Contemporary Art  (20024)

Degree/study: Degree in Humanities
Year: 3rd
Term: 2nd 
Number of ECTS credits: 5 credits
Hours of studi dedication:
Teaching language or languages: Spanish
Teaching Staff: María de los Santos García Felguera / Marta Anton / Alex Mitrani

1. Presentation of the subject

This subject is presented as an introduction to art during the first half of the 20th Century, from the main movements developed between the late years of the 19th Century - which is generically known as Post-Impressionism and "Fin de siècle" - to the previous years of the Second World War; i.e. "Early Avant-gardes" or "Historical Avant-gardes", paying attention to the main artistic movements: Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Russian Avant-garde and Constructivism, Neo-Plasticism, Bauhaus, Dada in Europe and the United States and Surrealism. 

The subject is supposed to offer students an overview which will allow them to acquire the basic knowledge needed to understand the period and deal with resources of the works of art, offering both the possibility to develop an ability for analysis which will help in understanding these works of art and the possibility to have an open mind which is necessary to approach other artistic manifestations from other areas and periods.

2. Competences to be attained

General competences

Specific competences

•1.      Ability to analyse a work of art, with no previous precise knowledge required like author, year, title, artistic movement... •2.      Ability to link plastic arts to other artistic, historical, philosophical and scientific manifestations. •3.      Ability to look at artistic manifestations with no prejudices. •4.      Ability to handle different sources: manifestos and declarations from artists, letters and memoirs, novels...

•1.       Ability to develop a critical sense and a personal opinion with no clichés. •2.       Ability to handle press releases and audiovisual resources. •3.       Ability to develop professional applications like conservation, disclosure and commission. •4.       Ability to start research projects in contemporary art history.

3. Contents

Syllabus

1. Towards the Avant-garde I: options by the end of the century. Symbolism.

The legacy of the 19th Century and the crisis. Against the Grain: aesthetes and decadents.

The total work of art: Modernism. Paris, Brussels, Barcelona.

Pictorial photography, between Symbolism and Impressionism. 

2. Walking towards the Avant-garde II: options by the end of the century. Post-Impressionism.

Cézanne and the permanent investigation.

Van Gogh and emotion. Gauguin the savage. The myth of the artist.

Gauguin's lesson: the nabis.

Seurat, Signac and colour science: Neo-Impressionism.

Munch y Strindberg.             

3. The freedom of the artist and the work of art:

1905. "Donatello among the wild beasts": the fauves.

Matisse, the painter of luxury, calm and pleasure.

1905. No rules, no skill. Die Brücke, Kirchner and the German Expressionism, between Dresden and Berlin.

Der Blaue Reiter. Kandinsky, from Murnau to Munich. Klee. 

4. A new pictorial language: Cubism.

1907. The Young Ladies of Avignon. Picasso and Braque in Paris.

Analytic Cubism and Synthetic Cubism.

1912. Collage. Sculpture and new materials.

Juan Gris' role.

The international spread of the Cubist movement: Apollinaire, Gleizes, Metzinger, Léger, Sonia and Robert Delaunay. 

5. Adoring the Modernity: Futurism.

1909. Marinetti, manifestos and futurist evenings. Noise music.

The mark of Cubist language: Carrá, Balla, Severini, Russolo.

Inquiring about dynamism: photography of movement, the Bragaglia Brothers and Boccioni's sculpture.

The spread of Cubism and Futurism. 

6. Change art to change the world:

The Russian Avant-garde. From the beginning of the century to the thirties. Supremacist, Constructivist and intermediate options: Malevich; Tatlin, Rodchenko and Stepanova; the Pevsner Brothers.

The spread of revolutionary ideas in the Netherlands and Germany.

De Stijl magazine and a step forward "towards a plastic architecture". Mondrian and abstraction.

Bauhaus, a building school: new everyday items and new architecture.

The migration of artists and the spread in the United States. 

7. Against art. Dada revolution.

1916. Zurich and Hugo Ball's Cabaret Voltaire.

Germany and the political commitment: Dada Fairs, photomontage, merz.

New York and Paris. Duchamp, Man Ray and the ready-made.

Picabia, 391, Cravan, the Delaunay and the modern Barcelona.

Photography without a camera: Rayograms and Shadographies.

Returns to order and the New Objectivity. 

8.  Surrealism.

1924. The unconscious and the automatism. Breton and the First Surrealist Manifesto.

Surrealist ways:

Joan Miró, "discovering the world".

Dalí and its colourfully painted dreams.

Surrealist items.

Surrealism between the Old and the New World. From Europe to America. 

  

*The full version with the sections 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.

4. Assessment

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5. Bibliography and teaching resources

5.1. Basic bibliography

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5.2. Complementary bibliography

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5.3. Teaching resources

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6. Metodology

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7. Planning of activities

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