Art-Words: How to Talk About Art

Art-Words: How to Talk About Art in the 21st
Century

Is Art a form of work, or play? Research, or
expression - of a self, or other things? Can it be
a way of exploring the world outside human
subjectivity, or perhaps even a method for
constructing other (new) worlds, with or without
ourselves in them? And what is the place of
objects and matter in Art, when for some the
artist is just another prop? Is all Art just
imaginary and fictitious, stories we tell? Or can
it be used to investigate different kinds of
truth? And what of the status of stories in
art-making? What does the term "Art" mean today,
what has it meant historically, and what might or
could it mean in the (near) future/s? This course
examines how both the discourses and
manifestations of Art have changed over the last
150 years, to ask what definitions and languages
might be useful in the 21st century. We explore
various discourses, focusing on key words, both in
their contemporary and historical uses, including
- Work, Play, Form, Content, Matter, Materialism,
Purpose, Meaninglessness, Ambiguity, Value,
Ideology, Politics, Identity, Subject, Object,
Aesthetic/s, Art, Modernism, (post)-Modernism,
Realism, Romanticism, Primitivism, Abstraction,
Representation, Transgression, Autonomy, Art
&Life, Critique, Criticality, and Contemporaneity.
We study texts that attempt to define how we might
approach art, the languages we use to discuss it,
and the values we draw on in classifying and
naming anything as Art. Alongside these we look at
a wide variety of practices, not just from High
Culture, but also from Instagram, non-western
indigenous societies, pre-modern art forms and
other non-art practices, such as self-taught
artists and hybrids where the arts intersect with
other disciplines.