Contemporary Art (20024)
Degree/study:Degree in HumanitiesYear: 3rd
Term: 2nd
Number of ECTS credits: 5 credits
Hours of studi dedication: 125 hours
Teaching language or languages: spanish (group 1 and 3), catalan (group 2)
Teaching Staff:Marta Antón, group 1, María de los Santos García Felguera, group 2, and Alex Mitrani, group 3
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
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General competences |
Specific competences |
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•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.
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3. Contents
Syllabus
1. Road to the vanguard: options of the end of the century. Post-Impressionism and Symbolism.
2. The freedom of the artist and the work:
1905. "Donatello among the wild beasts": the Fauvists.
Matisse, the painter of luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
1905. Without rules or skills. Die Brücke, Kirchner and German Expressionism between Dresden and Berlin.
Der Blaue Reiter. Kandinsky, from Murnau to Munich. Klee.
3. A new pictorial language: Cubism.
1907. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Picasso and Braque in Paris.
Analytical Cubism and Synthetic Cubism.
1912. The collage. Sculpture and new materials.
The role of Juan Gris.
The international diffusion of the Cubist movement: Apollinaire, Gleizes, Metzingen, Léger, Sonia and Robert Delaunay.
4. The cult of the modern: futurism.
1909. Marinetti, the Futurist manifests and evenings. The music sounds.
The footprint of the cubist language: Carr, Balla, Severini, Russolo.
Concern for the dynamics: the movement picture, the Bragaglia brothers and Boccioni's sculpture.
The spread of Cubism and Futurism.
5. Change the art to change the world:
The Russian vanguard. From the beginning of the century to the thirties. Supremacist, Constructivist and intermediate options: Malevich, Tatlin, Rodchenko and Stepanova, Pevsner brothers.
The spread of revolutionary ideas in the Netherlands and Germany.
The magazine De Stijl and the step "towards a plastic architecture." Mondrian and abstraction.
A building school, the Bauhaus: new daily objects and new architecture.
The migration of artists and diffusion in the United States.
6. Against art. The Dadaist revolution.
1916. Zurich and the Cabaret Voltaire of Hugo Ball.
Germany and the political commitment: the dada fairs, the photomontage, Merz.
New York and Paris. Duchamp, Man Ray and ready-made.
Picabia, 391, Cravan, the Delaunay and modern Barcelona.
Photography without a camera: rayogrames and schadografies.
The return to order and the New Objectivity.
7. The surrealism.
1924. The unconsciousness and automatic. Breton and the First Surrealist Manifest.
The paths of Surrealism: Joan Miró, "discover the world."
Dalí and the colourful painted dreams.
Surrealist objects.
The 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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