Undergraduate Course: Electric Dreams and Nuclear Visions: Art and Science in the Twentieth Century (HIAR10117)
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 | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Throughout the twentieth century the European avant-garde was informed and influenced by developments ongoing in the sciences. New discoveries in physics, biology and engineering impacted as never before upon society as electricity, industrialization, psychiatric medicine, relativity physics, public health programs and the onset of the nuclear age all changed profoundly how people responded to the scientific age and its perceived benefits. Between the years 1907-1960 science was conveyed to the public in a variety of ways: newspapers, 'popular' science books, government education programs and the gradual 'creep' of new technology into everyday life all contributed to the current of interest circulating around the subject. This seminar analyzes (through both visual and literary sources) how the twentieth-century avant-garde reacted to this stimulus by examining how the style and symbolism of modern art tallied with the new concepts of space, time, matter and mind emerging in contemporary science. |
| Course description |
Week 1: Introduction: This seminar will introduce the study of Art and Science in the twentieth century. It will cast an eye over the history and theory of the subject and its relevance to contemporary art history. A general introduction to the subject and seminar series will be given in which case studies will be highlighted and an explanatory overview of Art and Science in the twentieth century provided.
No set reading this week
Week 2: (i) Cubism, X-Rays and Ether Physics; (ii) Suprematism and Fourth-Dimensional Geometry
While much scholarship has attended to the relationship between Cubism, contemporary cultural politics and the philosophy of Henri Bergson little has thus far been said of the influence on Cubism of early twentieth-century ether physics. This seminar will examine the extent to which the dematerialised boundaries of objects in early Cubist paintings tally with popular fascination with the ether, radioactivity and x-ray technology in the first decade of the twentieth century. It will also look at the Russian avant-garde movement of Suprematism and address whether the fragmented, geometrical spaces of paintings by Malevich, El Lissitzky et al. have a kinship with early twentieth-century fourth-dimensional and non-Euclidean geometry.
Set Reading:
- Snow, C.P., The Two Cultures, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp1-21
- Apollinaire, Guillaume, 'The New Painting: Art Notes' (1912) in Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Harrison, C. & Wood, P. (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, pp181-2
Presentations:
i) Cubism, X-Rays and Ether Physics
Suggested Reading:
- Apollinaire, Guillaume, The Cubist Painters, Read, Peter (trans.), Forest Row, Artists:Bookworks, 2002
- Cottingham, David, Cubism and Its Histories, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, 'Editor's Introduction: I. Writing Modern Art and Science - An Overview; II. Cubism, Futurism, and Ether Physics in the Early Twentieth Century', Science in Context, 17(4), 423-466 (2004), esp. pp445-58
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, 'X-Rays and the Quest for Invisible Reality in the Art of Kupka, Duchamp and the Cubists', in, Art Journal, Vol.47, No.4, (Winter, 1988), pp323-40
- Tsivian, Yuri, 'Media Fantasies and Penetrating Vision: Some Links Between X-Rays, The Microscope and Film', Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural Experiment, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996, pp81-99
ii) Suprematism and Fourth-Dimensional Geometry
Suggested Reading:
- Bowlt, John, 'The Presence of Absence: The Aesthetic of Transparency in Russian Modernism', The Structurist, 27/28 (1987-8), pp15-22
- Bowlt, John (ed.), Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, London, Thames and Hudson, 1976
- Gamwell, Lynn, Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and the Spiritual, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2002
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983
- Milner, John, Kazimir Malevich and the Art of Geometry, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1996
- Tsivian, Yuri, 'Media Fantasies and Penetrating Vision: Some Links Between X-Rays, The Microscope and Film', Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde and Cultural Experiment, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996, pp81-99
Week 3: (i) Matisse and 'Black-Light' Physics; (ii) Orphism and Colour Psychology
During the First World War, Matisse began experimenting with 'black light' in a series of post-Fauvist paintings. In this context, the seminar will analyse the contemporary influence of Gustave Le Bon's theory of black-light radiation and its applicability to post-Fauvist colour theory. The usage of colour symbolism in Orphist painting will also be assessed by examining how Orphism not only drew upon Romantic colour theory but also early twentieth-century experimental psychology through its study of colour perception and synaesthesia.
Set Reading:
- Green, Christopher, Art in France: 1900-1940, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000, pp141-60
- Delaunay, Robert, 'On the Construction of Reality in Pure Painting' (1912) in Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Harrison, C. & Wood, P. (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, pp152-4
Presentations:
(i) Matisse and 'Black-Light' Physics
Suggested Reading:
- Cowling, Elizabeth and Golding, John, Matisse/Picasso, London, Tate, 2002
- Freeman, Judi, Fauves, London, Thames and Hudson, 1995
- Gage, John, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism, London, Thames and Hudson, 2000, pp228-40
- Gage, John, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction, London, Thames and Hudson, 1993
- Green, Christopher, Art in France: 1900-1940, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000
(ii) Orphism and Colour Psychology
Suggested Reading:
- Gage, John, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism, London, Thames and Hudson, 2000
- Gamwell, Lynn, Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and the Spiritual, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2002
- Green, Christopher, Art in France: 1900-1940, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000
- Hicken, Adrian, Apollinaire, Cubism and Orphism, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002
- Spate, Virginia, Orphism: the evolution of non-figurative painting in Paris, 1910-1914, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979
Week 4: (i) Secessionism, Mental Illness and Psychiatry; (ii) Futurism and Technological Modernity
Fin-de-siècle Vienna witnessed the birth of psychiatry which, in turn, undertook clinical research into the various signs by which mental illness registered on the patient's body. This seminar will investigate how the contorted and eroticised bodies favoured by the Vienna Secessionists relied on images of pathological body-types popularised by early 20th-century psychiatric medicine and the new concepts of sexuality to emerge out of Freudian psychoanalysis. This seminar will also look at the impact of new technology on the prewar avant-garde by examining how the 'machine age', telegraphy, radiography and cinematography influenced the preoccupations of the Futurists. The representation of successive viewpoints and multiple perspectives in Futurism shall be further analysed from the standpoint of 'simultaneity' and the pseudo-scientific influence of Bergson.
Set Reading:
- Wieber, Sabine, 'The Allure of Nerves: Class, gender and neurasthenia in Klimt's society portraits', in, Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900, Blackshaw, G. and Topp, Leslie (eds.), Farnham, Lund Humphries, 2009, pp119-35
- Marinetti, F.T., 'The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism' (1908) & 'Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto' (1910) in Theories of Modern Art : a source book by artists and critics, edited by Chipp, Herschel B., Berkeley & London: University of California Press, 1968, pp284-293
Presentations:
(i) Secessionism, Mental Illness and Psychiatry
Suggested Reading:
- Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900, Blackshaw, G. and Topp, Leslie (eds.), Farnham, Lund Humphries, 2009
- Blackshaw, Gemma, 'The Pathological Body: Modernist Strategising in Egon Schiele's Self-Portraiture' in Oxford Art Journal, Vol.30, No.3 (2007), pp379-401
- The Naked Truth: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals, Natter, T.G. and Hollein, M. (eds.), London, Prestel, 2005
- Schorske, Carl, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980
- Vergo, Peter, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918, London, Phaidon, 1975
- West, Shearer, Fin-de-Siècle, London, Bloomsbury, 1993, pp104-21
(ii) Futurism and Technological Modernity
Suggested Reading:
- Futurism, Ottinger, Didier (ed.), Paris, Centre Pompidou, 2009
- Futurist Manifestos, Apollionio, Umbro (ed.), London, Thames and Hudson, 1973
- Hewitt, Andrew, Fascist Modernism: Aesthetics, Politics and the Avant-Garde, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1993, pp133-60
- Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space, London and Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1983 and 2003
- Poggi, Christine, Inventing Futurism: the art and politics of artificial optimism, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2009
Week 5: (i) Vorticism and the Machine Age; (ii) Marcel Duchamp, Science and Technology
The spur of new technology on pre- and postwar avant-garde activity shall be the subject of this week's seminar. Firstly, the aggressive celebration of modernity upheld by the English vanguard movement, Vorticism, will be analysed within the context of the 'machine age' and contemporary faith in the transformational powers of industrialization. Secondly, this seminar will question the ways in which Marcel Duchamp incorporated a wide range of scientific and technological themes into his work (especially in the Large Glass of 1915-23) with the intention of both reinventing his artistic identity and parodying contemporary popular science.
Set Reading:
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, "'The Large Glass' Seen Anew: Reflections of Contemporary Science and Technology in Marcel Duchamp's 'Hilarious Picture'", in, Leonardo, Vol.32, No.2 (1999), pp113-126
- B., Berkeley & London: University of California Press, 1968, pp392-5 Duchamp, Marcel, 'Painting...at the service of the mind' (1946) in Theories of Modern Art : a source book by artists and critics, edited by Chipp, Herschel
Presentations:
(i) Vorticism and the Machine Age
Suggested Reading:
- Blast 1 and 2, Lewis, Wyndham (ed.), Santa Barbara, Black Sparrow Press, 1981
- Beckett, Jane, '(Is)land Narratives: Englishness, Visuality and Vanguard Culture, 1914-18', in, English Art, 1860-1914: Modern Artists and Identity, Corbett, D.P. and Perry, L. (eds.), Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000, pp195-212
- Cork, Richard, Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age, Vols.1 and 2, Berkeley, University of California, 1976
- Harrison, Charles, English Art and Modernism, 1900-1939, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1981
(ii) Marcel Duchamp, Science and Technology
Suggested Reading:
- Duchamp, Marcel, Notes, Paris, Flammarion, 1999
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, "'The Large Glass' Seen Anew: Reflections of Contemporary Science and Technology in Marcel Duchamp's 'Hilarious Picture'', in, Leonardo, Vol.32, No.2 (1999), pp113-126
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998
- Hopkins, David, Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: The Bride Shared, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998
Week 6: Innovative Teaching Week
Week 7: Reading Week (No Seminar)
Week 8: (i) Surrealism and Psychoanalysis; (ii) English Sculpture and Kleinian Psychoanalysis
This seminar will look at how early 20th-century psychoanalysis impacted profoundly upon two very different examples of avant-garde activity. The first part of the seminar will assess how Freudian psychoanalysis affected the Surrealist movement by facilitating the incorporation of dream-imagery and 'automatic' drawing into the Surrealist lexicon for 'revolutionary', satirical and subversive purposes. The second half of the seminar will address the influence of Kleinian psychoanalysis on sculptural theory and practice in interwar England. In particular, in will analyse the way in which Adrian Stokes theorised the 'mother and child' multipart sculptures of Hepworth through using a vocabulary indebted to the psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein's, notions of 'object-relations' and juvenile ego formation.
Set Reading:
- Lomas, David, 'The Omnipotence of Desire: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis and Hysteria', in, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, Mundy, J. (ed.), London, Tate, 2001, pp55-77
- Breton, André, excerpt from the 'First Manifesto of Surrealism' in Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Harrison, C. & Wood, P. (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, pp447-53
Presentations:
(i) Surrealism and Psychoanalysis
Suggested Reading:
- Breton, André, Surrealism and Painting, Boston, MFA Publications, 2002
- Krauss, Rosalind, L'amour fou: Photography and Surrealism, London, Arts Council, 1986
- Lomas, David, 'Modest Recording Instruments': Science, Surrealism and Visuality', in, Art History, Vol.27, No.4, September 2004, pp627-50
- Lomas, David, The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000
- Surrealism: Desire Unbound, Mundy, J. (ed.), London, Tate, 2001
(ii) English Sculpture and Kleinian Psychoanalysis
Suggested Reading:
- Klein, Melanie, 'Love, Guilt and Reparation', and Other Works, 1921-1945, London, Hogarth Press, 1975
- Stokes, Adrian, 'Miss Hepworth's Carving', in, The Critical Writings of Adrian Stokes, Vol.1 (1930-1937), London, Thames and Hudson, 1978, pp309-10
- Stonebridge, Lyndsey, 'A Love of Beginnings: Henry Moore and Psychoanalysis' in Henry Moore, Stephens, C. (ed.), London: Tate Publishing, 2010, pp40-9
- Wagner, Anne Middleton, Mother Stone: The Vitality of Modern British Sculpture, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2005
- Wagner, Anne Middleton, 'Miss Hepworth's Stone Is A Mother', in, Barbara Hepworth Reconsidered, Thistlewood, D. (ed.), Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1996, pp53-74
Week 9: (i) Surrealism and Relativity Physics; (ii) 'Biomorphism' and Biology
From its inception in the early 1920s through to the 1940s, the Surrealist movement demonstrated a significant engagement with the relativity physics of the twentieth century. This seminar shall explore how the concept of a 'new reality' as revealed by the new physics matched up to the Surrealist desire of moving beyond rigid determinism into a more discontinuous and anti-mechanistic philosophy of reality. The second part of this seminar will investigate the emergence of 'biomorphism' during the interwar period and how its iconography of curvilinear form and 'organic' shapes responded to contemporary knowledge of biology and the philosophy of 'neo-vitalism'.
Set Reading:
- Mundy, Jennifer, 'Form and Creation: The Impact of the Biological Sciences on Modern Art', in, Creation: Modern Art and Nature, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 1984, pp16-23
- Benjamin, Walter, 'New Things About Plants' (1928) in Germany, the New Photography, 1927-33; documents and essays, edited by Mellor, David, London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1978, pp20-1
Presentations:
(i) Surrealism and Relativity Physics
Suggested Reading:
- Gamwell, Lynn, Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and the Spiritual, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2002, esp. pp195-224
- Lomas, David, '"Painting is dead - long live painting"' Notes on Dalí and Leonardo', in, Papers of Surrealism, Issue 4, Winter 2005 (online edition), pp1-29
- Parkinson, Gavin, 'Surrealism and Quantum Mechanics: Dispersal and Fragmentation in Art, Life and Physics', in, Science in Context, 17(4), 2004, pp557-77
- Parkinson, Gavin, Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2008
- Whitworth, Michael, 'The Clothbound Universe: Popular Physics Books, 1919-1939', in, Publishing History, Vol.40, 1996, pp53-82
- Whitworth, Michael, Einstein's Wake: Relativity, Metaphor and Modernist Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001 [available at the NLS]
(ii) 'Biomorphism' and Biology
Suggested Reading:
- Barnett, Vivian Endicott, 'Kandinsky and Science: The Introduction of Biological Images in the Paris Period', in, Kandinsky in Paris, 1934-1944, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1986, pp61-87
- Gamwell, Lynn, Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and the Spiritual, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2002
- Krauss, Rosalind E., Passages in Modern Sculpture, Cambridge and London, MIT, 1977, esp. pp140-6
- Maldonado, Guitemie, Le cercle et l'amibe: le biomorphisme dans l'art des années 1930, Paris, CTHS-INHA, 2006
- Mundy, Jennifer, 'Form and Creation: The Impact of the Biological Sciences on Modern Art', in, Creation: Modern Art and Nature, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 1984, pp16-23
- Mundy, Jennifer, Biomorphism, (PhD Dissertation) London, Courtauld Institute of Art, (University of London), 1986 [available at the Dean Library, SNGMA]
- Mundy, Jennifer, 'Nature Made Strange', in, Surrealism and Design, Wood, G. (ed.), London, V and A Publications, 2007, pp59-79
- Mundy, Jennifer, 'Comment on England' in Henry Moore, Stephens, C. (ed.), London: Tate Publishing, 2010, pp22-37
- Wood, Ghislaine, 'The Shapes of Life: Biomorphism and American Design', in, Surrealism and Design, Wood, G. (ed.), London, V and A Publications, 2007, pp81-99
Week 10: (i) Constructivism and Science; (ii) Postwar Abstraction and the 'Nuclear Sublime'
The short-lived, Bauhaus-inspired, Constructivist movement that emerged in England during the mid-1930s sought to bring together art and science as a productive means of design development. Biology, mathematics and engineering were all seen as legitimate sources for Constructivists to pilfer in their utopian quest for more efficacious design techniques. The first part of this seminar will investigate the nature of Constructivism's relationship to science and ask how the discipline aided Constructivists in demonstrating modern art's perceived utility to society. The final part of the seminar will look at postwar abstraction (both European and American) and explore whether the onset of the nuclear age provided artists with new conceptions of the sublime. The 'transcendental' aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism (especially in the case of Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock), for example, shall be examined as a cultural response to the postwar era's obsession with the power of the atom.
Set Reading:
- Petersen, Stephen, 'Explosive Propositions: Artists React to the Atomic Age' in Science in Context, 17(4), 2004, pp579-609
- Gabo, Naum, 'The Constructive Idea in Art' (1937) in Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Harrison, C. & Wood, P. (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, pp384-7
- Pollock, Jackson, 'Interview with William Wright' (1950) in Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Harrison, C. & Wood, P. (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, pp583-6
Presentations:
(i) Constructivism and Science
Suggested Reading:
- Anker, Peder, 'The Bauhaus of Nature', in, MODERNISM/modernity, Vol.12, No.2 (2005), pp229-51
- Hammer, Martin and Lodder, Christina, Constructing Modernity: The Art and Career of Naum Gabo, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000, esp. pp379-401
- Lewison, Jeremy (ed.), Circle: Constructive Art in Britain, 1934-40, Cambridge, Kettle's Yard Gallery, 1992
- Martin, J.L., Nicholson, Ben and Gabo, Naum (eds.), Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, London, Faber, 1971
- Thistlewood, David (ed.), Barbara Hepworth Reconsidered, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1996
(ii) Postwar Abstraction and the 'Nuclear Sublime'
Suggested Reading:
- Boyer, Paul, 'The Bomb as a Harbinger of Cultural Transformation', in, The Nuclear Age, Maddock, Shane J. (ed.), Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001, pp39-50
- Gamwell, Lynn, Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and the Spiritual, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2002, esp. pp259-79
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, 'Mysticism, Romanticism and the 4th Dimension', in, The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1890-1985, New York, Abbeville Press, 1986, pp219-37
- Newman, Barnett, 'The New Sense of Fate' (1948), in, Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews, O'Neill, John P. (ed.), Berkeley, University of California, 1992, pp164-9
- Parkinson, Gavin, 'Surrealism and Quantum Mechanics: Dispersal and Fragmentation in Art, Life and Physics', in, Science in Context, 17(4), 2004, pp557-77
- Polcari, Stephan, Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991
- Winter, Amy, Wolfgang Paalen: Artist and Theorist of the Avant-Garde, London, Praeger, 2003, esp. pp181-91
Week 11: (i) Constructionism and Morphology; (ii) Mexican Art and Medicine
The Constructionist movement in postwar England was deeply interested in theories of growth and form in nature and their applicability to painting and sculpture. What this seminar shall investigate are the reasons as to why Constructionism adopted a process-based mode of practice that incorporated aspects of morphology as part of an 'organic' aesthetic. The second half of this seminar will explore the role of medical imagery in the work of the Mexican artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In the first instance, it shall look at how Kahlo utilized a variety of medical and anatomical images to articulate an autobiographical narrative of bodily trauma. In the second, it will analyse the representation of medicine and technology in Rivera's Detroit and Mexican National Institute of Cardiology murals.
Set Reading:
- Thistlewood, David, 'Organic Art and the Popularization of a Scientific Philosophy', in, British Journal of Aesthetics, 22:4 (1982:Autumn), pp331-21
- Heath, Adrian, 'Statement' in Nine Abstract Artists: Their Work and Theory, edited by Alloway, Lawrence, London: Alec Tiranti, 1954, pp25-6
Presentations:
(i) Constructionism and Morphology
Suggested Reading:
- Alloway, Lawrence, Nine Abstract Artists: Their Work and Theory, London, Alec Tiranti, 1954
- Garlake, Margaret, New Art, New World: British Art in Postwar Society, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1998
- Grieve, Alastair, Constructed Art in England after the Second World War: A Neglected Avant-Garde, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2005, esp. pp215-32
- Moffat, Isabelle, ''A Horror of Abstract Thought': Postwar Britain and Hamilton's 1951 'Growth and Form' Exhibition', in, October, Vol.94 (Autumn, 2000), pp89-112
- Thistlewood, David, 'Organic Art and the Popularization of a Scientific Philosophy', in, British Journal of Aesthetics, 22:4 (1982:Autumn), pp331-21
- Whyte, Lancelot Law (ed.), Aspects of Form: A Symposium on Form in Nature and Art, London, Lund Humpries, 1951
(ii) Mexican Art and Medicine
Suggested Reading:
- Ankori, Gannit, Imaging her Selves: Frida Kahlo's Poetics of Identity and Fragmentation, Westport & London, Greenwood Press, 2002, esp. pp95-134
- Dawns, Lisa Bank, Diego Rivera: The Detroit Industry Murals, Detroit, The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1999
- Folgarait, Leonard, Mural Painting and Social Revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940: Art of the New Order, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998
- Grimberg, Salomon, 'Frida Kahlo: The Self as an End' in Chadwick, W. (ed.), Mirror Images: Women, Surrealism and Self-Representation, Cambridge & London, MIT, 1998, pp82-104
- Lomas, David, 'Body languages: Kahlo and medical imagery' in Adler, K & Pointon, M (eds.), The Body Imaged: The Human Form and Visual Culture Since the Renaissance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp5-19
- Lomas, David, 'Remedy or Poison? Diego Rivera, Medicine and Technology' in Oxford Art Journal, Vol.30, No.3 (2007), pp456-483
- Lomas, David. "'Painting the History of Cardiology.'." in British Medical Journal 331 (2005), pp1533-1535
Week 12: Fieldtrip and Conclusions
In this seminar we will make a fieldtrip to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery so as to examine some of the artworks that have been discussed in class firsthand. Intended as both an opportunity to debate some of the ideas that have emerged over the past eleven weeks as well as preparation for the exam, this seminar will look at select artworks in the galleries' collections that touch upon scientific themes. In this respect, the seminar is not a 'guided tour'; rather students will be expected to contribute to interpretations of the artworks that relate to the central themes of the course. In this way this seminar will attempt to draw together the various threads woven throughout the course and put forward some conclusions about the relationship between art, science and modernity. A discussion of the relevance to art history and the history of science of Thomas Kuhn's concept of 'paradigm shift' will also take place. Needless to say, attendance is mandatory.
Set Reading:
- Kuhn, Thomas, ''Postscript - 1969' to 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions', in, Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Harrison, C. and Wood, P. (eds.), Oxford, Blackwell, 1992, pp936-40
General Bibliography:
(For more detailed study, students are directed to the separate bibliography (the suggested reading) provided for each presentation.)
- Berman, Marshall, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, London, Verso, 1983
- Blackshaw, Gemma and Topp, Leslie (eds.), Madness and Modernity: Mental Illness and the Visual Arts in Vienna 1900, Farnham, Lund Humphries, 2009
- Burnham, Jack, Beyond Modern Sculpture: The Effects of Technology on the Sculpture of this Century, New York, George Braziller, 1968
- Gage, John, Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism, London, Thames and Hudson, 2000
- Gage, John, Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction, London, Thames and Hudson, 1993
- Gamwell, Lynn, Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science and the Spiritual, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2002
- Harrison, Charles, English Art and Modernism, 1900-1939, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1981
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, Duchamp in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998
- Henderson, Linda Dalrymple, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983
- Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991, London, Abacus, 1994
- Jones, Caroline A. and Galison, Peter (eds.), Picturing Science, Producing Art, New York and London, Routledge, 1998
- Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space, London and Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1983
- Krauss, Rosalind E., Passages in Modern Sculpture, Cambridge and London, MIT, 1977
- Lomas, David, The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2000
- Maldonado, Guitemie, Le cercle et l'amibe: le biomorphisme dans l'art des années 1930, Paris, CTHS-INHA, 2006
- Parkinson, Gavin, Surrealism, Art and Modern Science: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Epistemology, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2008
- Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind : a medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present, London, Harper Collins, 1997
- Porter, Roy, Blood and Guts: A short history of medicine, London, Allen Lane/Penguin, 2002
- Snow, C.P., The Two Cultures, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998
- Whitworth, Michael, Einstein's Wake: Relativity, Metaphor and Modernist Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001 [available at the NLS]
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 History of Art courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
| By the end of the course students will understand the importance of science as a stimulus to the twentieth-century avant garde and be able to identify and explain the reasons for this. Students will also be cognizant of the theory underpinning contemporary art/science interdisciplinary research and competently discuss some of the major issues ongoing in this field of study. They will also be able to skillfully interweave visual and textual sources as a means of expounding upon how scientific ideas visually and ideologically impacted upon avant-garde production in the period 1907-60. More broadly, students will be able to understand the historical background against which various twentieth-century European avant-garde and scientific innovations took place.
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Reading List
| see syllabus above |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Edward Juler
Tel: 0131 651 1460
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Sue Cavanagh
Tel: (0131 6)51 1460
Email: |
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