Introductory description

This module intends to provide students with an overview of the multiple ways in which the disruptions of modernity have been interpreted and have developed in artistic practices across the world, from the early twentieth century to the present. The module will focus on artworks and artistic movements that developed alongside or against important historical events. Through themes such as primitivism and the Pacific, modernism and the cold war, the globalisation of the art world, and the role of participation and political protest in contemporary art, we will explore the place of geopolitics and cultural histories within pivotal artistic movements of modern and contemporary art.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Modernism in Europe: A breaking of boundaries
Imagining oneself and others: Primitivism and the Pacific
Imagining oneself and others: Orientalism and the Maghreb
Modernism and the Cold War
Art and Conflict: From Weimar to Vietnam
Art and Globalisation: Migration and indigenous culture
Art and Globalisation: Contemporary Practices in Africa and Latin America
Participation: Art and community

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate familiarity with the global variety of modern art practices since the early twentieth century.
• Understand the place of art and culture in the geopolitics of the globe from the early twentieth century to the present.
• Show an understanding of cultural theories of modernism, Primitivism, postcolonialism, globalisation and participation
• Understand the historical relationships between art and conflict
• Present and argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• Ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• Familiarity with essential ICT skills
• Ability to collaborate effectively with others
• Show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• Ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• Ability to formulate a sustained argument
• Think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• Employ sophisticated conceptual and visual analysis
• Demonstrate bibliographical skills at an appropriate level
• Produce critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context

Indicative reading list

Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso,
2012).
James Clifford, ‘Histories of the Tribal and the Modern,’ in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).
Douglas Crimp, ‘AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism,’ October 43 (1987..
Ima Ebong, ‘Negritude: Between Mask and Flag – Senegalese Cultural Ideology and the Ecole de
Dakar,’ in Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace (London: Iniva, 1999).
Elena Filipovic, ‘The Global White Cube,’ [2005] in The Biennial Reader (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2010).
Clement Greenberg, Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).
Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
Dorothy Price, ‘A ‘Prosthetic Economy’: Representing the ‘Kriegskrüppel’ in the Weimar Republic,’
Art History 42:4 (2019).
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2004).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

• Demonstrate familiarity with the global variety of modern art practices since the early twentieth century;
• Understand the place of art and culture in the geopolitics of the globe from the early twentieth century to the present.
• Show an understanding of cultural theories of modernism, Primitivism, postcolonialism, globalisation and participation
• Understand the historical relationship between art and conflict
• Employ sophisticated conceptual and visual analysis
• Produce critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context

Transferable skills

• present and argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• familiarity with essential ICT skills
• ability to collaborate effectively with others
• show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• ability to formulate a sustained argument
• think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• demonstrate bibliographical skills at an appropriate level