MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture

Tutor: Professor Cora Gilroy-Ware 

In Western Art, so the story goes, the emergence of the Modern depends on the death of “the antique”. A dry, lifeless, academic notion of beauty had to be destroyed to make space for more exciting, democratic, and relevant modes of representation. The relics of Greece and Rome, not to mention the many tedious neoclassical objects they inspired, were stripped, once and for all, of their claim to universal aesthetic supremacy. Not only does this grand narrative risk replacing one hierarchy with another; it also works to eclipse the work of visual artists who, positioned outside or marginal to the centre of artistic discourse, take up Greco-Roman forms and figures well after the ousting of the classical. In short, it is a narrative that does injustice to the artists of colour who engaged with the classical on their own terms and in their own time.

Seeing beyond the binary of classical and modern, this course looks at the work of Black artists working in the Anglo-American world between the 18th century and the present. Rather than structured chronologically, we will look at so-called “historic” (pre-1900) material together with later work, exploring, for example, the continuity between the art of queer Harlem Renaissance artist Richard Bruce Nugent and the designs of the British sculptor and illustrator John Flaxman. The course will also touch on non-traditional media, including vinyl-cover album art, and we will deploy works of fiction and poetry as a means of illuminating both art objects and their history.

Other case studies will include the verse of Phillis Wheatley and its connection to the art of the Royal Academy, the sculpture of Edmonia Lewis and Selma Burke, Romare Bearden’s 1977 cycle of Homeric collages A Black Odyssey, the 2006 series Roaming by Carrie Mae Weems, and Kara Walker’s recent installations for the Tate Modern: Fons Americanus and Shell Grotto. In addition to exploring cases of Black Classicism in visual art, our goal will be to gauge how associations between classical form and whiteness offered a creative challenge to artists of African descent. We will also determine whether the humanist integration of classical form and liberty made the art of Greece and Rome especially appealing for artists whose humanity, and claim to freedom, had been undermined for centuries by the powers that be.

Tutor: Professor Geraldine Johnson

This course focuses on the roles played by women in the production and reception of visual and material culture in 15th-, 16th- and 17th-century Europe. It also explores how the study of women and art (broadly defined) intersects with questions related to ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’, gender fluidity, racial identity and the de-centring of Europe within the so-called ‘global’ middle ages and early modern period.  

Drawing on an expanding field of inquiry, the course examines the careers of professional women artists such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster and Lavinia Fontana working in traditional media such as painting, as well as women in and out of Europe who were involved in the production of objects not always seen as ‘Art’, such as craft works and domestic furnishings. It considers influential women patrons and collectors such as Elizabeth I, Isabella d’Este and Maria de’ Medici, and less well-known lay and religious women patrons in Europe and beyond. Another topic is the representation of gendered subjects and strategies for visually encoding—and, at times, challenging—‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ in a wide range of media and diverse iconographic scenarios. The course looks as well at gender in relation to the beholders and users of art objects, for example when paintings and decorated household furnishings were produced to be viewed and used by young brides and mothers-to-be in the domestic sphere. The course will also consider the role played by gender in cultural exchanges between Europe and the wider world, as well as will touch on the visual afterlife of early modern gendered subjects in everything from 19th-century paintings, prints and photographs to contemporary film, television and online media. 

Tutor: Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black

Tutor: Professor Marko Ilic

This course offers a critical survey of the forces placing unprecedented demands on today’s art world – driving it into more anxious, reactive and contradictory configurations. Moving beyond familiar debates surrounding the so-called ‘global contemporary,’ our inquiry will be anchored in an examination of the art world’s political economy. We will explore art’s shifting dynamics in relation to identity politics and the rise of populism, to migration and conflict, as well as its entanglement with rapacious hyper-capitalism and the accelerating crisis of climate collapse. We will also consider its relationship to the all-consuming digital attention economy and the still-uncertain consequences of AI. 

Focusing each week on a specific theme, with case studies drawn from different parts of the world, the course offers a perspective on where the art world stands on these issues and what kinds of solutions it proposes – or fails to propose. Together, we will discuss where the art world is now, where it might be heading, and how artists, institutions, and writers can best intervene at a time that calls for nothing less.