Authorised by Academic Registrar, April 1996
Synopsis The major movements of the European avant-garde 1900-1940 will be discussed and assessed in relation to questions of social history, national identity, technical developments in painting, sculpture and exhibition design, and the history of technology. The subject will be responsive to significant issues and debates that in part constructed the conditions of visual modernism: formalism versus materialism; autonomy; war; modernist utopias; the communicative potential of abstraction; the rappel à l'ordre; industrial production and the machine, with reference to American modernism and design; revolutionary socialism; the unconscious. Movements discussed will include fauvism, cubism, futurism, vorticism, expressionism, dada, surrealism, orphism and neue Sachlichkeit. Students are advised to familiarise themselves with a good outline of the main developments in visual art 1900-1940 (see Stangos [ed.] below) so that they can better understand the relative complexity of the issues at stake.
Assessment Seminar paper (2000 words): 35% + Essay (3000 words): 40% + Visual test (1.5 hours): 25%