Department of Art History & Film StudiesARHT1002 - 2012 - MODERN TIMES: ART & FILM

ESSAY – which should be around 2,300-2,500 words, is worth 55% of the overall mark. Due by 4pm Monday 4pm MONDAY 30th April. No late papers!

A Few Pointers:Your essay should be clearly and articulately develop an argument to answer the set question. You are expected to discuss relevant artworks and/or films in some detail, building your argument from your close analysis of works. General points should only be made on the basis of such studies of artworks/films.

You are not encouraged to write biographies of artists or filmmakers, or to merely systematically describe the chronological development of their work.

You are encouraged to subject the statements of writers on art and film to critical assessment. They should be carefully tested against your own response to the artwork or film being discussed. It is often helpful to note differences of opinion amongst writers. Note that all primary and secondary sources must be properly footnoted.

Historical studies of relevant periods are usually worth reading. Similarly, artists’ and filmmakers’ statements about their own or others’ work are always of value, but are not the final word on the subject.

The main objective is to arrive at your own view of an artwork or film in response to studying the work itself, relevant statements, historical context, related work and critical interpretations. The questions are designed to help you do this. Having done so, you should be in a position to answer the question asked.

For the correct form of presentation for footnotes, endnotes, bibliography and illustrations consult the Department’s Guide to Essay Writing (on the department of Art History and Film Studies website). Also check the information on the essay that is given in your ARHT 1002 guidelines document.

Essay Submission:You will find the ARHT1002 essay coversheet on our website. Download it and print it out. Include on the coversheet your name, SID, tutorial time, tutor’s name, the number of the essay question you are answering, also please sign and date the plagiarism statement. Staple the coversheet it to the front of your essay, then place the essay with cover sheet attached in the ARHT1002 essay box. This is located in the corridor opposite the Admin/Head of Department’s office (room 215) in the Mills building.

Extensions:Students are reminded that the Department requires you to submit your assignments by the due date/ Failure to do so without formal permission - given before the essay is due – will mean loss of marks (2% per day, including weekends and public holidays), and your paper may not receive written comment. Extensions will be given only for illness or serious personal problems (but not for reasons of heavy workload, extra-curricular activities or outside job commitments). Request for an extension must be made online (see Course

Guidelines document, on the ARHT 1002 Homepage) before the date of submission; remember that it will require documentation (eg a medical certificate).

Assistance with essay-writing skills:If you require help in developing your essay writing skills you can contact the Learning Centre on campus. They provide short and longer courses that will help you develop this crucial skill. How to contact the Learning centre: Phone 9351 3853 http://www.usyd.edu.au/stuserv/learning_centre/index.shtml or visit them at Room 722, Level 7 Education Building. We also recommend the following book that is written specifically about the skills required for writing about art: Amy Tucker, Visual Literacy. Writing About Art, McGraw Hill, Boston, 2002

Now for the Essay Questions! Please answer ONE of the following questions:

1. Many twentieth century artists have been fascinated by the art of children, folk artists, the insane, and those regional or non-European cultures mis-named ‘primitive’. Discuss no more than three artworks created in the early decades of the 20th century that draw upon ONE of those sources. In your answer speculate on the reasons why these arts should have so strong an appeal to the modernist artist or filmmaker.

2. Early 20th century abstract artists often expressed the belief that their art could contribute towards the creation of an ideal society. In which ways could the abstract artist hope to affect society? (You will need to consider the ways in which abstract art is experienced, the ways it affects consciousness).

3. In the first half of the 20th century, artists, filmmakers and other cultural producers had a love-hate relation to industrial technology. Critically analyse two divergent positions taken to the ‘machine aesthetic’, making reference to no more than four specific examples.

4. Imagine that you are an avant-garde artist, designer or filmmaker in the period 1900-1930. You aim to revolutionise society and culture, not simply through subject matter or content but also by revolutionising the techniques and devices of artistic or cinematic form. For you, art and film need to change spectators’ perception of the world, as part of social and political change. Through analysing no more than 3 of your artworks or films, explain your revolutionary aesthetics.

5. “Montage is conflict” wrote Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (‘The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram’ (1949), Essays in Film Form, London: Harvest/HBJ, edited & translated by Jay Leyda), 1977, p.38) Analyse the different use and effects of montage in Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potempkin and Dziga Vertov’s The Man With A Movie Camera.

6. “Dada is nothing, nothing, nothing.” How do you evaluate the anti-aesthetic anarchism and nihilism of Dada? In answering this question, you might consider how Dada is best characterised. To what was dada responding? What

were the tactics of this response? Deal with the work, writing and actions carried out in at least one of these cities: Zurich, Berlin, New York, and Paris.

7. Analyse how Expressionist artists used the human body as an expression of broader social or political ideas, through a consideration of specific Expressionist artworks and/or films.

8. The German film historian and theorist Siegfried Kracauer called Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1929) “a film of unsurpassable staginess’. (Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, (1960), Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 61) German Expressionist cinema brought many ‘worlds’ together – for instance, the cinematic world suggested by camera movement and editing and the deliberately unreal world created by the stage designer. Analyse the painterly treatment, stylised architecture and theatrical dimension of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Do these ‘worlds’ collide, combine or resolve, and to what effect?

9. In “What Is Surrealism?” (1934) Andre Bréton wrote, “The marvellous is always beautiful, anything that is marvellous is beautiful; indeed, nothing but the marvellous is beautiful.” Elaborate and evaluate Bréton’s claim through a critical analysis of no more than 3-4 Surrealist artworks and/or films.

10. In the ‘happy ending’ of Luis Buñuel and Salvadore Dali’s Un Chien Andalou (1929), the lovers are finally united, but buried up to their necks in sand. Observers also note Buñuel’s “lasting concerns with dreams, imaginings and the workings of the subconscious, as well as his deep distrust of religion and bourgeois ways of living.” (Roy Armes, The Ambiguous Image, London: Secker & Warburg, 1976, 31) Could a surrealist live ‘happily ever after’? What would this ideal state be like? Please make reference to no more than 3 artworks or films in your answer.

11. It is 1916, and you are seeking respite from the Great War in downtown Zurich. A young and impressionable artist-friend invites you to the opening of a new club, the ‘Cabaret Voltaire’. Was it a memorable night? Why?

12. Analyse the characteristics of realism in the twentieth century as a force of progressive modernism. An example you may wish to consider is Di Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. How different is this to realism in the nineteenth century (eg. the paintings of Courbet and Daumier, the novels of Dickens, Balzac and Zola.)

13. In his 1908 Futurist Manifesto, F.T. Marinetti claimed that “Time and Space died yesterday.” How might this enthusiastic claim characterise the advent of the cinema and/or early avant-garde experiments?