Programme

The course introduces students to the historical developments and key figures in the visual arts of modernism - from roughly 1850 to 1940 - focusing on such issues as their relationship to technology and new media (photography, cinema), political and social contexts, urban and natural environments, and psychic life. These artistic experiences not only helped to transform the nature of aesthetic experience, opening up new forms of sensibility, but also radically redefined the understanding of individual and collective reality.

The analysis of the different trends and poetics will also provide the basic methodology for the study of the media and languages that characterize art between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, providing the critical tools essential for reading different types of works.

Core Documentation

Reference books:

19th Century (1850-1900): Federica Rovati, L'arte dell'Ottocento, Einaudi 2017
20th Century (1900-1940): Federica Rovati, L’arte del primo Novecento, Einaudi 2015. Alternative choice: Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh, Art since 1900, Thames & Hudson
Essays:
Stephen Kern, Il tempo e lo spazio, Il Mulino 2007: capitoli 4: Il futuro; 5: La velocità; 6: La natura dello spazio, pp. 117-226
Philippe Dubois, L'atto fotografico, Urbino 2009, pp. 25-108
Walter Benjamin, Piccola storia della fotografia, Einaudi
Check the Teams channel for these PDFs

Reference Bibliography

Per l'Ottocento (1850-1900): Federica Rovati, L'arte dell'Ottocento, Einaudi 2017 Per il Novecento (1900-1940): Federica Rovati, L’arte del primo Novecento, Einaudi 2015. O in alternativa Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh, Art since 1900, Thames & Hudson (o traduzione italiana in commercio).

Type of delivery of the course

In-person classes are recorded on Teams and are available via a link on my personal Uniroma3 page: https://www.uniroma3.it/en/persone/cFpYMElOZE1jSTNiTjFtQ1p0NlhaSTJqSkFpU2VJMEc0cFpHamZ1LzFoRT0=/

Attendance

In-person classes

Type of evaluation

The course does not differentiate between attending and non-attending students. All students are required to attend the classes, live or recorded. - The exam consists of a written test. A written, in-person test takes place during each exam day (or online if needed). It aims to verify the student’s ability to analyze themes, poetics, movements, artists examined in the course and treated in the bibliography and to attest his/her ability to read and interpret works of art, using appropriate critical terminology and relating the works to their historical context.

Programme

The course analyzes the relationship between art and the environment, starting from the avant-gardes to the second half of the twentieth century in which artistic intervention explodes in installations, often realized in situ or site-specific, in the exhibition space, in nature or in public space. From the relationship between art and the environment, the course will also focus on the exhibition as an installation and immersive space and on the forms of the contemporary art museum, in the dynamics of spectatorship and multimedia and multisensory dimension.
The following topics will be analysed:
- Beyond painting and sculpture. The relationship between art and space in Futurism, Constructivism and Dada;
- Marcel Duchamp's exhibitions and curatorial practice;
- Environment and Happening;
- From Arte Povera to Land Art;
- A new ideology of the exhibition space: exhibitions and galleries between the Sixties and Seventies;
- Site specific and time specific: environmental installations as immersive spaces;
- Forms of the contemporary art museum: from the postmodern turn to the contemporary.

Core Documentation

Testi adottati e bibliografia di riferimento

1) D. Riout, L’arte del ventesimo secolo. Protagonisti, temi, correnti, Einaudi, Torino 2002

2) F. Poli. F. Bernardelli, Mettere in scena l’arte contemporanea. Dallo spazio dell’opera allo spazio intorno all’opera, Johan & Levi, Milano 2016

3). Raccolta online delle immagini proiettate a lezione (disponibile a fine del corso)
/ Online gathering of images projected during lectures (available at the end of the course).


Non-attending students add:

4) G. Celant, Ambiente/Arte. Dal Futurismo alla Body Art. Biennale Arte 1976 (1977), La Biennale di Venezia, Venezia 2020

Type of delivery of the course

The course is organized in lectures conducted through screened presentations of works and documents and multimedia tools. Some topics are studied in depth through the reading, commenting and analysis of critical and programmatic texts, and with the active involvement of students in the discussion. Some visits to exhibitions or museum collections will be organized.

Attendance

Students are strongly encouraged to attend classes.

Type of evaluation

The examination is a written assignment. The examination aims to verify the ability to present and analyze poetics, movements and artists covered by the course and treated in the texts in program, from Impressionism to the artistic practices of the Seventies. Open questions will be proposed, as well as the recognition and analysis of some works reproduced in the texts and treated in class, in order to attest the ability to read and analyze the different types of contemporary works of art, using an adequate, critical terminology, and relating the work to the historical-artistic context. With regard to the works dealt with in class, a selection (which will be used for the examination) will be made available to all students at the end of the course on teams.