Visual Culture in the 20th and 21st Centuries 1400-OG-EN-VC-L

The technological development, globalization process and social shifts put into the question the traditional notions of art and its role. They also changed the definition of an image and perception. The questions what the image is or what it means demand quite different answer than a hundred years before. The lectures deal with both artworks like paintings and forms of popular culture, such as cinema, photography and digital media. The attention will be given to transformations of social and technological life which shaped the 20th and 21st century visual culture. Particular lectures will refer to the definition of an image in the pre-photograsphic, photographic and digital era, the relations between the industrialisation, developement of the city, the urban life and the popular culture, the ideoligical impact on vision, the psychoanalitic interpretations of art, cinema and photography, art as a spectacle, and the questions of identity and self-awarness in regard to digital media and communication.

The list of topics:

1. How Has Photography Changed Our Lives? – Part One: From Camera Obscura to Kodak Brownie.

2. How Has Photography Changed Our Lives? – Part Two: Documenting Life Through Photography.

3. How Has Photography Changed Our Lives? – Part Three: Creativity in Photography. From Pictorialism to Selfie.

4. What Are Images For? On The Art As a Spell Upon The Death. Part One: Images of Cult, Wordly Power, Beauty and Subjective Vision.

5. What Are Images For? On The Art As a Spell Against Death. Part Two: Images of Past, Images of Knowledge, Images of Illusion, Images of Love. Images of Rebel.

6. The terror of iconoclasm. What does the lack of images mean?

7. How does the face look? The images of the face in the 20th and 21st Century culture.

8. The perspective and the grid. On two dimensional visions of three dimensional reality in art.

9. The film as motion. How has the motion picture changed our lives?

10. Psychoanalysis and visual culture. What do we know about the culture due to Freud?

11. Metropolis. What is the city for contemporary visual culture?

12. Sublime images. On the ways of invoking the aesthetic affection.

13. On the artistic subjectivity. Is it important who the author of the image is?

14. The image in the age of capitalism. Is the contemporary art a commodity or is it means of critique?

Total student workload

Contact hours with teacher: - participation in lectures - 30 hrs (1 ECTS) Self-study hours: - preparation for lectures - 30 hrs (1 ECTS) - reading literature- 30 hrs - (1ECTS) Altogether: 90 hrs (3 ECTS)

Learning outcomes - knowledge

Student: W1: Has knowledge on the movements in arts and popular culture and their contemporary interpretations (K_W05). W2: Has the ability to interpret the key issues concerning modern and contemporary visual culture (K_W11). W3: Is aware of contemporary cultural life in the region, Europe and world (K_W14).

Learning outcomes - skills

Student: U1: Has the ability to find and cridical use of informations about the key issues concerning contemporary visual culture (K_U10), U2: Frames and interprets research topics in regard to the field od contemporary visual culture (film, photography, works of popular culture) (K_U02), U3: Has ability to analyse and determine on the basic level the symbolic content of the works of popular culture: (K_U06), U4: Has the ability to characterise the work of popular culture in terms of artistic form and to analyse it and intepret critically (K-U07).

Learning outcomes - social competencies

Student: K1: Is aware of the level of her knowledge and its possibile gaps, as well as understands the need of her constant scientific development (K_K01), K2: Understands the new and innsovative social ideas and trendu in contemporary visual culture (K_K05), K3: Actively participates in cultural life and is aware of the trendu in contemporary visual culture (K_K08),

Teaching methods

Problem-based lecture, participatory lecture, display The lecture can be conducted both in a traditional way and on-line through MS Teams platform.

Observation/demonstration teaching methods

- display

Expository teaching methods

- problem-based lecture
- participatory lecture
- description
- informative (conventional) lecture

Exploratory teaching methods

- classic problem-solving

Online teaching methods

- content-presentation-oriented methods
- methods developing reflexive thinking

Type of course

elective course

Prerequisites

English skills on B1 Basic knowledgle of the history of the modern and contemporary art and culture

Course coordinators

Filip Pręgowski

Assessment criteria

At the end of the course students take a multiple choice test based on the themes and issues presented in lectures.

Evaluation criteria: -->

60-65% - 3 (C);
66-75% - 3+ (C+);
76-85% - 4 (B);
86-90% - 4+ (B+);
91-100% - 5 (A).

The test may be conducted both in tradinional form in the lecture room at the University and via Internet on Testportal Platform.

Practical placement

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Bibliography

Hans Belting, Face and Mask. A Double History,
Hans Belting, An Anthropology of Images. Picture, Medium, Body,
W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation,
W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images,
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation,
Jean Baudrillard, America,
Susan Sontag, On Photography,
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others,
John Berger, Ways of Seeing,
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,
Walter Benjamin, The Author as Producer,
Zygmunt Bauman, Culture in a Liquid Modern World,
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle,
Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology,
Slavoj Zizek, First as Tragedy, Than as Farce,
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasura and Narrative Cinema,
Linda Nochlin, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,
Lind Nochlin, The Body In Pieces: The Fragment As A Metaphor Of Modernity,
Touree, Who Is Afraid of Post-Blackness?,
Douglas Crimp, On the Museum’s Ruins,
Roland Barthes, Mythologies,
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
Nicholas Mirzoeff, How to See The World,
Mieczysław Porębski, Ikonosfera,
(opr.) I. Kurz, P. Kwiatkowska, Ł. Zaremba, Antropologia kultury wizualnej. Zagadnienia i wybór tekstów.

Additional information

Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system:

Description of 1400-OG-EN-VC-L in USOSweb