Art History/Arts Management Courses
The course provides an understanding of the methods of identifying, interpreting, and evaluating ideas in the creative arts. Areas covered include art's functions, the visual elements and principles of design, the styles of art, and the art object. Offered every semester.
Survey of Western Art History 1 introduces students chronologically to major themes, movements, and issues in Western Art History from prehistoric times through the Rococco (approximately 1750). This course is ordinarily restricted to Visual Arts and Architecture/Community Design Majors, although other students may be admitted on a space-availalbe basis with permission of the instructor.
Survey of Western Art History 2 studies the complex relationships between artists and the cultures in which they work, from 1750 to the present, exploring how art deals with questions of war and peace, social justice, religious belief, censorship, propaganda, gender, ethnic and social identity, and social critique.
In this course, students will cultivate observational skills and learn to use drawing tools, such as pencils, charcoal and ink to create drawings on a variety of traditional 2-dimensional surfaces. Technical aspects of the course will cover composition, shape, contrast, texture and gesture as they relate to the history of the medium. Field trips to museums and other resources will supplement readings and studio based assignments.
Art + Architecture Fabrication Lab, a required course for students majoring in Architecture, Fine Arts and Design, offers students supervised professional construction and safety training using the Fabrication tools and equipment. Students complete a variety of practical construction-based projects to develop and practice proper material and tool use. The conceptual, theoretical and practical instruction received in this course will prepare students for studio-based course work and provide future access to the tools and labs in the Department of Art + Architecture. Cross-listed with ARCD 105.
The Imaginary Museum presents the great formal and historical issues of art history in western and world art traditions, with emphasis on the styles of objective accuracy, formal order, emotion, and fantasy.
This core studio class introduces the student to the broad range of materials, methodologies, and strategies that compose the art and design program. The student will explore a series of studio problems that begin simple and move to greater complexity. The language of art and design point, line, plane, space, color, light, value, texture, proportion, and scale will be the framework of our 2D and 3D investigations. (Required for all BAVA majors)
This basic drawing class introduces the student to the notion of mark-making. We will look at the way representations are made, their structure in space, and their context. A range of materials from dry (i.e. charcoals, chalks, pencils) to wet (inks) and various surfaces will be studied.
The Visual Communication course series will introduce students to the technical and conceptual study of graphic design as a wide-ranging practice for the creation, reproduction, and dissemination of visual messages. In Visual Communication I, students will explore these issues while developing fluency in the Macintosh OS operating system, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and In Design.
The Visual Communication course series will introduce students to the technical and conceptual study of graphic design as a wide-ranging practice for the creation, reproduction, and dissemination of visual messages. In Visual Communication 2, students will explore these issues while developing fluency in web development using HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver and Flash. Prerequisites: ART 155 and ART 120.
An interesting introduction to a topic in the field of Art.
Introduction to Museum Studies presents the historical development of museums, their collection, exhibition and education functions, administration, physical facilities, fundraising and ethics. Particular attention will be given to issues of diversity and multiculturalism; relationship of museums to changing populations and disciplinary trends; and examination of diverse types of collections. USF's Thacher Gallery serves as the laboratory for this course.
This course will introduce students to the practice, history, and theory of typography. Through design research, independent project work, and collaborative exercises, students will produce typographic solutions to applied and experimental problems using typography as their primary, if not exclusive, design element.
Arts for Educators is an interdisciplinary course for future elementary classroom teachers and students desiring an overview of the visual and performing arts. This course will offer students critical perspectives on arts education and hands-on experience in music, theater, dance/movement and visual art, with the goal of preparing them for reflective, culturally inclusive integration of the arts into the academic curriculum. The guiding framework for students’ examination of arts education theory and practice originates from the California Visual and Performing Arts (CA VAPA) Content Standards and the professor’s experience in the education and arts disciplines. The CA VAPA Standards include: 1) artistic perception, 2) creative expression, 3) understanding the cultural and historical origins of the arts, 4) pursuing meaning in the arts, and 5) making informed judgments about the arts. The course will culminate in student presentations of integrated arts units.
This introductory class will provide students with experience in acrylic, gouache, and watercolor as means for the exploration into the visual language of color, light, shape, and mass as they are embodied in paint. Painting support and the preparation of various surfaces will be studied.
This course explores the role museums (especially history and natural history museums) play in society and the range of issues they face in conserving and presenting cultural and historical materials to the public. Topics include the politics of representation, collecting practices, intellectual property rights and repatriation, displaying culture, and working with diverse publics. Will include visits to area museums.
This course develops the student's creative and technical skills in sculpture. Specific problems are given to explore and utilize the elements of form, space, line and mass. Emphasis is placed on problem solving and the physical means of realizing an idea three-dimensionally. Various media and techniques are explored, and students are encouraged to develop their own unique styles and visual language.
This course will expose students to the history and development of the book as an art form unto itself, from text to illustration to fine art, while teaching them a variety of techniques and materials with which to make their own books.
Visual Theology explores humanity's experience of the transcendent and sacred by learning to "read" the visual texts of religious myth, symbol, iconography and architecture from the Western and other traditions. Lecture course combines slide shows, reading and discussions, fieldtrips and creative projects.
This course utilizes the concepts and skills introduced in previous graphic design courses and builds upon these skills to further expand the palette and vocabulary of design. Students will develop a stronger understanding of typography and the integration of information into a publication format. Projects expand in complexity and focus on the challenges of design publication. Prerequisite: ART 205.
Ceramics I presents a working knowledge of the world's ceramic tradition from a functional, sculptural, and historical point of view. The goal of the class is for each student to develop basic hand building and sculptural techniques for the production of fine art and craft ceramics. These goals will be achieved through the creation of projects that utilize the construction methods of pinch,slab, coil, and combined techniques.
This course is designed to develop your skills in pixel based photographic manipulation and printing. The class will use Adobe Photoshop as the primary image-editing tool. Students will attend presentations, exhibitions and group critiques, and create a portfolio of digital photographic work.
A variable topic introduction to art, designed for incoming Transfer students (Students-In-Transition).
Directed study of a subject in the visual arts. The written permission of the instructor and the dean is required. Offered every semester.
Principles of collection development, management, conservation and use are taught in a special semester-long course using collections of Bay Area Museums.
This course will demonstrate
to students the power of design to leverage their sense of humanity and ability
to fashion a more humane and just world. The course will survey an array of
visual styles, communications and design projects that date from the turn of
the century to the present in the form of artistic posters, non-commercial
advertisements, web sites, outreach and political propaganda.
This course focuses on European art and visual culture, circa 1400'1600, with an emphasis on the visual traditions that flourished in the most influential centers of artistic production in the Renaissance, especially Italy, France, Germany and the Lowlands.
This upper-division course will examine special topics in the art and visual culture of seventeenth-century Europe, focusing on the traditions of painting, drawing, printmaking and architecture in Italy, Spain, the Lowlands and France.
Sustainable Design Seminar will examine theories and practices that encourage the development of ecological consciousness as applied to design practice and production. This course will ask students to think critically about what sustainability actually means, and to examine the complexities in our choices of materials, processes, locations, quantities, production and consumption.
This upper-division art history course offers in-depth analysis of the meaning of modern and contemporary art in society. Through discussions and numerous field trips students explore a number of stylistic and thematic issues in contemporary art and their legacy from specific historical avant-garde movements. Among the topics of focus are the role of memory and loss, the body and sexuality, and race and ethnicity in a variety of visual art forms from the early twentieth-century to the present.
This is an upper-division course designed especially for majors in the Visual Arts and minors in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Students will examine the history of female artists from medieval times to the present in the Europe, Russia, and the United States, as well as in a contemporary global context. We will address how art institutions (history, criticism, education, exhibition forums) have accounted for--or failed to account for--women's artistic production.
This course helps students build an understanding and appreciation of the visual arts of China, Japan, and India. Lectures illustrated with slides and museum visits.
This introductory class helps students gain knowledge and appreciation of the plastic and kinetic arts of sub-Saharan Africa. Mythology, masking traditions, ritual and spirituality, gender and cultural issues of traditional and contemporary African cultures are examined through slide lectures, videos, and museum visits.
Art of the Americas is an upper division art history course focusing on the art made by the numerous and different peoples of North and South America, from antiquity to the present.
This course investigates at a more advanced level the complex representation of space on the two dimensional drawing plane. The focus is on issues such as figure and still life as well as personal and conceptual questions in aesthetics and in the larger culture. The student will work in a range of scales and with a range of drawing materials.
Contemporary thinking about the art of the Middle Ages is all too often dominated by a long-standing prejudice and a propensity to see it as somehow "backward" or lacking in intrinsic interest or value. Over the past few decades, however, a wealth of art historical scholarship has begun to recapture and highlight the ways a vast array of medieval art reflects the unique cultural and intellectual achievements, compelling religious, economic and political circumstances, and complex social challenges of a lengthy and fascinating stretch of European history. This upper-division seminar seeks to characterize and underscore the incredible richness and sophistication of medieval artistic production, from the beginnings of Christianity in the West through the Late Middle Ages, circa 500-1300, with a special eye to the social, historical and philosophical conditions in which a range of medieval art and architecture, was produced.
Digital Literacy will introduce students to the practice and history of screen-based interactive design and web publishing using Dreamweaver, Flash, and introductory program languages. Course work will cover topics of interaction design, networked culture, and critical analysis of the use of technology in design and our everyday lives.
This combined studio and cultural history course offers a survey of Filipino American artistic production,looking at visual art, literature, music, and performance. The goal of the course is for students to develop their own artistic voice in response to histories of colonization, transnationalism, and globalization.
This intermediate studio class will build upon previous experience gained from Painting 1. The course will provide students with the introduction to personal subject matter while still providing expertise with technical issues in acryllic painting. Personal expression will be emphasized within the context of painting's history and contemporary issues with society and culture.
COLOR THEORY is an intermediate course for students in the four majors of the Department of Art + Architecture. This class is designed to meet the needs of students to prepare them for aesthetic and theoretical color use in their respective disciplines. Each student will attend presentations, workshops and group critiques, and create a portfolio of studio work individually and collaboratively.
This course builds upon the student's creative and technical skills developed in Introduction to Sculpture. As a continuing exploration of the physical means of realizing an idea three-dimensionally, students make molds of their own original clay sculptures and then cast them in a variety of media. Emphasis is placed on quality and craftsmanship, while students are encouraged to develop their own unique styles and visual language.
This course will introduce students to the study of information visualization as a wide-ranging practice for the creation of complex visual messages. Through sustained project work, students will investigate the ways that illustration, text, photography, sound, and the moving image can, in different ways, participate in the process of communicating multi-faceted and multi-dimensional systems of information. Lectures, readings, and student research will supplement project work, introducing students to the concentrated disciplines of mapping, timelines, and the history of information representation.
Exhibition Design Practicum will provide students working experience with the professional practice of exhibition design. Through research and collaborative project work, students will curate, design, and mount an exhibition for the university's Thacher Gallery.
This course will build on
the skills and framework learned in Typography to allow students to create
advanced typographic project work and research. Students will develop their own
design for a single-case font as well as integrate digital and non-digital
technologies to develop an experimental type.
Stained Glass 2 builds on skills developed in the introductory class. Course includes flat glass painting, kiln work, fusing, slumping, and glass casting techniques.
This internship offers students an opportunity to work on self-directed study projects with external and/or internal non-profit clients. Students are encouraged to locate internship-type opportunities to engage in client-based work and gain direct, full-immersion experience working with selected design professionals in their studios and businesses.
This is a studio course in mural painting that will contextualize the studio activities within the history and theories of mural painting and art activism. The field of cultural studies will be used to raise issues and questions fundamental to creating collaborative, public and activist art.
This course is an introduction to the most famous artistic movement in the history of art and one of the most important: Impressionism. It analyzes how a group of passionate young men and women struggled for years to offer their own vision of art and planted the seeds of many 20th century art movements.
This course investigates a visual art making through a multi-disciplinary approach. Students will utilize the potential of landscape, environmental, social and aesthetic phenomena for initiating group and/or individual actions. Students will experience the full public art process (collaboration with communities/local agencies, preliminary presentation, permitting process, fundraising, publicity, and preparation and implementation of an installation piece).
This intermediate level course introduces students to traditional printmaking practices. Wood relief and copper intaglio methods will be used to create original multiples of art. Environmentally sensitive chemicals and safe processes will be used.
This course introduces students to the history of stained and leaded glass design and technique through background and slide lectures and site visits to Bay Area churches and installations ("Glass Traditions"). The bulk of the class is in studio format in which the students learn to design and construct stained glass panels.
Interaction Design will advance students’ technical and conceptual skills in interaction design within the digital environment. Coursework emphasizes immersive and engaging user experience, site optimization, data visualization, and networked databases, along with readings that examine the history of human-machine interaction. Prerequisite: ART 315.
One-time offerings of special interest courses in various visual art areas.
Directed study of a subject. The written permission of the instructor and the dean is required. Offered every semester.
In this course, students of Drawing will build upon their general knowledge of the field of study while making an in-depth investigation of this particular focus.
In this course, students of Painting will build upon their general knowledge of the field of study while making an in-depth investigation of this particular focus.
Students learn the practical "nuts and bolts" business aspects of the art world through museum and gallery visits, curating of exhibitions,and presentations on finance, insurance, portfolio building, and grant writing from art professionals.
This internship places students in a museum setting where they learn the skills of community outreach, educational programming, fund raising, curating of exhibitions, among other skills. Partner organizations include: the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (De Young Museum and Legion of Honor), the San Francisco Museum of Modern art (SFMOMA), the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Exploratorium, the Museum of Craft and Design, among others.
This internship serves as an opportunity for students to develop patterns of professional behavior in the commercial art world setting. Students will be placed in a Bay Area art gallery where they will learn skills such as client interaction, cataloguing of works of art, shipping and insuring art, sales techniques, curating exhibitions, planning receptions, art fairs, and other public events, etc. Partner art galleries in San Francisco include: Franklin Bowles, Braunstein/Quay, Catharine Clark, Christopher Clark, Frey Norris, Haines Gallery, Hespe Gallery, Robert Koch, and Toomey Tourrell Fine Art.
This internship places students in a non-profit arts organization where they learn the skills of community outreach, fund raising, and curating of exhibitions in an alternative arts setting. Partner organizations include: Creativity Explored, Intersection for the Arts, Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, New Langton Arts, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery.
In this studio/practicum course students will learn how sculptors working in such areas as the film industry and medical and forensic science apply their art in creative and innovative ways.
Design Internship provides students a supervised work experience within a professional Bay Area design setting that complements the theoretical, methodological and practical instruction received in the Design major. Additional course work will contextualize the students’ work experience and will helps them to prepare for future work within the field.
This course prepares students for exploring employment, internship and graduate educational opportunities. Concepts, cross platform developments and issues concerning aesthetics, interface design and use of media are addressed. Students investigate specific areas of the graphic design industry and prepare applications and portfolios geared towards their area of interest. Students collect relevant material and produce a CD/DVD/Web-based portfolio, packaging for CD/DVD, resume, cover letter, business card, and a flatbook portfolio. Corequisite concurrent lab.
Corequisite: ART 460 Senior Design Project studio.
The course Fine Arts Internship offers students supervised pre-professional internship experiences designed to complement the conceptual, theoretical and practical instruction received in the Fine Arts major in the Department of Art + Architecture.
Senior Studio is a capstone course in the Fine Arts major in the department of Visual Arts that is designed to meet the professional needs of students whose concentration is studio art. The goal of the course is to prepare students for lives as working visual artists. Each student will complete a studio internship with a professional artist, attend presentations, workshops and group critiques, and create a solo senior exhibition and accompanying slide or CD portfolio.
This advanced level course introduces students to contemporary methods and processes, building upon experiences from the prerequisite course: ART 375 - Printmaking 1. Solar intaglio, lithography and linocut methods will be used to create original multiples of art. Environmentally sensitive chemicals and safe processes will be used.
Professional Practice in Design will bring students greater awareness of the career options that will be available to them following graduation and will provide them with the skills that will enable them to successfully enter the profession.
First part of a year-long sequence. Artist as Citizen A is primarily conceptual and theoretical. The class is composed of lectures/discussions with guests from various communities, readings, slides, journal keeping and a full scale proposal for a community-based art project.
Artist as Citizen B, Artist in the Community, is the outreach portion of the year-long sequence, (the "street" component). This includes work on site, collaborations, designing visual narratives and survival strategies that focus on marginalized communities. Possible communities could be those concerned with environmental issues, health, homelessness, teens at risk, racism, educational institutions, among others.
