Art

During their four years at Gutenberg, students participate in three art seminars and one art practicum. In the art seminars, students explore various art media as well as the ideas and concepts of art—the purpose of the seminars being both to give students a greater appreciation for the arts and to expose them to art’s power to convey the vital messages of our human and spiritual natures. The art practicum gives students practical experience making art; the focus of the practicum is not on individual skill, however, but rather on the challenge of transforming an idea into a form.

Freshman Seminar: Defining Art (ART 101)

This freshman seminar centers on discussing readings on art by a variety of artists and art scholars. Students also visit galleries and museums and dialogue with working artists, musicians, and writers about their personal interest and career involvement in artmaking. The goal of this seminar is for students to derive a definition of art by which the nature of all art practices can be understood.

Freshman Practicum: Drawing (ART 102)

This practicum introduces students to some of the elements of basic drawing. Through in-class drawing exercises, students experience first the discipline of objective realism and then expressionistic and abstract approaches to drawing. The drawing exercises help students understand some of the fundamental issues involved in understanding and making visual art. The practicum culminates in the Annual Student Art Show and Performance, where the art produced during the term, together with visual and performance art by other students in the Gutenberg community, is exhibited in Gutenberg College’s Puccinelli Art Gallery.

Junior Seminar: Music (ART 301)

Music has always been an expression both of universal human feelings and specific cultural trends. This seminar provides a general introduction to music theory, history, appreciation, and practice. Students will listen to a variety of music as well as explore the nature of music and the ways it has changed over time. The goal is to give students a broad overview that will prepare them to listen to music more knowledgably and to understand better the role of music in Western cultural history.

Senior Seminar: Moving Images & Cinema (ART 401)

Our society appears to be moving from a “word-based” to an “image-based” culture. This seminar addresses the complex issues surrounding the place and power of images—especially the moving images of video and cinema—in today’s culture; it includes a historical overview of how the moving image has developed in the film industry and a brief survey of contemporary theory of the moving image. Each week, students will discuss an assigned reading and view video and cinema segments that both reflect and have affected our culture’s ideas about the meaning of being human in the modern/postmodern world.