Course Schedule
Week 1
Introduction
Thinking Like an Artist and How to Read a Painting
Elements of Composition
Assignment 1:
Part I: What are the characteristics of how artists think?
Part II: What are some of the questions you should be asking when looking at piece of art? Identify the aspects of a work that you should consider when "reading a painting."
Include images that illustrate particular aspects of an art work under consideration.
Technology Integration: Using search engines to search image and art archives; downloading pictures from the Internet; Integrating graphic elements into Microsoft Word.
Week 2
Gender and the Artistic Enterprise
Readings: Why There Are No Great Women Artists
Assignment 2: Select three women artists from different time periods from the course art archive.
Study their life stories and particularly the biographical details relating to their personal and professional struggles for recognition as artists.
You may wish to look at the life and professional of Artemisia Gentileschi
or perhaps Rosa Bonheur
to examine the intersections between her personal life and artistic achievements. Be sure to draw parallels and distinctions between the artists
of your choice. Your essay should be accompanied by examples of the works of these women.
Technology Integration: Using Adobe Photoshop: color adjustments for graphic and internet; use of color palette, curves, light and contrast adjustments and sizing of images.
Week 3
Women Artists: Artistic Expressions of Power and Protest
Readings:Three Centuries of Japanese Women Artists:Triumphing over Real Odds by Patricia Fister
Assignment 3:
Select three women artists from different time periods and their representative paintings either from the course art archive
or sites on the internet. Write an essay on how each woman artist has used her art to express either her protest or to assert
her power in these works. Be sure to identify in detail the elements of the works you select to point out these assertions of
power and/or protest. Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith Beheading Holofernes and the essay on this web site
is a good example. Some examples from our own time that you may wish to use include the works
of Yolanda Lopez, Mary Yeager,
The Guerilla Girls, or Emma Amos.
Technology Integration: Scanning Images; Adobe Photoshop (continued): Using art tools for creating paintings and
ornamental text.
Week 4
Expressions of Domesticity
Readings: Domesticana:The Sensibility of Chicana Rasquache
Assignment 4: How have women artists managed to incorporate the elements of domestic life into their paintings?
How have these artistic renderings of domestic scenes been used to legitimize rather than denigrate the professional stature of women artists?
Select a number of paintings from different eras that portray domestic experiences. Do a carful reading
of how each artist has used domesticity and domestic themes to validate both domesticity and her own artistic expression.
Some examples you may wish to look at include the works of Carmen Lomas Garza,
Francoise Duparc,or
Mary Cassatt.
Technology Integration: Presentation Programs: Integrating stills, movie clips and sound into Power Point and Apple Works.
Week 5
Expressions of Religiosity, Spirituality or Fantasy
Assignment 5: Do an exploration of works by women artists into the range of religious, spiritual or psychic experiences.
How are some of these experiences rendered artistically? How have traditional religious themes or icons been
incorporated or subverted in the works of women artists?
Some examples you may wish to use include the works of Patssi Valdez,
Hildegard von Bingen,Leonora Carrington,
Frida Kahlo, or Luisa Ignacia Roldan.
Technology Integration: Using digital cam corder to capture movies and capturing stills. Using Imovie. Incorporating stills and film clips into texts and Powerpoint presentations (continued).
Week 6
Expressions of Sexuality and Eroticism
Assignment 6: Study some of the paintings available in The Art Book such as Girl and the Cat by Balthus,
The Bather by Ingres or Girl and White Dog by Lucien Freud. How have images of eroticism been shaped largely by masculine sensibilities?Describe the
ways the erotic is defined asymmetrically for women versus for men.
Select a few images by women artists and describe how these images redefine eroticism and female sexuality.
Some images you may wish to study may include those by Suzanne Valadon,
Judy Chicago,Georgia O'Keefe
Yreina Cervantez, or Cindy Sherman.
Technology Integration: Using digital cam corder to capture movies and stills (continued). Using drawing and painting programs: Illustrator and Apple Works.
Week 7
Women's Art and the Integrations of Women's Crafts
Readings: Crafty Women and the Hierarchy of the Arts
Assignment 7: Art and the crafts have always been divided by class and gender. Certain art genres such as miniatures,
collages, or flower paintings have also traditionally been relegated
to the lower ranks in the hierarchy of art because they were genres associated with women. Describe the ways
women artists use crafts associated traditionally with women as art. Some of the works using so-called women's crafts
include quilts, needlework,altars and installation pieces by artists such as Faith Ringgold,
Amalia Mesa Baines,
Audrey Flack, Pottery by Native American Women, Hmong Embroidery,
and the molasof the Cuna women of Panama.
Technology Integration:Using Adobe Photoshop to create digital outline sketch for self portrait project. Begin work on self portrait.
Week 8
Reconstructions of the Self: Self Portraiture and Women Artists
Readings: An Empress'Lourve and Labor of Love
Yolanda Lopez: Breaking Chicana Stereotypes
Assignment 8:
For many women artists, self portraits, repeatedly painted, have been the means of
finding their identities or of reinventing themselves.
A good example may be found in the case of Frida Kahlo who painted herself over and
over in different clothes, poses and as different personas. Portraits women paint of themselves and other women also frequently carry signifiers
of boundary transgressions and re-interpretations of long-held assumptions. An example of this is seen in Yolanda Lopez's numerous renditions of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and in her use of
figures from everyday life as versions of the Virgin. Select
a couple of self portraits and portraits women have painted of other women. What do these self portraits convey in the way of the artists own reconstruction of her own identity?
How are these characteristics manifest in these portraits?
Work on Self Portrait
Weeks 9 : Women Composers
Week 10 and Final Exam Day: Final Presentations
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