STUDY PROGRAMME
Painting and Visual Arts

AFAM CODE
ABST47

DISCIPLINARY AREA
Style, history of art and costume

DISCIPLINARY FIELD
History of contemporary art

CREDITS
6

APPROACH
Theoretical

The course aims at providing students with the necessary analytical tools for the articulation of a dynamic and critical vision of images within the contemporary society. It is structured as an interdisciplinary investigation of the artistic production of the 20th Century (visual arts, cinema, TV, and new technologies) with a methodological framework of reference that privileges a historical/anthropological approach and the analysis of several documents (images and documentaries). Through the study of artists and movements, styles and cultural trends, the course illustrates the shift from modernity to contemporaneity.

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

The aim of the course is to define a cartography of the fundamental moments of artistic-semiotic production in the years between 1948 and 1989, analysed within the unifying framework of the Cold War.

The course places the parallel worlds of East and West on the same level by comparing imagery, ideologies, and ways of doing and saying art to allow the students to read history in a non-separate way.

• 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.

• Art Since 1900, Foster Hal; Krauss Rosalind; Bois Yve-Alain; Buchloh Benjamin.

• Ways of Seeing, John Beger.

• Walter Benjamin, The work of art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction.

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.