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Art in Rome Course Offerings

Studio Art

Art 3001 Rome Studio (4 credits*)

Instructor: Maria Park
 Through a close examination of readings, studio work, field trips, critiques, and reviews, students will expand and clarify their understanding of the contemporary within art and visual culture, and develop a way to locate the contemporary within their own work. Students will also develop ways of working that allow them to remain productive in the mobile and transitory situation of a semester abroad, both within and outside of the studio setting.  


This studio, which focuses on the problem of the contemporary in art and visual culture, is designed to support a critical approach in the development an artistic practice and in preparation for senior thesis work. Through a conversation framed by theorists such as Giorgio Agamben, Henri LeFebvre, Lewis Mumford, and Jean Baudrillard, students will examine notions of the contemporary as it impacts the agency of art in culture. Students will address as well the aestheticization of material and social reality through a method of inquiry that questions both the attributions and appearances of style in contemporary art. Resonances of the contemporary will be sought out within a range of historical and contemporary works of art, design, and architecture, in Rome as well as other art centers in Italy and Switzerland. Class meetings will be comprised of presentations, discussions, group and individual critiques, studio visits, and field trips. Studio criticism and reviews are supplemented by local and international artists as part of the visiting artist series in Rome. Emphasis is divided between work accomplished in the studio and work executed in the environs of the city. At the end of the semester, the students will have opportunities to exhibit work produced in this course. 

Art 3001 Rome Studio (4 credits*)

Instructor: Luana Perilli

The aim of the course is to help students to grow and mature both in the art making process and in the development of individual paths of artistic exploration. This is done by offering technical support and demonstrations about different techniques, contemporary mediums, and visual languages and through feedback that will be given by art professionals in Rome in the second part of the semester. Students will meet all the different professionals that make up the art world, become informed and confident about displaying and discussing their work as well as have the possibility to seek out new opportunities.

*Required of majors and visiting students accepted to specific art, architecture, or urban studies track.

ART 1504 Introduction to Drawing in Rome (3 credits)

Instructor: Maria Park

This course introduces students to principles and techniques of visual representation. Emphasis is on the use of drawing for the development and refinement of visual expression. Using both traditional and nontraditional drawing approaches, students will work on drawing assignments and projects around the city of Rome while addressing various conceptual concerns on ideas surrounding the visual representation of information and experience. The approach to the course this semester will proceed along the following integrated lines of inquiry: form/field, stasis/event, and nature/culture. We will examine relationships between these pairs as oppositional, reciprocal, and convergent as a way of orienting ourselves in Rome and its environments. Students will explore various media such as charcoal, chalk, pencil, pen, and ink, and the projects will navigate between observational and conceptual drawings. Course readings will suggest possible approaches to these projects. This course assumes no prior knowledge of drawing.

 

With the exception of in-studio days, we will identify a different site (e.g., museums, parks, churches, terminals, squares, neighborhoods, and archaeological sites) each week that fall along the above-mentioned lines of inquiry. Students will have an opportunity to research and propose sites supporting the trajectory of work developed throughout the semester. Assignments will be given either in response to or in preparation for in-class work.

ART 1602 Introduction to Photography in Rome (3 credits)

Instructor: Liana Miuccio

In this class, students will explore the visual language of photography using Rome as their studio.  Rome’s many layered history juxtaposed with its current global urban landscape offers a unique opportunity to photograph an important European city in transition.


Through lectures incorporating the study of both historic and contemporary photographers, site visits to artist studios and galleries, and weekly photographic assignments, students will gain an in-depth understanding of the power of the photographic image as an art form. Students will integrate their individual disciplines of study in architecture, urban planning, art and liberal studies in this visual exploration. 


Students will be expected to complete a final project in which they choose one aspect of Rome’s multilayered landscape to visually explore in depth. The final project format can include traditional photographic prints, still images integrated with video and sound, or photography books. Students can capture images with a digital SLR or digitally scan their images from an analog SLR.Through lab demonstrations, students will gain mastery of the tools necessary to access the creative process of photography including the manual capture of the image, and techniques of post-production in Photoshop.

Does not fulfill prerequisite for upper-level Cornell photography classes.

 

Art History

ART 3102 Contemporary Rome Seminar (4 credits**)

Instructor: Shara Wasserman

This course is designed to introduce the student to contemporary art in Rome.The class combines theory and practice: primary and field research with pertinent readings, lectures, and discussions.

 

The point of departure is that Rome is not only an historical city, but also a city that participates actively in the development of a contemporary vocabulary.The discussions are triggered by this city’s very particular position with respect to contemporary art and contemporary vocabulary in general. Students will consider the issues of the historical past and the present, the preservation and reuse of historical spaces for the display of contemporary art, and how the new impacts the old and vice versa.In addition, pertinent themes such as immigration, the breakdown of borders and barriers, and gender will be addressed.

 

The class is handled as a workshop of contemporary art, making use of the resources that are particular to Rome, touching on all aspects of the art process from idea to realization of work to display to acquisition.

 

Students investigate the gallery as a cultural, didactic, and commercial institution, and explore its relationship and responsibility to the artist and to art promotion, taking into consideration the market and the public.Focus is placed on exhibition analysis, including theme or idea, selection and installation methods, documentary materials.Artist, curator, press release, invitation, labels, catalog, installation, opening reception, critic, and critical reviews become topics of study.

 

Through the course students define the role of the museum in the preservation, documentation, and display of art.The theories of collecting — permanent holdings, investments, public, and private – are addressed during visits to private and public collections. 

 

Students make use of exhibitions presented in Roman galleries and museums at the moment; studio visits to local and international artists; classroom lectures and discussions with dealers, curators, and museum directors; and the foreign and international component at the many international academies.

 

Each session consists of a one-hour in class lecture, followed by a site visit.

**Required of those enrolled in ART 3902

ART 3902 International Professional Practice / Internship (1 credit)

Instructor: Shara Wasserman

Students who select an unpaid internship, work 10 hours per week in a prestigious art institution or with an art professional. Placements are with galleries, curators, cultural institutions, and artists. The days and times are to be determined by the students with their hosts, and are dependent on their class schedules and the Cornell in Rome academic program. Internships give students the opportunity to experience the day-to-day operations of a dynamic and professional arts organization, while learning new skills and building work experience. In addition, students are be exposed to a detailed and intimate view of the Rome art scene.  Open to Cornell and visiting art and art history students only.

The deadline for fall 2013 applications is mid-March.

ART 3802 History of Art: Baroque Rome (4 credits, fall)

Instructor: Paolo Alei

This course analyzes the masterpieces of Roman Baroque art and architecture from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century. In this period, Rome was a leading center of the arts in Europe. Popes, cardinals, nobles, intellectuals, and church officials continued to sponsor the Renaissance project of renovatio urbis, the restoration and embellishment of the city. While analyzing urbanism, architecture, sculpture, and painting by some of the major artists of the period (Caravaggio, Bernini, Borromini, Cortona), we will consider the artistic trends that characterize the patterns of patronage in Counter-Reformation and Baroque Rome. Special attention will be given not only to the literary sources that shaped art theory, practice, and criticism, but also to important issues such as propaganda, the viewer’s emotional engagement, and the artist’s social status. The unity of the visual arts, rhetorical effects, artistic rivalry, scenic urbanism, the relation between art and poetry, the use of classical and “bizarre” vocabulary, the concept of pastoral, the representation of ecstasy, and the idealization of death will be some of the themes explored in this course. Each art work, building, or urban plan will be studied as a document to understand broader concepts related to politics, religion, music, science, theatre, and philosophy. Lectures will be held mainly on-site directly in the churches, palaces, villas, and piazzas of Rome.

ART 3803 Art History: Italian Cinema (4 credits)

Instructor: Carolina Ciampaglia

In the silent film era, Italian national cinema held a prosperous and influential position in the international scene that in the mid 1940s, after WWII, was regained through a movement known as neorealism. Neorealism depicted the devastating consequences of war through stories of common people filmed mostly on the streets.  During the war the major film studios had been destroyed and in the post-war years they were still not accessible on-location shooting was the only option left.

 

The visual representation of Italy has been heavily influenced by a national cinema that has been able to capture a fascinating and complex combination of the real and the imagined. This course aims to examine the cinematic representation of Italy with particular emphasis on the use settings and space. From the naturalistic spaces of post-war cinema in the 1940's to the ghettos of the 21st century, the course focus on how the themes of the films narrative are enhanced and reinforced by the setting and mise-en-scene.

ART 3801 Art History: Late Antique and Medieval Rome (4 credits, spring)

Instructor: Lila Yawn

This course examines metamorphoses continuities that characterize artistic culture its urban architectural settings during 1,000-year age middle between pagan antiquity early renaissance. class meetings take place on location city, permitting first-hand study extant works situ. these range chronologically from grand constantinian projects fourth century to illusionistic experiments pietro cavallini jacopo torriti, which immediately preceded inspired those giotto. monumental painting, mosaic, architecture, stone sculpture constitute major foci course, do other arts high hierarchy of media such as manuscript illumination, ivory wood carving, metalwork, textiles embroidery, the multimedia events liturgies, processions, coronations, pilgrimages — in whose service much medieval roman art and architecture were created.