Directed Projects: The Portrait - Responses to Art and Life
IPHTI-UT 1030 | 4 units | Instructor: Editha Mesina
The environment where great artwork is created can become a catalyst for new image-making. This course will utilize the abundant art resources and the cosmopolitan streets of the city of Paris as the inspiration for lens-based portraiture. Through an immersive engagement with the art history of Paris, students will create meaningful and conceptually driven projects connecting the city’s rich culture-defining works to their own present-day portraiture.
For the first half of the course, students will pursue weekly assignments, exploring museums and responding to selected artworks. Responses may initially include a restaging of chosen art pieces, then advance beyond mimicry in search of new interpretations. Through research, readings, slide lectures, and field trips, students will expand the narrative of important portraits from museums such as the Louvre and the Musée D’Orsay, relating their interpretations to current cultural and social themes. A student might deconstruct gender roles in Jacques Louis David’s paintings while Berthe Morisot’s paintings might spark a project on the analyses of the female ideal. The second half of the program will explore the city’s vibrant street scenes as material for image-making. Through various in-class lighting exercises, students will learn tools to make their images visually compelling. At the end of the program, students will develop an inspired final project mining the art and life of the unique city of Paris.
