Hosted by/ Sponsored by: Webcast Berkeley Courses

Course of Study: Practice of Art

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Description: Explore what it means to think visually, with Berkeley University web and audio lectures. The course illustrates how in art what you see is not necessarily what you get. You learn to contemplate art with all the senses—to become sensitive to what is beyond what seems obvious. Through every type of medium and style you are challenged to question continually and expand your ideas of what constitutes art and reality, regardless of taste.

The passion in the process of art is where the artist finds points of reference and investigation. From minimalism to collage and classic to modern, you will learn to seek in the content of art deeper histories, narratives and contexts. You will appreciate how perceptions of the moment of art-making are always changing through time.

Course of Study: Arts and History

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Description: “Napoleonic Paintings” examines how Napoleon’s regime compromised and censored to control mass propaganda in the prestigious “history painting” patronized by diverse crowds at the Salon of the Louvre.

Through lectures, exercises and plates, the 16 hour course explores the challenges of framing Napoleon’s public image as a peace seeking, moral and civilizing military genius who felt for the common man.

Napoleon’s paintings circulated in a post Revolutionary period that questioned divine right and authority—during a shift away from Enlightenment ideals of the rational, heroic and traditional and toward more Romantic sensibilities of the irrational, individual and modern questioning of suffering and violence.

Two paintings are singled out as pivotal in emulating the emerging Romantic style and for revealing the tensions between the “civilizing mission” of enlightened nationalistic ideals and the reality of suffering and death. The paintings “Jaffa” and “Eylau” by Jean Antoine Gros ‘are said to enshrine not only Napoleon’s heroism but also Gros’s misgivings’—introducing doubt into the glory of French history painting.

A short section of the course is devoted to Women and Portraiture in Napoleonic Europe, showing unprecedented privacy and authority in public images of women.

Hosted by / Sponsored by: Larry’s Art

Course of Study: Fine Arts / Painting

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Description: Larry’s Art offers a few introductory art lessons online for free. This lesson talks about watercolor paintings, but more specifically blending your paints (how to work with your color palette).

This free online course covers the basic color wheel, primary versus secondary colors, complementary colors, working with dual-primary palettes, working with black and white, and more.