Understanding Western Art: Stories, Styles, and Masterworks

Western art, spanning from the ancient world to the present, has produced extraordinary masterpieces by artists such as Phidias, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh. In Understanding Western Art: Stories, Styles, and Masterworks, a 25 lecture series, you will explore the major themes, styles, and ideas that reveal the deeper meaning of this artistic tradition, from color and composition to symbolism and modern innovation.

You will examine the power of color across centuries, from medieval manuscripts to the bold abstraction of Wassily Kandinsky, the mastery of perspective and illusion in artists like Hans Holbein the Younger and Paul Cézanne, the evolution of artistic genres through works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Raphael, Caravaggio, and Diego Velázquez, the rich symbolism found in Christian art across places like Ravenna and Chartres, and the emergence of Modernism and abstraction in the work of artists such as Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock.

Author Noah Charney is a professor of art history specializing in art crime, iconography, and art historical mysteries, as well as writing and scholarly publication. He teaches graduate-level courses in the ARCA Postgraduate Certificate Program in Art Crime and Cultural Property Protection and has held academic appointments at institutions including Yale University, the American University of Rome, and the University of Ljubljana, as well as teaching for Atlas Obscura and advanced pre-college programs at Brown University. His online courses include offerings with Wondrium/The Great Courses, the National Gallery (UK), Yale University, and the Smithsonian.