How to Look at and Understand Great Art

📚 Course Lectures

1. The Importance of First Impressions – Contexts of viewing; genres; media, tools, techniques (34 min)

2. Where Am I? Point of View and Focal Point – Viewer placement, angle, space; centering attention (30 min)

3. Color—Description, Symbol, and More – Value, saturation, analog/complementary; Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh (29 min)

4. Line—Description and Expression – Geometric, implied, directional; Picasso, Seurat, Modern/Expressionist uses (30 min)

5. Space, Shape, Shade, and Shadow – Figure/ground, mass/space; Caravaggio, Friedrich, Matisse, Michelangelo (30 min)

6. Seeing the Big Picture—Composition – Symmetry/asymmetry, scale, proportion; open vs. closed composition (30 min)

7. The Illusion—Getting the Right Perspective – Linear, foreshortening, atmospheric; trompe l’œil, anamorphosis (29 min)

8. Art That Moves Us—Time and Motion – Implied and actual motion; narrative time; Impressionism to Op and performance (29 min)

9. Feeling with Our Eyes—Texture and Light – Sculptural texture; paint handling; Ingres, Titian, Renoir, de La Tour (29 min)

10. Drawing—Dry, Liquid, and Modern Media – Purposes of drawing; metalpoint, charcoal, ink, pastel, pencil (31 min)

11. Printmaking—Relief and Intaglio – Woodcut, engraving, linocut; etching, mezzotint, aquatint; Dürer to Picasso (33 min)

12. Modern Printmaking—Planographic – Lithography, silkscreen, monotype; Daumier, Degas, Warhol; Whistler (29 min)

13. Sculpture—Salt Cellars to Monuments – Relief vs. in-the-round; subtractive/additive; assemblage and earth art (31 min)

14. Development of Painting—Tempera and Oils – Panel, fresco (buon/ secco), oil & watercolor; plein air (29 min)

15. Modern Painting—Acrylics and Assemblages – 20th-century materials; Stella, Frankenthaler, Pollock; oil vs. acrylic (31 min)

16. Subject Matters – Iconography levels; academic hierarchies; reading subject and meaning (30 min)

17. Signs—Symbols, Icons, and Indexes in Art – Changing symbolism; icons and indexes as meaning systems (32 min)

18. Portraits—How Artists See Others – Pose, gaze, placement; Rembrandt’s group portraits; David’s Napoleon (32 min)

19. Self-Portraits—How Artists See Themselves – From cameo appearances to self-revelation across eras (31 min)

20. Landscapes—Art of the Great Outdoors – Fore/middle/background; Romantic sublime; Hudson River to cityscapes (32 min)

21. Putting It All Together – Integrating the toolkit via Thorvaldsen, Van Oosterwyck, Bonnard, Van der Weyden (31 min)

22. Early Renaissance—Humanism Emergent – Classicism, human body, nature, earthly life; how to recognize the style (28 min)

23. Northern Renaissance—Devil in the Details – Cool light, fabric, minute detail; building the art-historical canon (31 min)

24. High Renaissance—Humanism Perfected – Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo; School of Athens and ideals (31 min)

25. Mannerism and Baroque—Distortion and Drama – Elongation, tertiary color; Caravaggio & Rubens’s Baroque energy (31 min)

26. Going Baroque—North versus South – Counter-Reformation South; French classicism; Dutch light & space (31 min)

27. 18th-Century Reality and Decorative Rococo – Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard; intimacy, curves, color (29 min)

28. Revolutions—Neoclassicism and Romanticism – David’s order & morality vs. Delacroix’s drama & emotion (32 min)

29. From Realism to Impressionism – Millet, Courbet, Manet; then Renoir, Monet, Degas and natural light (32 min)

30. Postimpressionism—Form and Content Re-Viewed – Cézanne, Seurat (form); Gauguin, Munch (psychology) (31 min)

31. Expressionism—Empathy and Emotion – Violent color, distortion, impasto; philosophy and Freud’s influence (32 min)

32. Cubism—An Experiment in Form – Phases of Cubism; geometry, fractured form; sculptural echoes (30 min)

33. Abstraction/Modernism—New Visual Language – Nonrepresentation; Kandinsky, Marc, Pollock, de Kooning (31 min)

34. Dada Found Objects/Surreal Doodles and Dreams – Anti-art, chance; dream imagery & automatism (31 min)

35. Postmodernism—Focus on the Viewer – Pop, Op, Minimalism; shifting meaning to audience interpretation (29 min)

36. Your Next Museum Visit—Do It Yourself! – Practical guide to collections and exhibitions; grand review (34 min)