Foundations of History and Theory

2013-2014 Academic Year

Foundations of History and Art Theory (20004)

Degree/study: Degree in Humanities
Year: 1^st
Term: 1^st
Number of ECTS credits: 4
Hours of student dedication: 100
Teaching language or languages: Catalan
Teaching Staff: Eduard Cairol / Pol Capdevila

1. Presentation of the subject

The subject FUNDAMENTALS OF ART HISTORY AND THEORY seeks to accomplish the double goal announced in its title: to provide students with some basic notions about Art History and Art Theory, with the prospect of a subsequent training in both disciplines.

All of this is obtained through a very specific strategy: on the one hand, taking as a starting point the current situation of artistic creation and its historical knowledge (characterised as critique or even terminal), the reconstruction of the main breaking-offs with tradition that have lead to the present situation in fields such as the connection between Art and Nature, the problems of artistic creation (laying a special stress on the impact of technology), and the characteristics of experience or aesthetic reception (emphasizing the matter of artistic consumption); and, on the other hand, the exploration, in a tentative and incidental way, of the nature and implication of pictorial images, photographic images, and cinematographic images, respectively.

In addition, and through a rather autonomous treatment, this course also seeks to approach the mutation in the area of aesthetic categories, from the pre-eminence of beauty to such up-to-date phenomena as kitsch or camp.

This will be approached through a double mediation as well: the career of a very selective series of artists who have represented such breaking-offs, and the help of an even smaller group of philosophers and art theorists which have contributed with its reflections to the understanding of the implications and the nature of these breaking-offs.

Finally, the devices developed throughout this course make it possible to reconstruct a concise History of Art (at least, that of the 20^th century) and an equally brief History of Aesthetic Ideas, thus accomplishing the goals set in the title and description of the subject. In addition, there will be a specific training to teach students to understand and enjoy 20^th century art.

Furthermore, this course would like to have a fundamentally self-managing character, to be determined in its final precision by the particular interests of each student, who should almost turn it into a made-to-measure tool, into a kind of personal research project of artistic reality.

2. Competences to be attained

General competences

Specific competences

Instrumental skills

1. Comprehension and analytical interpretation of texts with a fundamentally conceptual nature.

2. Development of consistent arguments, with the prospect of defending and justifying both one's own and others' positions. Eloquent and persuasive formulation and presentation of one's own positions and lines of reasoning.

3. Ability to integrate to one's own lines of reasoning and expositions materials and ingredients with diverse characters and origins. All in all, ability to explore and to get one's bearings in the transversal character of knowledge.

Interpersonal skills

4. Debate and confrontation of positions in a constructive, non-dogmatic context of research of a provisional truth. Acquisition, thus, of the habit of respecting others' opinions and points of view differing from one's own, as long as they are satisfactorily justified.

5. Collaborating, negotiating and reaching a consensus with the classmates, to elaborate a common line of reasoning.

Systemic skills

6. Learning to distance one-self from, and to have an analytical reserve towards, clichés or received ideas, and to be able to recognise its traditional affiliation and its historical character.

7. Developing a taste and an interest to grasp and to unravel the beat of current affairs and its final working mechanisms.

1. To determine and to understand the line of reasoning of texts dealing with artistic or aesthetic matters, thus developing an awareness of the specific rationality implied in judgment and in aesthetic discourse.

2. To place, historically, within an evolutionary course, some notions basic to art thinking, as well as its concrete inflections, to develop an awareness of the historicity of art and, consequently, to acquire the habit to value its works according to its implicit presuppositions.

3. To observe works of art as tools where the aspirations and the will of a certain period converge.

4. In short, to acquire the ability to manage and integrate in the comprehension and analysis of works of art evidence, materials and ingredients of a diverse nature and origin, as elements which contribute to define its meaning horizons, putting transversality at the disposal of the knowledge of works of art.

5. To see works of art as radiating centres with the ability to transcend its historical determination. In short, to acknowledge the intemporality of art and, consequently, to acquire de ability to understand and even to empathise with the current artistic situation, and especially with contemporary art.

6. To develop the habit and the skills needed to give a rational reasoning in the matters of artistic preference, to elaborate, organise and communicate one's answers about a work of art in the form of aesthetic judgments, and, in a further degree of articulation, in the form or artistic reviews.

3. Contents

Contents block 1: ART AND NATURE (Painting)

· Unit 1: Mimetic Theories of Art.

· Unit 2: Expressive Theories.

· Unit 3: The Dehumanisation of Art.

Contents block 2: ARTISTIC CREATION (Photography)

· Unit 1: Traditional Doctrine of Art.

· Unit 2: Theories of the Genius.

· Unit 3: Technical reproducibility.

Contents block 3: THE AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE (Cinema)

· Unit 1: The norm of taste.

· Unit 2: The aesthetic judgment.

· Unit 3: The loss of aura.

Seminars in small groups: THE AESTHETIC CATEGORIES

· Unit 1: Classic & Modern

· Unit 2: Beauty & Sublimity

· Unit 3: Aesthetic & Anaesthetic

· Unit 4: Kitsch & Camp

*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.