111-419 Theory and Discourse in Art History

Credit Points

Coordinator

Semester

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Subject Description

This subject examines the theoretical structures which have shaped the writing of art history from the late eighteenth-century to the present. The course proceeds by studying Cartesian and post-Cartesian theories of vision while, at the same time, investigating the development of art history as a discipline through the consideration of influential methodologies including the Hegelian approaches of the historicist school, the development of iconography, theories of perspectival vision and the idea of the centred subject, the impact of Marxism, feminist theory, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and the influence of psycho-analysis, particularly the dialectic of the gaze.

Assessment

Written work which may comprise class papers, essays, visual tests or take-home examinations totalling about 6000 words.

Prescribed Texts

• Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994.
• Rosalind Krauss, The optical unconscious. October Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1994.
• Norma Broude and Mary D Garrard, The Expanding Discourse, Feminism and Art History. Collins, New York, 1992.