Fine Arts

From Objects to Abstraction: Draw the line to forget it

Working away from the stretched canvas to different structures and surfaces, exploring scale and more site-specific projects, introducing the notion of space within a 2D context, this course will address in class systematically formal painting issues, i.e.; texture, mark, scale, color, composition etc. These issues will accompany important themes in Contemporary Art without replacing them. This undergraduate painting course aims to enable each student to pursue their ideas in and around painting in all its forms is the most committed, imaginative and experimental way. Work may manifest itself in a wide variety of different mediums and materials. This course engages with and contributes to the change and development in the expanded field of art. Although its core concern is with practice, it promotes the hybrid nature of current art practices by exploring the boundaries of, and the interface between, art and critical ideas. Furthermore, this class aims to develop the individualization of the students’ pictorial language.

Prerequisites: Foundation Core studios/2D Studio 1

The course will revolve around presentations and assignments to create a platform for analyzing your own emerging practice and learning how to pinpoint and develop themes from within it. The second half of the course will encourage the development of your personal areas of interest through dialogue, peer review and personal tutorial. Sculpture will be approached as a process of materializing and actualizing connection to Spaces and Objects (including politics, humans, histories…) and will reassess classical connotations of sculptural form by opening them to a wider range of issues coming from video, architecture, document and research approaches to art-making.

Following the first semester’s discussions on independent practice, the spring semester will focus on strengthening students’ personal artistic language and ability to locate and isolate relevant research topics either through intuitive, logical or thematic thinking.

Prerequisites : Foundation Core studios

This course is designed to build on existing technical knowledge and skills, facilitating a more focused approach to the relationship between creative technology and practice. The course seeks to explore drawing within contemporary fine art practice. The workshops will focus on the process of drawing as concept, drawing as subject matter, drawing to create or define context, drawing as source and resource to develop a personal expressive language.
The aims of the course are to extend advanced and technical knowledge, to encourage a broad range of unfamiliar materials, process and to facilitate experimentation. Research methods will be introduced to support your projects and to encourage a critical approach/response to ideas.

Instruction is delivered through studio sessions, site work, teaching events and demonstrations, and coordinates thematically with other coursework in the sophomore year curriculum.

Prerequisites : Foundation Core studios

The video course is organized as a creative workshop, where students are encouraged to engage quickly in a personal research. A strong involvement is necessary to achieve any 4D project including in-class tutorials and independent work.

The first semester will be devoted to technical familiarization with the different filming tools, recording sound, and linear editing, in order to acquire spontaneity. The goal for this first term is to develop all the technical skills and create automatisms to best serve the video practice. Students will be encouraged to use their personal filming tools (smartphones, regular consumer cameras, etc.), as basic as they could seem, to allow a common and natural usage. The collected imagery and sound will serve students all year to build their personal research and artistic proposals.

We will see how different artists create images from three constitutive elements: light, space, and time. We will learn that an image cannot be simply reduced to the broadcast visual element, but includes the contextual presentation. We will discuss the importance of the distribution of light and colors in the development of this overall picture, which will introduce the space, set design and the role of the spectator. We will approach the various possible temporal modalities of the image broadcast: real-time, delayed linear continuity, disruptive continuity (interactivity, random images, etc.), and their influence on the space and the spectator.

Prerequisite: Foundation Core studios

This interdisciplinary course explores the rise of visual media, communication and information, within the context of a broad cultural shift away from the verbal and textual toward the visual, which has taken place since the advent of photography and cinema in the late 19th century, through the birth of television, to the present proliferation of digital media worldwide. We will consider the critical practices of looking, historicizing and interpreting that have accompanied this ‘visual turn’. Our readings will primarily address the theoretical foundations of the study of visual culture, which is understood to incorporate a variety of visual media and visual technologies: painting and sculpture, scientific imagery, material culture, the internet. If everything can be visual culture, what remains of traditional notions of medium specificity? What critical tools must be invented to analyze visual events from a visual cultural perspective? The relationship between the visual arts and visual media, especially with respect to the ‘global’ contemporary visual landscape, will be a focus of this course.

Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

 From Objects to Abstraction: Draw the line to forget it

Working away from the stretched canvas to different structures and surfaces, exploring scale and more site-specific projects, introducing the notion of space within a 2D context, this course will address in class systematically formal painting issues, i.e.; texture, mark, scale, color, composition etc. These issues will accompany important themes in Contemporary Art without replacing them. This undergraduate painting course aims to enable each student to pursue their ideas in and around painting in all its forms is the most committed, imaginative and experimental way. Work may manifest itself in a wide variety of different mediums and materials. This course engages with and contributes to the change and development in the expanded field of art. Although its core concern is with practice, it promotes the hybrid nature of current art practices by exploring the boundaries of, and the interface between, art and critical ideas. Furthermore, this class aims to develop the individualization of the students’ pictorial language.

Prerequisites: Foundation Core studios/2D Studio 1

Following the first semester’s discussions on independent practice, the spring semester will focus on strengthening students’ personal artistic language and ability to locate and isolate relevant research topics either through intuitive, logical or thematic thinking.
Sculpture will be approached as a process of materializing and actualizing connection to Spaces and Objects (including politics, humans, histories…) and will reassess classical connotations of sculptural form by opening them to a wider range of issues coming from video, architecture, document and research approaches to art-making.

Prerequisites: Foundation Core studios/Sophomore Sculpture 1

This course is designed to build on existing technical knowledge and skills, facilitating a more focused approach to the relationship between creative technology and practice. The course seeks to explore drawing within contemporary fine art practice. The workshops will focus on the process of drawing as concept, drawing as subject matter, drawing to create or define context, drawing as source and resource to develop a personal expressive language.
The aims of the course are to extend advanced and technical knowledge, to encourage a broad range of unfamiliar materials, process and to facilitate experimentation. Research methods will be introduced to support your projects and to encourage a critical approach/response to ideas.
Instruction is delivered through studio sessions, site work, teaching events and demonstrations, and coordinates thematically with other coursework in the sophomore year curriculum.

Prerequisites: Foundation Core studios/Sophomore Drawing 1

You may select an elective from the many course offerings in your department or in other departments with the approval of your department chair.

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

The Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to explore the different creative processes and contemporary artistic practices. Open to research all media ranging from painting, drawing to photography and video, from objects, sculpture to installations and any un-familiar propositions, the students may experience and develop their ideas that emerge spontaneously out of experimentation and process. Through research and reference the students need to justify and document their ideas and proposals. The projects will include concepts and process; develop context and ideas.

The aim of the studio concept course is to encourage and enable students to create an individual and critical approach/response to ideas and tasks, spanning all disciplines and to assure an underlying connection to the student’s construction and deconstruction of their chosen areas and personal practice.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Studios

In order to evolve and discover new pictorial horizons painting today must remain open to the possibility of a dialogue with the wide range of multidisciplinary influences that are available. Where once the field of exploration was defined by the rigueur and strict dictates of a formal training.

The strength of painting today lies in its flexibility to use such training and adapt to the influences of other 2D and 3D disciplines and the pictorial possibilities that they offer as art experience. The possibility to create an art experience through research, experimentation and interaction are the key components in the junior year in painting. With this as a core component the dynamics of painting are explored through a variety of set projects designed to stimulate the individual imagination.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year painting

This course will focus on the actual drawing process as concept and experimental research as resource. Drawing as the subject matter, drawing context and the actual drawing practice to develop new ways of expression and mixing media, new ways to appropriate the act of drawing. This course is not about drawing “things”, but to encourage students to explore the actual physicality of making a drawing or to question the physical involvement of drawing; to explore existing and reinventing new methods, ideas or processes simultaneously. Through different exercises, in class workshops or given assignments the students can invent and develop a personal language and propose new ideas, make links between media and technologies.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year drawing, advanced drawing skills

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

The Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to explore the different creative processes and contemporary artistic practices. Open to research all media ranging from painting, drawing to photography and video, from objects, sculpture to installations and any un-familiar propositions, the students may experience and develop their ideas that emerge spontaneously out of experimentation and process.
Through research and reference the students need to justify and document their ideas and proposals. The projects will include concepts and process; develop context and ideas.

The aim of the studio concept course is to encourage and enable students to create an individual and critical approach/response to ideas and tasks, spanning all disciplines and to assure an underlying connection to the student’s construction and deconstruction of their chosen areas and personal practice.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Studios/Studio Concepts 1

In order to evolve and discover new pictorial horizons painting today must remain open to the possibility of a dialogue with the wide range of multidisciplinary influences that are available. Where once the field of exploration was defined by the rigueur and strict dictates of a formal training,
the strength of painting today lies in its flexibility to use such a training and adapt to the influences of other 2D and 3D disciplines and the pictorial possibilities that they offer as art experience. The possibility to create an art experience through research, experimentation and interaction are the key
components in the junior year in painting. With this as a core component the dynamics of painting are explored through a variety of set projects designed to stimulate the individual imagination.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year painting/Painting Interactions 1

You may select an elective from the many course offerings in your department or in other departments with the approval of your department chair.

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

The Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to explore the different creative processes and contemporary artistic practices. Open to research all media ranging from painting, drawing to photography and video, from objects, sculpture to installations and any un-familiar propositions, the students may experience and develop their ideas that emerge spontaneously out of experimentation and process. Through research and reference the students need to justify and document their ideas and proposals. The projects will include concepts and process; develop context and ideas.

The aim of the studio concept course is to encourage and enable students to create an individual and critical approach/response to ideas and tasks, spanning all disciplines and to assure an underlying connection to the student’s construction and deconstruction of their chosen areas and personal practice.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Studios

This course aims make aware students of certain issues in contemporary sculpture and gives them the technical and conceptual means to develop a more personal language and identity. Students are encouraged to experiment with different approaches, media and concepts and continue to explore technical skills necessary to conceiving and executing sculptural work. Over the course of the semester students are encouraged to develop and pursue a personal sensibility within their artistic research.

Prerequisites : Sophomore Sculpture

This course will focus on the making of sculptural form and installation work with clay, in the art context, and shall encourage the use of varied mediums and materials to combine with clay. It is based on the exploration of different subject matters and the acquisitions of technical skills.

The first semester will be focusing on experimentations. An important part of the program is based on showing students how to work in a studio space and become independent.?This course will encourage personal research and creativity in the making, and push students in exploring, clarifying and exalting their personality and qualities.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year sculpture

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

The Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to explore the different creative processes and contemporary artistic practices. Open to research all media ranging from painting, drawing to photography and video, from objects, sculpture to installations and any un-familiar propositions, the students may experience and develop their ideas that emerge spontaneously out of experimentation and process.
Through research and reference the students need to justify and document their ideas and proposals. The projects will include concepts and process; develop context and ideas.

The aim of the studio concept course is to encourage and enable students to create an individual and critical approach/response to ideas and tasks, spanning all disciplines and to assure an underlying connection to the student’s construction and deconstruction of their chosen areas and personal practice.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Studios/Studio Concepts 1

This course aims make aware students of certain issues in contemporary sculpture and gives them the technical and conceptual means to develop a more personal language and identity. Students are encouraged to experiment with different approaches, media and concepts and continue to explore technical skills necessary to conceiving and executing sculptural work. Over the course of the semester students are encouraged to develop and pursue a personal sensibility within their artistic research.

Prerequisites: Sophomore year sculpture/Junior Sculpture1

You may select an elective from the many course offerings in your department or in other departments with the approval of your department chair.

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

The Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to explore the different creative processes and contemporary artistic practices. Open to research all media ranging from painting, drawing to photography and video, from objects, sculpture to installations and any un-familiar propositions, the students may experience and develop their ideas that emerge spontaneously out of experimentation and process. Through research and reference the students need to justify and document their ideas and proposals. The projects will include concepts and process; develop context and ideas.

The aim of the studio concept course is to encourage and enable students to create an individual and critical approach/response to ideas and tasks, spanning all disciplines and to assure an underlying connection to the student’s construction and deconstruction of their chosen areas and personal practice.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Studios

This required Junior studio provides a highly-intensive introduction to video production. The fall course is an investigation of the moving image as an art form. Students will revise the basics of the language of film by further developing methodology and technical skills necessary to produce their own videos and animations. Throughout the course, students will be exposed to artists working in the field and will consider filmmaking and animation in relation to Fine Arts. Students will participate in all aspects of digital, time-based media production including concept development, storyboarding, shooting, editing, screening of final works and DVD authoring.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Video 1 & 2

This course will explore performance as a way to embody all artistic practices, as well as consider this particular medium as a resource, extension, or another expanded form. The course encourages cross-disciplinary exploration and the development of personal projects. Introducing the methodology and tools necessary to support performance with the aim to enhance individual skills in relation to performing and public presentation.

Fields as varied as music, science, or literature can be drawn on to develop unique performance practices.

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

The Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to explore the different creative processes and contemporary artistic practices. Open to research all media ranging from painting, drawing to photography and video, from objects, sculpture to installations and any un-familiar propositions, the students may experience and develop their ideas that emerge spontaneously out of experimentation and process.
Through research and reference the students need to justify and document their ideas and proposals. The projects will include concepts and process; develop context and ideas.

The aim of the studio concept course is to encourage and enable students to create an individual and critical approach/response to ideas and tasks, spanning all disciplines and to assure an underlying connection to the student’s construction and deconstruction of their chosen areas and personal practice.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Studios/Studio Concepts 1

The spring course will introduce students on the various concepts, methodologies and tools within the context of live video production, live performance and interactive installations. Students will approach the different possible temporal modalities of broadcast image: real time, deferred, linear or disruptive continuity and the influence of these temporal modalities on the space and place of the audience.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Core Studios & Digital skills

You may select an elective from the many course offerings in your department or in other departments with the approval of your department chair.

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

This seminar provides the theoretical and methodological foundation necessary for completing a senior thesis in the departments of Fine Arts, Photography, Communication Design, Interior Design and Design Management. Over the course of the semester, students will continue to conduct research and write their thesis for the Bachelor degree. The Senior Thesis course includes individual and group tutorials, peer assessments, and research and writing workshops. This course is intended to guide students through the final stages of the thesis (from finalizing the written submission to preparing the oral defence) and it seeks to make the thesis process and oral defence as painless (and, ideally, as enjoyable) as possible.

Senior Concentration is the synthesis of studio practice and theory. Senior year students will work independently to produce a conceptually coherent body of work expressing their individual artistic identity. Tutorials, guest lecturers and group critiques offer guidance and support as students focus on their chosen media, modes of expression, and research interests. The coursework culminates in a student presentation, final exhibition and assessment by a guest jury, during which students must consider issues of self-editing, display, and public presentation.

Prerequisites: Junior Core Studios

The Senior Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to consolidate their ideas and personal working processes. The course will help students to negotiate the development of an independent studio practice, respecting their chosen focus and with emphasis on advanced research methodologies.
A course designed to support each student within their artistic practice and projects, through regular individual and group tutorials. A studio course based on research, process, the actual making and contextualization of their work within a given reality, space, or “white cube” situation. A course, encouraging new ways of making, revealing experimentation, developing ideas until the students feel confident to engage with professional realities.
Workshops, gallery visits, relevant museum exhibitions will help students to situate their own practice within the contemporary art context.

Prerequisites: Junior Core Studios

You may select an elective from the many course offerings in your department or in other departments with the approval of your department chair.

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.

The Portfolio Development class focuses on student’s research skills based upon the first semester written thesis paper to be combined with their final degree project. Its purpose is to improve each student’s capacity to express the relationship between their visual/text-based research and studio practice. Working on their personal identity and projects, the class will concentrate on the student’s portfolio, as well as consider issues of self-editing, display and public presentation. Areas covered will include portfolio content, presentation ideas and practical solutions, self-branding, biography, artist statements, business cards and portfolio leave-behind cards. It also includes preparation for graduate degree applications, grants, residencies and specific professional competitions.

This course seeks to provide in-depth information and hands-on practice in developing the visual, textual, and oral aspects of portfolio presentation. We will look at content, selection and presentation of artwork. Students will learn the basics of writing methodologies for artist statements, project proposals, curriculum vitae building, grant applications, and more. Students will be taught to conduct effective research on potential opportunities, and learn the importance of tailoring their presentation to meet the specific requirements of each endeavor. Weekly mandatory homework assignments will offer ample practice and necessary feedback for progress, fine-tuning, and perfection of the students’ presentation skills.

We will examine how to navigate databases, websites and/or publications in order to locate opportunities consistent with the student’s art form, objectives and career goals: exhibition calls (solo, group, juried), calls for projects, artist and educative residencies, as well as other professional opportunities in France, Europe, and abroad. The “dos and don’ts” of the trade will be addressed, including how to avoid pitfalls and scams. Portfolio presentation and promotion of one’s artwork will be examined, spanning from a virtual (digital) perspective (websites, social media, registries) to face-to-face meetings with galleries, exhibition spaces, curators, and collectors. The fundamentals of print solutions will be invoked.

Senior Concentration is the synthesis of studio practice and theory. Senior year students will work independently to produce a conceptually coherent body of work expressing their individual artistic identity. Tutorials, guest lecturers and group critiques offer guidance and support as students focus on their chosen media, modes of expression, and research interests. The coursework culminates in a student presentation, final exhibition and assessment by a guest jury, during which students must consider issues of self-editing, display, and public presentation.

Prerequisites: Junior Core Studios.

The Senior Studio Concepts course challenges and encourages the students to consolidate their ideas and personal working processes. The course will help students to negotiate the development of an independent studio practice, respecting their chosen focus and with emphasis on advanced research methodologies.
A course designed to support each student within their artistic practice and projects, through regular individual and group tutorials. A studio course based on research, process, the actual making and contextualization of their work within a given reality, space, or “white cube” situation. A course, encouraging new ways of making, revealing experimentation, developing ideas until the students feel confident to engage with professional realities.
Workshops, gallery visits, relevant museum exhibitions will help students to situate their own practice within the contemporary art context.

Prerequisites: Junior Core Studios/Senior Studio Concepts 1

You may select an elective from the many liberal studies course offerings. Go to the Liberal Studies department page for more information.