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Art history finds itself, at present, in the midst of what might be called an environmental turn. Scholars have begun to examine the ecological entanglements of the visual arts and material culture: the brutal legacies of extraction; the lives and afterlives of plants and animals transfigured into pigment, panel, or other artistic media; and the ways in which art has lent itself, deliberately or unwittingly, to narratives of dominion and extinction. This seminar explores recent scholarship that has opened vital new avenues, reminding us that artefacts are never immaterial, but depend on the resources, infrastructures, and ecological systems that extend far beyond the object itself. We will examine works depicting animals, plants, minerals, hunts, mines, natural disasters, abundance, depletion, and loss, asking how they articulate—or fail to articulate—the moral sensibilities of their time toward the natural world. At the same time, we will consider how images and objects themselves bear witness to the environmental systems from which they emerged.

Instructor: T. Grusiecki