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This module concentrates on the main themes and debates surrounding modern and contemporary art.

It introduces key skills in visual analysis, the contested nature of meaning in art, the tensions between fine art and popular culture, and the changing status of the artist.

The core theme is that it is not possible to understand why contemporary art takes the form it does without an appreciation of the themes and debates of earlier 20th Century art.

1. Introduction to Contemporary Art Theory programme
2. How to view an artwork: Description
3. How to view an artwork: Interpretation
4. How to view an artwork: Evaluation
5. What is Contemporary Art Theory?
6. Art, knowledge and debate
7. New art history, high art and popular culture
8. Introduction to semiotics
9. Analysing advertisements
10. Understanding photography
11. Classical aesthetics: Plato and Aristotle
12. Renaissance artists and patronage
13. From the Academy to the revolution
14. Kant's aesthetics
15. Modernism and the avant-garde
16. Modernism and cinema
17. Varieties of modernism: Marx, Nietzsche and Freud
18. Postmodernism and the rise of identity politics
19. Gender and art: 'Why have there been no great women artists?'
20. Gender and art 2: Gender, Art and Psychoanalysis
21. Critiques of postmodernism: Robert Hughes and Donald Kuspit
22. Conceptualism
23. Contemporary Photography

On completion of this module the learner will/should be able to
1. Understand the key themes and debates defining modern and contemporary art.
2. Acquire critical skills in describing, interpreting and evaluating visual artefacts.
3. Attain an understanding of the tensions between fine art and popular culture.
4. Acquire an understanding of the changing status of the artist from the early Renaissance to the present.
5. Acquire a basic understanding of the history of aesthetic ideas.
6. Use core skills in critical analysis and thought through an understanding of the essay format.
7. Develop further knowledge based research skills to enable independent enquiry in making and viewing art.
8. Situate their own knowledge, practice and understanding within the wider cultural and historical framework.

Duration: 3 hrs
Time: 6.30-9.30pm/Tuesdays – Semester II
Start date: Tuesday, 16th January, 2018
 

€270