19 – After Impressionism: Routes into Early Modernism
On campus
Course 19 – Summer School on campus
Monday 7 – Friday 11 July 2025
MaryAnne Stevens
£645
Course description
The course covers the period 1880 – 1914, a period in which both meaning and process in European art were profoundly interrogated, and new visual languages were brought into being: Post-Impressionism, German Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Abstraction, among others.
Our course opens with a consideration of the varied definitions of ‘modern art’ (including ‘modernism’) and an examination of the centrality of Paris for artistic training and the establishment of professional careers. While not disregarding the Impressionists after Impressionism nor the technical experimentation of painterly naturalism, we shall focus largely on the men and women working in various artistic media within the risk-taking and innovative ‘avant-garde’, headed, in the first generation, by the influential figures of Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
We shall then turn our attention to Gauguin’s ‘disciples’, the Nabis, including Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard and sculptors like Aristide Maillol and Camille Claudel, before moving on to the ‘Fauves’ and the origins of Cubism. The cultural and artistic energy of Paris on the one hand became aligned with other European cities so that careful consideration will be given to the protagonists, contexts and themes of modern art in Brussels, Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna and Moscow, while on the other hand the absence of innovative art in London, and the lack of a powerful avant-garde artistic centre in the Nordic countries will also be addressed.
How to book
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If you have any questions please email us at short.courses@courtauld.ac.uk
Lecturer's biography
MaryAnne Stevens specializes in eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century art, with particular reference to British, French and Nordic art in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She worked at the Royal Academy of Arts, where, as Director of Academic Affairs, she established the Learning Department and the Architecture Programme, professionalized the Collections, Library and Archive, and served as Acting Secretary. She left the Royal Academy in January 2013 to pursue a career as an independent art historian, curator, lecturer and consultant. She has curated many major international loan exhibitions the most recent being Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway (Clark Art Institute MA, Bergen and Stockholm, 2021-22) and After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art (National Gallery London, 2023).