AH 360 - Art Analysis: What is Modern Art? What is Modern?

The course covers the development of painting from around 1850 to 1950: from the moment of a distancing from the traditions of academe through Impressionism, moving on through the “founding fathers” of Modern Art and the evolution of the avant-garde movements around 1900. Here a special emphasis will be on Austrian Art around 1900. The course will then focus on the art of the period between the two World Wars with Surrealism and Modernism until the time after the Second World War, with the emergence of an independent US-American mode of expression, which is primarily manifested in the artists of Abstract Expressionism. Artworks will be analyzed from various perspectives, compared to related art in Vienna, and connected to the cultural background of the period from which they arose. The focus of course is on artistic expressions of “modern”, new, innovative ways of seeing and experiencing the world.