KINGSTON
UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF ART
& DESIGN HISTORY
BA (Hons) History of Art, Architecture & Design
Fran Lloyd and Helen Potkin
Contents:
The
module focuses on the resources of London and its environs. It investigates the
different ways in which these may be used to enhance a critical understanding
of the objects of visual and material culture and their mediation in
contemporary culture. This will include assessing key research resources,
including internet sources, close analysis of particular works, objects or
sites, and the study of different modes of visual and critical presentation.
Introductory
lectures and workshops will introduce key themes and issues. Visits to public
and commercial galleries, public sites of interest, auction houses, museums,
key archives, specialist collections and research resources will form the
central part of the learning experience and are therefore a compulsory element.
Discussion
based workshops and seminars with an emphasise on group work will provide
opportunities to explore these resources and the ideas of context further and
enable students to present informed and critical research. The Preparation
& Seminars document will provide advice on how to prepare for each study
visit, workshop or seminar.
By
the end of the module you should:
·
have developed a confident working knowledge of the range of
resources for the study of visual and material culture in London and its
environs;
·
be critically aware of a range of contexts and different
forms of mediation which directly or indirectly affect the spectator’s
understanding of visual and material culture;
·
have developed a range of research and resource study skills
and the ability to work both independently and as part of a group;
·
be able to observe, describe and analyse different forms of
visual and material culture through written and oral work.
ASSESSMENT
This
module is assessed by three forms of in course work: a short visual
analysis/review of a key resource, a group presentation and an essay. Together
they assess a range of written, verbal, research and analytical skills.
·
500-700 word analysis – hand-in date 5 March 2003
·
group seminar presentation – 2 April
·
1,200-1,500 word essay - hand-in date 30 April
The three
pieces of assessed work are equally weighted.
Week1
Introduction to the course
Workshop: Identifying
Resources
Preparation for Visits & Seminar
presentations on Bentalls
Week
2
Lecture: Critical Reflections on Use of
Resources
Workshop: Synopsis of
Research Findings
Week 3
Visit: Tate Britain, including Library & Archive
Week 4
Visit: The Imperial War Museum
Week 5
Lecture: Contexts of
Production, Mediation & Consumption
Workshop: Text on 19th Department
Store, Rudi Laermans, ‘Learning to Consume: Early Department Stores and the
Shaping of the Modern Consumer Culture (1860-1914)’, in Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 10, 1993, pp 19-102.
Hand-in: short
critical analysis
Week 6
Visit: The Museum of London, including library & archives
Week
7
Visit: Broadgate, City of London
Week
8
Visit: Commercial
Galleries
Week
9
Week
10
Reading Week
Easter
Break
Week
11
Visit:
Auction
House
(Christies, South Kensington: Pop
Memorabilia and Indian and Islamic Art)
The literature on individual resources in and around London
is immense and easily accessible in directories, guides, and via the internet.
The following bibliography therefore focuses on how such resources may be
approached and used in the study of visual and material culture.
Core Texts:
L.
Buck, Target 2: A Users Guide to British
Art Now, London: Tate Publications, 2001
G.
Doy, Black Visual Culture, London:
I.B. Tauris, 2000
A.
Forty, Objects of Desire, London:
Thames and Hudson, 1986
S. Pearce (ed.), Interpreting Objects and Collections, Leicester and London:
Leicester Museum Studies and Routledge, 1994
M.
Pointon, History of Art, A Student
Handbook, London: Allen and Unwin, 1980
M.
Sturken & L. Cartwright, Practices of
Looking, an Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001
J.
Walker, Design History & the History
of Design, London: Pluto, 1989
Recommended Reading:
M.
Barnard, Approaches to Understanding
Visual Culture, Houndmills: Palgrave,
2001
J. Benson, The Rise of
Consumer Society in Britain 1880-1980, London: Longman, 1994
J. Berger, Ways of Seeing, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972
I. Borden, Architecture & Sites of History, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997
P. Jobling &
David Crowley, Graphics Design:
Reproduction and Representation
Since 1800, Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1996
M. B. Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the
Department Store, 1869-1920, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1981
E.D. Rappaport, Shopping For Pleasure, Women in the Making of London’s West End,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000
T.
Richards, The Commodity Culture of
Victorian England 1850-1914,
London: Verso, 1989
Don Slater, Consumer Culture and Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996
Short
Analysis:
500-700 word analysis
Select
one object, photograph, drawing,
painting or site that you can visit and consider its possible meanings in
relation to its context of presentation or mediation. This is a focused and
analytical piece of writing that should go beyond description. It is also a short piece so avoid the
temptation to cover too much and focus instead on a key aspect or debate.
Group Seminar
Presentation
In groups of 4-5,
students should choose a specific aspect of Bentalls Department Store in
Kingston to research and analysis. It may be research into the original
building; its significance within a broader history of retail developments; the
significance of its location in Kingston; an analysis of different parts of the
existing building, including the sculpture on the façade; changing patterns of
consumption, or how the function and/or meanings of the site has changed. The
aim of this project is that you research and analyse your chosen aspect in a
number of different ways.
In
week 9 each group is required to give a 10 minute presentation on their
research on an aspect of Bentalls. The notes and images should be presented and
submitted as part of the assessment. Each group will be awarded a single group
mark for the presentation.
You
are required to answer one of the
following questions. Your essay must include a bibliography of all source material,
including film or internet sources. All essays must be typed, double-spaced and
illustrated appropriately.
1. Write a critical
account of ONE aspect of a collection, site or research archive you have
visited.
2. Select one
site or resource in London and identify and discuss at least two different
ways
in which it could be used in the study
of visual and material culture.
3.
Present an outline of an exhibition proposal of your choice
which draws upon at least two different specific research resources of London
or its environs. Briefly discuss how you would use these resources and what
they would add to the exhibition.
Week
2
Workshop: Synopsis of Research Findings
Following the workshop
in week one, each group to work on three aspects of their selected site to present to the group using visual aids.
The presentation should be no more than 10 minutes. In making your choice of
points please consider the following:
What are the most distinctive aspects
of the building/collection/resource?
How is it presented to the public via
web/promotional material?
In what ways might it be useful to you
as a student?
What unexpected elements have you
discovered about it?
The selected
sites will include: The Museum of London, The Imperial War Museum,
INIVA
archive and Black Art Archive, Tate Britain, including Library & Archive,
Sothebys and Christies, the Photographers Gallery, and Broadgate.
Week 3 & 4
Visits: Tate Britain & The Imperial War Museum
Identify
which aspects of the collection or a theme that you are interested in before
the visit & during the visit select one object, image or installation to
analyse in depth. Identify its key characteristics and why it holds interest
for you as spectator. You may use one of these examples as the basis for your
first assessment.
Week 5
Lecture: Contexts of
Production, Mediation and Consumption
Workshop: Preparation
for seminar presentations
Please
read the two texts handed out in class in advance of this session and identify
three points about each that are of importance for you in preparation for group
discussions.
Week 6 - 8
Prepare
research & group presentation.
Week
9
In
preparation for this session please reflect upon what you have learnt from this
module and identify what are the key issues that you have become aware of
through the module.
Tate Gallery
Visit: Tate Britain,
Millbank (nearest train/tube station Vauxhall and just walk over the bridge or
short walk along river.
Meet: 10.30 inside foyer
by main entrance on Millbank.
Please work in small groups on the following rooms:
Room
15 Art & Victorian Society
Room
19 & 20 War & Memory
Room
21 Modern Art & Tradition
Room
24 1950s Art & Mythology
Ambulatory
– Jacob Epstein
Please consider the following:
How
is the work in this room mediated or framed by the gallery?
For
example, by the works hung together, by lighting, architecture/decoration of
room, through the text panels
What
are the major points that are stressed about the works?
What
questions are not addressed?
I
will move around the various groups to see how you are getting on and to take
small groups to the recently opened Hyman Kreitman Research Centre.
You
may also wish to use this visit to prepare for your first assignment. Details
below.
Short Analysis
500-700 word
analysis – hand-in date 5 March 2003
Select one object,
photograph, drawing, painting or site that you can visit and consider its
possible meanings in relation to its context of presentation or mediation.
This is a focused and analytical
piece of writing that should go beyond description. It is also a short piece so avoid the temptation to cover too
much and focus instead on a key aspect or debate.
Museum of London
Selecting one
of the galleries which focus on London from the Eighteenth Century onwards,
consider how we are aware of either
the cultural diversity of London at a specific time or of London as a colonising capital. What conclusions do you draw from this about the museum’s display
concerns and the histories represented?
Imperial War Museum
10.30-11.30
Film Archive
We will be
introduced to the film archive collection and shown a selection of films as
follows:
WW1 film
showing naval battle
The
Eternal Jew
- anti-Semitic film 1940s
Calling
Mr Smith
1943 - 'avant garde' film about persecution of the Jews. Censored in the UK
The House in the Middle - US Cold War
info film - about how to survive Nuclear holcaust by keeping your house clean!
Operation
Moneybags
- 1960s about LSD trials on soldiers
The Imperial
War Museum describes itself as ‘the museum of everyone's story: the history of
modern war and people's experience of war and wartime life in Britain and the
Commonwealth.’ Do you think that it is successful in achieving its aim?
As you move
through the museum think about how war is represented:
·
How are the different wars characterised?
·
What is the nature of the museum experience?
11.30 –12.30
please make your way to the two suites of galleries on the second floor.
EXHIBITION:
Paul Seawright: Hidden, 5 February - 30 March
In June 2002
the Imperial War Museum commissioned photographer Paul Seawright to visit
Afghanistan. The resulting exhibition consists of ten large format photographs
which investigate the country's landscape. Areas contaminated with unexploded
ordinance and mines, which also constitute the greatest barriers to the repatriation
of displaced people on the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
·
Can you characterise the museum’s approach to representing
war?
· Does it have a consistent view?
Commercial Galleries and Dealer
We will visit
galleries and dealers in Dering Street and then make our way to Cork Street.
The purpose of the visit is to consider the ways in which contemporary art is
presented in a commercial context and to think about the work and the spaces in
the broader context of the gallery system. Listings: www.newexhibitions.com, www.artmonthly.co.uk
DERING STREET
20 Anne Faggionato Ellen Cantor
21 Chinese
Contemporary www.chinesecontemporary.com Group
Exhibition
4th
floor 23 Annely Juda www.annelyjudafineart.co.uk Anthony
Caro
CORK STREET
33-34 Houldsworth www.houldsworth.co.uk Laura Ford: Headthinkers
5a Robert
Sandelson www.robertsandelson.com Howard Hodgkin
5 Hirschel www.hirschlcontemporary.co.uk Rebecca Salter
6 Entwistle
31 Alan
Cristea www.alancristea.com Picasso & Matisse
1st
floor 9 Art First www.artfirst.co.uk Jack Milroy: Falling and Flying
22 Beaux Arts www.beauxartslondon.co.uk Recent Acquisitions
22a the Mayor
Gallery www.artnet.com/mayor.html Peter
Hutchinson
21 Flowers
Central www.flowerseast.com Jack Smith
1st
floor 21 Michael Hue Williams www.mhwfineart.com
20 Redfern www.redfern-gallery.com Ffiona Lewis: from the Road
11&12
Waddingtons www.waddingtongalleries.com Antoni
Tapies
In preparation
for the visit you might wish to visit a selection of gallery websites. Also see
what you can find out about any of the artists on show.
Issues to
consider and for discussion on the visit:
·
the significance of where the galleries are located
·
the nature of the gallery spaces and the impact on the
visitor (design, organisation, display, accessibility and so on)
·
the differences between galleries in terms of the work shown
and intended market
·
does the fact the work is for sale change our relationship
to viewing the work?
·
What kind of information is available and how can you access
it?
The
purpose of this visit is to look at a site of public art. In this session we
will consider a range of issues relating to viewing art in this context, such
as what do we mean by ‘public’, what our relationship might be to the work in
this space, as well the meanings generated by the work. In preparation for the
visit, see what you can find out about the artists represented in Broadgate.
List below:
Richard Serra,
Fulcrum
Barry
Flanagan, Leaping Hare on Cresent and
Bell
Jacques
Lipchitz, Belleronphon Taming Pegasus
Stephen Cox, Ganapathi and Devi
Fernando
Botero, Broadgate Venus
Xavier
Corbero, The Broad Family
Suggestions
for reading:
Sara Selwood, The Benefits of Public Art, 1995
Malcolm Miles, Art, Space & the City, 1997
Here are some
issues we will consider on the visit:
·
What kind of space does the sculpture occupy?
·
What do you think public art might be for?
·
Does it ‘improve’ the environment?
·
Why do you think the works at Broadgate were commissioned?
·
Why do you think these particular works/artists were chosen?
·
Richard Serra has said there was ‘absolutely no aesthetic
agenda’ for Broadgate. What do you think?
·
What do you understand by the term ‘regeneration’ and how
does public sculpture fit into this
scheme?
·
What kind of social ideal is created at Broadgate and what
do think of it?