The Presence of Art: Reinterpreting Modern and Contemporary Art

Academic year 2011-12

Date last modified

23-4-2012 1:29

Period

Period 2

Startdate:

31-Oct-11

Enddate:

23-Dec-11

Code

HUM2013

ECTS credits

5.0

Organisational unit

University College Maastricht

Coordinator

C. Rausch

Description

Since the late nineteenth and certainly through the mid-twentieth century artists have issued avant-garde manifestoes of change, claiming their art to be ahead of their times. Critical of conventions and traditions, they regarded art as a revolutionary means to social, political, cultural, and intellectual emancipation and progress. Through what Robert Hughes has dubbed the “shock of the new,” by making tabula rasa with the existing, art was to create a better world. Were it not for the fact that artistic modernisms so well served the ideologies of both the socialist and fascist totalitarianisms of the last century, such radical ambitions might even sound a bit naïve, nowadays. Indeed, as yesterday’s future has become today’s past, the utopias of a bygone era seem to have been disappointed, at last - or have they not? Do we need to rescue avant-garde virtues and ideals for the sake of the relevancy of contemporary art? What precisely is legacy of the modernist avant-garde besides its success on the international art market? In dealing with such questions, this course considers histories and theories of modern and contemporary art. It provides an overview of the development of modern and contemporary art, sketching in particular its heterogeneous and experimental nature. Thereby, the course enables meaningful and critical debate on the presence and the future of art. Using as handbooks Peter Gay’s history of Modernism, as well as Sarah Thornton’s biting sociological account of the contemporary art world, artistic responses to and the position of art in relation to modern society, politics, science, and technology are discussed. Gay’s and Thornton’s texts are supported by an extensive reader of influential writings on modern and contemporary art. These texts include selections of theoretical pieces by Walter Benjamin, John Cage, Joseph Kosuth and others, as well as writings by artists and theorists on Modernism, Postmodernism, the 'classical' avant-gardes of Futurism, Dada and Surrealism, the avant-gardes of the sixties, such as Fluxus, Happening and Pop Art, on Conceptual Art, and on some of the latest developments in the art world: the globalization of contemporary art, performance art, etc. The course features visits to the Van Abbe Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in Eindhoven and to the Bonnefanten museum in Maastricht, as well as a guest lecture and discussion with an artist in residence at the Jan van Eyck Academy.

Goals

• To study historical and theoretical approaches to modern and contemporary art. • To enable critical reflection and debate on the meaning and relevance of artistic practices. • To learn how to write an art review.

Instruction language

Prerequisites

Recommended literature

• Peter Gay, Modernism: The Lure of Heresy. Vintage Books, London, 2009. • Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World. Granta, London, 2008.

Teaching methods

PBL
PRESENTATION(S)
LECTURE(S)
ASSIGNMENT(S)
PAPER(S)

Assessment methods

FINAL PAPER
ATTENDANCE
PARTICIPATION
WRITTEN EXAM
ORAL EXAM
TAKE HOME EXAM

Key words