AHT3011 - Baroque to enlightenment: European art before modernism - 2017

This unit focuses on European art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Key historical and theoretical topics in the art of the period will be considered, such as: the emphasis in Italian and Spanish Baroque art on spectacle, excess and spirituality; the tradition and legacy of French classicism from Poussin to Ingres; Northern European genre and still-life painting; art as politics and social commentary in France, England and Spain; the emergence of landscape and the philosophy of the picturesque and the sublime; the eroticism and escapism of Rococo; and the phenomenon of Romanticism.

The unit will provide students with an understanding of the history and historiography of European art after the Renaissance and before Modernism. Recent research and current topics of debate will be emphasised in lectures, seminar discussions and readings.

Upon successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Identify the main characteristics of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European art;
2. Understand the historical, cultural and social contexts of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European art;
3. Understand key aesthetic, philosophical and historiographical concepts in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European art;
4. Perform critical analyses of historical works of art;
5. Demonstrate a broad knowledge of the history of European art.

Critical analysis (20%)

Research essay (40%)

Slide test (40%)

12 hours per week, including 3 contact hours and nine hours of independent study or equivalent

See also Unit timetable information

Professor Rex Butler

12 credit points at first year level in Art History & Theory, or Theory of Art & Design, or Visual Culture, or permission from the Unit Coordinator

AHT2011