107-058 Theories of European Modernism

Availability

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 37.5 points of Art History at second/third year, see Prerequisites

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject will comprise close analysis of theories of avant-garde culture developing in Europe between 1885 and 1935. The focus will be determined by a number of issues, which may include: institutional structures (museums, dealers, artists' groups); nationalism (regional cultural and ideological factors); criticism and aesthetic theory; social developments (the rise of mass culture, new technologies); politics (anarchism, feminism, communism, fascism); discourse (epistemologies of modernism, identity, culture). Material will include revisionist analyses and critiques of modernism, informed by theories of gender, sexuality, and postcoloniality.

Assessment

A classpaper of 2000 words and an essay of 2000 words for 3rd-year. A classpaper of 2000 words and an essay of 3000 words for 4th-year.

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.
• C Harrison & P Wood, Art in Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. 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.