Corso di Laurea magistrale a ciclo unico in Conservazione e Restauro dei Beni Culturali - SUSCOR

This teaching aims to provide an in-depth knowledge of the poetics, of the processes and experiments made by artists of the historical avant-gardes and the of the neo-avant-gardes. It intends to provide a clear understanding of the expressive and linguistic motivations that underlie the different researches carried out by artists in the period between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries.

At the end of the teaching course, the student is able to recognize artistic current, historical period and author of a work of art. Equally, he is capable to read a work of art from an iconographic and iconological point of view; to connect the emergence of certain artistic research with the facts of history and the history of culture; to understand the references to the past history of art, which underlie the choice of a topic, of a medium or material; to know the development over time of the different media used by artists.

- The main artistic trends and personalities of the second half of the XIX century, as well as the birth of the "total art work".
- The historical Avant-gardes of the early XX century and their experiments (photography, collage, ready-made, objet trouvé).
- The years between the two World Wars, from the "return to order" to the "synthesis of the arts".
- The Neo-avant-gardes of the second half of the XX century, the new phenomenologies of the art work (assemblage, happening, performance, installation, environment, video and film, web) and the post-media condition of art.
- The Art in the post-colonization era, neo-object and neo-conceptual research from the 1990s to nowadays between old and new media (Brit Art, Relational art, Net Art).

The teaching method includes frontal lesson made by the lecturer (52 hours), within which students are called to intervene. Due to the amount of information and the complexity of the concepts treated in the course, the participation of the students is strictly required.

The assessment of learning is based on a final oral exam with questions aimed to verify the student's ability to navigate in the historical period covered by the programme as well as to connect historical facts with artistic researches. Other questions aim to verify the understanding the peculiarity of each artistic movements in terms of processes, techniques, mediums and poetic goals. Finally, other questions are addressed to assess the student's ability to recognize and read a work of art by listing authorship, artistic current, date of creation, subject, medium. The assessment of learning is based on 30-point grading system.

— Classroom lectures;
— Silvia Bordini (edited by), Arte contemporanea e tecniche. Materiali, procedimenti, sperimentazioni, Roma, Carocci: 2007 or later editions, 313 pages;
- T. Montanari, S. Settis, Arte. Una storia naturale e civile, Milano 2019, voll. 4-5