In this seminar examines episodes in the history of art and design from the perspective of their material constituents. Engaging both natural and synthetic materials and examining selected case studies of their manipulation in diverse times and places, the class asks how materials have conditioned the conception and shifting meanings of artworks and how a focus on matter can bring into view the environmental impacts and the human costs of design. What meanings, for example, did elephant ivory imported from distant parts of the world or metals or minerals mined from the earth hold for early modern viewers and how did the processes of harvesting and extraction affect local communities? How can the study of furniture made from mahogany sourced in the eighteenth-century Caribbean expose the blindspots attending the global systems of labor and transportation that moved such materials? Conversely, how might the uses of wood veneer reveal historical ideologies and/or period imaginaries of nature, time, and a nascent ecological awareness? What can the material qualities of porcelain or of plate glass and mirror glass reveal about cultural imaginaries in Asia and in Europe? And what does the humble material of clay have to do with the styling and planned obsolescence for which the twentieth-century American automobile industry was renowned?

The materials we will investigate range across the animal, vegetable, mineral, and industrial realms, and the objects we study and the texts we read will engage a variety of geographies and histories. Our aim is not to posit universals about materials and their effects but to defamiliarize the familiar, to bring into view objects and materials often marginalized by art and design historians, and to be open to the alternate histories of human design they propose.

Credits: 3-0-9 U; 3-0-9 G
Schedule: F 2-5