107-038 Modernist Avant-Gardes

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 12.5 points of Art History at first year, see Prerequisites

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject examines responses to modernity in avant-garde art, culture and theory during the high Modernist period 1900-1950. A variety of geographical locations (which may include Europe, Asia, North America and Australia) and stylistic categories (Futurism, Expressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Suprematism) will be considered. The social, historical and theoretical context in which diverse modernist aesthetics were formed will be studied using historical sources and contemporary theory. Issues considered may include: the rise of abstraction, the relationship of art and politics, the impact of urbanism on art, utopian models of art, nationalism and the arts, colonialism, gender and sexuality.

Assessment

Written work which may comprise classpapers, essays, visual tests, or take-home examinations totalling 4000 words.

Prescribed Texts

• B Fer et al, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art between the Wars. Yale University Press 1993.
• C Harrison et al, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction: The Early Twentieth Century. Yale University Press 1993.
• C Harrison and P Wood, Art in theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Oxford & Blackwell 1993.
• S Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918. Harvard University Press 1983.
• R Wohl, The Generation of 1914. Harvard University Press 1979.