Module Directory

This module seeks to answer a fundamental question: `What makes art modern?` In pursuit of this question, we will concentrate on key strands of European modern art in the first decades of the twentieth century, such as Futurism, German Expressionism, Constructivism, and Surrealism.

This module will closely analyse and re-examine a range of iconic artworks, such as Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Wassily Kandinsky's earliest non-representational compositions, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's street scenes, Rene Magritte's The Key to Dreams, and Alexandra Rodchenko's Spatial Constructions.

The aims of this module are:

• To develop a greater understanding of key developments in modern European art in the first decades of the twentieth century.


• To introduce students to artworks from this period and to the comparative study of modernism across European countries.


• To expose students to debates in past and recent literature about the interpretation of modern European art from the first part of the 20th century.


• To raise students` awareness of different methods for analysing works of art.


• To stimulate students to develop skills in communication through assignments and seminars.

Skills for your Professional Life

By the end of this module, students will be expected to have acquired a set of transferable skills and in particular be able to:

1. Define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant.


2. Seek and organise the most relevant discussions and sources of information.


3. Process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments.


4. Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure.


5. Write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications.


6. Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them.


7. Think 'laterally' and creatively (i.e., to explore interesting connections and possibilities, and to present these clearly rather than as vague hunches).


8. Maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position based on feedback.


9. Think critically and constructively.

Some of the topics under consideration include the ways in which new technologies transformed art-making and art discourse from the period; the intersections between art, mass media, and consumer culture; the impact of war on artists and their art practices; and the so-called birth of abstraction.

This module will be delivered via:

• One 2-hour combined lecture and seminar per week.

There will also be a Reading Week when no teaching will take place, exact week to be confirmed.