Art History

This course provides a study of the history of Aesthetics in both Asia and the Western world. It also examines the structure of aesthetics and its social impact.

This course is an interdisciplinary course that explores the relationship between art and architecture through visits to London’s famous museums, art galleries, public artworks, and iconic architecture. Students analyze the impact architecture has on viewing art with seminars which take place in some of London’s most famous museums and galleries such as the British Museum, Tate Modern, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The course then consider alternatives to this model, including more recent curatorial phenomena by organizations such as ArtAngel which commission contemporary artists to make artworks in unexpected places: from a performance in an abandoned Underground station to a concrete cast of an entire house. Through the lens of specific case studies of art and architecture, the course examines relevant critical issues such as race, globalization, and environmental justice. In doing so, students interrogate how urban circumstances have shaped issues in modern and contemporary art and architecture in London.

This gallery-based course focuses on developments in modern art during the 20th century in relation to artistic concepts of the future, looking at how these changed as the century progressed and earlier imagined futures were not realized. Themes discussed include historical avant-gardes, the Dada group, surrealism, utopion ideas, futurism, and activist art from Europe and the US in the 1960s.

The course covers both the historically specific concept of The Total Work of Art (Gesamtkunstwerk), with Richard Wagner's opera aesthetics in focus, as well as other forms of compound medial artistic expressions of our times such as film, music videos, and architecture. Special attention is paid to concepts such as form/content, art, intermediality, border crossings, art, aesthetics, and ideology.

This course covers two aspects of Chinese art and cultural heritage—ancient gardening and painting. Guided by classic literature such as Yuanye and Linquan Gaozhi, the course will vividly display the beauty and wisdom contained in Chinese cultural heritage in the form of classic reading, cultural relic appreciation, and image observation.