Theory of art history and criticism
Annette Van den Bosch
8 or 12 points * 3 hours per week * First semester * Clayton
This subject is organised in four equivalent sections: `Discourses in art history' includes the social history of art, feminist discourses, history of modernism and the avant-garde, postmodernism and the end of history; `Aesthetics and commodities' considers theories of aesthetic value, meaning and symbolic value, interpretation and consumption of art, and the distribution and exchange value of works of art; `Forms of visual analysis' includes realism and materialism, subjectivity and sexuality, psychoanalytic theories of art and difference, signs and signifying systems in mass media, semiotics and inter textual analysis; `Current critical perspectives' includes primitivism and bricoleurs, postcolonial mimicry and ambivalence, history memory and modernism, difference, desire and the body, gender transgressions, Australian regional exchanges, Aboriginal and Asian.
Assessment: 8 points
Seminar paper (2000 words): 35% * Essay (3000 words): 45% * Critical text analysis (1000 words): 20%
Assessment: 12 points
Seminar paper (3000 words): 35% * Essay (4500 words): 45% * Critical text analysis (1500 words): 20%
Prescribed texts
Bourdieu P Distinction, a social critique of the judgement of taste RKP, 1984
Broude N and Garrard M (eds) The expanding discourse, feminism and art history Icon, Harper Collins, 1992
Heller A and Feher J (eds) Reconstructing aesthetics: Writing of the Budapest school Basil Blackwell, 1991
Hiller S (ed.) The myth of primitivism, perspectives on art Routledge, 1991
Hutcheon L The politics of postmodernism Routledge, 1989
Irigaray L Je, tu, nous: Towards a culture of difference tr. A Martin, 1992
Wallis B Art after modernism: Re-thinking representation New Museum of Contemporary Art, R Godine, 1992
Wolff J The social production of art Macmillan, 1981