STUDY PROGRAMME
Contemporary Arts Markets

AFAM CODE
ABST47

DISCIPLINARY AREA
Style, history of art and costume

DISCIPLINARY FIELD
History of contemporary art

CREDITS
6

APPROACH
Theoretical

The course provides the students with the opportunity to investigate the artistic languages since the early 1900s and to build up sound cultural, historical and critical references, exploring the links among different cultural movements and contexts. All art has been contemporary, but not all art has been anything close to what Contemporary Art can look like today.

Why is Contemporary Art so shocking? Do they have to be? Have we found the answer to the question of what makes some contemporary artwork Contemporary Art? Benjamin was one of the first theorists to notice the constitutive nature of shock in the art of his days. One might venture, at this point, that the art he talked about is labelled ‘Modern Art’ and, as such, is distinguished from Contemporary Art. Pursuing the relevance of this distinction, however, is unfruitful, since it leads us to the supercilious distinction made in the past decades between Modern and Postmodern art, a distinction best avoided. By approaching the art that deals with the shock of the Modern Age, we will only make the following distinction: before a certain point, the arts registered the shocks of what Charles Baudelaire called ‘modernité’; after a certain point, the artists consciously used shock as the foundation of their aesthetics. The distinction is not yet that between Modern and Contemporary Art, but wherever one decides to insert the break, the distinction comes in handy.

Before the aesthetic adoption of ‘shock’, we can still speak of Beauty as the primary aesthetic quality. A work of art needed, above all, to represent whatever it represented in an aesthetically pleasing way, be that the Beautiful, the Sublime, or the Grotesque.

After the adoption of Shock in the arts, the Shock took the place once occupied by Beauty. Again, there is no clean-cut break. Shock has always been lurking underneath the surface of art, if just to mention Friedrich Nietzsche’s opposition between the Apollonian and Dionysian he read into the arts of Ancient Greece. But the distinction will be of use when discussing what distinguishes Modern Art from Contemporary Art.

The programme consists of one single module, which grants 6 CFA credits.

Successful students will be able to:

• Develop deep understanding of the historic, artistic, cultural, social and economic roots of the history of contemporary art

• Expertly identify the intellectual context that gives Contemporary Art its social significance

• Clearly identify the connections between the contours of aesthetics over time and evolving social concerns

• Competently recognize the importance of the ‘art market’ in the evolution of Contemporary Art

• Genealogy of the Aesthetics of Shock

• The origins of Modernist art in the avant-garde movements, most notably Futurism, dada, and Surrealism

• The raise of the Contemporary Art phenomenon following two alternative narratives: the formalist one, with the prominence of the Abstract Expressionists, and the anti-formalist one, centred on the backwoods of Black Mountain College.

This is a theoretical course. Didactic activities may include:

• Classroom lectures

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

• Active participation to classes through debates and presentations

• Individual study and research

• Field trips

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 during the course. Assessment criteria include commitment, active participation and personal growth of the students over the course.

• Foster, H., Krauss, R., Bois, Y.A., Buchloc, H.D. (2016), Art Since 1900. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, London: Thames & Hudson.

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.