Undergraduate Course: History of Art Critical Portfolio (HIAR10025)

Course Outline
School	Edinburgh College of Art	College	College of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)	SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate)	Availability	Not available to visiting students
SCQF Credits	40	ECTS Credits	20
Summary	This option is available to 3rd Year single Honours History of Art students, and is a requirement for 4th Year Fine Art students. It invites students to adopt the role of art critic and to reflect upon the theory and practice of art criticism and its role in the development of art history more broadly. The Critical Portfolio takes place over two semesters and has two parts: (1) Reviews, which is submitted at the end of Semester 1, and (2) Essay, which is submitted at the end of Semester 2. For the review portion in Semester 1, students are required to write either four short reviews, each 750 words long, or two reviews of 750 words and one longer review of 1500 words (i.e. 3000 words in total). The essay (3-4000 words) in Semester 2 should reflect both on the experience of writing art criticism and on the nature of art criticism - on art criticism in theory and practice. It is an opportunity for students to reflect on and analyse the practice of writing about art and to think critically about practical, theoretical and methodological challenges in the field, in the past, present and future.
Course description	Not entered

Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites	Students MUST have passed: History of Art 2 (HIAR08008)	Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations		Other requirements	None

Course Delivery Information

Academic year 2015/16, Not available to visiting students (SS1)		Quota: None
Course Start	Full Year
Timetable	Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info)	Total Hours: 400 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 2, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 390 )
Assessment (Further Info)	Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment)	In first semester: four reviews of 750 words In second semester: essay of 3-4,000 words
Feedback	Not entered
No Exam Information

Learning Outcomes
This course gets students out of the seminar room and into the public exhibition gallery. It challenges them to think and write about art historical issues from a different perspective to that of the art historian. It enables them to dispense with some of the traditional baggage of art historical writing (such as essays, references and bibliography) and to find their own critical voice. The essay requires them to articulate the challenges they face in taking-on the Critical Portfolio. The critic's task is nowhere usefully defined, so one of the key outcomes of the project is for students to decide what it involves. In part, this will be based on their practical experience. But they will also engage with the literature about and around the critical tradition: from Diderot in the Salon to Sewell in the Standard. The critical faculties and journalistic writing this course requires gives students a fresh perspective on art history and its writings.