ART 331 - Seminar in Northern European Art

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2024/25a: Visualizing the Mind Game. The play-element in culture, writes the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga in Homo ludens, is the very form in which culture arises. Ludic activities underlie all human activities, blurring in that process boundaries between seriousness and frivolity, genuineness and pretense, and reality and fiction. This seminar addresses the interconnectedness of play and culture, taking as its focus early modern art in Northern Europe. We examine visual examples of play and its adjacent phenomena, including discernment, negotiation, difficulty, and risk, and we learn from playthings—puzzles, games, toys, early modern and modern alike. The objective of this seminar is to reexamine the definition of play and the value of dexterity, acumen, and, above all, delight. Haohao Lu.

Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS