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Unit of Study ARTD2002 - Modern Art and the Avant-Garde (2025)

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Unit Snapshot

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Unit description

Examines issues that are central to the origins of modern art and the avant-garde. The onset of modernity enacted radical changes in the production and interpretation of visual art. Students will explore the reasons for, and the ramifications of, these changes, and in the process will become familiar with key political and theoretical issues concerning the legacy of modernist ideologies.

Unit content

  • Modernity, capitalism and the avant-garde
  • Craft as fine art
  • Primitivism and colonisation
  • The aesthetics of abstraction
  • Utopian visions: art as social critique
  • Art and technological reproduction

Availabilities

Location Domestic International
Online
Term1
N/A

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

recognise the various visual languages and aesthetic philosophies of modernism

articulate relationships between the avant-garde and modernity in Western and non-Western cultures

describe the key socio-political factors that impinged upon a range of modernist art practices

demonstrate an understanding of academic writing skills, information literacy, library and online research

Prescribed learning resources

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Prescribed Learning Resources may change in future Teaching Periods.