You may respond to the reading of your choice this week. Remember, don't lose the forest for the trees!
Course Description and Outcomes
This seminar is an introduction to the art history methodology of material culture. Simply put, the study of material culture is the study of “things”—human-made or human-modified products. These “things” can include clothing, your grandmother’s heirloom jewelry, a formally landscaped garden, a painting, or the contents of a trash can. Scholars of material culture investigate these cultural products as a way to uncover the beliefs, values, attitudes, needs, hopes and fears of a particular society at a particular moment. In this class we will look at art (early American portraiture; southern plantation architecture; hand-built wooden furniture), luxury goods (Marie Antoinette’s clothing; silver teapots), consumer goods (Tupperware; table forks), and popular imagery (photographs of President Kennedy; the interior decor of Graceland) through the material culture lens.
However, the study of objects alone is not enough. Material culture scholars must study contexts as well as objects, for it is only by considering the historical, social, spatial, and cultural contexts that we can come to a fuller understanding of the meaning expressed by the human-made/modified product itself.
In addition, the field of material culture studies is filled with challenges and debates. Scholars sometimes argue that objects “speak” to us about the past. What does this mean? How can we know for sure what the artifact(s) is “saying” to us? What are the limitations of using objects as evidence? Is it possible to overstate an object’s value as evidence? Is it possible to overstrain an interpretation? Such questions are endemic to the field and are important to our investigations this semester.
This course introduces students to the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of material culture studies through readings, discussion, and research in an array of fields including art history, anthropology, folklore, and history. It is important to recognize that our readings will NOT deal primarily with contemporary art. Rather, this seminar is designed to help you develop critical skills of object analysis and will encourage you to consider the relationships between human –made/modified products and cultural meaning.
However, the study of objects alone is not enough. Material culture scholars must study contexts as well as objects, for it is only by considering the historical, social, spatial, and cultural contexts that we can come to a fuller understanding of the meaning expressed by the human-made/modified product itself.
In addition, the field of material culture studies is filled with challenges and debates. Scholars sometimes argue that objects “speak” to us about the past. What does this mean? How can we know for sure what the artifact(s) is “saying” to us? What are the limitations of using objects as evidence? Is it possible to overstate an object’s value as evidence? Is it possible to overstrain an interpretation? Such questions are endemic to the field and are important to our investigations this semester.
This course introduces students to the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of material culture studies through readings, discussion, and research in an array of fields including art history, anthropology, folklore, and history. It is important to recognize that our readings will NOT deal primarily with contemporary art. Rather, this seminar is designed to help you develop critical skills of object analysis and will encourage you to consider the relationships between human –made/modified products and cultural meaning.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
The article that I read was American Furniture 1995 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Ulrich brings to question the role of gender through different items in dealing with decorative furniture and objects. This is an interesting concept because these items embody a certain gender. What really raises this concept to me is when Ulrich talks about the relation of furniture and the human body.
I've heard about this many times through my 3D courses but ignored it. What caught my attention is the question of whether furniture could have sex since it is based off of the human body. Why couldn't Ulrich go more into that but I loved how Ulrich went into the material culture of the items in paintings.
Often we here about artists or different people embodying objects that they purchase or had a hand in the process. I don't want to go too in detail about everything so I can save something for the discussion but I simply have a question for anyone to answer. Presently do you feel as if we're over the gender barrier in our culture or is it still pretty evident?
I found Caroline Weber's "Queen of Fashion" the most interesting of the readings for this week. What I found most interesting in this article was how clothing was used to re-form Marie Antoinette's own impression of herself. Endlessly trying to impress on the Dauphine the notion that she embodied all the positive qualities of the French nobility and what they stood for, her dames d'honneurs and other caretakers constantly rearranged her outward appearance.
Upon entering France Marie Antoinette, already wearing fine French clothing, was stripped naked and redressed in almost exactly the same manner as before; the difference being that now she was not in control of any aspect of her dressing. Her hair, dress, accessories were all controlled by others; even what time of day she would was her hands publicly and dress was prescribed by others.
Even more fascinating than the fact that all of this was dictated to her was how well it seemed to work. Constantly breaking down, crying, even rebelling somewhat against her dressers in her early political career, Marie Antoinette came to greatly enjoy her extravagant clothing and the manner in which it was applied to her. Adopting the abstract ideas her wardrobe and its design embodied, Marie Antoinette eventually came to express the ideas herself, in her manner, carriage, speech, etc.
Eric Easterday
Out of all of the readings this week I found Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's "American Furniture" to be the most fascinating. Ulrich suggests that not only does furniture mimic the human body, but it also has a gender that changes with culture and gender fashions of the time period. Earlier this semester we discussed how furniture, chairs in particular, are named after various body parts. But I had never considered the notion that furniture has a gender. At first I was unsure of this idea, but I think Ulrich proved herself pretty well. She described various fashions and how furniture mimicked these different gender fashions. I found it especially interesting when she talked about how fashionable it was for men to show off their legs at one time, and how furniture also began to have developed, prominent legs. I also liked how she related furniture to paintings.
The reading this week made me think of furniture that we give gender role to in modern times. The lazy boy recliner is male and the end table's are female. A tv stand or entertainment center seems male while a kitchen table would be considered female. It's interesting yet we never think about it.
Out of all the body parts on a chair, where does the stool come from, the chair's seat? Its very easy to see from these reading that objects play a huge part in defining gender roles. Furniture just like when we learned about posture can define a specified gender. Im am curious to know if there was any examples of people embracing objects with opposite gender roles in some hope to be more feminine or masculine. If a man wants to feel more manly, could he use a more manly object to help with that. Kinda like the bigger the gun.
Something else interesting to think about is color as material culture. Blue for boys pink for girls. How we see this normally in clothing but also in the rooms, everything blue or pink.
I think the big picture with all the readings is that in modern times we stereotype cars, clothing, bags, even food as relating to a gender We do this all the time even without realizing it. These articles just reveal that this has been going on for a very long time.
I found the Queen of Fashion reading most appealing. Ive been familiar with Marie Antoinette, but have never heard the full story, or at least the beginning of it, especially from our point of view.
The way things were run in old country gives us quite a shock as to how we used to be, or where we came from. Creating false icons and then exemplifying mastery over them is an interesting event to bear witness to.
From the beginning of this union she was treated as a ragdoll, the most beautiful and elegant ragdoll. Adorned in the most expensive and fashionable attire only to be ripped out of it and bathed in front of everyone at a moments notice. Although Marie became all about her material and the materials power to help sustain her political status, she was but material to the French.
Post a Comment