Class History of Art and Visual Culture

Classes offer an introduction to the general history of art and visual culture based on case studies, in order to understand the relationships between Art and Design, their origins, developments and multiple interconnections. Classes promote non-linear thinking about the History of Art, associating and drawing parallels between different artists, periods and artistic movements, from Antiquity to the 21st Century. With this approach, the objective is to demonstrate to the student the recursion of history and the consequent importance of knowing the past to build the future. Analyze and realize that the contexts of Art History and Visual Culture are inseparable from each other, and that they are articulated in theories and processes allowing the construction of a fundamental network of strategies for the study of Design. The UC includes a practical part in order to graphically investigate and explore some of the concepts covered in class, according to different techniques and materials.

I - Introduction to visual culture with a problem

1. The image

1.1. Images and new readings of the «Real»

II - Modernity and technicality

2. Modernity and the shattering of representation

2.1. Mosaics, archives, constellations, atlas

III - Contemporary transmutations

3. Images and contemporaneity

3.1 Visual decolonization, body and identity(ies), Otherness

3.2 Globalization, ecologies and cross-cultural practices

The creative methodologies used invest in the use of disruptive strategies, introducing new ways of looking at the contents. Thus, the pedagogical design follows a line of thought with the aim of creating an articulated relationship between thinking, feeling and doing, reorganizing the order of these three elements into new geometries whenever possible. From a specific context (story, challenge, brief, etc.) students are encouraged to develop attitudes and behaviors in project or laboratory mode, aiming to work on skills and curriculum content in a dynamic and interactive way, mobilizing different capacities of the student and their various kinds of knowledge. Some methodologies involve the introduction of creative challenges (use of objects, images, sounds or people, events or actions), creation of artifacts (production of analogue/other micro-devices, graphic and written diaries, cartography), use of the body (body expression)

Berger, John. Modos de ver. Lisboa: Antígona, 2018. ISBN 9789726083290.

Clifford, J. (1988) The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Crary, J. (1990) Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Foster, H. (ed.) (1988) Vision and Visuality. Seattle: Bay Press.

Gombrich, Ernst Hans. The Story of Art (16 a Edição). Londres: Phaidon Press, 2013. ISBN 9780714833552.

Jay, M. (1988) Scopic Regimes of Modernity?, in Hal Foster (ed.) Vision and Visuality. Seattle: Bay Press.

Mirzoeff, N. (ed.) (1998) The Visual Culture Reader. London: Routledge.

Mirzoeff, N. (1999) An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge.