Close Reading: Painting

The aim of this module is to introduce the students to a number of equally valid art historical narratives and to provide them with the critical attitude contemporary art requires from its beholder. Art historical canon interprets works of art along a vertical tradition, enforcing a terminology often unsatisfactory, neglecting aspects of an artistic product which inherently define the given artwork. Interdisciplinary research and methods – such as social studies, political sciences and reception aesthetics – broach questions which lead to a better understanding of the theory and most importantly the artwork and its era. These methods create a complex contextuality, in which the artwork is the origo for all interpretation, and goes beyond the multi-levelled analysis introduced by Erwin Panofsky in his iconology studies. The most important question of this module is not what the artworks represents, but how does it do it?