This seminar, to be co-taught by the Associate Curator of Modern Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) seeks to problematize the discourse and practice of formalism — i.e., critical approaches to the study of visible and material features of an art object — in the discipline of art history. Weekly seminars will alternate between the gallery spaces of the AGO, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), and other local collections, in order to facilitate the kind of first-hand looking at objects practiced by true formalists. First-hand engagement with objects will be combined with the reading of various methodological, historiographical, and theoretical texts, including those by the British art critic Roger Fry (1866–1934), who wrote extensively about both Chinese ceramics and modern art, and Henri Focillon (1881–1943), the French formalist who was also a Director of the Musée de Beaux Arts de Lyon. By developing critical, analytical, and object-focused skills, this seminar has three goals: to problematize the division between the fine and decorative arts; to consider the possibilities and limitations of established methods of formalism that have been resurgent with the rise of "Global Art History;" and, to suggest the importance of formalism in an era of methodological experimentation that at times eclipses the object. Ultimately, this seminar will equip students with tools for thinking through and making sustained art-historical arguments about diverse types of objects that are both methodologically rigorous and materially grounded.