How to Look at and Understand Great Art
Where to Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art
36.
Your Next Museum Visit-Do It Yourself!
2023-11-01
The final lecture opens with a detailed and thought-provoking guide to museum-going. Consider ways of making the most of visits to permanent collections and special exhibitions in both large and small museums.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 36 Now
35.
Postmodernism-Focus on the Viewer
2023-11-01
In the 1960s, Pop art, Op art, and minimalism brought yet another far-reaching redefinition of art. Learn to recognize these three distinct postmodern visions, and see how they shared a common rejection of the traditional focus on the artist, aiming instead to create works that exist only for the viewer's interpretation.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 35 Now
34.
Dada Found Objects/Surreal Doodles and Dreams
2023-11-01
Contemplate the "anti-art" spirit of Dadaism, its nihilistic yet humorous indictment of civilization and bizarre use of unconventional media. In the sensibility of Surrealism, observe its compelling focus on the subconscious and two substyles - dream imagery, with its juxtaposition of objects and settings, and "automatic drawing," eliciting unplanned images from the unconscious.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 34 Now
33.
Abstraction/Modernism-New Visual Language
2023-11-01
Abstraction and Modernism forged a daring new definition of art, breaking dramatically with the past. Discover the philosophical and experiential underpinnings of abstraction and nonrepresentational art, now radically freed from imitating nature.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 33 Now
32.
Cubism-An Experiment in Form
2023-11-01
Investigate the visual elements and the three phases of this hugely influential movement, based in its geometric fracturing of forms and multiple, interlocking meanings of line and shape. Find borrowings and echoes of Braque's and Picasso's Cubism in diverse 20th-century painters and experiments in Cubist-derived sculpture.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 32 Now
31.
Expressionism-Empathy and Emotion
2023-11-01
In defining the bold sensibility of Expressionism, explore its use of violent colors, stylistic distortions, and sculptural application of paint. Also contemplate its influences (including contemporary philosophers as well as Freud) and its goal to provoke empathy and thus touch the viewer at the innermost level.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 31 Now
30.
Postimpressionism-Form and Content Re-Viewed
2023-11-01
The term "Postimpressionism" comprises a varied and highly innovative body of art. Here, learn how Postimpressionist painters such as C
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 30 Now
29.
From Realism to Impressionism
2023-11-01
In canvases of Millet, Courbet, and Manet, observe the Realist ideals of honesty, simplicity, and descriptive colors in revealing contemporary experience.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 29 Now
28.
Revolutions-Neoclassicism and Romanticism
2023-11-01
Referencing the art of Napoleonic painter Jacques-Louis David, discover the tenets of Neoclassicism, specifically its ordered composition and emphasis on stoicism, morality, and rational control.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 28 Now
27.
18th-Century Reality and Decorative Rococo
2023-11-01
The sensuality of Rococo art mirrors 18th-century upper-class lifestyle and sensibility. Explore the evocation of intimate hedonism in Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and other Rococo masters, specifically through their imagery of lovers, social life, and pastoral pleasure.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 27 Now
26.
Going Baroque-North versus South
2023-11-01
Baroque style flowered in key regional variations. See the influence of the Counter-Reformation in southern Europe in dazzling religious images intended to excite and teach.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 26 Now
25.
Mannerism and Baroque-Distortion and Drama
2023-11-01
Two important artistic movements followed the High Renaissance. Beginning with late Michelangelo, Tibaldi, and El Greco, explore the hallmarks of Mannerism, including deliberate distortions of proportion and perspective and use of tertiary colors.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 25 Now
24.
High Renaissance-Humanism Perfected
2023-11-01
The Italian High Renaissance saw the full flowering of humanism and classicism. With reference to the era's thought and practice, delve into masterpieces by three of history's greatest geniuses: Raphael, Leonardo, and Michelangelo.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 24 Now
23.
Northern Renaissance-Devil in the Details
2023-11-01
Flanders and Germany also witnessed an explosion of art in the 15th and early 16th centuries. Define the stylistics of great Northern Renaissance oil painting, such as the use of cool light, richness of detail, and the depiction of fabric.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 23 Now
22.
Early Renaissance-Humanism Emergent
2023-11-01
Contemplate the Renaissance phenomena of classicism and humanism in 15th-century Italian art, which focused
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 22 Now
21.
Putting It All Together
2023-11-01
This lecture integrates elements including color, line, shape, composition, light, symbolism, point of view, and focal point. Using the viewing tools you've developed, look deeply at four diverse masterpieces, including a sculpture by Thorvaldsen, a "vanitas" still life by Van Oosterwyck, a lithograph by Bonnard, and a painting by Van der Weyden.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 21 Now
20.
Landscapes-Art of the Great Outdoors
2023-11-01
In this lecture on landscape painting, observe the classical, balanced division into foreground, middle, and background, and how Romantic painters altered these proportions to express drama, infinite space, and the sublime. Discover proportion and composition in landscapes of the Hudson River school, Luminism, Impressionism, and also the subgenres of seascapes and cityscapes.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 20 Now
18.
Portraits-How Artists See Others
2023-11-01
In examining the diverse functions and types of portraits, study the important elements of facial presentation and the subject's position and gaze with relation to the viewer and the pictorial space. See how Rembrandt added dramatic power to his group "corporation" portraits, and how David carefully rendered Napoleon in symbolic terms.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 18 Now
17.
Signs-Symbols, Icons, and Indexes in Art
2023-11-01
The richness of signs (signifiers) in art includes the use of symbols, icons, and indexes as they reveal layers of meaning. See how, in different historical eras, symbolic associations change over time, how icons visually represent a subject, and how indexes exhibit direct connections with the thing signified.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 17 Now
16.
Subject Matters
2023-11-01
Focusing on masterworks by Van Eyck and Rubens, define three levels of iconography (subject matter). Also study the academic codifying and ranking of subject matter in art, probing subject and deeper meaning in a variety of religious and history paintings, still lifes, landscapes, portraits, and genre works.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 16 Now
15.
Modern Painting-Acrylics and Assemblages
2023-11-01
The lecture opens with a historical panorama of painting techniques, highlighting the diverse treatment of human faces. Then, it tracks 20th-century developments in nontraditional materials and methods of application, including the techniques of Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler, and Jackson Pollock, as well as the contrasting strengths and mixed use of oil and acrylics.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 15 Now
14.
Development of Painting-Tempera and Oils
2023-11-01
Trace the history and technique of painting, beginning with the methodology of panel painting on wood; fresco painting, both wet and dry; and finally, oil painting and watercolor. Learn about types of oil paint, the mixing of colors, brushwork techniques, and the 19th-century phenomenon of plein air (outdoor) painting.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 14 Now
13.
Sculpture-Salt Cellars to Monuments
2023-11-01
Sculpture, as a genre, encompasses the full spectrum of three-dimensional artworks. Investigate the varieties and viewing contexts of relief and in-the-round sculptures
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 13 Now
12.
Modern Printmaking-Planographic
2023-11-01
This lecture explores the art of planographic printmaking, which allows artists to draw or paint directly on the printing surface. In detailed demonstrations and works by Daumier, Degas, and Warhol, grasp the techniques of lithography, silkscreen, and monotype, and explore the mastery of Whistler's lithograph "Nocturne: The Thames at Battersea.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 12 Now
11.
Printmaking-Relief and Intaglio
2023-11-01
The medium of prints attracted great artists from D
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 11 Now
10.
Drawing-Dry, Liquid, and Modern Media
2023-11-01
In this first lecture on genre, define the various purposes of drawings, from "croquis" drawing to capture a pose or action, to successive sketches visualizing larger works, to finished drawings as a distinct art. Study the diverse media of drawing, focusing on master drawings in metalpoint, charcoal, ink, pastel, and pencil.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 10 Now
9.
Feeling with Our Eyes-Texture and Light
2023-11-01
Here, consider texture in sculpture as an aid to meaning in sculptures by Rodin, Donatello, and Bernini, and the painter's use of paint as a way to capture texture and light on canvas. Then observe the virtuoso representation of texture by master painters Ingres and Titian, and the handling of light and shadow in works by Renoir and Georges de la Tour.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 9 Now
8.
Art That Moves Us-Time and Motion
2023-11-01
Explore how artists evoke motion and the passage of time, including implying motion through strong directional lines and time through narrative devices. Study approaches to implied motion in Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Op art, and the use of actual motion in performance art and modern sculpture.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 8 Now
7.
The Illusion-Getting the Right Perspective
2023-11-01
Tracking the history of illusionism in Western art, grasp the principles of linear perspective, foreshortening, and atmospheric perspective as they replicate how the human eye perceives.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 7 Now
6.
Seeing the Big Picture-Composition
2023-11-01
Define symmetry and asymmetry in painting and sculpture, and the key effects on the viewer of each. Also, study scale and proportion of figures, and the distinction between "open" and "closed" composition, reflecting the artist's approach to visually framing the image.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 6 Now
5.
Space, Shape, Shade, and Shadow
2023-11-01
Examine geometric and "organic" shapes in painting and sculpture and the crucial relationship of figure to ground and mass to space. Then, explore the illusionistic use of shading, shadows, and overlapping shapes in Caravaggio's and Friedrich's works, and the compositional power of shapes in paintings such as Matisse's "Dance" and Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam".
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 5 Now
4.
Line-Description and Expression
2023-11-01
Discover the properties of line, another essential element of art, as "descriptive" (describing reality) or "expressional" (conveying feeling). Learn about the use of geometric lines, implied lines, and directional lines within a composition.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 4 Now
3.
Color-Description, Symbol, and More
2023-11-01
Uncover the core principles of color in painting, including the distinctions of value and saturation and the relationship of colors as analogous or complementary. See how major works of art achieve their power and meaning through color, as seen in celebrated canvases by Seurat, Gauguin, and Van Gogh.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 3 Now
2.
Where Am I? Point of View and Focal Point
2023-11-01
Explore how point of view
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 2 Now
1.
The Importance of First Impressions
2023-11-01
Examine the contexts and environments in which we encounter art and their critical effect on our viewing experience. Consider ways of displaying and framing paintings, as well as key parameters for viewing sculpture.
Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art Season 1 Episode 1 Now
How to Look at and Understand Great Art is a series categorized as a new series. Spanning 1 seasons with a total of 35 episodes, the show debuted on 2023. The series has earned a no reviews from both critics and viewers. The IMDb score stands at undefined.
How to Watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art
How can I watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art online? How to Look at and Understand Great Art is available on The Great Courses with seasons and full episodes. You can also watch How to Look at and Understand Great Art on demand at Amazon Prime, Amazon online.
Genres
Channel
The Great Courses
Stream shows like How to Look at and Understand Great Art
Also on The Great Courses
