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Semester 2

Romanticism to Expressionism (HIAR10108)

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 the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artistic quest for the origins of Germanic identity and the Romantic roots of early Expressionism.

Course Description

Identity, as it is understood and explored in this course, is a multifaceted concept, one that might encompass geo-politics, self-perception, or, in an essentialist formulation, the notion of an inherent national spirit. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's essay 'On German Architecture' (1772) is a helpful starting point for considering how the idea of a 'Gothic' Germanic identity (especially with respect to the motifs of cathedrals and forests) played out in the visual culture of the long nineteenth century i.e. from Caspar David Friedrich onwards. Furthermore, the Nazarenes and the Brücke, while separated by a hundred years, might be considered avant-garde 'brotherhoods', who sought to reinvigorate German art in opposition to academic (especially neo-classical) artistic conventions. We will discuss early organic theories of art as expressed in the written work of such thinkers as Johann Gottfried von Herder, as well as later philosophies of art (Arthur Schopenhauer, Julius Langbehn, Friedrich Nietzsche et al.) and the artistic reception of their ideas. We shall also investigate the enduring Romantic cult of Albrecht Dürer as the German artist par excellence, and the influence of this icon of the Northern Renaissance on both nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German artists, as well as society more generally. In addition, we will discuss the German Romantic 'longing for the south' (Italy), in many respects following Dürer's travels, and the more problematic artistic and critical reception of French culture in Germany. The course will cover a wide range of subject matter and exact topics are likely to vary from year to year, but topics may include for example the arboreal 'fairy-tale' landscapes of artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and Adrian Ludwig Richter, and the anti-urban 'back-to-nature' tradition of representing rural peasants as seen in the art of Wilhelm Leibl and Paula Modersohn-Becker, among others. Visual expressions of a 'free body culture' in both Symbolist and Expressionist artworks as part of the Life Reform Movement may also be considered, as may the sexual misogyny and anxiety of turn-of-the-century art in Munich, Vienna and Berlin.

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.

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