Faculty of Arts

 Art History

Table of Contents

Subject Lists
    First Year
    Second and Third Year
        For the following subject to be credited towards a major in Fine Arts, the main project(s) must be approved by the Department of Fine Arts
    Fourth Year only

Art History studies the interpretation and history of the visual arts; painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, design, photography, popular culture, and indeed all forms of visual culture. Students of art history develop a wide range of skills for writing about a work of art:

• As a physical object - how it is made, how it should be handled, its condition and conservation.
• As an image - its subject, iconography, and meaning.
• As an object associated with documentation - primary sources, archival documents, critical commentaries and so forth.
• As a cultural product situated in an historical and social context.
• As the site of cultural issues such as nation, class, gender, ethnicity and race.

Career opportunities for graduates in Art History are to be found in teaching and in academic research, in the arts industry as curators, administrators, and directors of art galleries and museums, in the commercial sphere of dealerships and auction houses, and as critics, journalists and arts writers.

Art History is taught within the Department of Fine Arts (Art History and Cinema Studies), which offers a wide range of Art History subjects. These range from Medieval art through the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to twentieth century and contemporary art, including Australian, Aboriginal and Asian art. The Department also offers a program in Cinema Studies.

 1. Prerequisites

There are no specific prerequisites for Art History at first-year level. The prerequisite for a second-year Art History subject is normally one single-semester first year Art History subject (12.5 points), but students who have done suitable alternative first-year subjects may be granted an exemption. The prerequisite for a subject offered both at third and fourth-year level is normally 33 points in second/third-year in Art History subjects.

 2. Requirements for a major in Art History

A major in Art History consists of at least five subjects completed at second and/or third-year level in the Department of Fine Arts (Art History and Cinema Studies) at least three of which must be Art History subjects, totalling 83.3 points.

 3. Entry to Honours

The prerequisite for entry to fourth-year honours in Art History is the completion of all the requirements for the bachelor of Arts degree and completion of a major in Art History with an average grade of H2B or higher. Entry to fourth-year honours requires the approval of the Head of Department and of the Faculty.

 4. Honours requirements

Honours Coordinator - Dr Roger Benjamin.

 4.1. Art History Pure Honours

Students taking Pure Honours in Art History must complete:

• 111-400 Art History Honours Thesis, and;
• four single-semester Art History honours subjects.

A Cinema Studies subject from the Fine Arts Department may be substituted for one Art History honours subject, subject to approval from the course coordinator.

 4.2. Art History and Cinema Studies Combined Honours

Students taking Art History and Cinema Studies Combined Honours complete:

• four single-semester honours subjects in the Fine Arts Department, two of which are Cinema Studies subjects and two of which are Art History subjects, and;
• 111-400 Art History Honours Thesis.

 4.3. Art History Combined Honours

Students taking Art History Combined Honours complete:

• two single-semester Art History honours subjects in the Fine Arts Department (33.3 points), and;
• either
  • 111-400 Art History Honours Thesis or;
  • a thesis or its equivalent in another department according to the requirements of that department (33.3 points), and;
• subjects in the other department according to the requirements of that department (33.3 points).

 5. International study program

The Department of Fine Arts teaches a number of Art History subjects overseas in Rome, Siena, New York and Nuremberg as one-month intensive fieldwork programs in the summer semester or winter non-teaching period.

 6. Opportunities for further study

A degree in Art History can lead to Postgraduate Diplomas in Art History and Cinema Studies, Art Curatorship & Museum Management, or Tourism & the Visual Arts. An Honours Degree in Art History can lead to Postgraduate Diplomas in Art Curatorship & Museum Management or Tourism & and the Visual Arts, and MA or PhD degrees.

 7. For more information

Please contact:

First Year

111-103 Brave New Worlds: Modernity and the Visual Arts, 1850-1918
111-104 High Modern To Postmodern: the Visual Arts, 1918-1994
111-107 Design and Art in the Twentieth Century
111-108 Visual Cultures
111-109 Introduction to Art History A: The Work of Art
111-110 Introduction to Art History B: Artist and Audience

Second and Third Year

103-201 Multimedia Authoring
111-203 Italian Art From Donatello To Michelangelo
111-205 High Renaissance and Mannerist Art: The Age of Michelangelo and Titian
111-208 From Celtic To Gothic: Medieval Art in Northern Europe
111-209 The Art of Europe and Byzantium
111-213 Baroque and Rococo Painting and Sculpture: Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Watteau
111-214 Victorian and Edwardian Art
111-216 Postcolonialism in Australia and the Pacific
111-218 Studies in Asian Art and Architecture
111-221 Materials and Techniques of Art
111-223 Myths and Legends in Australian Art 1840-1950
111-224 Art in the Age of Rembrandt
111-227 Perspectives On Contemporary Aboriginal Art
111-229 Art and the Market, Then and Now
111-231 Venetian Renaissance Painting: Giorgione, Titian and their Contemporaries
111-240 Art and Culture in the Burgundian Netherlands 1380-1480
111-241 Northern Renaissance Art 1480-1600
111-243 Postmodern Prospects: Issues in Contemporary Art and Criticism
111-245 Passion, Power and Perception: French Art in the Nineteenth Century
111-251 Theorising the Body in Australia
111-263 Siena and its Environs: The Sacred and Secular Cityscape 1260 - 1460
111-264 Postmodern Culture: the Visual Arts in Manhattan
111-265 French Avant-Gardes. Post-Impressionists to Surrealists
111-266 Renaissance and Baroque Rome 1450-1750
131-235 Medieval and Renaissance Nuremberg: Art and Civic Culture in an Age of Transition
111-402 Art, Society and Ritual in Trecento Italy
111-407 Late Antique and Byzantine Art
111-411 The Connoisseurship of Italian Landscape Painting and Drawing
111-420 Art and Mass Culture in the 1960s
111-322 Special Study Research Essay
111-430 Orientalism in Visual Culture: A Colonising Gaze
111-433 You Beaut Country: Australian Art and Design in the 1950s
111-435 Piranesi's Rome and Tiepolo's Venice. Art in the Eighteenth Century
111-444 Making Gender: Art, Film and Spectatorship in the West 1850-1995
111-449 The Representation of Architecture

For the following subject to be credited towards a major in Fine Arts, the main project(s) must be approved by the Department of Fine Arts

Fourth Year only

111-400 Art History Honours Thesis
111-401 Art History Honours Thesis (mid-year entry)
111-403 Fine Arts 4A
111-404 Fine Arts 4B
111-410 Studies in the Art of the Victorian Era
111-415 Art and Theory in Paris, Matisse and Picasso
111-416 Beyond Impressionism. Naturalism, Nationalism and Plein-Air Painting 1860-1905
111-417 Australian Art At Home and Abroad
111-418 The History, Philosophy, Architecture and Design of Art Museums
111-419 Theory and Discourse in Art History
111-423 Art and the Book in Medieval Culture: Illuminated Manuscripts
111-424 Contemporary Art (Art in the USA 1970-1990)
111-426 Studies in Prints
111-434 Theories and Methodologies of Medieval, Renaissance & Baroque Art
111-436 Pastoral Narratives in Western Painting
111-437 The Artist's Self-Portrait: Image, Role and Identity
111-438 Women in Italian Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Art
111-445 Albrect Dürer: A Catalyst for Artistic Change in Sixteenth Century Germany
111-466 Postmodern Culture: the Visual Arts in Manhattan (Honours)
111-467 Renaissance and Baroque Rome 1450-1750 (Honours)
111-469 Art and Film Criticism: History, Theory and Practice
111-485 Siena and its Environs: The Sacred and Secular Cityscape 1260-1460 (Hons)
111-486 History, Travel and The Visual Arts

Status:                   Official 1998
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