STUDY PROGRAMME
Painting and Visual Arts

AFAM CODE
ABST46

DISCIPLINARY AREA
Aesthetics

DISCIPLINARY FIELD
Aesthetics

CREDITS
6

APPROACH
Theoretical

The course highlights problems and issues of contemporary art and culture. It focuses on philosophical aesthetics and on the identification of artistic research trends. During the course, the students will study the fundamentals of aesthetic knowledge by analysing crucial passages from tradition to modernity, and will investigate the state of research, in years characterized by cognitive mortification.

This course is made of a single module of 6 CFA credits.

The course is an introduction to the main issues of aesthetics and art philosophy, starting with a reflection on the question of modernity. Guided along a historical path, the students will acquire understanding of the philosophical lexicon right from the second half of the 20th Century, and analyse the ideas related to the structuralist and post-structuralist thinking with an overview of the developments and trends of the discipline in the contemporary age.

The course aims at providing a general introduction to the concepts and problems of aesthetics and philosophy of art. The students gradually become acquainted with the main historical moments of reflection on beauty and mimesis, previous (Plato and Aristotle) and subsequent (Kant and Hegel) to the definition of aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline. In addition, the main orientations of contemporary aesthetics are also introduced in its dual significance of theory of perception, and art philosophy. As for the first one, the focus is on issues related to the specificity of the senses, their link with the conceptual dimension, their mutual relations and synesthetic effects. In relation with the second aspect, the students will deal with art philosophy seen in specific artistic fields, from painting to photography, as well as with individual instances where art and philosophy meet. The course also goes in-depth into the lexicon of contemporary aesthetics, through some key figures of structuralism and post-structuralism such as Michel Foucault.

• Theoretical/project based classroom lectures

• Workshops

• Use of tutorials, videos or other media tools for detailed study

• Classroom debates and presentations

• Individual study and research

• Field trips (conferences, meetings, visits to exhibitions as organized by the professor or department)

Assessment is based on the overall competence of the students and may include:

• Oral exam

• Written exam

• Submission of papers, projects or research work

Further details on specific tests can be provided by the professor during the course. Assessment criteria include commitment, active participation and personal growth of the students over the course.

• M. Perniola, 20th Century Aesthetics: Towards A Theory of feeling.

• A. Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, 2014.

• N. Goodman, Languages of Art.

• G. Deleuze, Felix Guattari, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

• G. Deleuze, Francis Bacon.

• A. Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.

• L. Boltanski, The New Spirit of Capitalism.

• D. Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: and the crises of Capitalism.

• M. Taussig, Beauty and the Beast.

• M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

• M. Foucault, Subjectivity and Truth: Lectures at the college de france, 1980-1981.

• G. Deleuze, Foucault.

Further bibliographic recommendations may be provided by the professor during the course. A lot of the referenced material, together with other in-depth study material, can be consulted online in MyNaba, in the Library section.