HST 4380.501
Fall 1994
Topics in Intellectual History: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe, 1880-1930
The Industrial Revolution proved to be both a blessing and a curse to European cultural life. While technological innovations such as the steam engine could be seen as manifestations of human "progress," they also fostered the mass production of what critics referred to as "shoddy" goods. In addition, increasing urbanization led to the abandonment and/or impoverishment of the countryside and the demise of a millennia-old relationship between human beings and the land.
The Arts and Crafts movement represents the coalescence of critical response to these conditions from artists, novelists, philosophers. In this course we will consider the historical and cultural implications of the movement, primarily in England and Austria, during the period from 1880 to about 1930. This movement represents both an aesthetic and philosophical response to the loss of connection between human beings and their work, and to the institutional separation between "fine" and "applied" art. It also constitutes a serious critique of the nature of technology.
Discussion topics will include the historical and philosophical relationship between art and work, the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement on the development of Modernism in the arts, the influence of science and technology on the course of the movement, the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States, and the important but often neglected role women played both as artists and critics.
Readings for the course will be selected from representative works by the following: John Ruskin, William Morris, Virginia Woolf, Frank Lloyd Wright, C. F. A. Voysey, Thomas Carlyle, and others. Required texts include:
Cumming and Kaplan, The
Arts and Crafts Movement
Stansky, Redesigning the World
Morris, News From Nowhere
Vergo, Art in Vienna 1898-1918
Anscombe, A Woman's Touch
A complete list of required readings and materials on reserve appears below
Students will be evaluated on the basis of a short (7- to 10-page) research paper, class participation, and submission of student-generated questions that arise from the readings.
Syllabus for HST 4380.501
Week 1: Introduction, initial lecture: the importance of the arts and crafts movement in European and American intellectual history. The industrial revolution and the arts. The transition to modernism, 1880-1930.
Week 2: Pugin, Carlyle, Ruskin: the philosophical background of the movement. The Preraphaelites. Ruskin and Morris. Utopianism.
Week 3: The arts and crafts movement in England: Art, labor, and socialism.
Week 4: Morris's heirs: Mackmurdo, Voysey, et al. Liberty.
Week 5: Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and the aesthetes.
Week 6: Women in the arts and crafts in England.
Week 7: The Glasgow group: Mackintosh and his circle
Week 8: Fin-de-siècle Vienna I: The Secession. Film: Vienna 1900.
Week 9: Art, architecture, and craft. From Jugendstil to the Bauhaus
Week 10: Fin-de-siècle France: Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and their influence abroad (from Tiffany to Pueblo Deco).
Week 11: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the arts and crafts. [Film: The Landscape of Pleasure]
Week 12: Post-Impressionism in England and the Omega workshops.
Week 13: The Arts and Crafts movement in the United States
Week 14: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Craft of the Machine.
Week 15: Class presentations; final papers due
The following calendar indicates appropriate readings for weekly topics, on which lectures, discussion, and question sets will be based. Assignments and readings are to be completed by the dates listed.
September 19 (Week 2): Foundations of the Arts and Crafts Movement
Pugin, Carlyle, and Ruskin essays in Reader; Cummings and Kaplan, Preface and Chapter I (pp. 6-28); "The Blessed Damozel" (handout).
September 26 (Week 3): William Morris: Art, Labor, and Socialism
Morris, News From Nowhere, "Useful Work Versus Useless Toil," "Art and Society"; Stansky, Chapter I (pp. 12-68).
October 3 (Week 4): Morris's
Heirs: Guilds, Workshops, and Commerce
Stansky, Chapters II-IV and Conclusion (pp. 69-269); Cumming and Kaplan, Chapters
II and III (pp. 31-106).
First question set due.
October 10 (Week 5): The Aesthetic Movement
Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater essays, Swinburne and Beardsley poems in Reader.
October 17 (Week 6): From
Glasgow to Vienna
Research paper proposal due.
Mackintosh packet (handout); "Two Laughing, Comely Girls" (handout).
October 24 (Week 7): Fin-de-Siècle
Vienna I: The Secession
Vergo, Chapters I and II (pp. 9-85); Schorske, Chapter V (pp. 208-278, on Reserve
in the library); "Something Colorful, Something Joyful" (handout).
Second question set due.
October 31 (Week 8): Fin-de-Siècle Vienna II: From Jugendstil to the Bauhaus
Vergo, Chapter III (pp. 87-177); Schorske (on Reserve), Chapter II (pp. 24-115); Kraus essay and Musil chapter in Reader.
November 7 (Week 9): Art
Nouveau to Art Deco
Art Nouveau packet (handout); Art Deco packet (handout).
November 14 (Week 10): Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the arts and crafts
Essays by Clive Bell, Roger
Fry, and Virginia Woolf (reader); handout.
Third question set due.
November 21 (Week 11): Post-Impressionism in England and the Omega Workshops.
Anscombe, Omega and After.
November 28 (Week 12): Research and writing workshop.
Fourth question set due.
Last day to submit reasearch paper drafts.
December 5 (Week 13): The Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States
Cumming and Kaplan, pp. 107-178; Wright essay in Reader; "Not a Lady Among Us" (handout).
December 12 (Week 14): Class presentations, final papers due.
Book List: HST 4380.501
Topics in Intellectual History: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe, 1880-1930
Required:
Cumming, Elizabeth and Wendy Kaplan. The Arts and Crafts Movement. Thames and Hudson, 1991 (ISBN 0-500-20248-6).
Morris, William. News From Nowhere. [not op Penguin ed. with abridgement]
Stansky, Peter. Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts. Princeton, 1985 (ISBN 0-691-01441-6).
Anscomb, Isabelle. A Woman's Touch: Women in Design from 1860 to the Present Day. Viking, 1984? (ISBN 0-670-77825-6).
Vergo, Peter. Art in Vienna 1898-1918. Cornell, 1982 (ISBN 0-8014-9226-2) or Phaidon, 1994?
Anscomb, Isabel. Omega and After: Bloomsbury and the Decorative Arts. Thames and Hudson, 1993 (ISBN 0-500-27362-6).
Reader:
A. W. N. Pugin, "On the Feelings which Produced the Great Edifices of the Middle Ages," Chapter I of Contrasts (1836).
Thomas Carlyle, "Phenomena," "Gospel of Mammonism," and "Gospel of Dilettantism" from Past and Present (1843).
John Ruskin, "Nature of Gothic" (abridged), from The Stones of Venice (1853).
Oscar Wilde, "Art and the Handicraftsman" (1882).
Frank Lloyd Wright, "The Art and Craft of the Machine," (1901).
Karl Kraus, "The World of Posters" (1909).
Clive Bell, "Aesthetic Hypothesis" and "Aesthetics and Post-Impressionism" from Art (1913).
Roger Fry, "Art and Life," from Vision and Design (1917).
Virginia Woolf, Chapter Two of A Room of One's Own (1929).
Robert Musil, "Intellectual Revolution," from A Man Without Qualities (1930).
Required readings on reserve:
Schorske, Carl. Fin-de-siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Chapter II (The Ringstrasse, Its Critics, and the Birth of Urban Modernism) and Chapter V (Gustav Klimt: Painting and the Crisis of the Liberal Ego).
Other books on Reserve
*Anscombe, Isabelle. Omega and After: Bloomsbury and the Decorative Arts. Thames and Hudson, 1993.
________. A Woman's Touch: Women in Design from 1860 to the Present Day.
Boris, Eileen. Art and Labor: Ruskin, Morris, and the Craftsman Ideal in America. NK 1141 B6 1986.
Collins, Judith. The Omega Workshops. NK 942.045 C6 1984.
Callen, Anthea. Women Artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 1870-1914. NK 1149.5 C34 1979.
Lucie-Smith, Edward. The Story of Craft: The Craftsman's Role in Society. NK 600 L8
Naylor, Gillian. The Arts and Crafts Movement: A Study of Its Sources, Ideals, and Influence on Design Theory.
*Shone, Richard. Bloomsbury Portraits: Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and their Circle. Phaidon, 1993.
Vergo, Peter. Art in Vienna, 1898-1918.
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