Art, and especially visual art, appears to be closely connected with the human condition. From prehistoric cave paintings and traditional body ornaments to mass culture images and what is found around the world today in contemporary galleries, visual art forms have always been tightly woven into the way we experience the world.
The goal of this course if for you to become familiar with key moments in the history of Western art as it is traditionally told, but also to acquire a critical stance about this traditional art historical narrative and the various other vantage points it overlooks.
Classes will take the form of workshops where you will carry out your own discovery process and progressively acquire conceptual tools that can be applied to cultural developments as diverse as the Italian Renaissance, graphic novels and AI-generated imagery. A central premise of this course is that although knowledge about specific artists and artworks is crucial, art is essentially a social phenomenon and thus needs to be looked at from a larger social framework.
Key benefits from this course include improving your general knowledge, having a clearer grasp of the inner workings of the art world, as well as being more critical about how the way history is told impacts what is considered worthwhile or important. The main point is to help you see works of art differently, through questions that arise from both curiosity and pleasure.
- Enseignant: Yvan Tétreault