ARTHIST 725 A & B

Concepts in Contemporary Art


Please note: this is archived course information from 2017 for ARTHIST 725.

Description

This is a double-semester course that equips students with the most important theories and approaches that engage with art now and are indispensible for understanding it. It provides students with the confidence to combine a set of tools and theories and personalise these in order to critically analyse works of art, and to be creative in doing so. The course is social and interactive, relaxed and informal; students are encouraged to be exploratory and to discuss responses to art.

This course is important for introducing students to theories and approaches that are important for art writing and criticism, research, curatorial studies and for the interpretation of contemporary artworks, exhibitions, biennials and art fairs. By the end of the course students will be familiar with the latest debates, controversies and approaches to understanding key concepts in art history and criticism including:

  • The Body and phenomenology
  • Psychology and perception
  • Materialism
  • Sexuality
  • Sensation
  • Subjectivity
  • Critiques of Neoliberalism
  • Art and Activism
  • Space and Time
  • Immersion
  • Creativity and problem-making
  • The Everyday
  • Objecthood
  • Relational Aesthetics
  • Digital Art and the moving image
  • The Archive
  • Ecology
  • Death

Key theorists and philosophers: Freud, Bataille, Bakhtin, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Barthes, Lacan, Butler, Krauss, Ehrenzweig, Fried, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Jane Bennett. 

Artists: Smithson, Morris, Haacke, Mendieta, Orlan, Stelarc, Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Hatoum, Whiteread, Emin, Serrano, Hirst, Sherman, Opie, Wall, Struth, Mutu, Eliasson, Reihana, Dane Mitchell, Simon Denny, Luke Willis Thompson, Francis Uprichard, Billy Apple and many more.

These are some of the questions we will be asking on this course:

  • How do artworks encourage the exploration of various kinds of phenomenology?
  • How do artworks challenge traditional masculinity?
  • Does conceptual art or contemporary art challenge or reconfirm traditional categories of body and mind?
  • How does the abject function in art?
  • How does the subject of the memorial art challenge our assumptions about creativity and death?
  • How do immersive kinds of art question the dualism of transcendence and immanence?
  • How do immersive kinds of art question the dualism of body and mind?
  • How do artworks help to show how objects are constituted by subjects and how subjects are constituted by objects?
  • How can the artwork be said to “stare back”?
  • What strategies do artists adopt to make us aware of the everyday?
  • How do artworks challenge what it means to be political?
  • How do artworks cross the art-science divide?

Learning Outcomes:

Students will learn to apply a number of important critical theories to their understanding of art, and importantly, to explore or to constrain these theories through visual experience.

Students will learn how to adapt key philosophical and art theoretical texts to their essay writing, discussion and presentation.

To complete this course students must enrol in ARTHIST 725 A and B, or ARTHIST 725.

View the course syllabus

Availability 2017

Semester 1 and 2 (full year)

Lecturer(s)

Coordinator(s) Professor Gregory Minissale

Recommended Reading

Claire Bishop, Participation, London : Whitechapel ; Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2006.

Amelia Groom, Time. London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2013.

Antony Hudek, The Object. London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2014.

Stephen Johnson, The Everyday. London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2008.

Clare Doherty, Situation. London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2009.

Petra Lange-Berndt, Materiality. London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2016.

Charles Merewether, The Archive. London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, 2007.

Gregory Minissale, The Psychology of Contemporary Art. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Assessment

There are no exams.

In Semester 1, students have one short 2,500-word catalogue for an exhibition that they write on an artist or artists of their choice, relating this to themes discussed in the course.

Towards the end of Semester 2, students receive in-depth training to compose one 5,000-word essay, which involves primary research and gallery visits.

Students end with a presentation of a 2,500 word text.

Points

ARTHIST 725A: 15 points

ARTHIST 725B: 15 points

Restrictions

ARTHIST 724, 729