fbpx Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fine Arts — PCA

Fine Arts

Bachelor of Fine Arts
in Fine Arts

Teaching art is about initiating total involvement, passion, questioning and questioning the questioning, experimenting, process, investigating ideas, inventing and finding visual answers.
– Véronique Devoldère, Chair of Fine Arts

With Paris as its extraordinarily rich, cultural setting, the PCA Fine Arts Department promotes the development of artistic skills, the expression of creative processes, and an informed awareness of how art practice intersects with current visual, cultural and societal concerns.

As a student at PCA in this program, you gain a strong foundation in the artistic tradition via both established and new media, thus enriching your capacity for communication and expression. The curriculum balances a full investigation of traditional media: drawing, painting and sculpture, with extensive explorations in video, installation, performance, photography and digital imaging. Your junior year allows you to choose a 2D, 3D or 4D orientation. Elective courses in other departments offer new and different methods and processes. Interdisciplinary practice provokes students to pursue and develop individual artistic modes of inquiry.

Application of theory and criticism shapes your ability to work and think critically and analytically. Courses in Art History and Critical Studies, critiques, debates and tutorials, and the considerable resources available in Paris, direct you to an informed exploration within both historical and contemporary art practices. Museum and gallery visits are an integral aspect of the curriculum and create a boundless fine arts learning experience.

Faculty

Véronique Devoldère

Véronique Devoldère

Chair of Fine Arts
Chebron, Carole

Carole Chebron

Adjunct Faculty
clain

Didier Clain

Adjunct Faculty
LeaCollet-portrait

Lea Collet

Adjunct Faculty
Léo Coquet

Léo Coquet

Adjunct Faculty
_MG_9673

Ophir Darki

Art & Design Lab Technician
Jochum, Claire

Claire Jochum

Adjunct Faculty
Corrine Laroche dans son atelier, Paris 11eme, 21/09/2009

Corinne Laroche

Adjunct Faculty
Owen Moran

Owen Moran

Adjunct Faculty
Laurent_Pernot

Laurent Pernot

Adjunct Faculty
chloe-quenum

Chloe Quenum

Adjunct Faculty
ROGIER-WAESELYNCK_Axel

Axel Rogier-Waeselynck

Adjunct Faculty
Lisa Salamandra

Lisa Salamandra

Graduate Research Coordinator
Pepo Salazar

Pepo Salazar

Adjunct Faculty
Barbara Skuczik

Barbara Skuczik

Adjunct Faculty

Thorsten Streichardt

Adjunct Faculty
vernhes eric

Eric Vernhes

Adjunct Faculty

Curriculum

Credits

Foundation

fall

Ways of Seeing: Drawing or Photography

Code
FFND 0176
Description

In the fall semester, In-person Foundation students choose between Drawing I and Black & White Photography, and in the Spring semester, between Drawing II & Color Photography. Students in Pathways to Paris take two semesters of Drawing.

Materials and Dimensions I

Code
FFND 0110
Description

This course is an introduction to dimensions in art and design (2D, 3D, and Photography) through material processes. Over the course of the semester students rotate for one month through three discipline areas. A common theme links the three courses and projects overlap and develop progressively. All first years take part in a joint critique of their work. Students are taught how to use practical tools and shown methods for handling materials that provide concrete starting points for creative practice. These include, but are not limited to: book-making, basic printmaking, black and white printing, sewing inductions, and the operation of woodwork machinery.

City as Studio

Code
FFND 0174
Description

Students explore their immediate neighbourhood and the city at large as a site of inspiration. The city and its spaces become an extended classroom. Students respond to a theme designed to encourage interaction and integration with their surroundings and new, unexpected ways of looking at their environment. Site visits, walks, lectures, readings, and practical exercises guide students through different approaches to the creative process with the aim that they develop their own methodologies and engage with the city as potential artists and/or designers. In the final project, students respond to the brief using the medium of their choice.

Introduction to Digital Media I

Code
FFND 0170
Description

This course aims to equip all first year students with the necessary skills and confidence to be able to use digital tools. The curriculum is project-led and structured so that students can apply their growing skill-set to realize their ideas. All projects are contextualized with examples of work by contemporary artists and designers who are working with digital media. Students are introduced to the possibilities for digital tools as part of their creative work.

Introduction to Art & Design

Code
FHCA 0103
Description

This course aims to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and appreciation of various visual art forms. It fosters the ability to closely analyze visual materials and explore the range of questions and methods used to examine and interpret artworks. Moreover, the course emphasizes understanding art as a visual language and encourages students to express their understanding verbally, both orally and in writing. The course is structured around four thematic modules that correspond to specific geographical locations and major art historical periods. These modules do not provide comprehensive surveys of the art of each culture or era. Instead, they concentrate on specific themes and objects to enhance our understanding and appreciation of visual art forms.

Critical Thinking & Writing I

Code
FLIB 1011
Description

This year-long course is designed to improve critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Students learn to understand the inherent argument and logic of a text, to think more systematically and critically, and to write more effectively by developing skills in the structure, grammar, and mechanics of writing. Students also work toward the more focused goal of situating design and art practices within larger intellectual, historical and philosophical frameworks by exploring the indissoluble connection between ideas and the products of human culture. This is achieved by introducing students to texts representing and describing various methodologies applicable to art and design, which can then be used to critique and analyze visual and material artifacts.

spring

Ways of Seeing: Drawing or Photography

Code
FFND 0176
Description

In the fall semester, In-person Foundation students choose between Drawing I and Black & White Photography, and in the Spring semester, between Drawing II & Color Photography. Students in Pathways to Paris take two semesters of Drawing.

Introduction To Digital Media II

Code
FFND 0171
Description

Students develop projects with a growing complexity, employing the computer less as a tool and more as a medium to be manipulated with greater confidence and control. The aim of the course is to create an awareness of the potential for digital techniques to solve visual and communication problems. Advanced skills are taught during the Semester that support and encourage an ambitious approach to the digital field. Students integrate digital and non-digital practice and explore mixing different softwares and media. All projects are contextualized with examples of work by contemporary artists and designers who are working with digital media. By the end of the course all students are confident to use digital tools as part of their creative work.

Materials & Dimensions II

Code
FFND 0111 or FFND 0112
Description

Depending on the individual student’s interests they will enroll in either the 2D or 3D focus of Materials and Dimensions II:

Materials and Dimensions II: Printmaking

Building on the practical knowledge acquired in ‘Materials and Dimensions I’, students develop their ideas with more autonomy, through more personal projects, whilst being supported by the technical expertise of their instructor.

The course focuses on the relationship between design, process and final outcome in two dimensions through color. Students are taught to search for the most effective and pertinent way to communicate their ideas.

Through printmaking explorations students investigate image-making as a multi-layered creative process that enables them to transform and push their work forward in all areas of 2-dimensional image-making.

Materials and Dimensions II: Photography

Building on the practical knowledge acquired in ‘Materials and Dimensions I’, students develop their ideas with more autonomy, through more personal projects, whilst being supported by the technical expertise of their instructors.

The course focuses on the relationship between design, process and final outcome in two dimensions in photography. Students are taught to search for the most effective and pertinent way to communicate their ideas.

Explorations of analog and digital techniques encourage students to investigate image-making as a multi-layered creative process which will enable them to transform and push their work forward in all areas of 2-dimensional image-making.

Materials and Dimensions II: 3D

Building on the practical knowledge acquired in ‘Materials and Dimensions I’, develop their ideas with more autonomy whilst being supported by the technical expertise of their instructors.

With a specific focus on ‘The Body’ students are introduced to the many ways that the human form is central to art and design practices, whether it is in the design of clothes, products, buildings, or furniture. Students gain an understanding of the different possibilities for 3D Design (architecture, fashion, product design, furniture, fine art sculpture).

Projects are based on investigations into how the physical structure, dimensions, and the functions of the human body inspire and direct the design of forms. The influence of context and environment on the generation and development of ideas will be essential to the work. Students experiment with the potential and limitations of materials and different material combinations through a study of color.

Foundation Year Departmental Elective

Description

In addition to the required curriculum, in the spring semester students are encouraged to take an elective in the area of study they are considering entering in sophomore year. Course offerings are listed below:

Introduction to Design Practices

Photography Freshman Seminar

2D Workshop Series

Paris Yesterday and Tomorrow: history, art and urban culture

Code
FLIB 1105
Description

This course acquaints students with the neighborhoods, cultures, people, customs, institutions and organizations in Paris through a thematic approach based on three main modules: the city and its history; the literary and artistic representations of the city; the city, its citizens, and its future. Students will learn about key moments in French history, from the Romans on, via the Middle Ages, the Revolution, Haussmannization, and May 1968; they will be introduced to such themes as political migrations and colonialism, and will explore the city from a variety of points of views including literary and artistic exchanges, urban history, architecture, and ecology. Active exploration of the environment is strongly encouraged and learning is accomplished through a variety of means: site visits, the examination of texts and images, and first-hand encounters with museums, galleries, and libraries, as well as other art and design-related resources in the city.

Critical Thinking & Writing II

Code
FLIB 1012
Description

This year-long course is designed to improve critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Students learn to understand the inherent argument and logic of a text, to think more systematically and critically, and to write more effectively by developing skills in the structure, grammar, and mechanics of writing. Students also work toward the more focused goal of situating design and art practices within larger intellectual, historical and philosophical frameworks by exploring the indissoluble connection between ideas and the products of human culture. This is achieved by introducing students to texts representing and describing various methodologies applicable to art and design, which can then be used to critique and analyze visual and material artifacts.

Sophomore Year

fall

Sophomore Studio I

Code
FFAR 0201
Description

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

Sophomore Sculpture I

Code
FFAR 0205
Description

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

Sophomore Drawing I

Code
FFAR 0207
Description

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

Moving Image I

Code
FFAR 0209
Description

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

Introduction To Visual Culture

Code
FHCA 0340
Description

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.

spring

Sophomore Studio II

Code
FFAR 0202
Description

 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

Sophomore Sculpture II

Code
FFAR 0206
Description

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

Sophomore Drawing II

Code
FFAR 0208
Description

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

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

Junior Year Option — 2D Focus

fall

Studio Concepts I

Code
FFAR 0309
Description

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

Painting: Interactions I

Code
FFAR 0317
Description

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

Creative & Experimental Drawing

Code
FFAR 0326
Description

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

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

Art History Elective

Description

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

spring

Studio Concepts II

Code
FFAR 0310
Description

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

Painting: Interactions II

Code
FFAR 0318
Description

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

Studio Electives

Description

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

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

Junior Year Option — 3D Focus

fall

Studio Concepts I

Code
FFAR 0309
Description

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

Junior Sculpture I

Code
FFAR 0305
Description

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

Ceramic Sculpture: Materials

Code
FFAR 0334
Description

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

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

Art History Elective

Description

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

spring

Studio Concepts II

Code
FFAR 0310
Description

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

Junior Sculpture II

Code
FFAR 0306
Description

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

Studio Electives

Description

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

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

Junior Year Option — 4D Focus

fall

Studio Concepts I

Code
FFAR 0309
Description

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

4D Studio: Video I

Code
FFAR 0313
Description

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

Art History Elective

Description

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

Performance

Code
FFAR 0358
Description

What is performance art? Exploring the body and live media in art. What is the meaning of the term “performance” today? For many artists, its attitude is an integral part of their working process, with a range of expressive means: from painting to installation, video to text. This course will investigate ideas related to performance in the context of art. Together, we will experiment and delimit thinking around ‘performativity’, technology, and subjectivity via presentations, games, exercises, and visits to live events. The aim of this course is to explore and understand how the body (human and non-human) can be used as a tool for investigation, improvisation, and documentation. Students on the course are active in their learning. You will be introduced to key subjects and issues with examples of performances, followed by practical workshops where you will work together to develop and experiment through themes of music, movement, language, technology, liveness, and collectiveness. You will then be invited to test your own ideas with practical and conceptual support from the group. You will develop critical, creative, and producing skills in order to challenge what performance can be, what it can do in the world, and how it might connect ideas, practices, and communities.

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

spring

Studio Concepts II

Code
FFAR 0310
Description

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

4D Studio: Video II

Code
FFAR 0314
Description

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

Studio Electives

Description

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

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

Senior Year

fall

Senior Thesis

Code
FFAR 0409
Description

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 Studio Exploration

Code
FFAR 0403
Description

This first semester will engage in the development of individual and collective projects structured around a series of lectures/critics/discussions. The aim is to help students develop studio practices that stem from a process of research and development. The structure of the semester will create a supportive space for continuous exchange of views; encouraging students to develop skills and methods for articulating ideas in speech and work presentation. Various practical exercises on distinct thematics will punctuate the course for students to experiment with new mediums and thought processes. The seminar format and subject will change every two to three weeks including some reading suggestions, exhibition visits, and group critiques of student works to encourage a sense of community and sharing of experiences.

Senior Studio Concepts

Code
FFAR 0444
Description

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

Studio Electives

Description

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

Liberal Studies Electives

Description

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

spring

Senior Portfolio Development

Code
FFAR 0405
Description

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 Studio Realization

Code
FFAR 0404
Description

Studio Realization will continue to create a supportive space for the exchange of views and ideas and will be dedicated towards practical working sessions for the end of the year degree projects. Individual tutorials and group critiques will help support your research and project development for the final juried exhibition. Through regular discussions, students will have to prepare how to present and promote work individually and collectively for the audience? How to build a strategy for an eventual presentation of the work in an exhibition? Students will be informed about the main actors of the development of their careers illustrated by selected examples of curators, artists, institutions, and private foundations.

Prerequisites: Junior Core Studios.

Senior Degree Project

Code
FFAR 0445
Description

The Senior Degree Project course challenges and encourages students to consolidate their ideas and personal working processes. The course will help students to negotiate the development of independent studio practice, respecting their chosen focus and with emphasis on advanced research methodologies. In the spring semester, the students will be encouraged to develop their personal practice and research to build a body of work for the final senior degree exhibition. The course is studio-based and relies on the actual research and the making, as well as the desired final presentation, or curatorial concerns. Projects “in situ”/”site-specific”, conceptual or non-material, abstract or concrete, performance, installation, multimedia…the student will be encouraged to explore any media within their artistic practice and choices and develop their ideas until they feel confident to engage with the work and public presentation.

Prerequisites: Junior Core Studios/Senior Studio Concepts

Studio Electives

Description

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

Overall Credits Total
120