ART 111a or b, Visual Thinking  Staff

An introduction to the language of visual expression, using studio projects to explore the fundamental principles of visual art. Students acquire a working knowledge of visual syntax applicable to the study of art history, popular culture, and art. Projects address all four major concentrations (graphic design, printing/printmaking, photography, and sculpture). No prior drawing experience necessary. Open to all undergraduates. Required for Art majors.  HU  RP
HTBA

ART 114a or b, Basic Drawing  Staff

An introduction to drawing, emphasizing articulation of space and pictorial syntax. Class work is based on observational study. Assigned projects address fundamental technical and conceptual problems suggested by historical and recent artistic practice. No prior drawing experience required. Open to all undergraduates. Required for Art majors.  HU
HTBA

ART 116a, Color Practice  Halsey Rodman

Study of the interactions of color, ranging from fundamental problem solving to individually initiated expression. The collage process is used for most class assignments.  HU  RP
MW 10:30am-12:20pm

ART 130a or b, Painting Basics  Staff

A broad formal introduction to basic painting issues, including the study of composition, value, color, and pictorial space. Emphasis on observational study. Course work introduces students to technical and historical issues central to the language of painting. Recommended for non-majors and art majors.  HU  RP
HTBA

ART 225b, Adventures in Self-Publishing  Alexander Valentine

This course introduces students to a wide range of directions and legacies within arts publishing, including the development of fanzines, artists’ books, small press comics, exhibition catalogues, “just in time” publications, and social media. Students are given instruction in the Yale School of Art’s Print Shop on various printing and binding methods leading to the production of their own publications both individually and in collaboration. Attention is paid to ways artists’ publishing has been used to bypass traditional cultural and institutional gatekeepers, to foster community and activism, to increase visibility and representation, and to distribute independent ideas and narratives. Students explore the codex as it relates to contemporary concepts of labor, economics, archives, media forms, information technologies, as well as interdisciplinary and social art practices. Supplemental readings and visits to the Haas Arts Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, YUAG’s prints and drawings study room, and the Odds and Ends Art Book Fair provide case studies and key examples for consideration. Prerequisite: ART 111.
TTh 10:30am-12:20pm

ART 245b, Digital Drawing  Anahita Vossoughi

Digital techniques and concepts as they expand the possibilities of traditional drawing. The structure of the digital image; print, video, and projected media; creative and critical explorations of digital imaging technologies. Historical contexts for contemporary artworks and practices utilizing digital technologies. Group critiques of directed projects. The second half of the course is focused on individual development and exploration. Enrollment limited.
TTh 3:30pm-5:20pm

ART 331b, Intermediate Painting  Kern Samuel

Further exploration of concepts and techniques in painting, emphasizing the individuation of students’ pictorial language. Various approaches to representational and abstract painting. Studio work is complemented by in-depth discussion of issues in historical and contemporary painting. Prerequisite: ART 130, 230, 231, or permission of instructor.  RP
MW 3:30pm-5:20pm

ART 332a, Painting Time  Staff

Painting techniques paired with conceptual ideas that explore how painting holds time both metaphorically and within the process of creating a work. Use of different Yale locations as subjects for observational on-site paintings. Prerequisite: ART 130, 230, or 231, or with permission of instructor.  HU  RP
M 1:30pm-5:20pm

ART 355a, Silkscreen Printing  Alexander Valentine

Presentation of a range of techniques in silkscreen and photo-silkscreen, from hand-cut stencils to prints using four-color separation. Students create individual projects in a workshop environment. Prerequisite: ART 114 or equivalent.  HU
TTh 1:30pm-3:20pm

ART 356a, Printmaking I  Hasabie Kidanu

An introductory course on the historical, material, and collaborative nature of printmaking. Through studio projects, lectures, and critiques, we will explore both a personal and technological understanding of the print medium. Where and how does it share a commonality with literature, sculpture, photography and the moving image?  We will experiment with various techniques, including intaglio (dry-point etching, hard ground, aquatint), monotype, relief (linocut), and screen printing. Students will demonstrate critical thinking skills by engaging in a dialogue about their own work and the work of others. The themes of experimentation, reproducibility, storytelling, play, and patience will be particularly highlighted. Prerequisite: ART 114 or equivalent.  RP
MW 10:30am-12:20pm

ART 358b, Introduction to Intaglio Printmaking  Hasabie Kidanu

This studio course introduces students to the foundations of intaglio printmaking including drypoint, line-etch, and aquatint along with plate preparation, printing, and registration. Intaglio, a 500-year old process offering a wide range of marks and tones, involves incising a surface to create a repeatable image matrix. Visiting artists, visits to Yale special collections, essays and lectures will supplement studio instruction. No previous printmaking experience necessary.
M 1:30pm-5:20pm

ART 359b, Introduction to Lithography  Staff

This studio course introduces students to the foundations of Lithographic printmaking including stone, ball ground, and photographic plates, printing, and registration. Lithography, a planographic process developed in the 19th century, is particularly suited to reproducing drawn marks and high resolution photo prints. Visiting artists, visits to Yale special collections, essays and lectures supplement studio instruction. No previous printmaking experience necessary.
W 3:30pm-7:20pm

ART 421b, Advanced Drawing  Sophy Naess

Further instruction in drawing related to all four disciplines taught in the Art major. Emphasis on the development of students’ conceptual thinking in the context of the physical reality of the drawing process. Class time is divided between studio work, group critiques, discussion of assigned readings, and visits to working artists’ studios. Open to all students by permission of instructor. Art majors prioritized.  RP
MW 3:30pm-5:20pm

ART 457b, Interdisciplinary Printmaking  Hasabie Kidanu

Printmaking is inherently collaborative, generative, and social. Through studio projects, readings, and critiques, we explore both a personal and historical understanding of this medium. We learn how we can integrate printmaking with other disciplines. Where and how does it share a commonality with literature, sculpture, photography, and the moving image? We experiment with techniques, including intaglio (dry-point etching, aquatint, hard ground etchings), woodcuts, stencil, and screen printing. The themes of experimentation, play, reproducibility, circulation, and patience are particularly highlighted. Prerequisite: at least one term of printmaking.  RP
MW 10:30am-12:20pm

ART 510b and ART 511a, Pit Crit  Staff

Pit crits are the core of the program in painting/printmaking. The beginning of each weekly session is an all-community meeting with students, the DGS, graduate coordinator, and those faculty members attending the crit. Two-hour critiques follow in the Pit; the fall term is devoted to developing the work of second-year students and the spring term to first-year students. A core group of faculty members as well as a rotation of visiting critics are present to encourage but not dominate the conversation: the most lively and productive critiques happen when students engage fully with each other. Be prepared to listen and contribute. Note: Pit crits are for current Yale students, staff, and invited faculty and guests only; no outside guests or audio/video recording are permitted.  3 Course cr per term
T 3:30pm-6:30pm

ART 512a and ART 513b, Thesis 2025  Lisa Sigal and Karin Schneider

The course supports the Painting/Printmaking Thesis exhibition through development of programmatic and publication-based elements that extend the show to audiences beyond Yale, as well as attending to the logistics of the gallery presentation. Studio visits initiate conversations about the installation of physical work in addition to considering the documentation/recording possibilities that allow the work to interface with dynamic platforms online and in print. The course introduces technology and media resources at CCAM and the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at West Campus in addition to biweekly studio visits and group planning meetings. Editorial support is provided in order to enfold students’ writings and research with documents of time-based or site-specific work in an innovative and collectively designed publication. Enrollment limited to second-year students in painting/printmaking.  1½ Course cr per term
Th 4pm-7pm

ART 514b, Colorspace  Kern Samuel

How can we “redesign a rainbow,” as Paul Thek suggests in his 1978 “Teaching Notes for the Fourth Dimension”? The psychophysical dimensions of color have been continually debated, reinvented, structured, codified, mystified, and systematized. The term “color space” refers to a range of color mapped by a system, such as RGB or CMYK. But long before these models were used to describe color on screen or paper, artists were utilizing systems to organize color in their work. Hue, value, saturation, and surface are all relative components artists use to structure color in specific ways. In this course we explore the space of color, from its visual and psychological qualities to its relationship to language and culture. Through assignments and critiques, students experiment with different approaches to using color in their own work. Readings and presentations examine principles of color interaction, as well as color’s expressive and symbolic potential. Open to all M.F.A. students.  3 Course cr
M 10am-1pm

ART 537a, Form as Feeling  Jennifer Pranolo

“The work of art,” writes the poet Lyn Hejinian, “offers an experience of contradictions and incommensurabilities—these are much better than truths.” This course explores the truth of experience, of ineffable feelings, as it is transfigured by the constraints and conditions of art as a formal container for that which escapes or is beyond measure. Inquiring into the classic distrust of art as an adulteration of the truth via the illusory effects of mimesis, representation, and catharsis; onward through the interpretive fallacies (intentional, pathetic, affective) that trouble the mutual circuit between form and feeling—we ask: do feelings take a certain form or does form give rise to particular feelings? At stake is a question of practice, of shaping present “structures of feeling” in order to intervene in social, cultural, and political realities through aesthetic experience as an ongoing reimagination of sense and sensation. Across “positive” to “ugly” feelings, major and minor affects, we engage texts in poetics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and new media, as well as artists’ writings on materiality and medium specificity that address us as affectable subjects open to art’s infinite forms, however familiar or strange, as activating forces of feeling.  3 Course cr
M 2pm-5pm

ART 544a and ART 545b, Individual Criticism: Painting  Maria De Los Angeles

Limited to M.F.A. painting students. Criticism of individual projects.  6 Course cr per term
HTBA

ART 546a, Round Trip: First-Year Crits  Sophy Naess and Amanda Parmer

A course required of all incoming M.F.A. students in the painting/printmaking department to unpack, denaturalize, and slow down our making and speaking practices as a community. The course hopes to bridge the intensities characteristic of our program: the intensity of the private studio with the intensity of the semi-public critique. We ask crucial questions about the relationships between form and content, between intents and effects, between authorship, authority, and authenticity, between medium specificity and interdisciplinarity, and between risk and failure. How can our ideas and language be tested against the theories of the past and present? Existential, spiritual, and market-based goals (both internal and instrumental motivations) for art making are explored. Meetings alternate between group critique and reading discussion, supplemented by a series of short writing exercises. Enrollment is limited to incoming students in the department, but readings and concepts are shared widely.  3 Course cr
T 3:30pm-6:30pm

ART 552a, The Matrix: Textures and Densities of the Grid  Sophy Naess

This print-focused course is intended for M.F.A. students who wish to explore the grid as a principle in their work. Our inquiry spans the occurrence of grid systems in contemporary reprographics as well as in ancient tesserae and weave structures. Students are invited to address compression and expansion at the level of both the image and the substrate itself while contextualizing grid based operations in relation to a range of historical precedents. In conjunction with weekly readings, participants develop new works and present them in group critiques. Screenprinting, pronto plate lithography, and collograph are introduced; some weaving theory and praxis are also explored. Students should have a basic understanding of Photoshop.  3 Course cr
W 3:30pm-6:30pm

ART 562b, Artists, Teaching  Miranda Samuels

This course considers approaches to teaching and learning from the perspective of artists. While many artists teach—whether in the museum, art school, or elsewhere—pedagogical practice is seldom considered an important facet of their own training as artists. Throughout the semester we explore a diverse range of theories, frameworks, and models to do with the learning and teaching of art. This includes case studies on artists and collectives who have developed distinctive perspectives on pedagogy and experimented with the relationship between their teaching and artistic practices. We consult artists’ writings, archival material, and works of art, as well as texts from the fields of philosophy, art theory and history, and pedagogy. While not strictly an instructional class on how to teach, some exercises designed to support the development of practical skills (such as designing workshops, writing syllabi, and planning classes) are incorporated throughout the semester.  3 Course cr
Th 10am-1pm

ART 571b, “Disassembly”  Staff

This course provides a fresh look at new and revised critical frameworks for examining the decoupling of art from neo-capitalist and neo-colonial systems. By employing reverse engineering as a conceptual tool for disassembly and repair, the course engages students to collectively and individually rethink social, cultural, and political systems pertaining to spatial, ethical, racial, human, machine, and monetary structures and deploy these insights through their own respective practices. Fostering an environment for the cross-circulation of critical ideas, the course includes seminars, guest lectures/presentations, case studies, and site visits, as well as interdepartmental collaboration where possible. Designed as a “think tank,” this course is a space where critical reflection, readings, and practical assignments culminate in a collective, decentralized class project. This may take the form of an exhibition, public program, or publication/zine.  3 Course cr
F 2pm-5pm

ART 586a, Weaving the Moments  Vamba Bility

This course focuses on the techniques of weaving, fiber engagement, and their poetic processes. Students explore gestures and techniques that speak to their current artistic pursuits in relation to material engagement. Capturing the contours of the substrate to a realized form or one in process. The threads, the treadles, the shafts, the heddles, the shuttles, the reeds, the stitches, and the moments. The thoughts, the rhythms, the rhymes, the touch, the feelings.  3 Course cr
W 10am-1pm