TAD2103

Classical tradition and contemporary critique 2A

6 points - One 2-hour lecture-seminar, and one 1-hour tutorial per week - First semester - Caulfield and Gippsland, internal and distance - Prerequisites: TAD1101, TAD1102 - Corequisites: None - Prohibitions: TAD2113, TAD3103, TAD3113 - Elective

Objectives On successful completion of this subject students should be able to identify key artistic and architectural works of renaissance and baroque culture, as well as classical works from the neoclassical and postmodern eras; recognise the key formal, stylistic and conceptual characteristics of classicism and classicizing art, architecture and design and consider their pertinence to a contemporary practice; have developed appropriate analytical, critical, writing and oral communication skills necessary for the articulate discussion of artworks; comment critically and perceptively on the content and meaning, iconographic sources, and the place and function of works within their specific artistic, historical, ideological and social contexts, noting the differences between them and the context of contemporary studios; understand that meaning is not necessarily fixed, but remains open to a range of readings, re-interpretations, appropriations and cultural transformations; be prepared to formulate critical attitudes to concepts such as humanism, for example, from a Marxist, post-structuralist or feminist point of view; and discuss critically how contemporary artists have responded, or positioned themselves in relation to the classical tradition and speculate about its pertinence in postmodern culture.

Synopsis This subject will examine the persistence and continuities (conceptual, ideological, formal and stylistic) of the classical tradition, the dominant cultural model of western art and architecture, providing an historical and critical overview from early Renaissance to neoclassicism and the new classicism in the art and architecture of the 1970s to 1990s. Important topics for the history of art and art theory will be examined, looking at the complexity of meaning and content in Renaissance and baroque art: symbolism, iconology and iconography; mythology and allegory; the sacred and the secular; and the development of philosophical discourses and theory in the arts. The material conditions of artistic practice during this period will also be considered: training and education, patronage and employment, workshop practices, the art market, the relationship between theory and practice, the guild system and the professionalisation of the artist and institutionalisation of the arts via the academies. Finally postmodern revisionist readings of the Renaissance and baroque will further re-evaluate issues of representation and gender, aesthetic theories, attitudes to the body, and patriarchal discourses of humanism. All these speculations are located in the context of a contemporary studio practice.

Assessment One class paper/visual analysis of 1500 words: 30% - One 2000-word essay: 40% - One visual test/exam: 30%

Prescribed texts

Tansey R G and Kleiner F S Gardner's 'Art through the ages' Harcourt Brace, 10th edn, 1996

Recommended texts

Baxandall M Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy Oxford, 1986
Greenhalgh M The classical tradition in art Duckworth, 1978
Honour H Neoclassicism style and civilization (Series) Penguin, 1977
Jencks C Post-modernism: The new classicism in art and architecture Academy editions, 1987
Summerson J The classical language of architecture Thames and Hudson, revised edition, 1980
Turner J G(ed.) Sexuality and gender in early modern Europe: Institutions, texts, images Cambridge University Press 1993

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