HI342 Art and Society in European Culture
Over the course of "the long nineteenth century" painters were in the thick of debates over the direction of European society and culture, often attracting controversy and criticism on all sides. To be an artist necessitated a clear vision of what one wanted to achieve in the face of sometimes aggressive confrontation. Regardless of ideological persuasion, artists had to "go hard in the paint." This course will examine and analyze the vaious movements of artistic expression in Europe from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries as a means of exploring shifting ideas about politics and government, economics and social class, family structures and human relationships, and religion and philosphies of human fulfillment.