ARHT1002

THE MODERN: ART & FILM

Semester Two 2011 Co-ordinator: Dr Catriona Moore

Course Description
ARHT1002 - Modern Times investigates art and film in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a major focus on Europe and North America. The course is made up of three related sections. We will firstly examine ideas about urban growth, technological developments, the modern body, and utopian hopes for social improvement through the arts in the early decades of the twentieth century, to ascertain how specific historical events war, revolution, fascism - affected both avant-garde and popular culture. Historical analysis will be combined with an introduction of various approaches taken and methodologies used in the interpretation of art and film. The second component of the unit examines art and film after world war two, with the acceleration of late modernist styles marking a crisis in the very idea of a singular, modernist program. After the war, what happened to the underlying, avant-garde idea of artistic revolt prompting a revolution in every-day life? The unit concludes with an introduction to contemporary art, film and digital media. Gender and sexual difference, cultural identity, globalism and a sense of environmental crisis have been important sources for art practice and filmmaking since the 1960s. We examine these and related challenges facing artists and filmmakers in todays globalised culture. STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this unit of study, you will be familiar with the major trends in modern western art and film, and will be able to identify works of art as belonging to various schools or isms. You will also gain an understanding of the dynamic relations between art and film with the politics and social attitudes of the period. Through the lecture and tutorial programme you will develop the analytical tools and conceptual grammar needed to discuss modern and contemporary art and film.

Lecture and Tutorial Programme

Lectures and tutorials are compulsory. Weekly lectures are held in the eastern Avenue Auditorium every Monday between 4 and 6pm. You are allotted a weekly, one-hour tutorial from the timetabling unit. You are expected to have attended the lecture and read each weeks tutorial readings before each tutorial. Note that your tutorial readings largely contain original documents from the periods under review. These primary sources may be statements by artists, filmmakers and critics; poems; ideas for artworks; or artistic manifestos. Therefore treat these tutorial readings as you would visual and film texts. That is, step back a little from these primary sources and read critically for the writers political, artistic and historical bias. Understand what were the ideas and issues, attend to the language or rhetoric used, and also try to understand what was at stake. Week 1 - Monday 25th July Introduction to the Unit; understanding key terms. No tutorials this week Week 2 Monday 1st August Lectures: Cubism and Futurism (RB & CM) Tutorial Reading: F. T. Marinetti, The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism (1908) in H.B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, Uni of California Press, 1968, pp.294 Week 3 Monday 8th August

Lecture: Early cinema: slapstick comedy, Charlie Chaplin (LJ)

Tutorial Reading: Ben Singer, 'Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism', Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, L.Charney and V.R.Schwartz (eds), University of California Press, Berkeley/London, 1995, pp.72-99 Week 4 Monday 15th August Into Production! The Russian Avant-garde (CM) Film: excerpts from Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin, 1925; Dziga Vertov, The Man with a Movie Camera, 1929 Tutorial Reading: (nb many readings this week, but they are all short): Manifesto Whom is Lef Alerting? (Vol 1, pp.10-11); Osip Brik, Into Production! Lef (1923); Dziga Vertov, Film Directors, A Revolution, Lef Vol 3, pp.135-143; Lef Manifesto (1923). The Lef material is sourced from Screen Reader 1: Cinema/Ideology/Politics, BFI, London, 1977). Sergei Eisenstein, The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram, In Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, (ed and translated by Jay Leyda), Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, London, 1977, pp.28-44

Week 5 Monday 22nd August Expressionism: art and film Film: Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1926) Tutorial Reading: 1. J.P.Telotte, German Expressionism: A cinematic/cultural problem, in L.Bradley, Barton Palmer, and Steven Jay Schneider (eds), Traditions in World Cinema, Rutgers, N.J., 2006, pp.15-28 Week 6 Monday 29th August Dada, the New Objectivity, Bauhaus; Surrealism (CM) Film: Salvatore Dali/Luis Buel: Le Chien Andalou (1929) Tutorial: Sign up for a tutorial visit to the Art Gallery of NSW special exhibition: The mad square: modernity in German art 191037 (no set reading) Week 7 Monday 5th September Realism and Neorealism in the cinema (BI) 1. Andre Bazin, Bicycle Thief, trabsl Hugh Gray, from What is Cinema, Vol 2. Berkeley; UC Press, 1971 [1967), pp.47-59 2. Robert Stam, The Classic realist text, from Film Theory: An Introduction, Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 2000, pp. 140-145 Week 8 Monday 12th September

Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism (KB)

Tutorial Reading: 1. Harold Rosenberg, The American Action Painters, 1952 2. Claes Oldenburg, I am for an art (1961) 3. Roy Lichtenstein, Interview with G.R. Swenson (1963) 4. Andy Warhol, Warhol in his own words: Untitled Statements (1963-87), (all excerpts taken from Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (eds), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists Writings, University of California Press, 1996)

nb ESSAYS DUE IN THIS WEEK! 4pm MONDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER

Week 9 Monday 19th September Pop Art; Feminist Interventions (CM) Tutorial Reading: Maura Reilley, Global Feminisms, in Maura Reilley and Linda Nochlin (eds), Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum, 2007

AVCC Common Week Monday 26th-Friday 30th September

- No Lectures or Tutorials this week

Week 10 Monday 3rd October: Labour Day Holiday: No Lecture Tutorials this week will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art: viewing Almanac The Gift of Ann Lewis AO, an exhibition of Australian art practice over the past few decades. Week 11 Monday 10th October Late Cinema (Baz Lurhmanns Australia 2008) (LJ) Tutorial Reading: TBA Week 12 Monday 17th October Contemporary Film: digital, multi-platform, mobile (BI) Tutorial Reading: Lev Manovich, Chapter 6: The New Language of Cinema, in What is Cinema, Vol 2. Berkeley; UC Press, 2005 [1967), pp.309-333 Week 13 Monday 24th October Think Global, Act Local: Contemporary Art in a Globalised Culture (CM) Week 14 Monday 31st October Study Week Date and Time to be announced: Short-answer test. Duration: 1 hour; however please allow 2 hours