THEME VIII: MODERNISM AND BEYOND

NEW COURSE

Course 7: Dr Rebecca Arnold and Beatrice Behlen

Fashion in London/London in Fashion

£420

N.B. We regret that due to unforeseen circumstances this course had to be cancelled

This season, London Fashion Week celebrated its 25th anniversary.  Its shows were held in the courtyard of Somerset House, its classical façade providing a backdrop for the myriad styles produced by the city’s designers.  But what does London fashion represent?  What do Londoners wear? Where do they read about and buy fashion?  And how has this changed since the early twentieth century? This course will explore the ways designers from Lucile to Mary Quant and Vivienne Westwood to Christopher Kane have shaped the way London fashion is viewed, as it has evolved as a fashion city.  We will examine surviving dress in the Museum of London’s storeroom, to see what people wore, how it was made and what it meant.  We will also consider how fashion connected to its wider social and cultural contexts, and how it connected to art, film, theatre and popular culture.  A wide range of visual, literary and documentary evidence, and visits to relevant museums and archives will be used, and we will walk around areas of the city that are key to London fashion – past and present.  We will explore the ways fashion connects to national and personal identity and how it has shaped the image of London itself.

 

THEME IX: MODERNISM AND BEYOND

Course 8:Dr Richard Cork
Making it New: Modernism in the Early Twentieth Century
£420

THIS COURSE IS NOW FULL. PLEASE DO LET US KNOW IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PLACED ON A WAITING LIST.

With seismic explosiveness, young artists across Europe changed the course of painting and sculpture soon after the new century began. A series of revolutionary movements erupted, beginning with Fauvism in France and Expressionism in Germany. The Italian Futurists were the most clamorous but the Cubists in Paris proved the most far-reaching. Then, in 1914, London was shocked by the advent of Vorticism and its rumbustious magazine BLAST. This course explores the rebellious momentum of an exciting period. However, it terminates in the tragedy of the First World War when many avant-garde artists found themselves caught up in a blood-bath. Visits include the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery’s display of twentieth-century art, Tate Modern, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art and the Imperial War Museum.

THEME V: ART AND SOCIETY IN NORTHERN EUROPE

NEW COURSE
Course 13: Dr Christian Weikop

German Romanticism to Expressionism: From the Nazarenes to the Brücke

£420

 

This course examines the 19th-century artistic quest for the origins of Germanic identity, and the romantic-idealist roots of early Expressionism.  We will use Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s essay ‘On German Architecture’ (1772) as a starting point, and discuss how his interest in the idea of a Gothic German identity reverberated in the visual culture of the long 19th century, from the Nazarenes to the Brücke group.  We will consider the ideals of the German Romantic movement, from early organic theories of art to an ‘aesthetics of inwardness’, which might be what unites the work of artists as diverse as Philip Otto Runge and Franz Marc.  The course will cover a wide range of subject matter: from the forest cult in prints and paintings by artists like Caspar David Friedrich and Ludwig Richter, to the anti-urban ‘back-to-nature’ tradition of representing rural peasants as seen in the art of Wilhelm Leibl and Paula Modersohn-Becker, among others, and the visual expressions of a ‘free body culture’ in the Symbolist canvases of artists like Hugo Höppener. We shall also investigate the enduring Romantic cult of Albrecht Dürer as ‘the’ German master par excellence, and his influence on both 19th- and early 20th-century German artists.  By the end of the week students will have a much better idea of how Expressionism connected with and departed from the ideals of Romanticism.  This course will involve trips to print rooms in London, including those of the British Museum and V&A.


THEME IX: MODERNISM AND BEYOND
Course 17:

Jerzy Kierkuc-Bielinski

From Pollock to Pop: American Art c. 1930–1972

£420

This course provides a focused survey of major artistic developments in the United States in the period when Modernism first began to develop in America to the early 1970s, when Modernist practice began to be questioned. The shift from medium-specific practices (painting, sculpture, printmaking) in the New York School context to medium-resistant practices in the 1960s (photography, site-specific work, Conceptual art) is a central concern of the course. Throughout, we will consider artistic production in relation to larger patterns of historical change. We will also explore the rich critical literature of the period, including artists’ writings, as well as more recent scholarship.

 



THEME VIII: MATERIAL CULTURE, FASHION AND THE ARTS OF DESIGN

NEW COURSE
Course 25: Dr Julian Stair

Ideas, Materials and Practice: 20th-century and contemporary British ceramics

£445

This course will provide an overview of British ceramics from the early 20th century to the present day through a series of lectures, gallery talks, a handling session and visits to contemporary artists’ studios. The course will examine the development of ideas from the Arts and Crafts movement to the pioneering studio potters Bernard Leach and William Staite Murray, to the diversity of current practice and the work of Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry.  The course will also illustrate the importance of materials in the expression of ideas through a one-day session in Julian Stair’s London studio. Here he will discuss basic ceramic techniques and procedures, explain firing techniques and demonstrate how different materials such as earthenware, stoneware and porcelain impact on the production of contemporary ceramics.

 

THEME IX: MODERNISM AND BEYOND

Course 26: Dr Caroline Levitt

Encounters and Collaborations: Artists and Writers in 20th-century Paris

£420

Paris in the first half of the 20th century was a vibrant meeting-place for practically anyone who was anyone in the avant-garde art world. This course will examine not only who was meeting who, but how movements and tendencies clashed and interacted through a variety of different media and with dramatically creative effects. Beginning by tracing the progression from late 19th-century Impressionism to tendencies generally understood to be ‘modern’, we will challenge traditional narratives that differentiate between groupings such as the Cubists, the Dadaists and the Surrealists and will examine the links and interactions between such major groups of artists and writers through the written press, their apartment-studios and their collaborations on both books and films. Visits are to include The Courtauld’s collections of paintings and 20th-century journals, Tate Modern, Erno Goldfinger’s Modernist home at 2 Willow Road (Hampstead) and the National Art Library, where we will have the opportunity to examine some rare artists’ books firsthand.

Whilst this course is entirely freestanding, Caroline Levitt’s Autumn study tour, ‘At home in Paris’, from 17–19 September 2010, will develop a number of the themes approached during the week and will provide the chance to visit the homes and studios of some of the artists to be discussed.

THEME VI: ART IN BRITAIN, THE NETHERLANDS AND ITALY

Course 32: Dr Sara Cochran

Contemporary British Art

£420

In the 2009 Venice Biennial, the German Pavillon was devoted to the work of the British artist Liam Gillick. While this fact speaks to the fact that Gillick has lived in Berlin for a number of years, it also highlights the incredible international presence of contemporary British art on the world scene. This has extended well beyond the phenomenon of the Young British Artists and draws on the great strengths of the British art schools. After a preliminary discussion of the strategic success and undeniable influence of the so-called YBA, this course will focus on the diverse generation of artists working in Britain today and explore the intellectual and professional topology of their context. There will be a particular focus on the work of women artists and their considerable role and influence on the British scene. Visits include museums, galleries, and studios.

 

THEME IX: MODERNISM AND BEYOND

Course 34: Dr Sarah James

Photography and Modernism in the 20th Century

£420

This course will explore the unfolding relationship between art and photography in the 20th century; a relationship which came to define the modern epoch. We shall examine the ways in which photography intersected with painting at the turn of the century, and its role in shaping the most significant artistic movements of the European avant-garde from Futurism, Constructivism and Dada to Surrealism and New Objectivity. The course will also consider the work of those great European and American modernist photographers – including August Sander, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier Bresson, Edward Weston and Tina Modotti – whose explorations of the medium defined its use in the 20th century. We shall look at the most significant photographic theory and practice that came to define modernism. The course will further examine the status of photography in this period, as both art and document. The changing relationship between photography and the modern museum will also be investigated. In addition, we shall consider those photographers often left out of the modernist canon, great women photographers of 20th century, reportage and street photography, photo journalism, and the photography that emerged during the Cold War in the countries of the Eastern Bloc.