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Collision Course: Producing Art Through Cultural Collisions Syllabus  Visual Media Presentation Aesthetic Movements Narratives of Cultural Collision: The Odyssey and the Meaning of Monsters on the Fringes of Civilization

 

 

Collision Course: Producing Art Through Cultural Collisions

In this course we're going to examine the ways in which cultural contact spurs and shapes art.

 

Syllabus 

Road map for our cultural collisions.

 

In this course memorizing and summarizing are only the beginning. The goal of this course is to move on to ANALYSIS and CRITICAL THINKING. Skills you will need to complete your degree here at LTU.

 

 

Visual Media Presentation

We live in a culture that is inundated with visual media. As a result, you have probably been analyzing visual media most of your life. Today we're going to look at the language that is used to articulate the analysis you've already done!

 

Aesthetic Movements

• The elements of formal analysis (that we just explored) are only a part of visual thinking.
• Art can also be characterized by aesthetic qualities and movements
• Aesthetic qualities can basically be reduced to two categories:
• IMAGINATIVE
• Imaginative art often emphasizes the emotional (or psychological or non-rational).  
• Imaginative art is often highly symbolic. 
• REALISTIC
• Realistic art often emphasizes the rational.
• Realistic art imitates perceived (visual) reality.  
• Aesthetic movements describe specific artistic practices shared by a group of artists (during a specific time, in a specific place). These aesthetic movements typical emphasize either the imaginative or realistic aesthetic.  
• Some aesthetic movements we are going to explore include: 
• Romanticism
• Realism
• Modernism  
• We're also going to look at aesthetic movements that are not bounded by a single time or place.
• Heroic Realism 
• Although these aesthetic movements are typically associated with mainstream Western art, we are going to look at them from a global perspective and examine the ways in which similarly-identified movements developed across cultures. We're also going to look at the ways in which cultural collisions shaped these movements (rather than emphasizing orthodox Western definitions).
• African Art (The MET)
• Egyptian Art (The MET) 
• Asian Art 
• National Museum of China 
• European Art 
• Victoria and Albert Museum (Great Britain) 
• The Louvre (France) 
• Latin American Art 1600 - 1900 
• North American Art (The MET)
• National Museum of the Native American 

 

Note: The resources available here are limited by what is available online and in the English language. Although (I believe) online resources are giving us access to an increasingly diverse range of resources, the resources available here may still privilege a Western perspective on global art.  

 

Narratives of Cultural Collision: The Odyssey and the Meaning of Monsters on the Fringes of Civilization