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Art, Industry and the Modern, 1840-1900

Module description

Nineteenth-century art was fundamentally reshaped, expanded and challenged by industrial innovation. There were many new forms of visual media and decorative art, which changed the period’s understanding of visuality, perception and, indeed, the nature of art itself. At the same time, the fine arts were revolutionized by avant-garde movements like the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. This module explores how art, industry and modernity were intertwined. It demonstrates how Victorian artists, designers, craftsmen and prominent thinkers engaged with the key question of how to represent ‘modern life’ at a time when traditional hierarchies and forms of art were disintegrating, and industrial progresses promised to bring art and beauty to the masses. 

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to introduce you to a range of disciplinary perspectives on the connections between art and industry in the Victorian period and the revolutionary impact of industrial innovation upon the fine arts. In so doing, it will also examine the influence of technological, social and cultural change on the understanding of vision and perception in the nineteenth century. The module brings together a diverse range of fields including the fine and applied arts, engraving, architecture, science and optical toys and photography, and will consider a wide range of images of Victorian modern life in paint, illustration, design and print. You will study movements such as the Gothic Revival and Arts and Crafts, as well the birth of photography, popular illustration, panoramas, and fashion and dress, The hands-on approach of the workshop sessions will draw on the rich resources of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum and the collections of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

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

• 1. Demonstrate an advanced critical understanding of key texts, artists and art movements from the nineteenth century
• 2. Demonstrate an advanced awareness art works and the essential characteristics of art production of this period
• 3. Demonstrate critical engagement with important theoretical concepts related to aesthetics, technology, visual culture and perception in the nineteenth century

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

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

• 4. Demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse nineteenth-century visual texts and relate them to their historical and cultural context
• 5. Demonstrate an advanced ability to work within a multi-disciplinary framework, and to interrelate texts and discourses specific to your own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
• 6. Demonstrate an advanced ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to written and visual texts

ILO: Personal and key skills

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

• 7. Through seminar discussion, demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups
• 8. Through essay-writing, demonstrate appropriate research and bibliographic skills, an advanced capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 9. Through research for seminars, essays and presentations demonstrate advanced proficiency in information retrieval and analysis, an advanced capacity to make critical use of secondary material, to question assumptions, and to reflect on your own learning process

Syllabus plan

The syllabus is arranged thematically in order to address a series of key themes and movements in nineteenth-century visual culture. Examples are drawn from a wide range of visual, material, literary and historical texts that address the intersection of art, industry and modernity in the period. The module is divided into three blocks which are:

• Art and Industry
• Perceiving the Modern
• Popular Art: Pictures for the People

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

Extracts will be available on the ELE website comprising relevant reading for seminars. Some key primary texts may include:

• John Ruskin, ‘On the Nature of Gothic’ from The Stones of Venice (1853)
• William Morris, ‘The Lesser Arts’ (1877)
• Walter Pater, “Conclusion”, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)
• Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying”(1891)

Secondary Reading

• Altick, Richard. The Shows of London. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.
• Armstrong, Isobel. Victorian Glassworlds: Glass and Imagination, 1830-1880. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.
• Auerbach, Jeffrey. The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1999.
• Byerly, Alison. Realism, Representation, and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997
• Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer:On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century. MIT Press, 1992.
• Kriegel, Lara. Grand Designs: Labor, Empire, and the Museum in Victorian Culture. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 2007.
• Siegel, Jonah. Desire and Excess: The Nineteenth-Century Culture of Art. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4885 

Key words search

Victorian, visual culture, art and technology, popular culture, design and modernity