Painting Courses

The Tactile + The Digital: Painting in the New Century

Course No. PTG 21X  Credits: 3.0
Prerequisite(s) Intro to Painting: Painting History: 1828-Present

The focus of this course is the role of Painting in the digital age. Students will use varied media and subjects, traditional and non- traditional, to further develop analytical and expressive means in their painting and creative practices. Students are encouraged to draw from personal interests and from many disciplines to develop projects that will be presented to the class for group critiques. Through slide presentations, gallery visits museum shows, and readings, information will be presented relating to the current art scene in order to further the student’s personal vision, help clarify directions, and explore a variety of formal, conceptual, and technical approaches to painting and image-making. Projects will address, among others, ideas and forms of light and space, color relationships, means and meanings of representation, text and texture, and gender, social and political issues. This course is open to all students with the prerequisite of Intro to Painting or with the permission of the instructor.

Painted Bodies: The Contemporary Figure

Course No. PTG 220  Credits: 3.0
Prerequisite(s) Intro to Painting: Painting History: 1828-Present

This course deals with the position of the figure within contemporary painting and a studio practice extending from that position. Figurative painting represents a tradition that extends back before history and is yet poised to reach into any foreseeable future. Class discussions will be based on readings that deal with critical and historical issues surrounding the figure in painting and on the work of contemporary artists dealing with the figure. By the end of the semester students will be expected to develop a cohesive body of work dealing with the figure as its subject. The student will also be required to articulate a statement that situates their work within a contemporary practice of figurative painting. This course is open to all students.

Intro to Painting: Painting History: 1828-Present

Course No. PTG 221  Credits: 3.0

This is a beginning painting course. It is a prerequisite for painting electives and all advanced painting courses. This course introduces students to painting through historic painting practices and conventions using oil-based paint as the primary material. Students are asked to approach painting pre-photographically (as if the year were 1828). Students are introduced to the fundamentals of a traditional painting practice with an emphasis on observational rendering and applied color theory beginning with Newton. Students will learn about color mixing, brush types, support construction and general canvas preparation. Students will paint from life learning how to capture the three- dimensional world on a two-dimensional surface as well as how to use material working through shape, form, texture, and mark to create an illusion of space and mass. Through critiques, discussions, readings, slide presentations, and museum visits, students will develop vocabulary and critical thinking skills essential to their studio practice as well as a sense of the history of painting leading to contemporary practices. Offered fall.

Painting as System, Method, Organism + Concept

Course No. PTG 226  Credits: 3.0
Prerequisite(s) Intro to Painting: Painting History: 1828-Present | Painting Beyond Observation

This course examines the nature of Painting as it relates to other visual arts media. The creation of systems as a way to generate, organize, compose, pattern, plan, fashion, model, design, execute, and possibly destroy art work will be explored. Artists such as Sol Lewitt, Marcel Duchamp, Survival Research Laboratories, Vito Acconci, Fischli & Weiss, Chuck Close, Alfred Jensen, Jackson Pollock, and Mel Bochner will be examined within the context of how systems function within their work. Reading relevant texts, looking at work, research/special projects, studio work, group and individual critiques are an integral part of this course. Students may work in the area of their expertise. Goals & Objectives: Students should understand the nature of the decision-making process in the creation of work, and establishing analyzing and evaluating criteria. This course is open to all students with the prerequisite of PTG 221 Intro to Painting or PTG 232 Painting Beyond Observation or with the permission of the instructor.

Popular Culture + Imagery

Course No. PTG 227  Credits: 3.0

This course will explore the symbiotic relationship of art and culture, and the particular ways in which popular and material culture influence the visual arts and vice versa NOW (if there are indeed any particular ways that stand out in this particular time as opposed to a different time in history). Students will learn to discern both the overt and covert affects/effects of culture on contemporary artists as well as on their own work and that of their peers. Students in order to take part in relevant class room conversation/discussion need a working knowledge of current events/ history/popular culture and will need to be ready to read and do research, etc. Open to all Students.

Popular Culture + Imagery: A Painting Course

Course No. PTG 227-327-427  Credits: 3.0

This course will explore the symbiotic relationship of art and culture, and the particular ways in which popular and material culture influence the visual arts and vice versa NOW (if there are indeed any particular ways that stand out in this particular time as opposed to a different time in history). Students will learn to discern both the overt and covert affects/effects of culture on contemporary artists as well as Êon their own work and that of their peers. Students in order to take part in relevant class room conversation/discussion need a working knowledge of current events/ history/popular culture and will need to be ready to read and do research, etc. Open to all students.

Painting Beyond Observation

Course No. PTG 232  Credits: 3.0
Faculty Anthony Ingrisano | Michael Meier
Prerequisite(s) Intro to Painting: Painting History: 1828-Present

Continued emphasis on material, color, and skill-building. Students will work with primarily with acrylic paint. This class moves beyond observational rendering and focuses on other approaches to developing content for work. Class topics focus on contemporary issues in Painting including: “What makes a Contemporary Painter? What is Painting? What is a studio practice? What does it mean to be a professional?” Some of the topics to be considered: abstraction, representation, perception, mimesis, conceptual, subject, reality, expressive, authorship, and interpretation. A few of the artists that will be looked at: Kandinsky, Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Jack Whitten, Peter Saul, Agnes Martin, Pipilotti Rist, Lisa Hoke, Jessica Stockholder, Jenny Saville, et. al. This course is open to all non-Painting major students as an elective with the prerequisite of Intro to Painting or with the permission of the faculty. It is required of all Painting major sophomores.

Painting After the Photograph: Painting in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Course No. PTG 233  Credits: 3.0
Prerequisite(s) Intro to Painting: Painting History: 1828-Present | Painting Beyond Observation

Painters going back as far as the Renaissance have been using devices such as the camera obscura to produce a two-dimensional verisimilitude. With the invention of photography in 1839, artists were liberated from the demands of reproducing naturalistic appearances. This course will explore the relationship between the photographic and painting; the effect that the birth of photography has had on the history and current state of painting. A primary question to be considered will be: What are the strategies of Painting in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction? How has photography and mechanical reproduction influenced painting functions? We will look at artists as varied as Delacroix, Courbet, Warhol, Rosen Quist, Tuyman’s, and Richter among others. Readings will include Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Prerequisite: PTG 221 Intro to Painting or PTG 232 Painting Beyond Observation.