„The Bauhaus: Modernist Ideas, Artistic Practice, and Cultural Heritage“
The Bauhaus plays a special role in 20th-century art, culture, architecture, design, and new media. As a design school, the Bauhaus revolutionized artistic thinking, architectural practice, and design production worldwide. The course will explore the Bauhaus as a place of alternative art education and new artistic practices. The Bauhaus will not only figure as an institution that merged aesthetic theory and artistic practice, but also as a central place of artistic interaction and cultural exchange between East and West, North and South that, despite its short-lived institutional existence, gained a strong influence upon the development of the visual arts in Europe and subsequently in the United States, the Near East, Asia, and Australia. The course includes a field trip to the historic Bauhaus sites in Weimar and Dessau.​
DU2389 Exoticism within: Images of Roma and ‘Gypsies’ in Central European Art and Visual Culture
This course offers a a critical account of Roma and “Gypsy” stereotypes in the art and visual culture in Central Europe since the nineteenth century and examines these in light of current debates on whiteness and decolonisation. It examines the ways in which art both reflected and also shaped the image of the Roma in Central European society. The course not only considers "Gypsy" images but also introduces Romani cultural emancipation and explore contemporary art projects by Romani artists from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.​
DU2321 Other modernisms
This blended course looks beyond the established canons of modern art and design which give preference to the avant-garde and individual 'great artists.' The course examines the topic from an international perspective, acknowledging modernism as a global phenomenon. It introduces topics such as women's contributions to modern visual culture, art and design of minority groups, folk modernities, and global entanglements of modernity (with e.g. the USA, Mexico, or India). The course is delivered as a series of lectures on selected topics that challenge the western canon of modernism. The scope of modernism is explored through talks by invited international speakers with expertise on different aspects of modernism. A study visit of an exhibition in Vienna is an indispensable part of the course.​
DU2401 The local in a global context: art and visual culture in the twentieth century
Throughout the 20th century it has become increasingly accepted that we live in an interconnected world. Global, national, regional and even local cultures do not exist in isolation from each other, but shape each other. At the same time, international cultural trends are given a national character, while regional and local cultures make use of universal ideas and practices. As a result, we live in a mixed, hybrid world – the “local in the global”. This course examines this issue as it relates to visual culture since 1900. Using a range of case studies, from modernist architecture in Africa and India to Mexican & Native American art, from ethno-fashion to Moravian folk art, it explores the ways in which artists, designers and architects have exploited this intersection of cultures in productive ways. The course also pays attention to the practices at museums and galleries that address the topic of local and global in exhibitions. Alongside the discussion of individual examples, the course examines the different theoretical concepts that have been used to describe and understand this phenomenon. The students will benefit from different approaches of internal and external speakers.
DU2323 Vienna and Beyond: Art and Architecture in Austria-Hungary, 1873-1918
This course offers a critical account of art and architecture in Austria-Hungary from 1873, the year of the World Fair in Vienna, to 1918, when Austria-Hungary collapsed. Its main focus is on Vienna, but it will also discuss examples from other sites in the Habsburg Empire, e.g. Prague, Budapest, for comparison and context.It examines the ways in which art and architecture both reflected and also shaped the cultural politics of the late nineteenth-century in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria-Hungary. The course considers not only central and well-known individual artists and architects such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner and Koloman Moser, but also broader thematic topics, including, for example, museums and exhibitionary practices, debates on folk and vernacular culture, historicism and national traditions, gender and sexuality; urbanisation and the experience of modernity; photography and mass media.Being delivered in English, the course will also include a session on the use of academic English and styles of writing.​
DU2408 Folk Art and Vernacular Culture from the 15th to the 21st century
The course guides students through the basic concepts, terms, and important topics of folk art from the early modern period to the present, focusing on the following topics:​
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Early print as popular print? Its impact on modern art
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Ethnography, costumes and stereotypes
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Print, mass media and the illustrated press
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Vernacular architecture
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Folk Art and “High Art”: painting from the ideal countryside to social realism
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Regions and places: national symbols and design
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Minority folk arts and craft practices
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Wood, metal, glass: Reinventing craft practices
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Textile works: handicrafts and gender
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Photography and fashion: making the folk “popular”
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