Theory of art history and criticism
Not offered in Semester 2, 1997
Annette Van den Bosch
12 points
* 3 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton
Objectives For students to read and interpret current theoretical texts and methodological debates in art history and theory in relation to their own practice. and develop a theoretical and methodological position from which students can write thesis and research essays; to conceptualise the relationship inherent in the work of art as an aesthetic form, and its distribution as a commodity; to develop current theoretical and political perspectives on sexuality, identity, and post-coloniality, to assume in their writing of history and criticism.
Synopsis This subject is organised in four equivalent sections: `Discourses in art history' includes the social history of art, the problem of style in art history, speaking positions in cultural studies; feminist discourses, history of modernism and the avant-garde, postmodernism and, `Aesthetics and commodities' considers theories of aesthetic value, meaning and symbolic value, interpretation and consumption of art, and the distribution and exchange value of works of art; `Forms of visual analysis' includes realism and materialism, subjectivity and sexuality, psychoanalytic theories of art and difference, signs and signifying systems in mass media, semiotics and inter textual analysis; `Current critical perspectives' includes primitivism and bricoleurs, postcolonial mimicry and ambivalence, history memory and modernism, difference, desire and the body, gender transgressions, Australian regional exchanges, Aboriginal and Asian.
Assessment Seminar paper (3000 words): 35%
* Essay (4500 words): 45%
* Critical text analysis (1500 words): 20%
Prescribed texts
Bourdieu P Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste RKP, 1984
Dougherty T (ed.) Postmodernism: A reader Columbia University Press, 1993
Frascina F and Harris C Art in modern culture: An anthology of critical texts Open University and Phaidon, 1992
Grosz L Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism Allen and Unwin, 1994
Heller A and Feher J (eds) Reconstructing aesthetics: Writing of the Budapest school Basil Blackwell, 1991
Nead L The female nude: Obscenity and sexuality Routledge 1992
Turner C (ed.) Tradition and change: Contemporary art of Asia and the Pacific University of Queensland Press, 1993
`Postmodernism: A consideration of the appropriation of Aboriginal imagery' in S Cramer (ed.) Forum Papers Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1989
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