107-058 Theories of European Modernism

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually 37.5 points of art history or European studies at second/third year, see Prerequisites and see Prerequisites, or admission to the Postgraduate Diploma or Fourth Year Honours in Art History.

Semester

Subject Description

This subject will comprise close analysis of theories of avant-garde culture that developed 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). Students should become familiar with analyses and critiques of modernism, as they are informed by theories of gender, sexuality, and postcoloniality.