Collection Concentration: Searching for Paradise: Arcadian Landscapes from Antiquity to the Modern World

About the Class

Henri Matisse’s monumental Le Bonheur de Vivre shocked audiences when it was first exhibited in 1906. Academic critics saw its bold colors, jarring shifts in scale, and distorted anatomies as an improper way to depict Arcadia, an ancient landscape long imagined as a place of abundance. For thousands of years, writers and artists mythologized Arcadia as a utopia where humans lived in perfect harmony with the natural world.

In this 14-session course, using the Barnes’s Visual Experience Platform (VXP), we’ll explore how the image of Arcadia evolved from its ancient roots through the Renaissance and into the modern era. Guided discussions and close-looking exercises will focus on the ways artists reinterpreted Arcadian themes across historical periods and aesthetic movements.

We’ll pay special attention to works by Matisse, Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, and other artists whose radical approaches to color, form, and composition transformed the tradition in unexpected ways. Together, we’ll consider how artists used imagined landscapes not simply to depict paradise but also to question modernity, memory, leisure, and the role of art itself.

The class is online-only. More about online classes.

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Barnes classes will:

• Sharpen your observational and critical thinking skills.
• Improve your ability to communicate about art.
• Deepen your appreciation for cultures and histories outside your own.

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Barnes Method

Barnes Method courses follow the teachings of Dr. Albert Barnes and Violette de Mazia. Classes focus on rigorous formal analysis and direct visual engagement with works of art. In this method, close looking at art helps build critical-thinking skills that can be carried beyond the gallery walls.

What Our Students Say

“The instructor was not only knowledgeable but so accessible, and such an inviting presence. She provided great reading to supplement the course.” —Mary Cassatt: Art, Identity, and Independence with Larissa Bailiff

“Pierre brings the art alive with her inside stories and images and how she interacts with the students. She is always able to answer and follow up with more information at the next class.” —Exhibiting Modernism: From the Salon to the Avant-Garde with Caterina Pierre

“Alison Boyd was engaging and effective during the online instruction, and she offered well-selected background materials for further reading.” —Aaron Douglas from Harlem to Philly with Alison Boyd