Course detail

Artists and Curators in Texts

FaVU-2ACTAcad. year: 2021/2022

The course is divided into three thematic segments. In the first one, we will focus on discourses associated with post-war and contemporary painting and its connection to politics and the rhetorics and stereotypes of social status of artists on the one hand, and on the emancipatory potential of the medium and its practices on the other (the context will be political, feminist art). In the second bloc, we will focus on the issues of representation dealt with by feminist artists, curators, and theoreticians from the 1970s to 2000s. Following the texts by Peggy Phelan and Andre Fraser, the last bloc will be devoted to the analyses of discourses produced by artistic institutions in the forms of press releases and other texts accompanying particular recent exhibitions.

Language of instruction

English

Number of ECTS credits

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Department

Department of Art History and Theory (KTDU)

Offered to foreign students

Of all faculties

Learning outcomes of the course unit

Tests, essays, discussions.

Prerequisites

Upper-Intermediate and higher levels of English are required.

Co-requisites

Not applicable.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

Seminar form. Each class: 1) written reflection of the assigned reading 2) group discussion of the text, contextualization.

Assesment methods and criteria linked to learning outcomes

Students will be assesed from discussing and writing short, in-class response papers about the assigned texts. Not having read those texts will count as an absence.
The answered quiz questions regarding each text for homework have to be uploaded to the shared drive a day before the class.
Students will be assessed from the regular, continuous work during the semester.

Course curriculum

1. Abstract expressionism and politics. Max Kozloff: Abstract Expressionism, Weapon of Cold War.
2. The queering of AbEx: Amy Sillman: AbEx and Disco Balls
3. The discourse on painting after 2000 - not from the perspective of the death of the medium: Isabelle Graw - The Love of Painting (selected essays).
4. Isabell Graw - The Love of Painting (selected essay) + Johanna Druckner - Sweat Dreams (the figure of a successful painter). The movie Basquiat/Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adéle) - the figure of a successful painter - the cultural stereotypes.
5. Katy Deepwell - Paint Stripping: towards a feminist painting practice
6. Adrian Piper: The Triple Negation of Ćolored Women Artists
7. Peggy Phelan: Broken Symmetries. (is visibility and representation in institutions and dominant discourses sufficient?)
8. Lynda Nead: Theorizing the Female Nude
9. Monique Wittig: The Straight Mind
10. Andrea Fraser: There Is No Place Like Home (art institutions, markets, and discourses and the (lost) potential of artistic activism)
11 - 12. The discourse of contemporary Czech artistic institutions - exhibition press releases, accompanying essays, catalog essays. Analyses of selected events. Students will be assigned (or will choose) a particular exhibition and institution they will analyse.

Work placements

Not applicable.

Aims

The course will show students ways in which sophisticated theoretical reflection of artistic/curating practices can be done.

Specification of controlled education, way of implementation and compensation for absences

Hybrid forms of classes - in-class (including individual tutorials) and remote forms of teaching. Students must attend 75% of the videoconferences actively, which includes questions addressed to the students during the conference both in written and oral form. The course is based on the students' weekly work, that is, students must have read the assigned texts before each class.

Recommended optional programme components

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Amelia Jones. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. (EN)
Hilary Robinson and Maria Elena Buszek. A Companion to Feminist Art. (EN)
Hilary Robinson. Feminism Art Theory. An Anthology. (EN)

Type of course unit

Lecture

13 hod., optionally

Teacher / Lecturer

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Seminar

13 hod., compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

VUT

Faculties

University Institutes

Parts

Artists and Curators in Texts

Type of course unit