Art History and Architecture   

Part 1 of the course will recount the lives of artists – famous and not so famous – who were the perpetrators or the victims of crimes. These include Caravaggio, who fled from Rome after being accused of murder; Benvenuto Cellini and Pompeo Leoni, two prominent Italian Renaissance sculptors; and Gianlorenzo Bernini, the dominant sculptor of the 17th century. Two great female artists, Properzia de’ Rossi and Artemisia Gentileschi, survived violent crimes and went on to produce significant bodies of work. Also, in this series we will look at forgers, including the infamous Dutchman Van Meegeren who made fake Vermeers.

These lectures will deal with theft, including the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911, the theft of three paintings from the Gardner Museum in Boston, and the theft of a Caravaggio in Palermo in 1969. The course will document two large-scale looting sprees, that of the Napoleonic armies from around 1795 to 1815, and that of the Nazis, including the heroic saga of the Monuments Men (the American soldiers deployed to find and recover Nazi loot). The ongoing debate about repatriating works of art that were wrongfully seized by colonial powers will also be discussed.

This course will explore domed structures through history, from the ancient world to the present. Each of the lectures will present two or more domes, looking into not only their structure and construction, but also who built them and why. The zoom lectures will be richly illustrated with photos and diagrams. Comparisons of the 10+ structures will be made regarding size (plan and volume) and construction methodology. All the domed structures in the course are extant (except one) so lectures will include current photography and current uses.

The course will explore the Mad Genius hypothesis, which is the idea that producing noteworthy art is correlated with having a psychological disorder. The scientific research relevant to this hypothesis will be discussed along with a few selected case studies of famous artists (including van Gogh, Dali, Munch, and Pollock). The course will be primarily lectures with no outside class readings or videos required.

Many historians believe the era of modern architecture began in Chicago with the first skyscraper. It progressed through a myriad of styles and philosophies until the present. Throughout this evolution, many architects have made major contributions to the art form, breaking existing orthodoxy and challenging the eye, the mind, and even the way we live. Part I of this course will examine several architects from around the world (some familiar and a few not so well-known) and their art. Lively discussions will be encouraged.

NOTE: the time on this class has been changed from the original time in the catalog. It is now 11:00am-12:40pm. If you do not wish to remain in the class, please contact Osher@pitt.edu.

This course will start with an examination of the factors that led to the appearance of tall buildings in American cities. Among those factors were the use of new materials such as iron and steel, new technologies such as the passenger elevator, and, finally, the economic pressures which made tall buildings practical. The remaining sessions will cover skyscraper development in chronological order: the late-19th and early-20th century, the period between the two world wars, mid-20th century, and recent trends.

This course borrows its title from a famous 1979 non-fiction book by the British art historian Kenneth Clark. Critics of art have long wrestled with the question of what elevates a work of art to masterpiece status. We will do the same through a series of historical and theoretical considerations. Traditionally reserved for an artist’s greatest works, the term masterpiece now appears routinely in auction catalogues, raising questions also about how much the art market shapes our views. A portion of this course will be dedicated to such masterpieces as Velázquez's "Las Meninas" (1656), Picasso's "Guernica" (1937), Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" (1974-79) and other favorites.