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Semester 2

Bad Painting: Humour, Sarcasm and Stupidity in Modern and Contemporary Art (HIAR10172)

Subject

History of Art

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above, and please note that we will not consider History courses unrelated to Art, or practical Art courses, towards these pre-requisites. We will only consider University/College level courses. Please see Additional Restrictions below.

Course Summary

This course examines aspects of humour, sarcasm and stupidity in modern and contemporary art around the theme of 'Bad Painting'. Deriving from a curatorial category proposed in 1978 by Marcia Tucker, we will expand the idea to describe a form of art making that deliberately defies both existing bourgeois norms of 'good taste' and avant-garde models of 'good practice'.

Course Description

This course explores the possible critical value of 'Bad Painting' and its associated forms, drawing on a diverse range of visual and theoretical material, from the early twentieth century to the present day, including for example, the later works of enigmatic surrealists Francis Picabia and René Magritte, which, on the surface, seemed to contradict the artists' avant-garde roots, signaling a descent into excess and willful stupidity, and a trend in German painting in the late 20th century, incorporating artists such as Sigmar Polke, Isa Genzken, Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen, whose works sometime seem to express little more than a sarcastic and adolescent sense of humour. Structured as a series of two-hour seminars, focusing on different themes, including deadpan humour, cynical reason and the death of painting, we will explore the way in which this approach to art making rejects the social and politically minded aspects of much modern and contemporary art, indulging instead a nihilistic and apathetic sensibility, adhering to Picabia's aphorism that all 'conviction is a disease'. Drawing upon the dissident surrealist writings of Georges Bataille and Roger Caillois and more recent theorists of negativity such as Jean Baudrillard and Steven Shaviro, as well as up to date theoretical contributions on comedy, we will explore the potential critical value of 'Bad Painting' in the visual arts; unpacking and problematising issues such as the avant-garde, art's relationship to media and technology, the so-called 'end of painting', art and the commodity object, and the political agency of humour.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 50%, Coursework 50%, Practical Exam 0%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a History of Art exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in one 3rd year History of Art course each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. Enrolment in a second course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the January Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the extremely limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course