AXR272 The art history residential school

Please note that the dates of the 2013 AXR272 residential school are: week 1: 29 June - 5 July and week 2: 6 July - 12 July

Study of this module will enable students to:

have first hand experience of works of art in gallery and museum settings
develop analytical and critical skills in the study of works of art. In addition to painting, examples may be drawn from sculpture and architecture, photography and graphic art
learn about some of the different approaches to the study of art.

The module consists of three main components:

readings and exercises designed to prepare students for a week of intensive study in museums and in the class room. These serve to introduce concepts and approaches to looking at art and raise questions that will be considered during the module of the residential school. Students will also be required to complete a preparatory assessment
a one-week residential school based in London, which includes guided visits to museums and galleries (and, where appropriate, temporary exhibitions) as well as small group seminars. Students will participate in a group project presentation
a 2,000 word end-of-module assignment (EMA), which students will complete after the residential school.

back to topRole of the residential school tutor

The residential school is based around four teaching themes. These are taught in seminars at Queen Mary College, University of London, and supported by visits to three London galleries and museums to acquaint the students with works of art. The museums are the National Gallery, Tate Modern, and the British Museum. Students study the four themes in rotation, one each day. The themes are taught in the form of an introduction, a gallery visit and a follow-up seminar. You will be appointed to teach one theme, repeating it four times to four small groups of approximately 15 students. The residential school themes are:

Theme A. Renaissance Art: Sacred and Secular - structured around a visit to the National Gallery;
Theme B. Academy and Avant-Gardes - structured around a visit to the National Gallery;
Theme C. Modern Art and Modernism - structured around a visit to Tate Modern;
Theme D. Western Art and Other Cultures - structured around a visit to the British Museum.

Theme A. Renaissance Art: Sacred and Secular examines painting from Italy and northern Europe dating from c1400-1550. It is based largely on the National Gallery collection of Renaissance art, but may also include reference to the collection of Byzantine icons at the British Museum.

Theme B. Academy and Avant-Gardes examines European art from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, with a particular focus on French and British art. The study material for this theme is intended to prepare you for a visit to the National Gallery, whose collection includes examples of British eighteenth and early nineteenth century art and of French seventeenth to nineteenth century art.

Theme C. Modern Art and Modernism is structured around a visit to Tate Modern where students will engage with a wide range of works spanning the period from 1900 to the present including works of 'modernism' the 'historical avant-garde' and 'postmodernism'. In addition to studying painting and sculpture we will also look at works in other media, which may include photography, video and installations.

Theme D. Western Art and Other Cultures is centred upon a visit to the British Museum where students will encounter selected works, both from within the western tradition, and from other traditions.

You will also supervise students' work on their residential school project, which they deliver in the form of seminar presentations on the final morning. For the project, students are asked to present an illustrated talk about a group of works of art, incorporating ideas acquired during the week. The purpose of the project is to provide an opportunity for some self-directed learning and to give them practical experience in discussing works of art.

Please note that tutors are appointed to teach one theme only. Your basic teaching commitment will be:

Introduction: one introductory session on Saturday evening, synoptic in nature, drawing out main themes of the module; discussing with students areas they have found difficult; and introducing them to the idea of the project.

Theme: theme-based sessions repeated daily, comprising:

A 11/2 hour introductory session leading to the gallery visit. You should distribute a worksheet on what you expect students to study at the gallery
A visit to the National Gallery, Tate Modern, or the British Museum, according to the theme you are teaching, during which students will be expected to attend to selected works of art as laid out on your worksheet. You will accompany groups on each of the four theme days
A 11/2 to 2 hour tutorial following up the gallery visit and drawing the theme together.

Project: prepare students for (and advise them on) the residential school project, which will be discussed on Sunday evening and at other times throughout the week. They will be asked to consider a selected work of art studied in galleries during the week, and relate the chosen work to a wider range of works and to art-historical and art-critical texts. They will work in small groups and present their work in a seminar on Friday.

There will be two slide projectors and screens in teaching rooms. Facilities may also be available for tutors to present their teaching material using PowerPoint. More detailed information will be sent to you before the school.

back to topQualifications

You should be a well qualified art historian and willing to take part in the whole range of activities at the school. You are expected to be familiar with the content and aims of the module. You will be sent a set of study materials. Specific advice for each theme is set out below:

Theme A. Renaissance Art: Sacred and Secular tutors should have a thorough grounding in art from both Italy and northern Europe dating from c1400-1550, and possibly some knowledge of Byzantine icons of the period. The main teaching visit for this period will be to the National Gallery. Morning sessions on campus will be designed to equip students to make best use of the gallery visit: for example tutors might include a consideration of viewpoint and mathematical perspective; a brief explanation of the form and function of altarpieces (single-panelled altarpieces, polyptychs, triptychs); and a basic introduction to painters' materials during the period, and their properties. The gallery visit itself is intended to encourage close and intelligent looking rather than to give a potted history of Renaissance art. With the aid of worksheets, tutors will be expected to teach students to begin to interrogate paintings in terms appropriate for the Renaissance period. This will include some of the following:

the way a painting was made (tempera or oil painting; wooden panel or canvas support; pentimenti; pigments - specifically pigments that change through time; gilding; frames; variations in the degree of surface finish)
the approach to representation (the illusion of life; the construction of pictorial space; directional light and modelling; trompe l'oeil; gesture, movement and expression; surface textures; portraiture; composition and narrative)
the way in which the function of a work of art might affect the form it takes (size; shape; viewpoint; symbolism; subject matter).

Theme B. Academy and Avant-Gardes teaching of this theme is based on the collection at the National Gallery, and focuses on works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tutors should plan a morning session on campus introducing particular themes they hope students will address and explore in front of particular works in the gallery. These themes might include:

Institutional conditions of art of these periods, including the role of the academies, the rise of public exhibitions and the establishment of museums and the 'canon'. The focus here should be on the art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but there is some scope for including some examples of seventeenth century painting in terms of its relevance to understanding later developments in art (e.g. Poussin and the 'canon', the influence of Dutch genre painting). It is important here to avoid both giving a potted history of art in this period and relying on an over-schematic contrast between academy and avant-garde. The morning session could also include some brief consideration of the National Gallery itself.
The hierarchy of the genres, the growing importance of the 'lower' genres and the blurring of genre boundaries. These could be discussed in front of specific examples of eighteenth/nineteenth century portraiture, history, landscape and genre painting. The visit could include viewing of a mixture of familiar and canonical works (e.g. Wright, Experiment on an Air Pump; Gainsborough portraits, Constable, The Hay Wain; Manet, Music in the Tuileries Gardens; Seurat, Bathers, with lesser known works and less familiar fields (e.g. eighteenth-century French or nineteenth-century German painting).
Other possible themes for consideration here: Classicism, Realism/Naturalism, Modernity, Art and Politics.

Either the morning session or the follow up session might include some consideration of recent critical perspectives in relation to class, gender and race. This would need to be tied in closely to the viewing of works in the gallery.

Theme C. Modern Art and Modernism teaching of the twentieth-century strand is based on the collections of Tate Modern at Bankside. There will be students who have no previous grounding in the art of the twentieth century. While examples should not be restricted to too narrow a period, tutors should not attempt a broad survey. Rather it will be important to provide address to some major issues in the art of the period, and to offer students a means of first-hand engagement with works in the gallery. Among themes that might be considered are the tendency to accord priority to expression over description, the introduction and development of abstract art, the idea of the readymade, the uses and effects of photographic techniques, and the post-1960 'expansion' of artistic media. Whatever themes are chosen for emphasis it is important that students should gain understanding of their pertinence through the direct encounter with specific examples.

Theme D. Western Art and Other Cultures is organised around a visit to the British Museum. The Museum's collections are diverse, and include fields such as India, China, Africa as well as various ancient civilisations. While we do not wish to exclude any area in advance, tutors are urged to make their teaching relevant to the wider issues taught in the summer school. Thus, a narrow focus on, say, Chinese porcelain, or the Benin bronzes, would not be advisable. This is not to say, however, that both those areas of study might not form 'case studies' in a wider brief.

The initial approach should be to explore questions such as 'What do I need to know to understand this work?' This may involve some contextual knowledge about the circumstances of the piece's production. It may also involve some practical knowledge about how it was made. We do not want students to think they have to become instant experts in fields of which they have no previous knowledge, but we do want to alert them to the fact that they might need to bring to the encounter with work from other cultures competencies that are not quite the same as those they bring to the encounter with more familiar work. Thus they may need to consider the purpose or function for which the piece was made. They will also need to consider questions pertaining to the way the work is displayed in the British Museum. How is the balance of anthropological and aesthetic negotiated? Are the conventions in terms of which works of art are displayed in Western art museums adequate for the display of non-Western works? Is it the case that information which may be implicit in the encounter with Western art has to be made explicit in the case of non-Western work?

In the follow-up session it may also be worth considering questions of the Museum itself. For example, the question of 'Whose culture is it?' Is the notion of the 'universal museum' tenable? What are the consequences of contemporary cultural globalisation for collections of objects largely made during the period of imperialism?

This is an enormous and frequently fraught area. We do not expect you to resolve these issues for students, but to seek to balance an openness to the requirements of encounters with other cultures - which may include the provision of 'new' information about them - with a reflexiveness about what such encounters demand of contemporary spectators.

back to topCompleting the application form

Question 7

Please indicate the themes you are willing to teach:

A Renaissance Art: Sacred and Secular

B Academy and Avant-Gardes

C Modern Art and Modernism

D Western Art and Other Cultures

Please note that tutors will be appointed to teach one theme only.

Question 9

Give brief details of the main topic or subject area you intend to teach in the theme sessions (the artists and issues to be covered). Provide details of any teaching experience, research or specialist interests relevant to your themes. (Use Q9 if you need more space).

back to topDates & venues - AXR272

back to topSummer

Venue	Start date	End date
Queen Mary, University of London East London	Sat 29/06/13	Fri 05/07/13
Queen Mary, University of London East London	Sat 06/07/13	Fri 12/07/13

See Dates & venues for other courses.