ART HISTORY L3

An advanced Art History class covering a range of topics and discussions:

Introduction to New Zealand art / Welcome Home introduces New Zealand art history, from early colonial beginnings to early 20th C regionalism, onto contemporary practice.

Post-Colonial New Zealand is a counterpoint to the previous class that provides a new approach for artists and art historians alike. Investigate historical work with a more precise eye for politics and identity, addressing the ramifications of colonialism on art and nation-building.

Creating Across Cultures builds upon post-colonialism in New Zealand art, to discuss global artists of colour who redress the (largely) Eurocentric canon in their work.

Art and Power, there is inherent power in representing oneself or others. What are the motives? Who is the intended audience? What legacy is being suggested? Survey a range of portraits of leaders across time, to see how power can be declared, and, unintentionally, destabilised with imagery.

Art and Display considers how the display of art can connote, and even create, power. The ways in which art is displayed has historically defined what art can be, and conversely, what is not art. Examine art that interrogates and challenges these categories. 

Colonialism on Display is a critical look at watershed exhibitions that changed the museological discourse, including: ‘Primitivism in 20th Century Art’, ‘Te Maori’ and Fred Wilson’s ‘Mining the Museum’. These exhibitions individually exposed how the display of art can reframe, and possibly transform, the meaning of artwork.

Conceptual Art concludes our term, we will look at art that arguably does not exist! What are the consequences of an art form that does not rely on any physical presence? How do we engage with it? How can it be displayed? How do we value it, without customary precious molecules of paint or paper to reassure us of its timeless significance?