**This class will be taught on Zoom**
Travel around the world, examining the incredible beauty within diverse cultures, linguistics, and belief systems through the profundity of art. We will expand our horizons by taking in a deep past as we consider its impact on our present. While marveling at humanity’s dynamic complexity, we travel along the songlines in the ancestral lands of the aboriginal people of Australia. Along our journey, we will make our way through West Africa, Latin America, and Ancient Rome before finding the dawn of globalization and echoes of modernity in the 17th-century Dutch Masters.
Week by Week Outline
Week 1: Chinese Art and Innovation through the Ages
At the crossroads of east and west, an ancient Chinese past connects with the first light of modernity. A confluence of faiths manifests in art, trade, and ideas that continue to be a part of our world today.
Week 2: Ancient Rome’s Judeo-Christian Connection to Today
Beneath Rome’s soil lies the secret that accelerated the rise of a republic transformed through art that masked reality with the godly ambition of Emperors. A new religion will arise atop the eternal city’s ancient foundations built on the back of a fallen kingdom.
Week 3: Exploring the Art of West Africa
Secret societies, storytellers, and sculptures will amplify our horizons as we contemplate masks that introduce an incredible constellation of West African cultures. Transformative visual art with magic powers produces profound expressions of sacred social structures.
Week 4: The Colonial Art of Latin America
Symbolism in art forms new narratives while acting as a colonial force, a form of resistance, and the preservation of an obscured past. Pangea reunites, fusing beliefs and visual culture, effecting our world today through the unique beauty of Latin America.
Week 5: Aboriginal Art and the Dreamtime
Together we will track the sounds of the Songlines to the beginning of time. On a journey through Dreamtime, we will encounter a rainbow serpent, origin myths, and an incredible myriad of linguistics. Explore the profound through an aboriginal entheogen as a way of communal education and creation.
Week 6: Beneath the Beauty and Banality of 17th-Century Dutch Masters
From within the structured still-lifes and group portraits of the world's second superpower, shadows of darkness and reflections of light will form a new reality. We will examine symbolism, realism, and the backstory that gave birth to globalization.
