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Topics in Art History and Visual Culture I

Module description

This module offers you a first opportunity for detailed study of a major topic in art history and visual culture through a contextual examination of selected movements, periods or themes, dating from the Renaissance to the present day. The course is designed to introduce you to the sustained analysis of visual objects and you will be encouraged to engage closely with individual works and the debates that are assembled around them. The current theme is Classicism in the Early Modern Netherlands. Classicism has its roots in the material cultures of the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans from roughly 1200 BCE to the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE but its uses and meanings have evolved over centuries. As a key strand in the history of Western European culture, the phenomenon of classicism has had a significant impact on a broad range of cultural production and has featured prominently in the academic and political spheres. Each historical era forged its own conception of classicism but, as a category it is always relational—it implies peaks and troughs—and access to it, both in terms of production and consumption, was largely reserved for members of the educated elite. This module considers classicism through the lens of the Early Modern Netherlands, where the reception of antiquity developed in a particular direction, both in dialogue with and in counterbalance to the Italian tradition. Subjects to be considered include painting, architecture, art theory, print culture, collecting, conceptions of the body, and patronage and gender.

Module aims - intentions of the module

In this module you will explore Classicism as it emerged in the southern Netherlands (now Belgium) in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We will consider Classicism as a fundamentally interdisciplinary phenomenon that was broadly manifest in literary, visual and material culture. In this period ancient examples provided frameworks for everything from the arrangement of pictorial composition to philosophies of life. We will consider the peculiarly Netherlandish ‘brand’ of Classicism through an examination of its expression in Netherlandish art theory, print culture, architecture, studio practice, and collecting. Engagement with the ‘classical’ also generated a broad range of practices and, among these, we will consider the tradition of the Italian ‘sojourn’ and the impact of classical texts on depictions of the body and contemporary conceptions of beauty. The module will be delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars, which will give you the opportunity to discuss critical texts in detail and develop own your position in relation to art historiography and theories of art history and visual culture more broadly.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. demonstrate a critical understanding of the phenomenon of Classicism in the southern Netherlands in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
• 2. analyse works of visual and material culture in the context of wider intellectual and popular discourses in the early modern period
• 3. articulate your own critical position relative to historical and current debates on Classicism

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. display confidence in analysing a wide range of artistic practices
• 5. use a range of methodologies and theoretical approaches to interpret art and visual culture
• 6. critically engage with relevant scholarly texts and documents, and relate them to a range of historical material

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, and a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument based on visual analysis and scholarly literature
• 8. demonstrate proficiency in information retrieval and analysis
• 9. develop confidence in verbal communication
• 10. develop appropriate time-management skills for private study, and the ability to work collaboratively with peers

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that the module will cover some or all of the following topics:

• What is Classicism?
• Classicism in print culture
• The classicising body
• Classicism and female patronage in the early modern period
• Collecting antiquities in Antwerp
• The Italian ‘sojourn’: Flemish artists in Rome
• Rubens and classicism
• Van Dyck: classicising portraiture

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Indicative bibliography:

• Margaret Carroll, 'The Erotics of Absolutism: Rubens and the Mystification of Sexual Violence', chapter from Painting and Politics in Northern Europe (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), 96–101.
• Karolien de Clippel, ‘Defining beauty: Rubens’s female nudes’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 58, Body and Embodiment in Netherlandish Art (2007-2008), pp. 110-137.
• Steven J. Cody, 'Rubens and the "Smell of Stone": the Translation of the Antique and the Emulation of Michelangelo' Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 20/3 (Winter 2013), pp. 39-55.
• Zirka Zaremba Filipczak, Picturing Art in Antwerp 1550-1700 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 58-72.
• David Freedberg, ‘The Problem of Classicism: Ideology and Power’, Art Journal 47, no. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 7-9.
• Elizabeth McGrath, 'Black Bodies and Dionysiac Revels: Rubens' Bacchic Ethopians', in Rubens and the Human Body, ed. Cordula van Wyhe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 291-316.
• Jeffrey Muller, ‘Rubens’s Museum of Antique Sculpture: An Introduction’, The Art Bulletin 59, no. 4 (December 1977), pp. 571-582.
• Salvatore Settis, The Future of the Classical, trans. Allan Cameron (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), pp. 9-14; 28-33; 49-54.
• Leah Sweet, 'Fantasy Bodies, Imagined Pasts: A Critical Analysis of the “Rubenesque” Fat Body in Contemporary Culture', Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, volume 3, 2014, pp. 130-142.
• Andreas Thielemann, ‘Stone to Flesh: Rubens’s Treatise De imitatione statuarum’, in ed. Cordula van Wyhe, Rubens and the Human Body (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 41-102.
• Caroline Vout, 'The Death of Classical Art?', chapter from Classical Art: A Life History from Antiquity to the Present (Princeton University Press, 2018) pp. 220-42.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE: https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11110
  

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Topics in Art History and Visual Culture I