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COURSES SPRING 2009

Histart 192F

UG SEMINAR: UNIVERSAL EXPOSITIONS AND THE SPECTACLE OF EMPIRE (4 units) Mondays, 2-5 425 Doe, CCN: 05586 Aruna D'Souza

This course will examine a number of universal expositions that took place in France, England and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These exhibitions – part architectural display, part trade show, part art exhibition, part demonstration of national strength – drew crowds from all over the world to participate in what was often a spectacular display of imperialist power. The course will treat the architectural, artistic and engineering innovations produced in and around the exhibitions, keeping in mind the theme of globalization (in its economic, cultural, and political aspects). We will treat topics such as: the Crystal Palace, one of the first examples of a monumental iron and glass architecture, designed by Joseph Paxton at the 1851 expo in England; Courbet's and Manet's independent exhibitions held in conjunction with the 1855 and 1867 Paris exhibitions, respectively; Mary Cassatt's murals for the Woman's Pavilion at the World Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893; the pavilions designed to show off European colonial holdings at the 1900 exhibition, such as those of India, Indochina, Tahiti, etc. (and which often included human displays); the impact of such pavilions on Western European and American artists and architects such as Gauguin, Rodin, and Frank Lloyd Wright; the use of expositions as spaces for architectural experimentation, such as Melnikov's Soviet Pavilion and Le Corbusier's Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau at the 1925 Exposition des arts décoratifs.

 

 

 

 

 

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