ARH 383 Social Life of Prints
This course explores the various roles that printed images - woodcuts, engravings and etchings - played in the development of the visual arts since the Renaissance. For example, prints served as the most rapid form of mass communication (and propaganda); as a means to discreetly disseminate illicit or pornographic images; as scientific records of the natural world; and as affordable imitations of paintings or as a means to communicate visual motifs among artists. Perhaps most importantly, this course will consider the means by which prints stimulated the development of the visual and critical skills necessary to negotiate cultures that were increasingly saturated by images.