Cultural theory and visuality
Proposed to be offered next in 1998
8 or 12 points
* 2 hours per week
* Clayton
Objectives On successful completion of this course students should have gained an understanding of the principal relationships between the field of cultural and critical theory and the visual field; applied cultural and critical theories to a range of visual works; become familiar with a number of contemporary discourses of visuality; developed the confidence to discuss the historical positions and theoretical constructions of visuality; and accumulated the critical and expressive resources to write clear, concise, accurate and independent essays on topics related to this subject.
Synopsis This subject addresses the relation between cultural and critical theory and the visual field. The range of visual products whose theorisation will be considered includes photography and film, painting, sculpture, architecture, performance, non-Western visual practices, and common objects. Discussion will take place on the historical positions and the theoretical construction of these products with reference to the discourses of modernism and modernity, postmodernism, the body, totalitarianism/post-totalitarianism, museology and institutions, and `the everyday'.
Assessment (8 points) Seminar paper (2000 words): 30%
* Essay (4000
words): 70%
Assessment (12 points) Seminar paper (3000 words): 30%
* Essay (6000
words): 70%
Preliminary reading
Barasch M Theories of art from Plato to Wincklemann New York U P, 1985
Barthes R The responsibility of forms: Critical essays on music, art and representation Hill and Wang, 1985
Bryson N Vision and painting: The logic of the gaze Macmillan, 1983
Bryson N (ed.) Calligram: Essays in the new art history from France CUP, 1988
Clark T J The absolute bourgeois: Artists and politics in France 1848-1851 Thames and Hudson, 1973
Gombrich E H Art and illusion: A study in the psychology of pictorial representation Phaidon, 1977
Michelson A and others (eds) October: The first decade MIT, 1988
Preziosi D Rethinking art history: Meditations on a coy science Yale U P, 1989
Rees A L and Borzello F (eds) The new art history Camden, 1986
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