Visual Arts

(Formerly R1001) The fundamentals of visual vocabulary and handling of drawing materials including charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencil, pen, ink, and brushes. Various conceptual and practical approaches to image-making are explored as formal issues such as line, volume, contrast, and composition are emphasized.  Class assignments are accompanied by discussions and critiques.  Students draw largely from observation, working with a variety of sources that may include still-life objects and the human figure. Portfolio required at the end.  If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R1001) The fundamentals of visual vocabulary and handling of drawing materials including charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencil, pen, ink, and brushes. Various conceptual and practical approaches to image-making are explored as formal issues such as line, volume, contrast, and composition are emphasized.  Class assignments are accompanied by discussions and critiques.  Students draw largely from observation, working with a variety of sources that may include still-life objects and the human figure. Portfolio required at the end.  If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R1001) The fundamentals of visual vocabulary and handling of drawing materials including charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencil, pen, ink, and brushes. Various conceptual and practical approaches to image-making are explored as formal issues such as line, volume, contrast, and composition are emphasized.  Class assignments are accompanied by discussions and critiques.  Students draw largely from observation, working with a variety of sources that may include still-life objects and the human figure. Portfolio required at the end.  If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Introductory course to analog photographic tools, techniques, and photo criticism. This class explores black & white, analog camera photography and darkroom processing and printing.  Areascovered include camera operations, black and white darkroom work, 8x10 print production, and critique. With an emphasis on the student’s own creative practice, this course will explore the basics of photography and its history through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, and readings. No prior photography experience is required.

Introductory course to analog photographic tools, techniques, and photo criticism. This class explores black & white, analog camera photography and darkroom processing and printing.  Areascovered include camera operations, black and white darkroom work, 8x10 print production, and critique. With an emphasis on the student’s own creative practice, this course will explore the basics of photography and its history through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, and readings. No prior photography experience is required.

Since Walter Benjamin’s concept of “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” (1935), photography has been altered, magnified, and refracted by the proliferation of mechanical, and then digital, means of image capture and processing. This class explores the history of the photographic image, as a global phenomenon that accompanied industrialization, conflict, and decolonization. Students will combine case studies, critical essays, and hands-on training in digital capture, workflow, editing, output, and display formats using digital equipment (e.g., DSLR camera) and software (e.g., Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Scanning Software). Students will create a final project based on research and shooting assignments. No Prerequisites. Students must have access to their own DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera.

 

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) Examines the potential of drawing as an expressive tool elaborating on the concepts and techniques presented in VIAR UN1001. Studio practice emphasizes individual attitudes toward drawing while acquiring knowledge and skills from historical and cultural precedents. Portfolio required at the end.

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) (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.

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) (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 R3130) This studio course will provide the students with a foundation in the ceramic process, its history, and its relevance to contemporary art making. The course is structured in two parts. The first centers on the fundamental and technical aspects of the material. Students will learn construction techniques, glazing and finishing methods, and particulars about firing procedures. This part of the course will move quickly in order to expose the students to a variety of ceramic processes. Weekly assignments, demonstrations, and lectures will be given. The second centers on the issue of how to integrate ceramics into the students current practice. Asking the question of why we use ceramics as a material and, further, why we choose the materials we do to make art. Rigorous group and individual critiques focusing on the above questions will be held. The goal of this course is to supply the students with the knowledge and skill necessary to work in ceramics and enough proficiency and understanding of the material to enable them to successfully incorporate it into their practice. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3330) The fundamentals of sculpture are investigated through a series of conceptual and technical projects. Three material processes are introduced, including wood, metal, and paster casting. Issues pertinent to contemporary sculpture are introduced through lectures, group critiques, discussions, and field trips that accompany class assignments. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3330) The fundamentals of sculpture are investigated through a series of conceptual and technical projects. Three material processes are introduced, including wood, metal, and paster casting. Issues pertinent to contemporary sculpture are introduced through lectures, group critiques, discussions, and field trips that accompany class assignments. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3401) Enables the student to realize concepts and visual ideas in a printed form. Basic techniques are introduced and utilized: the history and development of the intaglio process; demonstrations and instruction in line etching, relief, and dry point. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3411) Printmaking I: Relief introduces woodcut and other relief techniques. Given the direct quality of the process, the class focuses on the students 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.

Advanced analog photography & darkroom printing. Students will work with analog cameras and learn how to refine black-and-white printing techniques, produce larger prints, etc. Emphasis will be placed on the editing, sequencing, and display of images while cultivating a theoretical and historical context to situate the work. Students will engage with an array of photographic practices through presentations, critiques, guest artist lectures and printing assignments. This course will explore critical issues in contemporary photography and advanced camera and production techniques through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, readings, and field trips. Prerequisites: Intro Darkroom Photography (Columbia) or equivalent experience

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) (Formerly R3515) This course approaches drawing as an experimental and expressive tool. Students will explore the boundaries between drawing and sculpture and will be encouraged to push the parameters of drawing. Collage, assemblage and photomontage will be used in combination with more traditional approaches to drawing. The class will explore the role of the imagination, improvisation, 3-dimensional forms, observation, memory, language, mapping, and text. Field trips to artists’ studios as well as critiques will play an important role in the course. The course will culminate in a final project in which each student will choose one or more of the themes explored during the semester and create a series of artworks. This course is often taught under the nomenclature Drawing II - Mixed Media.

In times where millions of images are being made every day, how can a photographer create an original body of work? With this idea in mind, this class will explore a multi-directional approach to archive based photography and how to create a project around it. Gripped by Jacques Derrida’s “archive fever,” photography has remapped its field of practice around the capture, reimagining, and explanation of the archival object. This class explores many types of archives–family albums, government records, flea market collectibles, historical photographs, precious objects, and paper documents. We will use a series of lens based technologies, starting from the flatbed scanner and radiating outward. We will explore archive concerns including consent, ownership, privacy, circulation, respect, and political impact. For midterm and final projects, students will explore the many display forms available for the photography derived archival project. The final result of this class, students can both project their bodies of work towards becoming a fanzine, a book or an exhibition that will help to resurface the memories of these photographs with a fresh eye.

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) and (VIAR UN2100) (Formerly R3202) Painting II: Extension of VIAR UN2100 This course explores the transition of representational form towards abstraction in the early 20th century (Cubism) with full consideration to recent movements such as geometric abstraction, organic abstraction, gestural abstraction, color field and pattern painting. Students will be encouraged to find dynamic approaches to these classic tropes of 20th and 21st century abstraction.

Prerequisites: VIAR R1000 and VIAR R2100. (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.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN2420 or VIAR UN2430 note that VIAR UN2430 was formerly R3420. The objective of the course is to provide students with an interdisciplinary link between drawing, photography and printmaking through an integrated studio project. Students will use drawing, printmaking and collage to create a body of work to be presented in a folio format. In the course, students develop and refine their drawing sensibility, and are encouraged to experiment with various forms of non-traditional printmaking. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN2420 (Formerly R3402) Continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in intaglio. 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.

This course offers to the student who may find an examination of printmaking an asset to their art practice.
The course will cover several printmaking processes like relief, intaglio, silkscreen, and monotype. In addition, we will discuss printmaking concepts such as repetition, matrix, original/translation, reproducibility, and multiple considering the works produced in class.
We will involve a separate in-depth study of each process by alternating studio time, demonstrations, field trips, individual and group critiques.
Through the printmaking processes, students will explore assignments and projects and be encouraged to incorporate them into their own body of work.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN2430 (Formerly R3412) Printmaking II: Relief continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in woodcut. 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.

Beginning Video is an introductory class on the production and editing of digital video. Designed as an intensive hands-on production/post-production workshop, the apprehension of technical and aesthetic skills in shooting, sound and editing will be emphasized. Assignments are developed to allow students to deepen their familiarity with the language of the moving image medium. Over the course of the term, the class will explore the language and syntax of the moving image, including fiction, documentary and experimental approaches. Importance will be placed on the decision making behind the production of a work; why it was conceived of, shot, and edited in a certain way. Class time will be divided between technical workshops, viewing and discussing films and videos by independent producers/artists and discussing and critiquing students projects. Readings will be assigned on technical, aesthetic and theoretical issues. Only one section offered per semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R4601) New York City is the most abundant visual arts resource in the world. Visits to museums, galleries, and studios on a weekly basis. Students encounter a broad cross-section of art and are encouraged to develop ideas about what is seen. The seminar is led by a practicing artist and utilizes this perspective. Columbia College and General Studies Visual Arts Majors must take this class during their junior year. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN3900 Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3900 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3901. Corequisites: VIAR UN3911 Students must enroll in both semesters of the course (VIAR UN3900 and VIAR UN3901). The student is required to produce a significant body of work in which the ideas, method of investigation, and execution are determined by the student. A plan is developed in consultation with the faculty. Seminars; presentations. At the end, an exhibition or other public venue is presented for evaluation. Studio space is provided.

Prerequisites: Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3910 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3911. Corequisites: VIAR UN3900 (Formerly R3921) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN3910 Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. Corequisites: VIAR UN3901 (Formerly R3922) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

This course seeks to build upon (or expand) skills learned in sculpture I. This workshop based course allows students more access to the shops  to continue to develop those introductory skills while focusing on specific materials and processes. In this course students will complete one self directed project and a number of inclass short assignments and exercises providing a greater exposure to sculptural practice and processes. Acting as both a bridge to and support for more advanced inquiry into making.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN2300 (Formerly R3302) Laboratory in Relational Art; Sculpture without Objects The purpose of this class will be to explore the function of Relational Aesthetics in contemporary art practice and to develop ideas about the role of context in art, as the students develop their own site-specific works and research historical precedents for art designed to be exhibited in non-traditional venues. This course will also prepare students for professional work preparing art for venues of that type. This class will be structured around studio work, with an emphasis on the development and production of a final site-specific project. In order to foster students’ growth and ongoing investigation into the nature of contemporary sculpture, the class will also be comprised of slide lectures, visits to local artists’ studios, and galleries, as well as various public art projects throughout the city. As the semester progresses, the emphasis will gradually be shifted from research to intensive studio work on a final project, often a proposal for a site-specific work in a non-traditional venue. Generally, the first half of each class session will be dedicated to lecture and discussion, while the second half will be dedicated to individual studio work and critique.

This course offers to the student who may find an examination of printmaking an asset to their art practice.
The course will cover several printmaking processes like relief, intaglio, silkscreen, and monotype. In addition, we will discuss printmaking concepts such as repetition, matrix, original/translation, reproducibility, and multiple considering the works produced in class.
We will involve a separate in-depth study of each process by alternating studio time, demonstrations, field trips, individual and group critiques.
Through the printmaking processes, students will explore assignments and projects and be encouraged to incorporate them into their own body of work.

In times where millions of images are being made every day, how can a photographer create an original body of work? With this idea in mind, this class will explore a multi-directional approach to archive based photography and how to create a project around it. Gripped by Jacques Derrida’s “archive fever,” photography has remapped its field of practice around the capture, reimagining, and explanation of the archival object. This class explores many types of archives–family albums, government records, flea market collectibles, historical photographs, precious objects, and paper documents. We will use a series of lens based technologies, starting from the flatbed scanner and radiating outward. We will explore archive concerns including consent, ownership, privacy, circulation, respect, and political impact. For midterm and final projects, students will explore the many display forms available for the photography derived archival project. The final result of this class, students can both project their bodies of work towards becoming a fanzine, a book or an exhibition that will help to resurface the memories of these photographs with a fresh eye.

Introductory course to analog photographic tools, techniques, and photo criticism. This class explores black & white, analog camera photography and darkroom processing and printing.  Areascovered include camera operations, black and white darkroom work, 8x10 print production, and critique. With an emphasis on the student’s own creative practice, this course will explore the basics of photography and its history through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, and readings. No prior photography experience is required.

Introductory course to analog photographic tools, techniques, and photo criticism. This class explores black & white, analog camera photography and darkroom processing and printing.  Areascovered include camera operations, black and white darkroom work, 8x10 print production, and critique. With an emphasis on the student’s own creative practice, this course will explore the basics of photography and its history through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, and readings. No prior photography experience is required.

Since Walter Benjamin’s concept of “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” (1935), photography has been altered, magnified, and refracted by the proliferation of mechanical, and then digital, means of image capture and processing. This class explores the history of the photographic image, as a global phenomenon that accompanied industrialization, conflict, and decolonization. Students will combine case studies, critical essays, and hands-on training in digital capture, workflow, editing, output, and display formats using digital equipment (e.g., DSLR camera) and software (e.g., Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Scanning Software). Students will create a final project based on research and shooting assignments. No Prerequisites. Students must have access to their own DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera.

Advanced analog photography & darkroom printing. Students will work with analog cameras and learn how to refine black-and-white printing techniques, produce larger prints, etc. Emphasis will be placed on the editing, sequencing, and display of images while cultivating a theoretical and historical context to situate the work. Students will engage with an array of photographic practices through presentations, critiques, guest artist lectures and printing assignments. This course will explore critical issues in contemporary photography and advanced camera and production techniques through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, readings, and field trips. Prerequisites: Intro Darkroom Photography (Columbia) or equivalent experience

The Graduate Seminar in Printmaking and Related Media is designed to create a space that is inclusive yet focused on printmaking. Class time is structured to support, adapt and reflect students' needs and goals as individual artists and as a community. The course will examine printmaking as a medium in an expanded field, investigating its constitutive materials, exhibition and installation practices, and its ethics in the 21st century. The seminar will focus on the specific relations between tools, ideas and meanings that arise when artists engage with print media in various incarnations and concepts including editioned prints, multiples, artist-books, other types of printed matter, alternate means of distribution, and strategies of duplication and repetition. The ultimate objective is to provide students with in-depth knowledge of the materials, tools, histories and theories that underlie specific printmaking practices. The seminar combines discussion of students' artwork and research with readings on ethics, performance, cinema, poetics, data, museum practices, politics, and public space as they relate to printmaking.

While the Columbia Visual Arts Program is dedicated to maintaining an interdisciplinary learning environment where students are free to use and explore different mediums while also learning to look at and critically discuss artwork in any medium, we are equally committed to providing in-depth knowledge concerning the theories, histories, practices, tools and materials underlying these different disciplines. Each semester we offer one Graduate Seminar in a different discipline, or combination of disciplines, including moving image, new genres, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. These Discipline Seminars are taught by full-time and adjunct faculty, eminent critics, historians, curators, theorists, writers, and artists. Each seminar focuses on specific relations between tools, ideas and meanings that arise when artists engage with a particular medium. The seminars combine discussions of readings and artworks with presentations of students' individual work and research.

In 1964, Fluxus artist Daniel Spoerri fulfilled an unrealized wish of Marcel Duchamp’s by stretching a replica of the Mona Lisa over an ironing board. For her 2017 survey at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Tania Bruguera included a photograph of a urinal she had installed in The Queens Museum, accompanied by the statement: “It’s time to return Duchamp’s urinal to the bathroom.” However we interpret these gestures, separated by more than fifty years, it’s clear that Duchamp’s “reciprocal readymade” endures as a potent model for the transvaluation of artwork and artistic practices into different states and uses.

Thesis Completion Internship provides MFA Visual Arts students who are registered for Thesis Completion with off-campus experiential learning designed to provide graduate students with opportunities to make connections between theory and the practical application of their studies and skills in a professional work environment.