(BA) (4-year-programme) - The University of Hong Kong

105FINE2027.The formation of modernity: Art in Europe, 1840-1890 (6 credits)This course examines the early formation of modern European visual culture, from Realism toImpressionism. The underlying historical theme will be the rise of bourgeois society. Painting,sculpture, printmaking, and photography will be discussed in the context of related ideological issuessuch as industrial capitalism, mass media, urban leisure, tourism, new gender roles, and Europeanimperialism.Assessment: 100% coursework.Prerequisite: One 1000-level Fine Arts course.FINE2028.Vision in crisis (6 credits)In art, as in other fields of knowledge, the late 19th century and the early 20th century was a timewhen pre-existing assumptions were challenged in a radical way. To certain artists in Europe, forinstance, illusionistic realism or the conventions of perspective no longer seemed adequate tools forrepresenting the world and our experience of it. Amongst the factors provoking this crisis of visionwas an increasing awareness of other cultures and their differing modes of visual representation, andmany non-Western artists shared with their Western counterparts this new sense of the relativity ofcultural knowledge, although they tended to respond to it in different ways. Vision in Crisis willexamine this moment of great artistic change, focusing primarily on European examples, with Chineseart being taken as the main non-Western case for study. Artists whose work may be discussed indepth include Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse.Assessment: 100% coursework.Prerequisite: One 1000-level Fine Arts course.FINE2029.Modernity and its discontents (6 credits)Although certain 20th century artists can be taken as celebrating the modern, many artists offeredinstead a critical engagement with the newly-emerging forms of experience they were encountering,or sought various forms of escape from them. While the response of European artists to the moderncondition is most well known, artists from other parts of the world were equally engaged with the taskof creating an art adequate to the new environment in which they found themselves. Both will beconsidered in this course, which will focus primarily on European art of the first half of the 20thcentury. Chinese art will provide the main non-Western case for study. Abstract art, Futurism,Expressionism, Dada and Surrealism may all be considered.Assessment: 100% coursework.Prerequisite: One 1000-level Fine Arts course.FINE2030.Towards the global (6 credits)Paris has been described as the capital of the 19th century, and indeed one can talk of a Europeancultural hegemony that lasted until the outbreak of the Second World War. The postwar period,however, saw a migration of cultural authority across the Atlantic to the United States, and with theending of the Cold War American cultural dominance seemed to become even more deeplyentrenched. If the close of the colonial era did not then eliminate the asymmetry of power betweenWestern and non-Western cultures, it did at least alter the conditions for artistic production in thelatter. Furthermore, with an increasing pace of globalization at the end of the century, theopportunities for non-Western artists to reach new audiences have expanded enormously. This coursewill begin with a consideration of Pollock and Abstract Expressionism, and later developments inAmerican art will be a major focus of the course, which will also be concerned to document the