Transformations of the visual
C Hamann
6 points * 3 hours per week * Second semester * Clayton
This subject develops on principles and approaches initiated in VSA1010, expanding to include an international and historical emphasis. The aim is to intensify and complicate students' understanding of and critical responses to the visual arts, by addressing a range of instances of the changing character of the visual world, from earlier historical periods to the present. Varying approaches to the visual will be addressed in relation to a series of questions and issues such as realism, space and representation; the political and ideological dimensions of architecture and the other visual arts; subjectivity, race, gender and sexuality; psychoanalytic readings; `high' and `low' art; modernism and its discourses.
Assessment
First essay (1500 words): 25% * Second essay (2000 words): 50% * Visual test (1 hour): 25%
Recommended texts
Baxandall M Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy rev. edn, OUP, 1988
Carr D and Leonard M Looking at paintings: A guide to technical terms Getty Museum, 1992
Chadwick W Women, art and society Thames and Hudson, 1990
Frampton K Modern architecture: A critical history 3rd rev. edn, Thames and Hudson, 1992
Frascina F and Harrison C Modern art and modernism: A critical anthology Harper and Row, 1982
Suleiman S (ed.) The female body in Western culture: Contemporary perspectives Harvard UP, 1985
Wood P and others Modernism in dispute: Art since the forties Yale UP, 1993