Course Programme: Second Semester

Lectures: Mondays and Tuesdays, 2-3pm
There will also be one tutorial a week, beginning in the second week of the programme.

Coursework: One essay (2500 words minimum) and one class test.
For assessment overall the essay counts for 30%, the class test 20%, and the examination 50%.

The convenor and lecturer for this course is Associate-Professor Leonard Bell, a specialist scholar on 19th century European art, and on the relationships between 19th century art and modern and contemporary art. His scholarly articles, essays and books have been published in New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, USA, Germany and the Czech Republic.

This course addresses a crucial period of change and innovation in European art practices and ideas about art and the visual, the consequences and complexites of which are still being played out in the art and socio-cultural worlds of today. London and Paris were both the most modern cities in the world in the mid 19th century and the cities in which the old and the new, the traditional and the revolutionary tensely co-existed - tensions that were played out in the worlds of art and image-making. The images and objects produced in this period were frequently socially and psychologically shocking in both their subjects and how those subjects were represented. New and innovative art often generated intensely passionate responses, criticism and argument.

Topics:

Leading contemporary artists and photographers, such as Sam Taylor-Wood, Geoffrey Crewdson, Ed Ruscha, Yasimusa Morimura, to name a few, reference, as well as  make use of, ideas, forms and motifs from mid 19th century French and British art. Why and how do they do this, and how is the past related the present?

Early to mid Victorian painting and photography in Britain, with particular and detailed emphasis on the art of the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates. Why look at it? The works of Rossetti,  Millais, Holman-Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Burne-Jones and the pioneer  and innovative ‘art’ photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron are studied closely, as are those of the American artist, Whistler, the exponent and theorist of ‘Art for Art’s sake’, who worked in Britain and France.

Primary themes in the art of the period in France and Britain, such as the complexities of love and relationships between men and women and people from different social classes, the ‘fallen woman’, women and myth, suffering and death, work, modernity and medievalism, the city and the  beach are  explored.
 
With the mid 19th century French art, the primary focus is on the innovators and the early modernists, such as Courbet, Manet, Degas, Daumier and influential photographer Nadar, though academic art and  traditional notions and practices in paintings are also investigated.

The concept, indeed the invention of the avant-garde in this period is explored, as are the importance of caricature, comedy and cruelty, shock and provocation in painting, lithography and the public performance of artists – their staging their selves, that is. Ideas about narrative, symbolism and formalism in the art and art writing of the period are studied.
 
Art theorists and critics were increasingly important and influential in the mid 19th century art world. Thus the writings of leading figures, such as Ruskin in Britain and Baudelaire, and their close relationships to artists are considered.

Other topics include changing approaches to the depiction of lansdscape, the interactions of the new medium of photography and painting, the works of travelling artists in the Middle East and New Zealand, and with it the emergence of the new genre of Orientalist art.

Crisis and Change focuses on art works that are visually compelling and conceptually complex. Their formal, iconographic and socio-cultural dimensions are studied. The course involves both looking closely at art works and investigating their places in the broader social and political contexts of the day. The course offers close readings of art works, investigations of the differing ways art works can be interpreted, and consideration of the limits of verbal interpretation of visual images and objects.

As such the course provides advanced skills in the interpretation of visual images, in exploring different ways of looking and seeing, and in relating art practices to theory. These are applicable and valuable not just for encounters with mid 19th century  French and  British art, but  also for our experiences of art and visual culture generally, whether historical or the most contemporary.

Resources: Powerpoints for all lectures and tutorials are placed on CECIL for students to access. The Art History Image Database, which can be accessed through Voyager, provides many more images of the work of the artists from the course, and the Fine Art Library of the University Library has an outstanding collection of books and articles on 19th century French and British art.