Art History

Course goals

After successful completion of this course, the student has:
 
•          developed a critical understanding of theories and philosophies dealing with visuality and the hierarchy of the senses 
•          developed a critical understanding of theories of visual culture and the relation they has with the visual arts
•          practiced with making critical understanding of visual culture theories and theories, criticism and philosophies dealing with visuality, the senses and the hierarchy of the senses
 

Content

The aim of this course is to make students familiar with and learn them to look critically at theories of visuality and theories that consider the senses, the importance of sight and the anti-ocular impulse. Today sight seems to be the most importance sense in our culture. But has this, from a historical point of view, always been so? Which theories and philosophies have questioned the dominance of sight and why? How has modern and contemporary art dealt with its own historically grown inclinations towards the eye? We will be considering ideas developed by philosophers such as Rene Descartes, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord; psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan and look at art from amongst others Gustave Courbet, impressionists, Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Martin Kippenberger…

Students familiarize themselves with the basic concepts of evolutionary theory and cognitive science in order to able to evaluate the controversies and debates within the framework of an evolutionary perspective on art, literature, and music. Several themes are discussed, such as: the mating mind; artistic universals; human nature: blank or pre-wired, the rhythm of poetry; the science of art; the origins of music, grooming, gossip, and the novel; art as adaptation vs. art as by-product. At the conclusion of this course, students are able to evaluate and apply Darwinist approaches to practices in art, literature, music, and religion.

This course offers a study of contemporary art movements and the social, political, and economic context in which they developed. It analyzes works of art, from the origins of contemporary art in the mid-19th century to the present day, alongside corresponding primary sources and art history texts.

This is the first part of a two-semester course covering the period from the 15th and 17th centuries. It focuses on Renaissance and Baroque periods. Rather than the global and idealizing point of view, often confining to the "family novel" of the great heroic artists, it places greater emphasis on a whole series of problems, artistic and inartistic, considered as sensitive questions: problems of space, place of Antiquity, religious devotion, funerary practices, political images, mannerisms and bodily movements, and mannerism and technique. In other words, a history of forms and styles allows a deeper questioning of the profound inventiveness of the visual productions of the Renaissance and the Baroque age.

In this course, students examine the art and visual culture of Australia's Indigenous people. Students are introduced to fundamental cultural concepts that are significant to Aboriginal people in terms of their visual culture and art-making. Ancient rock art, bark painting, post-contact art, and urban-based contemporary art are examined and discussed.

This course examines theories of museum informatization, including introduction; digital management of museum collections; digital museums (including digital tour/on-site multimedia display content and online exhibition digital methods); theories and technologies of the museum collection information management system including the function setting principle and operation method; text and multimedia information collection.