Unit information: Understanding Cubism in 2019/20

Please note: Due to alternative arrangements for teaching and assessment in place from 18 March 2020 to mitigate against the restrictions in place due to COVID-19, information shown for 2019/20 may not always be accurate.

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Unit name Understanding Cubism
Unit code HART30052
Credit points 20
Level of study H/6
Teaching block(s) Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director Emeritus Professor. Shaw-Miller
Open unit status Not open
Pre-requisites

None

Co-requisites

None

School/department Department of History of Art (Historical Studies)
Faculty Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit is designed to give students a deeper and wider awareness of the ideas that support, and are generated from, cubism. They will gain detailed familiarity with the works of key artists and theorists,and develop advanced skills in visual analysis. This builds on the work students will have done in the first two years of the program providing a more detailed engagement with the artistic culture of Paris between 1907-1914. Beyond this the unit will also engage the legacy of cubism through consideration of post-cubist art up to the present.

Intended Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit students be able to:

1. demonstrate an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the developing critical reception and interpretation of cubism;

2. analyse primary sources;

3. integrate both primary and secondary source material into a wider analysis;

4. select pertinent evidence/data in order to illustrate/demonstrate more general ideas;

5. identify a particular academic interpretation, evaluate it critically and form an individual viewpoint;

6. acquire advanced writing, research, and group presentation skills.

Teaching Information

1 x two-hour seminar per week

1 x one-hour workshop per week.

Assessment Information

One 3000-word summative essay (50%) [ILOs 1-4, 6]

One 2-hour exam (50%) [ILOs 1, 3, 4, 5]

Reading and References

Mark Antliff & Patricia Leighten, A Cubism Reader: Documents and Criticism, 1906-1914 (Chicago UP, 2008)

 

David Cottington, Cubism and Its Histories (MUP, 2004)  

 

Christopher Green, Cubism and Its Enemies: Modern Movements and Reaction in French Art, 1916-28 (Yale UP, 1987)  

 

T.J. Clark, Picasso and Truth (Princeton, 2013)  

 

Mark Antliff & Patricia Leighten, Cubism and Culture (London, 2001)

 

Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern 'Art  (MIT, reprint 2019)

John Golding, Cubism a History and Analysis, 1907-1914 (London, rev.1988)  

William Rubin, Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism (New York, 1989)  

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