TAD3215

Going for baroque: visual culture at the end of the twentieth century 2

3 points
* 2 hours lecture/tutorial and 4 independent study hours per week
* First semester
* Caulfield
* Prerequisites: Two second-year level theory of art and design (TAD) subjects
* Prohibited combinations: TAD3211 and TAD3216

Objectives On successful completion of this subject, students should identify key features of the `baroque' in both its specific and widest sense; recognise the richness and opulence of its visual styles and forms; understand the source material of certain aspects of and trends in contemporary artistic practice and discourse; be aware of the discourses of art history which inform contemporary art practice and theory; understand that artists draw from a number of traditions, and position themselves in relation to these.

Synopsis Students taking this subject at third-year level are required to read more widely and to submit longer assignments. By exploring the visual work of local and international contemporary artists across a range of mediums and visual practices, such as photography, film, painting and drawing, sculpture, fashion design, this subject examines how the baroque aesthetic and sensibility has manifest in some aspects of late twentieth-century postmodernist artistic practice (what Deleuze defines as modern neo-baroque). Cultural and historical definitions of the term `baroque' are analysed as well as contemporary theoretical re-readings and comparisons with Mannerist and Baroque art, sculpture and architecture are made in terms of how they may throw light onto our understanding of contemporary art (and vice versa). Common identifying features such as spectacle, theatricality and play, performance, illusion, rhetorical form, painterliness, figuration, sensuousness, as well as universal themes of life and death, the apocalyptic, the sublime and the mystical, the sacred and profane, the realm of the emotions and senses, human psychology, the erotic and the body are analysed. Postmodern critical practices and stylistic tropes: appropriation, homage, pastiche, parody, irony and allegory, are also examined, addressing issues of originality and the `authorial' voice of the artist.

Assessment Tutorial paper or short essay: 50%
* Gallery report: 50%

Recommended texts

Deleuze G The fold: Leibniz and the baroque Athlone Press, 1993
Jencks C Post-modernism: The new classicism in art and architecture Academy Editions, 1987
Jencks C (ed.) The Post-modern reader Academy Editions/St Martins, 1992
Martin J R Baroque Harper and Row, 1977
W[sinvcircumflex]lfflin H Principles of art history Dover, 1950 or Renaissance and baroque Collins, 1964