VSA2110

Critical perspectives on modern art

Annette Van den Bosch

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton
* Prerequisites: Two visual arts subjects at first-year level

Objectives To enable students to develop critical perspectives on modern art, through their understanding of the critique of modernism; for students to locate their historical study of aesthetic tendencies and styles in relation to social history; to understand the dominant paradigms of the modern in relation to the city, and urbanisation, and mass production.

Synopsis The major movements of the European avant-garde 1900- 1940 will be critically discussed 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; and the unconscious. Movements discussed will include fauvism, cubism, futurism, vorticism, expressionism, dada, surrealism, orphism and neue Sachlicheit. 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%

Prescribed texts

Chadwick W Women, art and society Thames and Hudson, 1990
Chipp H B (ed.) Theories of modern art U California P, 1968
Frascina F and Harris J (eds) Art in modern culture: An anthology of critical texts Phaidon, 1992
Hiller S (ed.) The myth of primitivism: Perspectives on art Routledge, 1991
Stangos N (ed.) Concepts of modern art Thames and Hudson, 1981