VAM4020

Theory of art history and criticism

(ART)

Annette Van den Bosch

12 points + 3 hours per week + Second semester + Clayton

Synopsis: Discourses in art history: social history of art, style, feminist discourses, modernism and the avant-garde, postmodernism, speaking positions in cultural studies. Aesthetics and commodities: meaning and symbolic value, interpretation, consumption, distribution and exchange. Visual analysis: realism and materialism, subjectivity and sexuality, psychoanalytic theories, signs and signifying systems, semiotics and intertextual analysis. Current critical perspectives, from primitivism to postcolonial mimicry.

Assessment: Seminar paper (3000 words): 35% + Essay (4500 words): 45% + Critical text analysis (1500 words): 20%