CdSINTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME IN HUMANITIES
CodiceL1478
CFU6
PeriodoSecondo semestre
LinguaItaliano
| Moduli | Settore/i | Tipo | Ore | Docente/i | |
| MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART | L-ART/03 | LEZIONI | 36 |
|
The course aims to provide students with a basic knowledge of the history of Western art from Impressionism to the late 1960s, with some stronger emphasis on a few key exponents of Italian art. Rather than an exhaustive survey of movements and artists—which would have been an exorbitant task anyway—the selection of the arguments of this course was made with the intent of introducing students coming from diverse cultural backgrounds to some critical tools necessity to comprehend the challenges to common taste brought forth by many modern or contemporary artworks. In fact, with the unfolding of modernist ideologies and aesthetics, artists have progressively subverted the traditional assumptions about the representational nature of pictures and statues, and the delighting, moral, or educational functions of their fruition. Therefore, modernistic artworks shall be considered not only for their formal-stylistic features, but also in their historical, political, intellectual contexts.
Active participation in discussion is strongly encouraged. Students are therefore asked to read all the assigned readings before each lesson, in order to attend the classes already with a basic knowledge and engage in a more profitable dialogue with the teacher about any doubts or topics that may require explanations and further elaboration
A basic knowledge of the history of western art is recommened, although not mandatory.
1. A brief introduction to painting in the Nineteenth Century; Manet
Arnason, pp. 13-22; Rubin, pp. 9-48.
Suggested: Harrison-Wood-Gaiger, pp. 493-506 (Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life).
2. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Seurat, Gauguin
Arnason, pp. 22-27 (Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas) and pp. 37-40 (Paul Cézanne); Rubin, pp. 308-320.
3. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Redon
Arnason: pp. 40-46 (Vincent van Gogh; Paul Cézanne); pp. 70-72 (Odilon Redon); Rubin, pp. 373-387; Harrison-Wood-Gaiger, pp. 896-898 (Vincent van Gogh, Letters to his brother Theo [only 30 April 1885]); Harrison-Wood, pp. 37-40 (Paul Cézanne, Letters to Emile Bernard).
Suggested: Harrison-Wood-Gaiger, pp. 945-948 (Vincent van Gogh, Letters to his brother Theo and his sister Wilhelmina, [8 September 1888; 5 June 1890]; pp. 1064-1966 (Odilon Redon, Suggestive Art).
4. Fauves and Cubists
Arnason, pp. 100-103 (Henri Matisse and Fauvism to 1912); pp. 117-122 (Picasso before cubism); Foster et alii, pp. 70-84 (1906-1907); pp. 100-105 (1910); Harrison-Wood, pp. 72-78 (Henri Matisse, Notes of a Painter).
5. Cubism and the beginning of Abstraction
Foster et alii, pp. 106-124 (1911; 1912; 1913); Harrison-Wood, pp. 152-154 (Robert Delaunay, On the Construction of Reality...).
6. Italian Futurism
Humphreys, pp. 12-48; Foster et alii, pp. 90-96 (1909: exclude Fascism and Futurism); Harrison-Wood, pp. 145-152 (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism; Umberto Boccioni, Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto).
7. German Expressionism
Arnason, p. 163 (introduction only); pp. 164-168 (Emil Nolde; Die Brücke; Ernst Kirchner), pp. 172-174 (Der Blaue Reiter. Vasily Kandinsky to 1914); Foster et alii, pp. 85-88 (1908: exclude sub-chapter Dehumanization as diagnostic); Harrison-Wood, pp. 67-68 (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Programme of the Brücke); pp. 101-102 (Emil Nolde, On Primitive Art) ; pp. 86-91 (Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art).
8. Abstract art
Foster et alii, pp. 130-134 (1915); pp. 148-153 (1917a); Arnason, pp. 219-221 (Kasimir Malevich) ; Harrison-Wood, pp. 282-287 (Piet Mondrian, Dialogue on the New Plastic) ; pp. 290-292 (Kasimir Malevich, Non-Objective Art and Suprematism).
9. Dada
Foster et alii, pp. 135-138 (1916a: exclude sub-chapter A miniature sublime); pp. 174-179 (1920); pp. 186-190 (1922); Harrison-Wood, pp. 248-255 (Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918; Richard Huelsenbeck, First Dada Manifesto).
10. Duchamp and de Chirico
Foster et alii, pp. 96-97 (1909 – Fascism and Futurism only); pp. 125-129 (1914); pp. 160-165 (1918); Arnason, pp. 284-289 (Giorgio de Chirico); Harrison-Wood, pp. 60-61 (de Chirico, Mistery and Creation); p. 248 (Marcel Duchamp, The Richard Mutt Case).
11. Surrealism; “Degenerate art” and Guernica
Foster et alii, pp. 190-195 (1924); pp. 250-254 (1931); pp. 281-285 (1937a);
Suggested: Harrison-Wood, pp. 440-446 (André Breton, Surrealism and Painting).
12. Abstract expressionism and Informel
Phillips, pp. 12-27 (The Postwar American Art Community; and Abstract Expressionism: The New York Vanguard [exclude sub-chapter Sculpture of the New York School); Foster et alii, pp. 369-374 (1946); pp. 380-391 (1947b; 1949a); Harrison-Wood, pp. 593-595 (Jean Dubuffet, Crude Art Preferred to Cultural Art);
Suggested: Harrison-Wood, pp. 590-593 (Notes for the Well-Lettered); and pp. 619-620 (Michel Tapié, An Other Art)
13. Italian art 1943-1953
Vetrocq, pp. 20-31.
14. New-Dada/Nouveau Réalisme and Pop art
Phillips, pp. 83-94. Collins, pp. 301-315; Harrison-Wood, pp. 711-712 (Pierre Restany, The New Realists).
15. Pop art/Italian art to 1968
Phillips, pp. 109-11; 114-145; Briganti.
16. Italian art to 1968
Briganti; Potts; Silk.
17. Italian art to 1968
Potts; Silk
18. Field trip
- H. H. Arnason, History of Modern Art, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1970.
- James H. Rubin, Impressionism, London, Phaidon, 1999.
- Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh, David Joselit, Art since 1900. Modernism Antimodernism Postmodernism, New York, Thames and Hudson, 2011.
- Richard Humphreys, Futurism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (editors), Art in Theory 1900-1990. An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford-Cambridge, Blakwell, 1992.
- Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger (editors), Art in Theory 1815-1900. An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford, Blackwell, 1998.
- Lisa Phillips, The American Century. Art and Culture 1950-2000, New York, Whitney Museum/W. W. Norton, 1999.
- Bradford R. Collins, Pop Art, London, Phaidon, 2012.
- Marcia E. Vetrocq, Painting and Beyond: Recovery and Regeneration, 1943-1952, in Germano Celant (editor), The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943-1968, New York, Guggenheim Museum Publications, 1994, pp. 20-31.
- Giuliano Briganti, Cultural Provocation: Italian Art in the Early Sixties, in Italian Art in the 20th Century: Painting and Sculpture, 1900-1988, London, Royal Academy of Art, 1988, pp. 301-307.
- Alex Potts, Disencumbered Objects, in “October”, vol. 124, Spring 2008, pp. 169-189.
- Gerard Silk, Myths and Meanings in Manzoni's Merda d'artista, in “Art Journal”, Vol. 52, No. 3, Autumn, 1993, pp. 65-75.
Please, note: the assigned readings and the slides of the lessons are uploaded on Moodle (http://elearning.humnet.unipi.it/)
The final exam will consist in a written quizz and orals based on the the topics addressed during the classes and the assigned readings.
The course starts the 28th of February 2018
Active participation in discussion is strongly encouraged. Students are therefore asked to read all the assigned readings before each lesson, in order to attend the classes already with a basic knowledge and engage in a more profitable dialogue with the teacher about any doubts or topics that may require explanations and further elaboration.