Dr. Constantinos V. Proimos
Adjunct Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Visual Arts at the Department of Architecture, Technical University of Crete
Tel. (28210) 23169 or 68105 or 6077-607580.

 Description and purpose of the course: This lecture course aims to introduce students to selected key topics of world visual art history, i.e. painting, sculpture and architecture, with a special emphasis to the Greek world. While presenting topics such as The Minoans and Egyptian architecture, Greek sculpture and idealization, Hellenistic landscape painting, Byzantine religious iconography we will also attempt to discuss theoretical issues like the devaluation of Roman art, iconoclastic tendencies in the eastern civilizations and the like. The following session program is indicative and may be modified to suit the class needs. Film screenings as well as three field trips will be scheduled: one, in which we will visit the Archaeological Museum of Hania, another in which we will visit the Byzantine Museum and a third visit to the Municipal Gallery of Hania.  These field trips will occasion a live encounter with significant works of art that belong to local, public collections as well as an introduction to these specific collections by local museum experts.

 Session 1, 3/7/2006: “Art” as a relatively recent concept

Session 2, 4/7/2006: Hunters and Farmers

Session 3  5/7/2006: Ancient Egypt

Session 4, 6/7/2006: The Minoans and the civilization of the Aegean

Session 5, 10/72006: The Classical Greece. Sculpture and architecture

Session 6, 11/7/2005: Field trip to Hania Archaelogical Museum

Session 7, 12/7/2006: Plato, Aristotle and tragedy

Session 8, 13/7/2006 : Hellenistic painting and architecture

Session 9, 17/7/2006 : Roman sculpture and its political quests

Session 10, 18/7/2006 : Midterm exam

Session 11, 19/7/2006 : The Pantheon and the Colosseum as model buildings for subsequent generations.

Session 12, 20/7/2006 : The Byzantine world. The Christian basilica and Hagia Sophia

Session 13, 24/7/2006 : Orthodoxy and Iconoclasm

Session 14, 25/7/2006 : Field trip to the Byzantine Museum of Hania

Session 15, 26/7/2006 : Islamic art, decoration and architecture.

Session 16, 27/7/2006 : Gothic flying battresses and stained glass

Session 17, 31/7/2006 : Fifteenth century Italy and Flanders. Film projection.

Session 18, 1/8/2006: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Film projection.

Session 19, 2/8/2006: Field trip to the Municipal Gallery of Hania

Session 20, 3/8/2006: Final exams

Selected bibliography and suggestions for further reading

1. Hugh Honour & John Fleming, A World History of Art, sixth edition, London: Lawrence King Publishing, 2002.
2. Martin Kemp, The Oxford History of Western Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000
3. Frederick Hartt, A History of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, vol. 2, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1993
4. Μιλτιάδης Παπανικολάου, Ιστορία της τέχνης στην Ελλάδα, Αθήνα: Αδάμ, 1999.
5. Meyer Schapiro, Theory and Philosophy of Art: Style, Artist and Society, New York: George Braziller, 1994.
6. Readings in Art History, ed. Harold Spencer, third edition, vol. 2, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1983
7. Art History and Its Methods. A Critical Anthology, ed. Eric Fernie, London: Phaidon Press, Ltd, 1996
8. Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher S. Wood, New York: Zone Books, 1991
9. Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991
10. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988