Summer 2012: Florence, Italy

An Exquisite Corpse: KCAI at SACI

This six-credit program is a collaboration between KCAI and Studio Art Centers International-Florence (SACI), an art school founded by the painter Jules Maidoff, which offers a full range of studio and liberal arts courses, as well as a conservation degree and post-baccalaureate and graduate programs.

Dates

May 16-June 23, 2012

Academic credit

Three credit hours: Life drawing, painting department open studio elective
Instructor: Jessie Fisher, assistant professor of painting

Three credit hours: Course of your choosing offered by SACI. 
Note: the term of attendance is "LATE SPRING 2012."

Trip costs

$5,825 (this does not include airfare, meals or the $400 refundable housing deposit)

The final cost include KCAI and SACI tuition for a total of six credit hours; lodging in SACI apartments; Amici degli Ufizzi card; museum fees; and day trips to Fiesole, Pisa, Lucca, Sienna, Volterra and San Gimignano.

Application deadline

Feb. 3, 2012

Program description

This five-week program in Florence, Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance and perhaps the most important city in the development of Western aesthetics, will immerse the student in Italian culture. It offers participants an abundance of painting, sculpture, architecture, music and cultural artifacts experienced in their original context in museums, churches, villas, monasteries, piazzas and gardens, which will serve as an extension of the classroom. The city, a work of art itself, will provide students with an experience and awareness of historical artistic precedent and a culmination of the plastic arts, sciences and humanities. The Florentine environment and the students’ integration into the SACI community will provide the student with a lived education that will broaden their world view as well as provide an example of the heights of human aesthetic achievement.

In addition to the curriculum and experiences that come along with a study abroad program in this inviting, accessible and safe city, Florence offers a range of cultural and popular events and activities during the summer months. These include late evenings at the Uffizi, the Palazzo Strozzi and the Accademia Museums; The White Nights Festival; the famous Calcio (soccer) in Costume during which the different quarters of the city compete in this well-known game; the Maggio Musicale, a series of outdoor and indoor events ranging from ballet to opera to symphony concerts; outdoor evening film festivals; and the Estate Fiesolana, which includes concerts, films and theater held in a Roman amphitheater.

Academic curriculum

The painting open studio course will introduce the student to the ideas and topics central to the development of the Florentine Renaissance as it relates to the pictorial arts. Students will work primarily from observation –– drawing from the model in the classroom as well as drawing on-site from paintings and sculptures. Students will additionally work in the landscape using the gardens, architecture and grounds of Florence as an extension of the classroom. On-site lectures and museum visits will provide an immediate synthesis of theory and practice.

Students will study the evolution and development of systems of proportion, perspective, linear composition, convention and arrangement, and the grotesque as it was used in the 15th and 16th century Florentine art theory and practice. Drawing from these numerous topics and work created in class, students will learn to construct a unified and idealized composition.

This course is designed for students with previous life drawing experience. Students will learn to prepare traditional drawing surfaces, work with direct and indirect drawing techniques, manipulate structural anatomy and create illusion through spatial convention. Supplies for this course will cost an estimated $30 to $200. While this course will be focused on drawing, advanced students will have the option of painting in oils.

Students will have an art historian led trip on Sundays to the following venues in Tuscany: (1) Fiesole, (2) Pisa and Lucca, (3) Siena and (4) Volterra and San Gimignano.

Download an information packet.

Download an application.

More information

Jessie Fisher, assistant professor in painting, jfisher@kcai.edu