Description

This module aims to introduce students to the key themes and debates that have developed around the idea of the ‘avant-garde’ in the 20th century. Specific artists and movements as well as artworks and texts may provide case studies for this module.

Topics covered might include abstraction, modernism, gender, materiality, the city and subjectivity. How artists and writers sought to establish new visual models and vocabularies in the 20th century are the main themes underlying the module.

Objectives

By the end of the module, students should have acquired:

• a detailed knowledge of a number of key avant-garde strategies, artists and artworks
• the ability to read carefully, and critically, a number of key texts by artists, art historians and theorists relating to the ‘avant-garde’
• the ability to express, and articulate the key arguments and debates studied over the course of the module

Preliminary Reading

• Art of the Avant-Gardes, Edwards et al (Yale UP, 2005)
• A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945, ed. Amelia Jones (Blackwell, 2005)
• Modernism and Modernity: French Painting in the 19^th Century, Frascina, et al. (Yale UP, 1993)
• Realism, rationalism, surrealism: art between the wars, Batchelor, Fer, et al, (Yale UP, 1993)
• Art since 1900: Modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism, Bois, Buchloh, Foster, Krauss, (Thames and Hudson, 2005)