The Art Appreciation course explores the world’s visual arts, focusing on the development of visual awareness, assessment, and appreciation by examining a variety of styles from various periods and cultures while emphasizing the development of a common visual language. The materials are meant to foster a broader understanding of the role of visual art in human culture and experience from the prehistoric through the contemporary.

This is an Open Educational Resource (OER), an openly licensed educational material designed to replace a traditional textbook. The course materials consist of 24 lessons each with a presentation, reading list, and/or sample assignment. For ease of adapting, materials are available as PDFs and Microsoft PowerPoint or Word documents.

This OER was adapted from existing resources by Marie Porterfield Barry for the Fall 2019 semester as part of East Tennessee State University’s Open Educational Resources (OERs) Awards Program.

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Art Appreciation Open Educational Resource [Complete Collection of Lessons]

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Lesson 01: Introduction to Art Appreciation

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Lesson 02: Elements and Principles

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Lesson 03: Prehistory - Our Connection to the History of Humankind Before Text

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Lesson 04: Death and Mourning in the Prehistoric and Ancient World

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Lesson 05: Ideal Beauty in the Ancient World

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Lesson 06: Divine Architecture

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Lesson 07: The History of Blue

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Lesson 08: The Renaissance

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Lesson 09: Michelangelo- From High Renaissance to Mannerism

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Lesson 10: The Northern Renaissance and Arnolfini Double Portrait

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Lesson 11: Bosch and Other Scenes of the Apocalypse

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Lesson 12: Hans Holbein and Kerry James Marshall

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Lesson 13: Mirrors in Renaissance and Baroque Art

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Lesson 14: Judith and the Heroines of Baroque Art

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Lesson 15: Fragonard through the French Revolution

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Lesson 16: What Shocks in 1863

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Lesson 17 Part 1: Reactions to the Modern World-Introduction and Impressionism

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Lesson 17 Part 2: Reactions to the Modern World-Post-Impressionism and Expressionism

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Lesson 18: On the Dada of Art versus the Dada of War

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Lesson 19: The Unraveling - Abstraction in the Modern Era

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Lesson 20: Soup Cans! Consumerism! Balloon Dogs! - From Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons

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Lesson 21: Vision and Abstraction by Female Artists

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Lesson 22: Postmodernism

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Lesson 23: The Postmodern Body in Art

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Lesson 24: Converging Histories - The Global Art World