Postgraduate Course: Post-Modern Painting (HIAR11062)
Course Outline
| School |
School of Arts, Culture and Environment |
College |
College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Course type |
Standard |
Availability |
Not available to visiting students |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) |
SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Credits |
20 |
| Home subject area |
History of Art |
Other subject area |
None |
| Course website |
None |
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| Course description |
The aim of this course is to encourage students to engage with the medium of painting by considering both its historical legacy and its capacity to engage with a contemporary world dominated by new media and technologies. The course will focus on painting produced after the second world war and, in particular, students will be asked to consider why, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, after centuries of artistic dominance, painting was attacked by a number of influential art critics and cultural commentators who claimed that the medium had become an exhausted cultural force. Students will be asked to examine the strengths and weaknesses of such claims and to formulate their own opinions on the status of painting as medium capable of engaging with the complexities of the contemporary world.
In the early 1980s, painting, which had come to represent a diminished presence at the cutting edge of the international art scene, was finally declared dead by a number of art critics. The death of painting however, turned out to be a curious affair. While those who had come to bury the medium attempted, in their critical writings, to dispose of the aesthetic remains, others began to claim that, far from being dead, painting was actually showing vital signs of renewed life.
This course will examine the crisis which brought about painting&©s premature burial and explore the reasons behind its cultural resurrection within the context of an emerging Post-modernism.
Through a critical analysis of texts by writers such as Thomas Lawson, Donald Kuspit, Douglas Crimp and Benjamin Buchloh together with an exploration of painting by a wide range of artists including Guston, Twombly, Schnabel, Salle, Basquiat, Baselitz, Keifer, Polke and Richter, we will scrutinize the claim that painting represented a stagnant bastion of a redundant modernist tradition and consider its capacity to remain a relevant cultural force in a world where new forms of media and new theories of art were becoming increasingly influential. |
Entry Requirements
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites |
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| Prohibited Combinations |
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Other requirements |
None
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| Additional Costs |
None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Delivery period: 2010/11 Semester 2, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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WebCT enabled: No |
Quota: None |
| Location |
Activity |
Description |
Weeks |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
| No Classes have been defined for this Course |
| First Class |
Week 1, Friday, 11:10 - 13:00, Zone: Central. Seminar room 2, Minto House |
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
| By the end of the course students will be able to identify the factors involved in the so called $ùdeath of painting&© and be able to formulate their own opinions on both the nature of this debate and on the capacity of the medium to engage with the complexities of the contemporary world. They will also be able to use textual and visual material to analyse how cultural attitudes and political agendas shaped the responses to an artistic medium long considered to be a crucial vehicle of artistic expression. |
Assessment Information
| 3-4000 word essay |
Special Arrangements
| Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser |
Mr Peter Rimmer
Tel: 0131 651 1460
Email: primmer@staffmail.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary |
Mrs Lucy Hawkins
Tel: (0131 6)51 3212
Email: Lucy.Hawkins@ed.ac.uk |
|
copyright 2010 The University of Edinburgh -
1 September 2010 6:06 am
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