ARTT1105

‘Art in the Modern World’

2023
 E-Mail Policy
Questions about the content/assessments of the course:

Dr. Paolo Magagnoli

p.magagnoli@uq.edu.au
Dr. Sushma Griffin
sushma.griffin@uq.edu.au
Tobias Broughton
tobias.broughton@uq.net.au

Questions on timetabling/enrolment issues:

sca.timetable@uq.edu.au

Questions about Blackboard:

itsupportdesk@its.uq.edu.au
EXPECTATIONS: HIGH ART 1850s-1945
Week 2. MODERN ART VS. ACADEMIC ART IN EUROPE

Week 3. 19th CENTURY REALISM: COURBET AND HIS INFLUENCE

Week 5. IMPRESSIONISM IN FRANCE AND JAPAN

Week 6. MODERN ART AND THE PRIMITIVE (SYMBOLISM,

EXPRESSIONISM)

Week 7. PHOTOGRAPHY, MODERNITY, AND PAINTING

Week 8. WESTERN STYLE PAINTING IN JAPAN AND CHINA

Week 9. CUBISM AND ABSTRACTION

Week 10. DADA AND INTERNATIONAL SURREALISM

Week 11. REALISM(S) BETWEEN THE WARS IN EUROPE AND MEXICO

Week 12. POSTWAR AMERICAN ART: ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND

ITS LEGACIES
 EXPECTATIONS
• Be ready to question your ideas about art;
• Be open to be shocked – modern art is
provocative, whether intentionally or not:
modern art was ‘counterculture’, not
mainstream;
• Modern art might reflect values and modes of
seeing the world that we don’t share
anymore/violate our contemporary ethics;
How to succeed in ARTT1105
“Some of the readings were extremely long and difficult to maintain. Some
indication of the most important parts of the readings are would be helpful’.

‘The powerpoint slides were not very detailed which made it hard to follow
sometimes if you missed something that was said there was no way to read
back over it.’

*‘Suggestions for recommended/further readings about movements that we

don't have enough time to cover… I did struggle with fitting in the readings
however would not wish for less readings to be given as I found them all very
valuable. I just had to take the approach of treating them as recommended
readings and got through what I could, and that was enough to get me through
the course and I didn't feel like I was missing out on too many levels of
understanding thanks to lectures and tutorials. I will definitely be revisiting
some of the readings more thoroughly in the future however.’
• We are facilitators: we are here to help you do
the work – but we can NOT provide
summaries of the readings, because that is the
work.

• The readings are useful because they provide

content but also because by reading them
you’ll improve your writing skills;
 Hone your writing skills
1. Look at the resources in the Blackboard Assessment
Page
(https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/strategi
es-essay-writing)

2. Consider taking a writing class (see Fundamentals of

Academic Writing WRIT1005)

3. Read art magazines (Art Forum, Frieze, etc ….)

 ASSESSMENTS

*Online Forum Questions:

“NB. Students will have to have completed the question BEFORE THEIR
TUTORIALS - Failure to complete the questions beforehand will result in a 0 mark.
Word length: Min 250 words”
 ASSESSMENTS

“I also felt like the assessment types made sense for this
type of content weekly reflections incentivised engagement
with content/lectures, whilst the bigger, longer assignments
allowed the progressive development of nuanced
responses and theses. I also liked how both the shorter
and longer assignment were weighted the same, showing
that concise writing is a skill in itself, and thus the smaller
assessment isn't just the bigger one but easier!”
BREAK
 Modern/Modern Art

1. Modern ≠ all art/images produced in the

Modern Period*;

*Having decided that the modern period is 1850s-1945.

A display case with 18th-century portrait miniatures at
the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland
cartes de visite of Queen Victoria taken Saint Crepin, patron of
by photographer John Jabez Edwin shoemaker, ca. 1850-1875,
Mayall, 1859-1861 lithography, author
anonymous
The Art Journal, 1878
The Art Journal, 1878
The Art Journal, 1878
The Art Journal, 1878
The Diorama (Daguerre)
Stereoscope
 Modern/Modern Art

1. Modern ≠ all art/images produced in the

Modern Period;
2. A selective term that imply a ‘distinction’
within the sphere of High Art: modern vs.
traditional, classic, academic art;
 Academy-Academic Art
• Royal Academy of Painters and Sculptors
(France, 1648) (England, 1768);
• Salon (annual exhibition): 1737 – open to the
public and free of charge;
• Prix de Rome;
• 1741 – first surviving piece of art criticism
(pamphlets and magazines);
• Linked to the Monarchy;
 HIERARCHY OF GENRES
1. History painting, including historically
important, religious, mythological, or
allegorical subjects
2. Portrait painting
3. Genre painting or scenes of everyday life
4. Landscape
5. Animal painting
6. Still life
Francois Joseph Haim, Charles X Distributing Awards to Artists Exhibiting at the Salon of 1824
at the Louvre, 1827 (H. 1.73 m; W. 2.56 m)
Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884)Salon of 1852, large north gallery
Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884)Salon of 1852
Thomas Couture, Romans of the Decadence, 1847, oil on canvas (473 x 787 cm)
D. Papety, The Dream of Happiness, 1843 (370 x 635)
Paul Delaroche, Artists of All Ages, 1836-1841, oil on canvas (473 x 787 cm)
Jean-Leon Gerome, Young Greeks Attending a Cock Fight, 1846 (H. 143; W. 204 cm)
Ary Scheffer, Saint
Augustine and
Saint Monica,
1854.
 ACADEMIC STYLE
• Modelling
• Perspective
• Drawing
• Moral ‘message’: privilege narrative readings
• Classic/mythological/historical subject matter
(over urban-modernity)
• Finish
• Sentimentality or ‘pathos’
 DEMANDS FOR CONTEMPORANEITY

“il faut être de son

temps”—“you
must be of your
time.”

Henri-Charles Guérard, Portrait of H.

Daumier,1888.
“… the painters of today, through subjects of a
general nature and applicable to all ages,
nevertheless persist in rigging them out in the
costumes of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance or
the Orient. This is symptomatic of a great degree of
laziness…. By modernity I mean the ephemeral, the
fugitive, and the contingent… Every old master had
its own modernity”

Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1863

“The painter, the true painter, will be he who
wring from the contemporary life its epic aspect
and make us see and understand, with color or
in drawing, how great and poetic we are in our
cravats and our polished books.”

Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, 1863

Constantin Guys, Carriages and Promenaders on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, 1855
(24 x 41 cm)
Eduard Manet, Concert in the Tuileries, 1862, oil on canvas,76 x 118 cm
 To Recap: Modern/Modern Art

1. Modern ≠ all art/images produced in the

Modern Period;
2. A selective term that imply a ‘distinction’
within the sphere of High Art: modern vs.
traditional, classic, academic art;
3. The idea of the modern changes through
time: e.g. what is ‘modern’ in 1859 is not the
same ‘modern’ as in 1915
 Kazemir Malevich, Black Square, 1915,
oil on canvas

Boris Kustodiev, The Merchant’s Wife, 1915, oil on canvas