TAD2113

Classical tradition and contemporary critique 2B

3 points - One 1-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 (1) identify key artistic and architectural works of renaissance and baroque cultural production, as well as classical works from the neoclassical and postmodern eras; (2) recognise the key formal, stylistic and conceptual characteristics of classicism and classicising art, architecture and design and consider their pertinence to a contemporary practice; (3) have developed appropriate analytical, critical, writing and communication skills necessary for the articulate discussion of artworks; (4) 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; (5) 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. Areas covered will include definitions of classicism; art, architecture and ideology: the language of power; the humanist revival of Graeco-Roman classicism in Renaissance art and architecture; classical theories of art and beauty; classical humanism and the woman artist; baroque classicism of the Bolognese school; Poussin, seventeenth-century classicism and the classical landscape; and the eighteenth century cult of the antique. The course will also introduce students to postmodernism and the new classicism in the art and architecture of the 1970s to 1990s. All these speculations are located in the context of a contemporary studio practice.

Assessment One class paper/visual analysis of 1000 words: 30% - One 1200-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 edition, 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 Penguin, 1977
Summerson J The classical language of architecture Thames and Hudson, revised edition, 1980
Jencks C Post-modernism: The new classicism in art and architecture Academy Editions, 1987

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