Meaning & Mystery in European Painting

Using the great art galleries of Europe as your personal visual library and viewing many masterpieces in the original, you will analyze and learn to appreciate the master works of both Spanish and non-Spanish artists across the canvas of European painting such as El Greco, Velázquez, Goya, Sorolla, Picasso, Miró, and Dalí but also Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Munch, Matisse and others. Seeking both meaning and mystery in great works of art, this course deepens your understanding of expression in European painting.

Surveying both European and Spanish original masterpieces, this course therefore provides a theoretical and practical foundation for developing the heightened visual literacy required of meaningful appreciation of great painting. It provides a framework for understanding the principles of scholarly analysis and interpretation of painting within their many layers of meaning. The course presents established methodologies and approaches necessary to analyze, interpret and evaluate paintings. You will learn how visual elements of design (color, space, perspective, tone) and principles of composition are articulated, how they relate to each other, and how the artist manipulates them in order to alter the effect on the viewer. The different methodologies of cultural history and art history will be addressed as well, along with the various types of conceptual frameworks for interpretation, including formal-stylistic, aesthetic, technological, historical, ideological, political, sociological and gender-based.

Visual lectures use illustrated art works and integrate readings relevant to the various paintings under discussion. In addition, there are visits to the National Museum of Catalan Art which illustrates stylistic developments in painting in Western Europe. The course concludes with student-designed and student-led presentations of selected masterpieces in the art museums and galleries of Barcelona.