Week 1: 12-16 July 2010

Course 8: Dr Richard Cork

Making it New: Modernism in the Early 20th 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 20th-century art, Tate Modern, the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art and the Imperial War Museum.

 



Week 2: 19-23 July 2010

Course 17: Dr 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.


 

Week 3: 26-30 July 2010

Course 26: Dr Caroline Levitt

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.


Week 4: 2-6 August 2010

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.