Art History Undergraduate Courses

FIRST YEAR

Film, Visual and Performing Arts

Unit 1 (course code WSOA 1002) and Unit 2 (course code WSOA 1003)

Left: Sam Nhlengethwa, It left him cold , 1990

Art History at first year level is incorporated into the FVPA (Film, Visual and Performing Arts) interdisciplinary course. In this course you will be introduced to key concepts in the areas of Film, Drama, Music and Visual Arts, and to a range of art forms from these different modalities. There are two units in the first year. In Unit 1 the course is arranged according to two overarching themes, namely representation and art as play/ play as art. In Unit 2, you will be introduced to further key concepts in the areas of Film, Drama, Music and Visual Arts. This unit is arranged according to the overarching themes of contexts and conventions and the body, sex and race. Lectures and tutorials in both units explore the ways in which these concerns are manifested in different forms of art and performance, looking at both commonalities and differences.

Through this exploration, students intending to major in specific arts disciplines will gain a broad understanding of issues in the wider cultural sphere, a sphere which extends beyond the narrow confines of specialist studies, into our everyday lives, and our understanding of the world. Increasingly in the arts, discipline boundaries are being challenged and re-drawn. This course will give you a basis on which to assess such developments. The course will be taught by leading artists/academics from the school.
For each unit you will be required to submit an essay and two projects, and you will write an exam at the end of each unit (one in June and one in November).

For the duration of this first year course there are optional weekly reading and writing study groups.

SECOND YEAR

Unit 1 - February to June: Art, power and society (course code HART 2001)

In this course you will be studying art from different historical societies in Europe, Asia and Africa, in relation to social, political and religious conditions. The aim of the course is to locate the production, use and understanding of visual arts in particular historical and cultural contexts and to enable students to analyse the ways in which various forms of power impact on art practices.
You will be required to acquire knowledge of different political and belief systems in order to assess the significance of particular art traditions. Art is assumed here never to be a neutral practice whose products are made for aesthetic reasons alone. The course starts from the premise that most art forms are informed by, if not directly driven by, those who wield power in their own social groups. You will therefore be introduced to different theoretical frameworks which deal with the ways in which power is built and will be enabled to acquire the skills of visual and verbal analysis which are necessary to critical interrogation of particular art works in relation to these formations of power.
In this unit you will be required to write 2 essays and 2 projects or tests and an exam in June

Unit 2 - July to November: Art historical modernism (course code HART 2002)

In this unit you will be studying modernism as expressed in the art, architecture, and design of Europe and the United States, as well as non-Western countries, from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth centuries. Modernism will be understood not only in terms of its formal and stylistic characteristics, but also in its social and political contexts.
The aim of the course is to locate the wide-ranging and sometimes disparate phenomenon of modernism in an accessible and relevant framework. You will analyze the ways in which modernism can be understood not only as a response to the forces of industrialization, urbanization, and capitalism that characterize the modern period, but also as a philosophical and critical construct that has its origins in the Enlightenment thinking of the late 18th century.
You will be exposed to different theoretical frameworks that deal with the ways in which the phenomenon of modernism in the arts has been critically interpreted and constructed. In this way, you will be enabled to acquire the skills of visual and verbal analysis that are necessary to critical interrogation of particular forms of modern art in relation not only to the contexts in which they were produced, but also in terms of the broader discourse of art historical writing in the twentieth century.
In this unit you will be required to write 2 essays and 2 projects or tests and an exam in November.

THIRD YEAR

In the third year course there are four units.

Unit 1 - Art: contexts and display (course code HART 3001)

This course examines the contexts of production and display (exhibition) of works of art in selected periods and social frameworks. It includes arts such as architecture and design, arts from specific sites, and critical issues in museums and exhibition strategies. Examples will be drawn from historical and contemporary production in Europe, the Americas (including the African Diaspora), Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
You will be required to write one project, one essay and one seminar paper and an exam on this material in June.

Unit 2 - Reading the contemporary (course code HART 3002)

In this course you will study art produced in the late modernist and so-called postmodernist period, as well as examples of contemporary art production drawn from Europe, the United States, and South Africa. Lectures will be presented in the first quarter, and you will be required to present seminar papers on specific topics, which you have researched independently of the lectures, in the second quarter.
You will be required to write one test, one essay and one seminar paper and an exam on this material in June.

Unit 3 - Constructs of Africa (course code HART 3003)

This course introduces students to a critical understanding of the ways in which African art has been written and researched. The course covers historical art forms from the continent, in the context of modernism, notions of popular art and forms of art education. You will be looking at the ways in which Africa has been and is represented as an idea, an identity and a series of images, as well as they ways in which Africans express particular constructs of their own identity.
You will be required to hand in a seminar paper, an essay and a group project. You will write an exam on this material in November.

Unit 4 - Constructs of the Renaissance (course code HART 3004)

This course looks at ways in which Renaissance art in Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries has been studied and written about and constructed as a category of history and of art. It is therefore not an introduction to the Renaissance as a seamless body of knowledge to be recuperated, but rather an introduction to the ways in which the Renaissance as an area of study has been framed. Lectures will introduce you to seminal methodological and thematic approaches.
You will be required to hand in a seminar paper, an essay and a group project. You will write an exam on this material in November.
For all four units the year mark is composed of the marks for the essays, tests and projects, which in turn comprise 50% of the total mark for the unit. The exam will contribute another 50% towards the total mark for the unit.