Art Nouveau Across Europe

Overview

Description

The appearance of this style differed hugely from city to city and from artist to artist, but shared a commitment to a varied and often contradictory set of principles. The creators of Art Nouveau looked simultaneously to the past and the future, to art for the people and art for art’s sake, to social reform and luxurious decadence, to the national and the international. They sought both to change the world and to escape it. On this course we will explore the complex impulses, anxieties and hopes for the future that shaped the visual arts around 1900.

Course aims

By the end of the Art Nouveau Across Europe course at University of Oxford you will be able to:

• explore the development of new ideas about art and design and its role in the modern world at the fin-de-siècle.
• look closely and analytically at the art, design and architecture of the period and make connections between works and their intellectual, social and cultural context.
• explore what such art works, designs and theories can tell us about how the people of Europe responded to and sought to understand and express their experience of a rapidly changing world at the dawn of the twentieth century.

And you will have developed the following:

• familiarity with the general trajectory of evolving ideas and forms in art, design and architecture in Europe around 1900.
• how an art work or design can reflect the ideas and aspirations of an artist, a patron and the society for which it was produced.
• a detailed understanding of selected national case studies or design fields based on their areas of interest

Teaching outcomes

By the end of this course students will be expected to have gained the following skills:

• Visual analysis skills - looking at art and design and making connections to ideas raised in course material and readings.
• Research skills - reading analytically and evaluating text and online learning material.
• Self-expression of ideas through writing and discussion.