Visual Arts

(Formerly R3201) Introduction of the fundamental skills and concepts involved in painting. Problems are structured to provide students with a knowledge of visual language along with a development of expressive content. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3201) Introduction of the fundamental skills and concepts involved in painting. Problems are structured to provide students with a knowledge of visual language along with a development of expressive content. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3201) Introduction of the fundamental skills and concepts involved in painting. Problems are structured to provide students with a knowledge of visual language along with a development of expressive content. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3201) Introduction of the fundamental skills and concepts involved in painting. Problems are structured to provide students with a knowledge of visual language along with a development of expressive content. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3201) Introduction of the fundamental skills and concepts involved in painting. Problems are structured to provide students with a knowledge of visual language along with a development of expressive content. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3413) Printmaking I: Silkscreen introduces silkscreen and other silkscreen techniques. Given the direct quality of the process, the class focuses on the student's personal vision through experimentation with this print medium. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R4005) Students will connect with the very heart of the Western Art tradition, engaging in this critical activity that was the pillar of draftsmanship training from the Renaissance on through the early Modern Era. This pursuit is the common thread that links artists from Michelangelo and Rubens to Van Gogh and Picasso. Rigorous studies will be executed from plaster casts of antique sculptures, and pedagogical engravings. Students will confront foundational issues of academic training; assessing proportion and tonal value, structure and form. Hours will be spent on a single drawing pushing to the highest degree of accuracy in order develop a means for looking at nature. There is a focus on precision and gaining a thorough understanding of the interaction between light and a surface. This approach emphasizes drawing by understanding the subject and the physical world that defines it. While this training has allowed great representational artists of the past to unlock the poetry from the world around them and continues to inspire a surging new realist movement, it can also serve as a new way of seeing and a launching point for achieving creative goals. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3203) This advanced painting class meets each week for six hours at locations throughout the city to paint in the urban landscape. Students are responsible for an additional six hours of out of class painting and drawing, structured in a way that provides a energetic studio practice. Working primarily from observation, we explore landscape, still life, interiors, portraiture and figurative painting, through which students will gain a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of representational painting. This class will include demonstrations and discussions on painting technique, the preparation of supports, use of painting tools, color mixing, color-value relationships, light, composition, and spatial representation. Critiques and assignments are designed to help expand creativity and begin to locate the individual’s voice while building confidence within the medium.  If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3210) Course provides the experience of employing a wide range of figurative applications that serve as useful tools for the contemporary artist. Non-Western applications, icon painting, and the European/American traditions are presented. Individual and group critiques.Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3131) This course will focus on using ceramics as a primary art making machine by breaking out of the constraints wedded to this traditional material. Building on the foundation set in VIAR R2200 Ceramics I, this course will delve further into the technical and historical aspects of the ceramic process. Students will learn advanced construction techniques and finishing processes, including an introduction to mixing raw ceramic materials to create custom clay and glazes. The class will center around real world issues in the art world; this will happen with visiting artist lectures, gallery and museum visits, as well as artists' studio visits. An essential part to working with ceramics successfully is an understanding of its history, both where it comes from and how it has been used over the ages. Lectures and readings on these areas will be given throughout the course. Students will use a self-directed working process to facilitate the incorporation of ceramic materials into their existing art practice while allowing them room to go in their own conceptual direction. Rigorous group and individual critiques will be held on a regular basis. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3331) Continuation of VIAR R2300. The objective of the class is to engage in in-depth research and hands on studio projects related to a specific theme to be determined by each student. Each student is expected to complete class with four fully realized and thematically linked works. Wood, metal, and plaster will be provided for this class but video, sound, performance and various mixed media approaches are highly encouraged. In addition, lecture and field trips will be part of the course. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3332) Sculpture III is an invitation for immersive sculpting. The class will explore the idea of experiences and construction of contexts as central research topics. The class becomes a laboratory space to explore various techniques to heighten body awareness and spatial sensibility. Through assignments and workshops, the students will practice how to digest these sensory experiences through their studio practice. Historical precedents for art outside the usual mediums and venues will be our reference points to investigate how our own work may take part in a generative process that evolves the definition of sculpture. The assignments in the first half of the semester point the students to performance, site specificity, and sound, that utilize New York City's odd spots and professionals. While building such common experiential platforms, the class will also build language for a dialogic space, through weekly in-class discussions lead by the instructor, guests, and rotating panels of the students. As the semester progresses, the emphasis will gradually be shifted from experiential learning to intensive studio work on a final project, where the students are asked to pay close attention to how various methods and fields of subjects combine. The resulting project has to be the best work you have ever done. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3414) Printmaking II: Silkscreen continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in silkscreen. Encourages students to think visually more in the character of the medium, and personal development is stressed. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R4702) The goal of the course is for each student to create small-scale documentary projects using photography and writing with an eye towards web publishing. Taking advantage of the ease and speed of image production and distribution, students will propose and workshop projects that can be quickly completed and uploaded to a class website. Assignments, readings and discussions will focus on the role of the documentary tradition in the history of photographic art practice. Students must provide their own laptop and digital camera. If the class is full, sign up for the wait list at http://arts.columbia.edu/photolist.

(Formerly R3415) Designed for students who have already taken one semester of a printmaking course and are interested in continuing on an upper level. Students are encouraged to work in all areas, separate or combined, using their own vocabulary and imagery to create a body of work by the end of the semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Advanced Video is an advanced, intensive project-based class on the production of digital video. The class is designed for advanced students to develop an ambitious project or series of projects during the course of the semester. Through this production, students will fine-tune shooting and editing skills as well as become more sophisticated in terms of their aesthetic and theoretical approach to the moving image. The class will follow each student through proposal, dailies, rough-cut and fine cut stage. The course is organized for knowledge to be shared and accumulated, so that each student will learn both from her/his own process, as well as the processes of all the other students. Additional screenings and readings will be organized around the history of video art and the problematics of the moving image in general, as well as particular issues that are raised by individual student projects. NOTE: There is only one section offered per semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

The goal of the course is for each student to create small-scale documentary projects using photography and writing with an eye towards web publishing. Taking advantage of the ease and speed of image production and distribution, students will propose and workshop projects that can be quickly completed and uploaded to a class website. Assignments, readings and discussions will focus on the role of the documentary tradition in the history of photographic art practice. Students must provide their own laptop and digital camera. If the class is full, sign up for the wait list at http://arts.columbia.edu/photolist.