AR345-6-SP-CO:
Visualising Bodies
2022/23
Art History and Theory
Colchester Campus
Spring
Undergraduate: Level 6
Current
Monday 16 January 2023
Friday 24 March 2023
15
05 October 2022
Requisites for this module
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What is an ‘ideal’ body? To whom is it ‘ideal,’ and how has the reception of classical art, particularly sculpture, shaped these concepts in western art history?
Antique art has informed variations on the ‘ideal’ body for centuries, from the re-discovery of sculptures like the Belvedere Torso and the Venus de Medici, through to fashion houses like Dolce and Gabbana evoking the image of ancient goddesses on runways in Greek temples or performance artists engaging with hybrid figures like satyrs to challenge normative gender.
This module will investigate the manifold receptions of the ‘classical’ body in antique art and its formal, social, and political uses in the modern period. This will focus primarily on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with incursions into the twentieth and contemporary period. An introduction to classical sculpture in the first week will act as a foundation. Lectures will begin in the eighteenth century with the theories and critiques of Winckelmann, Lessing, and Goethe, neoclassicism, and the ideal body politic in revolutionary Europe. The nineteenth century saw multiple revisions of the ‘ideal,’ the ‘classic,’ and the impact thereupon of the body and art; these include the arrival in Britain of the Parthenon sculptures, discourses around women’s bodies and dress, obscenity and art, and the increasingly international movement of objects, artworks, and discourses.
The formation of new canons of ‘classical’ bodies and the contested histories, reuses, and appropriations of the antique in the twentieth century will inform readings of photography, painting, and sculpture. Twentieth-century material will include discussions of Fascist appropriation of antique sculpture and the idealised body for the promotion of white supremacy, as well as contemporary attempts to reclaim and decolonise classical art history. Contemporary engagements with the classical body through digital, performance, and fashion close out the module, addressing the continuing relevance and contemporaneity of the antique body.
Students will be asked to consider the changing nature and function of idealisation, particularly that shaped by antiquity, across periods and media. They will be asked to consider how ‘classicism’ can be broadly and variously construed for widely differing artistic and political ends, and how these debates continue to shape discourses around the ‘ideal’ ‘real’ body. Questions of gender, race, and sexuality will run across the module, from the construction of ideal beauty by Winckelmann as white skinned to the depiction of masculine bodies as antique statues by Leni Riefenstahl, and genderqueer, non-binary, non-human, and even the non-body today.
The aims of the module are:
o investigate the tradition of the representation of the human body in the artworks examined within the module;
to consider how the body was made to stand for a broad range of complex ideas;
to consider how the body became at different times a locus of politics, knowledge, and desire;
to encourage students to develop skills in written communication through the writing of essays, and in oral communication through active participation in seminars.
By the end of this module students should have:
1. a substantial understanding of the relationship between art and the body in a specific period and geographical location;
2. the ability to critically describe, analyse and interpret works of art featured in the module;
3. the ability to write at length in an informed manner on the relationship between art and the body and to form an argument relating to various aspects of the topic;
4. the ability intelligently to relate works of art to primary sources, and art historical and theoretical literature relating to the topics covered on the module;
5. the ability to write in a synthetic manner, drawing links between different artists, artistic centres, and periods;
6. the ability to articulate the relationship between politics, knowledge, sexuality, and the body in the period under consideration.
No additional information available.
There will be a two-hour combined lecture and seminar each week. There will also be a reading week, exact week to be confirmed.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
| Coursework |
Weekly Reading Summaries TOTAL |
|
33% |
| Coursework |
Week 17 Reading Summary |
|
|
| Coursework |
Week 20 Reading Summary |
|
|
| Coursework |
Week 23 Reading Summary |
|
|
| Coursework |
2500 word essay |
|
67% |
| Exam |
Main exam: Remote, Open Book, 24hr during Summer (Main Period)
|
| Exam |
Reassessment Main exam: Remote, Open Book, 24hr during September (Reassessment Period)
|
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Melissa Gustin, email: melissa.gustin@essex.ac.uk.
Dr Melissa Gustin
artquery@essex.ac.uk
Yes
Yes
Yes
Dr Dominic Paterson
University of Glasgow
Senior Lecturer in History of Art / Curator of Contemporary Art
Available via Moodle
Of 20 hours, 20 (100%) hours available to students:
0 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s), module, or event type.
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