The course aims to show that an important function of art is to enhance the ability to see the world from a number of different perspectives increasing the breadth and depth of a viewer’s self-awareness. An essential, underlying theme is how the viewer’s vision is addressed and explored in the art of the twentieth century, and how the gaze is related to the construction of the viewer’s own identity. Not only do the art works of these different periods challenge the viewer imaginatively to adopt a multiplicity of identities and roles, they also reflect back different conceptual, emotional, psychological, political and social ways of seeing.
Trying to frame or target the viewer’s responses needs and realities in art has a long history. In this course we will focus on FOUR major approaches:
- Social Context
- Facture
- Sensory perception and emotional response
- Conceptual and Philosophical response
The course will pay attention to the fact that within each of these broad categories of address and response, there are different cultural, personal and individual inflections, and that it is possible to focus on certain themes which cut across these different types of response, such as the representation of women, or non-Western cultures and ethnic minorities, which involves looking through a whole range of addresses and responses outside of the dominant white, privileged, Western male’s perspective that so much of Western art leaves unchallenged.