Cultural Dimension of Art

This course tackles art from a cultural point of view. In doing so, it is consistant both with the theoretical approach of the Cultural Studies and with the more practical requirements in the field of Cultural Management.

After a brief theoretical introduction, the syllabus is divided into two major sections.

The first one deals with the arts as a whole, and is therefore interested mainly in what happens 'outside' the art work. It takes a multifaceted approach from different perspectives, offering a caleidoscopic and necessarily pluralistic view of a complex and often even contradictory reality. Each approach deals with one particular aspect of art as a historical, social and cultural practice, and will be tackled with a diachronic, but by no means exhaustive perspective: only the most relevant episodes will be taken into account. In turn, each of these conceptual threads will intersect the others at some point or another. Some of those points serve as real nodes, transforming our understanding of art as a whole. The most important one will be undoubtedly the period known as modernism. Modernism representes the culmination of the search for autonomy of the artistic institution, with extremely important historical, social, economic and cultural consequences which to a great extent still determine our understanding of the discipline. Obviously enough, we are currently engaged in yet another of those nodes: digitalization and globalization are modifying enormously our comprehension of the artistic sphere.

The second section will address the main types of analysis of art and the work of art. It is concerned mainly with what happens 'inside' the art work. An art work is a complex artifact that serves many purposes and transmits its contents in a variety of ways. This section will study the main theoretical perspectives on art analysis. Especial attention will be paid to those which are still in use in the fields of visual and cultural studies.