Department:

History & Theory of Architecture and Heritage Conservation

Course Leader:

prof.dr.habil.arh. Celia Ghyka

Teaching language:

Romanian

Learning outcomes:

This course will survey art from the late 18th century to the pre-war avantgardes, organized around key issues that shaped artistic practice and its reception. Necessarily selective, the course will stress the key moments in the history of modern art that have proven to have decisive influences on the production and reception of art. The survey is chronological and thematical, following in parallel a possible survey of the reception and experience of art exhibitions (from the Royal Academies to the 19th-century Salons and finally the white cube of the modern art gallery). The course will proceed chronologically, but the organization, readings, discussions, and assignments will have thematic stakes in order to understand the intersections and divergences among the artistic practices of a time and the respective cultural, political, social context.
Learning objectives:
- understanding the historical and contextual development of visual arts in modernity
- developing a critical and advised sensibility about the language of visuality
- building a basic art history vocabulary and using this vocabulary in conducting a „close looking“ formal and visual analysis of a work
- developing the critical and analytical abilities through museum/gallery visits. Format and structure a response paper after the museum visit
- demonstrate the ability to critically analyze artworks in their appropriate contexts: historical, cultural, social, political etc.

Content:

Topics:
• Introducing modernity. Towards a history of experience
• Methods and approach. Vocabulary and elements of visual analysis
• End of the 18th c, Early and mid-19th century.
Le Grand Tour and Orientalism
Neoclassical
Romanticism (in France, England, Germany)
Realism. Courbet
Manet

Teaching Method:

Lectures and discussions of images and texts. Film screenings. The course will comment key-works that have shaped the current understanding of Western art history. Group and individual visits at museums and art galleries.

Assessment:

Final written exam (90%). Individual assignements during the semester (10%).

Bibliography:

Students are encouraged to purchase Will Gompertz´s book (any edition), and excerpts from Stockstad&Cothren și Foster & Krauss or other readings discussed in class will be provided along the semester. Course synopsis will be provided for each lecture, indicating the works discussed in class. It is the student’s responsibility to find any images discussed in class that are not present in the bibliography.
Mandatory:
Will Gompertz, What are you looking at?150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye, Penguin Books (any edition)
Kleiner, Fred S., Gardner’s Art through the Ages. A Global History, 13th edition, Thomson & Wadsworth, 2009
Stokstad, Marilyn, and Michael Cothren, Art History. Combined volume 4th ed., Pearson, 2011 (excerpts)
Foster, Hal, Rosalind Krauss, Yves-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloch, Art since 1900. Thames & Hudson, 2004 (excerpts)
Extended:
The Illustrated Story of Art, DK Editions, London, 2013
Edwards, Steve, and Paul Wood, Art & Visual Culture. 1850-2010: Modernity to Globalisation, The Open University, Tate Publishing 2012
E.H. Gombrich, The story of art (different editions)
Charlotte Klonk, Spaces of Experience, Yale University Press, 2009