107-038 Modernist Avant-Gardes

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 12.5 points of first year art history, 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. Students should become familiar with issues such as: 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

A class paper, an essay and a take-home examination totalling 3000 words, and a 1 hour visual test.

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.