Insegnamento a.a. 2023-2024

This course takes thus into consideration an historical framework moving from the Second Post-War to the present times considering the relation between artists, works and institutions in a thematic perspective. Topics addressed would consider question of materiality and immateriality of the artistic labour, authority and delegation, the clash between social aspects and institutional breakdown, always merging the historical discourse with the development of artistic practices. The course will be based on a series of thematic readings (collected in the course Reader) and discussed in class plus the mandatory reading of Jacques Rancière, Le Maitre Ignorant (The Ignorant Schoolmaster).

Course presentation: art and education or how to re-stage an institution

Jacques Rancière, Le Maitre Ignorant (The Ignorant Schoolmaster).

From Academia to artist studio

Gustave Courbet, The Artist studio, 1855

Brian O’ Doherty, Inside the white cube, 1986

Artistic practices and the social turn: Joseph Beuys, Tania Bruguera, Tim Rollins and K.O.S, Olafur Eliasson, Jonathas De Andrade

School as an art form – from Black Mountain College to SOMA Mexico

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Class presentation

Off campus visits (tbc)

• Appreciate and articulate the ability of artworks of any form to interrogate the way we teach and we learn.
• Grasp the potential of artworks to convey the distinction between art, research and entertainment.
• Understand the complex historicity of artwork –  and their changing meanings over time – as well as the role of the artist as active agent of social transformations.

• Approach artifacts beyond their aesthetic appeal, and examine them in relation to their cultural, social and political milieu.
• Formulate critical arguments about the interconnection – and distinction –  between convey art, research and entertainment.
• Problematize the changing forms of arts, its notion and the role of art institution as learning center.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Company visits
• Individual assignments
• Group assignments

This course combines traditional frontal teaching (lectures) with seminar-based activities and off-campus visits to relevant collections, art galleries, institutions and/or exhibitions. Guest lecturers are invited to join the class presenting their research and methods in talks, dialogues or film screenings. The course is thus shaped paying attention to the individual experience, evaluation and re-elaboration of the contents proposed in the classroom. Image-based exercises and oral presentations (both individual and in group) are assigned through the course for attending students. Students are expected to participate in class discussions.

Students are required to take final exam (50% of the grade). The exam is oral, and students are asked to answer a mix of open-ended and image-based questions. 50% of the grade is represented by an oral presentation (prepared individually or in group) on a topic of free choice (related to the course) and presented in class at the end of the course.

The exam is based on course readings, as well as on seminar materials and discussions held in class. The exam aims to assess student’s engagement with the understanding of textual and visual evidence and their ability to interpret such evidence critically, showing and understanding new forms of arts and their effect in the politics of spectatorship as well as in the development of art institutions.

Students are required to take final exam (100% of the grade). The exam is oral, and students are asked to answer a mix of open-ended questions. The exam paper is based on reading list that students receive when they enter the course. The exam aims to assess student’s familiarity with the main issues addressed by the assigned readings; their ability to summarize and critically interpret the narratives and arguments advanced by those readings.

Attending students:

·      Reader – assigned readings (available at EGEA bookshop)

·      Lessons

·      Jacques Rancière, Le Maitre Ignorant (The Ignorant Schoolmaster), any edition

NON-attending students

·      Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory art and the politics of spectatorships, Verso, London, New York, 2012 (any editions)

·      Jacques Rancière, Le Maitre Ignorant (The Ignorant Schoolmaster), any edition