MONASH UNIVERSITY FACULTY HANDBOOKS

Arts Undergraduate Handbook 1996

Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996

VSA1020

Transformations of the visual

C Hamann

Synopsis This subject develops on principles and approaches initiated in VSA1010, expanding to include an international and historical emphasis. The aim is to intensify and extend 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
• Stangos N Concepts of modern art Thames and Hudson, 1981
• Suleiman S (ed.) The female body in Western culture: Contemporary perspectives Harvard U P, 1985
• Wood P and others Modernism in dispute: Art since the forties Yale U P, 1993