Two Centuries of American Art: 1776 to 1976

This course explores the uniquely American art form that emerged out of the British style and traces its development during the burgeoning nation’s first two centuries. Our exploration begins with the Hudson River School—a mid-19th century movement of landscape painters influenced by Romanticism and briefly leads up to the pinnacle moment of the 1913 American Armory Show that marked the dawn of Modernism in America. Other highlights include the Ashcan artists best known for works portraying scenes of daily life at the beginning of the 20th century in New York—often in the city's poorer neighborhoods; American Regionalism of the 1930s, which depicted realistic scenes of rural and small towns mostly in the Midwest and Deep South; the WPA’s Federal Art Project, which employed more than 5,300 artists; and the inimitable developments of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. This course will be recorded. Students will have access to videos for the duration of the course.