Whether you’re earning a degree on a full- or part-time schedule, seeking personal enrichment, or exploring professional development, our online art courses give you the flexibility to pursue your creative goals wherever you are.
Online courses meet through Canvas, a virtual classroom for learning. To access course materials all that you need is a connected device with a modern web browser. Live instructors provide a syllabus listing important assignments, deadlines, and virtual office hours.
You’re free to manage your own time, online classes follow the same semester calendar as on campus classes. Instead of attending class at specific times during the week, you’ll access course materials and lectures, participate in discussions and research, take quizzes, and submit work according to your own schedule, as long as you meet the assignment due dates and other deadlines.
Online courses cover the same objectives and competencies as courses offered face-to-face on campus, giving you the full outstanding UW–Madison experience. Enrolling in online courses saves you money to complete your degree in four years, rather than taking a fifth year, and you’ll gain more time for internships or other opportunities down the line.
Many courses open to beginners, non-art majors, & special students!
Art 100 Introduction to Art
About this Course
This course seeks answers to the fundamental question “What is art?” Through our lectures, readings, discussions, and creative projects, we seek answers from multiple perspectives—historical, theoretical, critical, conceptual, formal, and experiential. Throughout the course, students develop visual literacy, sophisticated observational skills and a formal language to assist in the interpretation of objects and experiences in the context of art. Through both theory and practice students develop an understanding of the ways artists arrive at the ideas that inform their creative processes. This course includes a survey of developments in art media and looks broadly at art movements, trends and styles throughout history and in varied world cultures. We maintain a tighter focus on Modern and Contemporary art from approximately 1800-present.
Course Content
The intellectual, cultural and physical components of the visual arts are presented as an essential and interrelated whole.
- Why Art? Concept, necessity, awareness, perception, aesthetics, creativity, persona, perspectives. Representational, and Non-Representational forms of art.
- Form and content; style and iconography. Elements of visual communication. Aesthetic evaluation.
- Themes and Purposes of art: major subjects; personal and cultural functions.
- Visual Elements of Art: line; shape and mass; light, value and color; texture; space; time and motion.
- Principles of Design: unity, variety, balance, emphasis, proportion, scale, rhythm and repetition.
- Visual mediums and methods: Drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, cinematography, television, electronic imaging, sculpture, clay, glass, metal, wood, fiber, architecture, urban and regional design.
- Art of the past: overview of ancient through Baroque & Neoclassical art in the western world; art beyond the western world, geographically, thematically, and formally.
- Art of our time: 19th, 20th and 21st century cultural upheavals that yielded Modernism and Post Modernism. Issues of expression, structure, cultural diversity and internationalism.
- Art for today and tomorrow. Art reveals the past and the present. Art as a tool for shaping the future.
Art 108 Foundations of Contemporary Art
About this Course
Foundations of Contemporary Art surveys the movements and theories of the twentieth century that inform contemporary art production. Special emphasis will be placed on the shift from modernist models of art making to postmodernism’s critical deconstruction to our current post-historical phase.
In this class students will…
- describe basic qualities and conditions of Modern art as well as several exceptions.
- describe the technological, political, social, and economic conditions that created the backdrop for the emergence of various Modern art movements.
- describe at least 8 Modern art movements, key artists in the movement, important works and media, and the content of the manifesto when applicable.
- identify the work of a variety of artists and critics and describe their contributions.
- identify key figures that shaped the culture of the 20th Century including Freud, Walter Benjamin, and Karl Marx and describe their significance.
- be able to describe both impediments to the participation of women and people of color as well as specific strategies various individuals and groups used to access and participate in the art world.
- describe examples of non-western art of the same period.
- discuss the concept of “male gaze” and how this evolved during the 20th century.
- define and apply a range of art-related terms such as appropriation, the uncanny, purity, manifesto, and
- identify a variety of art media and discuss the emergence and impact of new media such as film and use of the “ready-made.”
- engage in discussions and demonstrate development in both your ideas and your ability to articulate those ideas.
- create several original works in response to the course content.
- demonstrate an understanding of the institutions and practices related to Modern art.
- relate specific artists’ work and practice to issues of identity, perspective, spirituality, etc.
- demonstrate an ability to be critical consumers of visual culture.
Art 208 Current Directions in Art
About this Course
Current Directions in Art (Art 208) examines current artists’ motivations, intentions, processes and their relationship to general developments in contemporary art.
Art 393 Internships in Art
About this Course
This online course allows students who have found outside art-related internships to earn academic credit in connection with their work experience, providing them real-world experience. Students in the Art Department have interned and conducted research at many businesses, institutions, and on-campus departments, find out more about Internships & Research.