STUDY PROGRAMME
Painting and Visual Arts

AFAM CODE
ABAV5

DISCIPLINARY AREA
Painting

DISCIPLINARY FIELD
Visual Arts 3

CREDITS
12

APPROACH
Theoretical / Project based

The course in Visual arts 3 consists in a final series of experimental laboratories directed at establishing the design and exhibition methods to be undertaken by the students, who will learn how to present and exhibit their personal work, familiarising with the latest trends and practices within the world of contemporary art. Guest speakers will be welcomed, and public presentations organized during the Visual Arts 3 module as a form of review.

In the Display module, with a view to let students familiarise with artistic production processes, including contemporary exhibition systems, the course will focus on the practices and models employed to create exhibition spaces, analysing typical examples and case studies relating to the history of exhibitions and curatorial methodology from the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day. Divided into thematic units, this course is designed to provide students with the methodological tools to navigate through the history of exhibitions and in debates on curatorial practices, enabling them to create a field of research and experimentation suited to their work. Through lectures and practical workshops, the course programme aims at showing the students how 20th Century art history is full of attempts to modify the relationship between the development of artistic practices and a new experimental concept of exhibitions. This awareness is crucial for the students to be able and contemplate the spatial devices that determine the relationships between works, presentation and visitors. In fact, it is these relations that define the sequence and configuration taken by the works, giving them a role and a specific meaning.

The total credits for this course are 12, divided as follows:

• Visual Arts 3: 8 Cfa

• Display: 4 Cfa

The course helps students structure and increase their technical-expressive as well as visual-communicative skills, providing them with the tools to build, deepen, experiment with and expand their artistic path.

• The Visual Arts 3 module intends to further refine and fine-tune the artistic path already undertaken by each student, focusing on creative, technical, formal and set-up aspects in order to provide the latest stimuli in preparation for the public presentation of their work. Thanks to the exhibition and presentation of their works and artistic portfolio, this module acts as the last laboratory in view of a subsequent academic or professional career.

• The Display module focuses on the term “display”, which in the exhibition context indicates the act of delimiting, defining a space, but also opening it to distribute the objects contained in it to the gaze and body of the observers. In this sense, the display can be considered as an active, responsible, in many cases collective operation, built around human behaviour aimed at perceiving and understanding objects in a given perspective. Decentralized exhibition forms, exhibition actions as artistic practice, as well as the analysis of key terms such as “work”, “exhibition”, “display”, and the concept of “white cube”, are the basis of the lessons cycle that ends with the presentation of the students’ research work.

• 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.

• Agemben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.

• Agemben, What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, Meridian.

• Deleuze, What is philosophy?.

• Brian O’Doerthy, Inside the white cube, chap 2.3.

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.