articulate middle class public of art lovers
the development of new venues to discuss art, such as the Salons, and new media to disseminate art
In this seminar we will investigate how these developments interacted to make Paris around 1750 the place where the modern art world was born; more in particular, we will consider how these, often conflicting, developments manifested themselves around a series of public debates, from the disputes caused by the rediscovery of Paestum and Pompeï, which led to radical new assessments of the value of classical art for the present, to the design of the church of Sainte Genenviève, subsequently the Panthéon; or the debates that surrounded the transformation of Royal art collections at the Palais-Royal into the Louvre; the new artists and audiences that met in the Salons; or the debates caused by the publication of Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums.
During the seminar students will choose art works, texts or artefacts in the collections of the University Library or Museum of Antiquities as the focus of their research. The seminar will also include an excursion to Paris.
Course objectives
Students will have a firm grasp of the main events, artistic, theoretical and historiographical developments contributing to Paris becoming the centre of the modern art world in the 1750s;
They will master the existing literature, and will identify new avenues of research;
They will be able to give a close visual analysis of an art work or artefact, and demonstrate how it relates to the developments studied in the seminar.
Timetable
Please consult the timetable on the MA Arts and Culture website.
Location: The class will be given in the University Library (Heinsius Room).
Mode of instruction
Research seminar, consisting of a combination of lectures by the tutors, presentations by the students in which they report on their progress and present their analysis of their work of art, text or artefact of choice.
Excursion to Paris.
Attendance is compulsory. Students are allowed to miss a maximum of two seminars.
Course Load
The total course load for the course is 280 hours.
Classes: 13 × 4 = 52 hours
Presentations: 55 hours
Outline: 55 hours
Research paper: 108 hous
Assessment method
Short oral presentations in Leiden and Paris (25% of grade);
Short outline of the research questions, argument, methods and sources for the final paper of this seminar (25%);
Research paper (50%).
ResMa students that take this course will write a paper that reflects the demands of the Research Master. That is, they will have to formulate more complex and original research questions than the MA students, include a critical positioning towards the state of the art of its subject, and produce a longer paper (7000 words including bibliography instead of 5000 words).
Re-examination via a rewritten version of the research paper
Blackboard
Blackboard will be used to post assignments, the required reading list, powerpoints used in the lectures, and relevant events.
Reading list
T.b.a. during the first session.
Registration
Students are required to register for this course via uSis, the course registration system of Leiden University. General information about uSis is available in English and Dutch.
Exchange and Study Abroad students: Please see the website Study in Leiden for information on how to apply/register for this course.
Students who are not in the MA Arts and Culture programme, but who would like to take this course as an optional course, please contact Mrs. Joëlle Koning MA the co-ordinator of studies.
Contact information
Remarks
This course can be taken for the MA Arts and Culture specialisations:
Architecture
Early Modern and Late Medieval Art
The course can also be taken as a specialist course for the MA Arts and Culture free component of any other specialisation (10 EC) or MA program of Leiden University.