History of Modern Art

The course introduces to the history of European modern and avant-garde movements from the 19th century to the inter-war period, and the relation of modern ‘aesthetics’ to modernization, i.e. the experience of cultural, historical and socio-political changes. Particular emphasis is also placed a) on the shaping of a professional identity, métier and ways of distributing and communicating art alternative to the art education and art institutions established since the 18^th century on the one hand, and b) on the attitude of avant-garde movements towards technological advances and new scientific theories, on the other.

By the end of this course students should be able to:

• understand modernism (/modern style and experimentation with form, techniques and media) as the expression of the changing historical and socio-political conditions, cultural hierarchies and ideological discourses
• give an outline of the characteristics and periodization of modern and avant-garde movements as far as style, subjects, the use of techniques and the experimentation with form and media is concerned
• to be able to recognize and describe styles, movements, techniques, media in artworks used as examples during the course
• explain certain key notions and terms

Week #1: Introduction: Enlightenment as the foundations of modernism: historical and socio-political conditions and cultural context; changes in the production and distribution of art, the emergence of new sujets and styles; the establishment of art institutions; art education, the shaping of criteria for judging art and the Salons (Grand Manner).   

Week #2: a) The Academy and monarchy Classicism & the “promodern” Classicism of French Revolution: the emergence of new subjects from contemporary history and the shift to the public sphere. b) Classicism vs Romanticism

Week #3: a) Romanticism and the first critique to Enlightenment; the value of imagination and the expressive power of the modern subject. b) Realism: Gustave Courbet.

Week #4: Impressionism: ‘realism’ or abstraction? Impressionism and modern life; Neoimpressionism and science.

Week #5: Symbolism, Synthetism, and the art of expression; the issue of Orientalism.

Week #6: Fauvism and German expressionism: primitivism, the ‘decorative’, Expressionist critique to modernization and ‘escapism’. 

Week #7: Analytic and Synthetic Cubism. Cubist collage: art and the real, art and language.

Week #8: Abstraction in Europe and Russian avant-gardes: the rise of a new reality and a new language.

Week #9:  Art at the machine age (Ι). Futurism and Constructivism.

Week #10: Art at the machine age (ΙΙ): Constructivism and Bauhaus: avant-gardes and socio-political intervention. The utopia of Gesamtkunstwerk and its history in the Turn of the (19^th to 20^th) Century.

Week #11: Surrealism.

Week #12: Dada: the main avant-garde strategies of an anti-art.

 Week #13: Inter-war period: ‘return to order’, art and propaganda.

Stangos, Nikos ed. 1994. Concepts of Modern Art: From Fauvism to Postmodernism. Thames & Hudson.

Buchloh, Benjamin, Rosalind Krauss, Hal Foster et al. 2012. Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. Thames & Hudson.

See also, Grove Art and tate.org.uk art glossary along with e-class, for further bibliography, course material and links.

There is used a combination of methods: lecture and discussion method along with group exercises, oral or written (brainstorming), discussed in class. The projection and discussion of audio-visual educational material is also essential.

Enhanced by multimedia content.
The learning process is supported by the asyncrhonous e-learning platform e-class.

Τhe students are evaluated through a written exam which has two parts: A) a description and analysis of a given work of art B) an essay on a given subject. Evaluation methods are described in e-class and orally, at the beginning and the end of semester.