AH20200

Learning Outcomes:

-- recognise and account for the key concepts and major manifestations of modern and contemporary art, especially as they pertain to the main themes of the course.
- identify and critically analyse canonical modern and post-modern artworks.
- be familiar with major critical texts pertaining to the development of modern art as a concept within visual art.
- critically reflect on the key themes of the course - abstract art, use of readymade materials, chance and automatism, other modernisms, and the role of the gallery space.

Indicative Module Content:

The Avant-Garde; Abstraction; Use of Readymade Materials - collage, readymade, objects; Conceptual Art; Chance and Automatism; Other modernisms - Harlem Renaissance; Mexican Modernism; Irish Modernism; Installation art and White Cube space.

Student Effort Hours:

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:

The course is taught via lectures and via small group seminars. Students will have the opportunity to look at works of art in the original on a gallery visit and to discuss the main themes of the module in this context. Students are strongly encouraged to visit the library in person, read books, visits galleries and museums, make use of recommended texts, and contribute in class. Support material and recommended readings from lectures will be available on Brightspace and students are encouraged to keep a journal detailing the content of the lectures and related tasks and research. Students are expected to attend lectures and seminars and to participate in the latter by contributing to class discussions and doing relevant preparatory work.
All submitted assignments should be original, non-plagiarised work without recourse to AI tools.

It is incumbent on any undergraduate student who fails this module to contact the lecturer concerned to announce their attention to resit, and to obtain details of resit assignments. Any resit/ repeat registration/ fee issues should be dealt with by the Arts programme office.

Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Learning Recommendations:

Art History majors should not take any Stage 2 or 3 Art History modules until they have completed their Stage 1 Art History requirements.

Module Requisites and Incompatibles

Incompatibles:
AH10070 - Dublin: Its Museums

Additional Information:
Students intending to Major in Art History are required to have competed the CORE Stage 1 module, and at least one other Stage 1 Art History module before progression.


 

Assessment Strategy

 

Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 

Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Online automated feedback

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Students are given individual feedback on their end of term essay and on the short text essay, via Brightspace but also face to face, by appointment.

Essential reading *

Highly recommended key texts:
General
Acton, Mary. Learning to Look at Modern Art. Routledge, 2004.
Bishop, C. Disordered Attention. How we look at Art and Performance Today, Verso, 2024.
*Brettell, R. Modern Art, 1851-1929: Capitalism and Representation, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Chadwick, W. Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, T&H, 1985.
Clark, T.J. Farewell to an idea. Episodes from a History of Modernism, Yale University Press, 1999.
Cottington, David. Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Crow, Thomas. The Rise of the Sixties, American and European art in the era of dissent, Everyman
Art Library, 1996.
Crow, Thomas. Modern Art in the Common Culture, Yale University Press, 1998.
Foster, Hal. The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on Post-modern Culture, New Press, 1998.
Foster, H, Krauss, R, Bois, Y-A, Buchloh, B, Art Since 1900, Modernism, Antimodernism,
Postmodernism, Thames and Hudson, London, 2004.
Frascina, F., Blake, et al., Modernity and Modernism, Open University, 1993.
Frascina, F. ed., Pollock and After: The Cultural Debate, Routledge, 2000.
Gablik, Suzi. Has Modernism Failed? Thames and Hudson, 1985.
Gaiger, Jason. Frameworks for Modern Art, Yale University Press, 2004.
*Harrison, C., et al, Primitivism, Cubism, Abstraction, Open University, 1993.
*Harrison, C., Modernism, Tate Gallery, 1997.
*Harrison, C, Wood, P, (eds), Art in Theory 1900-2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell,
Oxford and Cambridge USA, 2001.
Hessel, Katy. The Story of Art Without Men. Penguin, 2022.
Hopkins, David. After Modern Art, Oxford University Press, 2018.
Hughes, R. The Shock of the New, Thames & Hudson, 2005 ed.
Kuspit, Donald. The Cult of the Avant Garde Artist, Cambridge University Press,1993.
Krauss, Rosalind. Passages in modern Sculpture, Thames & Hudson, 1977.
Krauss, Rosalind. The Originality of the Avant-garde and other Modernist Myths, MIT Press, 1986.
*Meecham, P and Sheldon, J Modern Art: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, London and New York,
2004.
Meecham, P. ed. A Companion to Modern Art, Wiley, Blackwell, 2018. (e-book available)
Perry, Gill and Paul Wood, eds. Themes in contemporary art. New Haven: Open University Press,
2004.
Rhodes, Colin. Primitivism and Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1994.
Smith, Terry. Art to Come: Histories of Contemporary Art. Duke University Press, 2019.
(e-book available)
Stangos, Nikos. Concepts of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, 1994.
Wood, Catherine, Performance in Contemporary Art, Tate Publishing, 2022.
Wood, Paul et al., Modernism in Dispute, Open University Press, 1993.
Wood, Paul, The Challenge of the Avant-garde, Yale University Press, 1999.
Wood, Paul, ed. Varieties of Modernism, Open University Press, 2004.


Abstract Art
Anfam, David. Abstract Expressionism, Thames & Hudson, 1990.
*Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual In Art, Dover Publications,1977.
Karmel, Pepe. Abstract art. A Global History, Blackwell’s, 2020.
Polcari, S. Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Taylor, Michael. Inventing Abstraction 1910-25. Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2013.

Collage and Object
Ades, Dawn, Photomontage, Thames & Hudson, 1986.
Banash, David. Collage Culture: Readymades, Meaning and the Age of Consumption, Brill, 2013,
(e-book available)
Bradley, Fiona. Surrealism, Tate, 1997.
*Godfrey, Tony. Conceptual Art, Phaidon, 1998.
Lodder, Christina, Russian Constructivism, Yale University Press, 1983.
Waldman, Diane. Collage, assemblage and the Found Object, Harry N. Abrams, 1992.


Chance
Baker, Kenneth. Minimalism. Art of Circumstance, Abbeville Press, 1988.
Fer, B., Batchelor, D et al., Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism, Open University Press, 1993.
*Godfrey, Tony. Conceptual Art, Phaidon, 1998.
Iverson, Margaret.ed, Chance. Documents in Contemporary Art. Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2010.
Lippard, Lucy. Six Years. The Dematerialisation of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972, Studio Vista,
1973.
Richter, H. DADA, Art and Anti-Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1965, reprint 1978.


Gallery Space
Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, Verso, 2012,
(Available online)
*Bishop, Claire. Installation Art. A Critical History, Tate Publishing, 2005.
De Oliveira, Nicolas. Installation Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1994.
Godfrey, Tony. Conceptual Art, Phaidon, 1998.
Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. London: Thames and Hudson,
2001.
Jones, Amelia. Body Art/Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
*O’Doherty, Brian. Inside the White Cube: the Ideology of the Gallery Space, Lapis Press, 1986.
*Reiss, Julie H. From margin to center: the spaces of installation art. MIT, 2001. (e-book available)


Other Modernisms
Mercer, Kobena, ed. Cosmopolitan Modernisms, IVA, 2005.
Mitter, Partha, The triumph of modernism : India's artists and the avant-garde, 1922-1947, Reaktion, 2007.
Murell, Denise, ed. The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2024.
O’Brien, Elaine; Nicodemus, Everlyn et al, (eds.) Modern Art in Africa, Asia and Latin America. An
Introduction to Global Modernisms, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
Wood, Paul, Western Art and the Wider World, John Wiley and sons, 2013. Available as e-book.
https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/series/harlem-renaissance-podcas

Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.