Art History

The course foregrounds some of the most topical territory in art history and cultural studies today: how to deal with the Imperial past? As such, this course builds on the more global approach taken in Year 1, but it also provides an in-depth theoretical lens to examine the inter-relationship between visual culture and colonialism (especially in the context of the British Empire). Students explore the way the colonial past continues to influence contemporary art and the socio-economic landscape today. Students investigate notions of race, identity, national self-determination as well as the broader inter-connected ideas of Britishness, Black-ness and Other-ness. An understanding of these issues is vital for students to engage productively with the contemporary artworld. This course therefore explore exhibitions and artworks that are currently on view.

This course offers a study of artistic development in Spain throughout the 20th century in its dual aspect: the contribution of Spanish artists in the context of the international avant-garde movement and developments that occurred within Spain itself.

This course examines the artistic production of Latin America from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, with special emphasis on postcolonial and decolonial revisions 

This course examines visual art practices and movements within the social, economic, philosophical, and political contexts of Europe and North America, circa 1900-1960. Concepts to be considered and interrogated through a decolonial, feminist, and Marxist lens include: abstraction, the avant-garde, expressionism, modernity, modernism, primitivism, and the readymade.

This course offers a survey of Spanish art history in three main areas with an emphasis on the principal artists and most relevant movements, such as the Spanish history of architecture and urban design from prehistory to the present, focusing on Madrid and the role of building in its changing society; Spanish painting from the Age of Mannerism to 19th-century modern art; and major movements in painting and sculpture of the 20th century in Spain.

This course offers an overview of Iberian Art from its beginnings to the present day. It explores architecture, painting, and sculpture from various styles and eras including: Islamic, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Golden Age, and Baroque. 

This course examines global postmodern and contemporary art from the 1950s to the present day. It discusses transformations in media, authorship, spectatorship, display, and distribution, along with globalization of art through art markets, biennales, artistic networks, and museum franchises. Students learn about key developments such as Pop, Minimalism, conceptual art, performance, computer art, and the Social Turn, with particular emphasis upon how these have been interpreted, expanded, and challenged by artists outside of Western metropolitan centers in, for example, Brazil, China, India, Ireland, Japan, and Oceania. In addition to the themes and contexts of postmodern and contemporary art, students engage with relevant debates concerning economic and cultural globalization, transcultural exchange, Indigeneity, and postcolonial politics. 

This course examines the relationship between visual art and technology, through a history of new media and the emergence of mass audiences. The aim is to illuminate a constellation of artifacts, publics, power dynamics, and patterns of experience that are equally significant to art history and to media studies; the methods of formal analysis, historical contextualization, and critical self-reflexivity will be foregrounded. Case studies are chosen to explore the origins of mass media and modern visual culture from the nineteenth century to the present. We will consider the experimental and competitive environments of creative practice and technical innovation; tensions between democratization and commercialization in the circulation of images, identities, and world-views; powers of voicing, silencing, belonging and exclusion in spaces of representation and the formation of publics; and the changing social and perceptual conditions of spectatorship. We will examine the effects of participatory and immersive frameworks that gather large heterogeneous audiences in a shared space (such as festivals, exhibitions, panoramas, and cinema) and images for the masses that are optimized for isolated, partitioned interfaces (such as print, photography, virtual reality, and social media).

This course presents a thematic introduction to Irish art, architecture, and design in its broader international context. Subjects are connected across periods and styles – the focus not on presenting individualized summarized histories but rather considering how aspects of Irish visual history are connected and have evolved over time. Lectures include the identification of key works from Irish art and architecture, addressing fine, applied, and popular art-forms. Throughout the course, Irish visual history is discussed in its artistic, social, and cultural contexts together with its place in a broader international perspective.